Thank you Netflix for saving the Trailer Park Boys. It hasn’t been smooth sailing, but ever since the Boys returned to Sunnyvale with the excellent Season 8 (remember Orangie?), the show has continued unhindered by cast defections. Season 11 is the first without Lucy Decoutere (Lucy) and Jonathan Torrens (J-Roc). After already losing such favourites as Trevor (Mike Jackson) and Ray (Barrie Dunn), I can understand why some fans may have said enough’s enough. Every show has its peak. For some that would be the first three seasons of Trailer Park Boys. For others, we have rolled with the changes. Not all fans were unanimous in the acceptance of newer characters such as Col. Dancer, Don/Donna, and Candy. For this season, those characters have been dropped. The core park residents are now Ricky, Julian and Bubbles accompanied by Randy, Lahey, Sarah, Cory, Jacob and Trinity. Little baby Motel is around, as is Barb Lahey.
Continuing a storyline from Season 10, Julian has vanished. Bubbles is doing well now, having gone legit selling his own brand of organic pizza sauce. It’s a hit, and a restaurant owner is willing to pay wholesale. He has the whole park working together growing vegetables, contributing to the well-being of Sunnyvale and its residents. All is well, but Bubbles does miss Julian. Jim Lahey is sober and supervising, having truly changed this time. He and Randy are planning to get married, while Randy is vying to get on the police force. The absence of Lucy and J-Roc is explained satisfactorily.
When Ricky and Bubbles (now mobile with his own little truck) discover that Julian is now a lobster fisherman (or is he?) living in a shipping container, they go to confront him. Ultimately, Julian’s return brings what it always does: crime back into the park. Snoop Dogg calls and wants weed, and lots of it. Julian decides to hijack Bubbles’ pizza sauce business and convert it to a grow op. As usual, Bubbles is driven near to the breaking point as the stress builds.
In Season 10, there was a revelation that Lahey may in fact be Ricky’s real father. This is fully addressed in Season 11, via a lightsaber dual (hockey sticks and brooms subbing in for laser swords) and dialogue taken directly from The Empire Strikes Back. Director Bobby Farrelly (Bobby fucking Farrelly!) must be given credit for the perfect Star Wars homage in Episode 4, “Darth Lahey”, right down to the action beats. Brilliant stuff — a highpoint episode for this show.
There are cameos by celebrities and past characters. Look for Susan Kent from 22 Minutes, and NHLer Nathan MacKinnon, first overall draft pick and rookie of the year. A few old adversaries have returned as well, to cause problems for our three lovable idiots. Speaking of idiots, Ricky and Julian manage to bring the stupidly to new levels, but simultaneously, Ricky has a Yoda-like ability to trick cops. Meanwhile, they have also managed to keep up with modern technology. Cell phones, cameras and GPS now figure into the plots. There are references to the Walking Dead and changing times. This manages to keep the series feeling fresh.
After 11 seasons, it is understood that a show rarely hits the highs it once did. Season 11 is a worthy effort; not in the Top Five, but certainly good enough at this point.
GETTING MORE TALE #555.5: A Short Visit to Sonic Boom
Yesterday I took Mrs. LeBrain to Toronto to see a neurosurgeon. It was a great meeting; very positive, but we will get more into that in a future tale. (Look for an upcoming Getting More Tale story called “Seize the Day” if you want to know more.) After the meeting with the doctor, she had some tests. I didn’t need to be around for the those, so with a couple hours to kill, I went down to Sonic Boom on Spadina. I was accompanied by Mrs. LeBrain’s Mom, who insisted we cab to the store. It was a rainy miserable day outside. Wet, cold, windy and unpleasant. The cab ride wasn’t unwelcome.
I’m glad I shaved my beard down to a goatee the other day, because almost every dude in that store looked the same. Bearded hipsters buying vinyl, left right and center, lookalikes all! I tuned out the background noise and focused on the cool. Upstairs they had two colouring books I almost considered getting. Do you know anyone who is a huge fan of either James Franco or Benedict Cumberbatch? If so, I am happy to report that Sonic Boom had colouring books of both. (They also had Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation.) I spied the new Mastodon among the new releases, but headed downstairs where the real treasures usually lay.
Although I put in a Herculean effort, there was little to be found. Maybe I have too many CDs, because everywhere I flipped it seemed to be “got it, got it, got it, got it…” Aaron asked me to look for Danny Michel and a few other titles. Nothing to be found. I was struck by how just about everything seems to be reissued on vinyl today. The Spice Girls’ first album, Spice. I fail to comprehend. It doesn’t compute. I considered buying some Kiss reissues, but I didn’t really want to come home with something I already owned.
With some persistence I did liberate three titles:
The Queen set was in the recent arrivals, and that is a nice score. I’m nowhere near complete with my Queen remasters, but when I can pick them off one by one, used? That’s the best way. The Rush on the other hand is something of a chance I’m taking. This is a radio broadcast vinyl, and I’ve never bought one of those before. They had several available. I don’t have anything live from Rush in 1975, so that was the key factor. Also a non-album track: “Bad Boy”, a Larry Williams cover. 180 gram coloured vinyl to boot. Should be good times.
Not a knockout shopping excursion, but not a waste of time either. We walked back to the hospital (although Mrs. LeBrain’s Mom would have preferred a cab) and got soaked, but it’s good to stretch the legs when it’s a long day of driving and sitting. Besides, we enjoyed looking at the Toronto scenery. The fruit and vegetable markets smelled great. They even had bonsai trees.
Back in the hospital waiting room, I was able to do a little research for my Kiss Re-Review series in progress. Guess which album I have to write up next.
I don’t want to use the word “disappointing” for this Sonic Boom trip, because I am very pleased with my new albums. I told Uncle Meat I wanted some more The Sword, and Sonic Boom delivered. I’m more surprised than disappointed that I was only able to scrounge up three finds this time. Every visit is different, and I’m sure that next time I return (either in the fall with Aaron, or sooner for more tests) it will be another story. Sonic Boom is still an absolute must for any music fan visiting Toronto. Don’t miss out, and be sure to check out the new arrival bins. They are often the key to many great finds.
As always Sonic Boom gets 5/5 stars. And so does Mrs. LeBrain for being a tough-as-nails trooper.
Canadian supergroup SNOWSHOE is ready to rock the tundra this summer on the “ETERNAL WINTER” tour.
SNOWSHOE consist of the following legendary Canadian rock musicians:
BILLY SOL HUROK – Lead vocals, guitars
After two decades touring with what is considered the greatest Canadian grunge band of all time DIRTY SLUSH, Billy Sol is looking for new roads to plow. Expect Billy to perform lead vocals in his trademark style, often described as “a polar bear making sweet love to a caribou”.
IRVING COHEN – Lead vocals, bass
Controversial bassist known for his claims of being the illegitimate son of Leonard Cohen. Famous for his punk band DEAD BIRD ON A WIRE. Irv has spent the last decade and a half working for the Canadian post office in Alert, Nunavut. Pleading boredom, Irv is ready to put on his bass once more and heat up the Great White North with his bandmates in SNOWSHOE.
JOHN Y. SCHMENGE – Drums, vocals
Son of polka musicians, John was born in Churchill, Manitoba and learned to play drums by hitting rocks with sticks. This will be his first major tour after working as a starving drummer/house painter for over a decade. The critics rave: “Nobody can do a garage door like John can, in -10 degree weather plus wind chill.”
SNOWSHOE will be playing the following Canadian cities:
June 16 – Iqualuit, Nunavut – The Outhouse (limited seating available)
June 20 – Pond Inlet, Nunavut – The field across from the school (subject to change)
June 27 – Puvirnituq, Quebec – Puvirnituq Airport lounge
June 29 – Thunder Bay, Ontario ** ONLY ONTARIO DATE ** – Deke’s Palace (featuring opening act INUKSHUK)
July 1 – Port Nelson, Manitoba – Special Canada Day celebration featuring jugglers and a puppet show – Downtown square
July 4 – Hines Creek, Alberta – Bob Neilson’s back yard (bring your own lawn chairs)
July 5 – High Prairie, Alberta – Big Jim’s Bar
Additional dates to be added per demand.
Be sure to catch SNOWSHOE as they prepare to release their debut album ETERNAL WINTER this fall. The thaw has begun!
Nobody really liked working with Dandy. What Dandy did was decide who he liked and who he didn’t. If he liked you, he wouldn’t annoy you repeatedly. If he didn’t like you, then he just didn’t care – he’d do whatever he wanted, the more annoying the better. One or two higher ranked people never saw his annoying side. For the rest of us, he’d act like an idiot on a dime.
One of his most annoying habits was dancing at work. He’d put on one of his favourite bands – the Dandy Warhols, or the Toilet Boys – and dance around the store. And when he danced, his white belly would pop out from his too-tight black T-shirt – not a pretty sight. I’ll admit I’m not the most svelte of specimens but I keep my white belly under ample amounts of shirt! I’ll never forget the sight of him belly dancing when the Toilet Boys came on.
He also liked to embarrass other people as much as possible. For example, when Joe Strummer died. Customers were jumping on the Clash bandwagon, but I really didn’t know anything about the band. I knew the hits from having heard them in the store, and there were songs that I like. I know one of the drummers (Terry Chimes) was briefly in Black Sabbath. But I knew next to nothing else about the band members. Due to his name (Strummer) I assumed Joe was the guitar player. To this day I only own one Clash album (London Calling). It just wasn’t my background. My youth was a heady mix of British and North American classic rock and metal, and I never even bought a punk rock album until the mid-90s (Never Mind the Bollocks was my first). Once Dandy realized I didn’t know who Joe Strummer’s was, he made sure to tell everybody. Loudly.
“Hey get this! We were listening to the Clash – Mike thinks Joe Strummer is the guitar player! HAH HAH HAH! He doesn’t even know! HAH HAH HAH!”
But then the next day he would be nice as pie to me, and picking on somebody else. Usually the infamous Spoogecakes.
Spoogecakes and Dandy weren’t exactly two of a kind. She liked Lord of the Rings, Finger 11 and the Showboat soundtrack (we’ll talk about that one another day). He liked drugs, makeup, and whatever was on-trend. The only thing they had in common was annoying me. Like for example, one time Spoogecakes hid my hat somewhere in the store and thought it was freaking hilarious. I found out later on that she had a crush on me and this was an attention-getting game. Kind of like something you’d do in grade school, annoying the girl you like for attention because you didn’t know what else to do.
It was Dandy who coined her original nickname: the Angry Walrus. His opinion was that she had that kind of face, and always seemed angry. (She did definitely always seem angry.) Apparently the name stuck immediately. It was like a freight train that could not be stopped and I was the last one to hear about it, because I was the manager and nobody wanted to tell me.
Dandy: “Damn, you have me scheduled to work with the Angry Walrus tonight. That sucks.”
Me: “Who the fuck is the ‘Angry Walrus’?”
I was so frustrated with both of them that I really didn’t even give a fuck anymore. Thankfully I was soon transferred over to another location, and I never had to work with either again. Thank fuck!
– Alive II (1977 Casablanca, 2006 remastered edition from Alive! 1975-2000)
Kiss in 1977 were a band of four different personalities, and those personalities were beginning to drift apart. There was talk of allowing members some time to do solo albums and blow off some steam. There was a Kiss movie happening (Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park), not to mention Love Gun and its accompanying tour. Kiss Alive! was the album that made them a household name, so why not try to buy some time with another live release? The band had amassed three more studio albums in the interim.
Eddie Kramer was hired once again to recapture the magic. Shows (and soundchecks) in L.A. were recorded, and older tapes from a pre-Love Gun Japanese tour were dusted off. They had lots of material to work with, and so it was decided that Alive II would have no crossover with tracks from Alive!, a value-conscious move that fans appreciated. They were still short enough songs to make a full double live, so studio time was booked at Electric Lady to record new songs too. As with the previous Alive, much fixing and re-recording was done to the live tracks. Some of the soundchecks were used with audience noise overdubbed. Two songs (“Hard Luck Woman” and “Tomorrow and Tonight”) were actually re-recorded completely. Knowing now what we didn’t know then, this certainly explains why Alive II sounds more sterile than the first, and why you can hear Paul Stanley singing backup vocals to his own lead vocals.
Alive II has always been viewed as sort of a poorer cousin to Alive! It’s hard to blame the studio tampering, because Alive! was done the same. For whatever reasons, it’s a lot more noticeable on Alive II, although not to the point of distraction. Alive II simply does not have the same oomph, the same fire bleeding through. Even with tracks like “Detroit Rock City”, “Shout it Out Loud”, “God of Thunder” and “I Stole Your Love”, it’s hard to compete with Alive! for sheer ferocity.
As is their penchant, some songs like “God of Thunder” are much faster live. “God of Thunder” could be the heaviest version of that track on tape. “Ladies Room” and “Dr. Love” are also faster and harder. “Makin’ Love” blows away the album version, and “I Want You” comes close. Ace Frehley’s vocal slot on “Shock Me” is a welcome treat and obvious highlight, featuring Ace’s big solo spot. As for Peter Criss, “Hard Luck Woman” is a nice electric version, but “Beth” underwhelms. Singing “Beth” to backing tapes is a “who cares” moment anyway, but Peter doesn’t nail it either.
The real point of interest on Alive II is side four, the studio side, for two reasons. One is that it’s a surprisingly strong side even though only one of these songs has gone on to be a classic today. Paul Stanley has dismissed these tracks as schlock, but fans don’t always agree. The second is that Kiss’ internal problems had come to a head, and once again members were secretly replaced on recordings by outsiders.
Ace Frehley wasn’t around, except to record his own song (“Rocket Ride”), which has become a second-tier Kiss classic. Maybe to spite Kiss, he played all the bass and guitars on it. Ace’s track is immediate, Kiss-like and perfect for his persona. With Peter Criss in the pocket, Ace lays down some seriously wild effects-laden six-string magic. But that was it. Ace was focussed on his forthcoming solo album. The wheels were already in motion and songs were being written. To keep things from falling apart and maintain a facade of unity, Kiss decided that all four of them would release solo albums, unified, under the Kiss banner.
Meanwhile, Paul and Gene came up with a few tracks for side four. Replacing Ace Frehley on lead guitar was the man who he nudged out of the job in the first place — Bob Kulick. Paul and Bob had maintained a friendship in New York ever since his 1973 Kiss audition. Bob was asked to come in on the sly and record uncredited. His task was to play like Ace would have done it, a difficult task. “Ace wouldn’t play that note”, someone would say from the control booth as Bob struggled to come up with the enigmatic “right” vibe. But he did it, and now that we know the truth, fans hold Bob’s work in high esteem.
Paul Stanley’s “All American Man” (Stanley/Sean Delaney) has the goods: a signature guitar hook, a memorable chorus and a killer solo that we only know now was actually Bob. “All American Man” is a natural extension of where Kiss were headed with Love Gun. Gene had the next two tracks, “Rockin’ in the U.S.A.” and “Larger Than Life”. “Rockin’ in the U.S.A.” sounds like Gene writing his own “Ballad of John and Yoko”, but a hard rock version. As for “Larger Than Life”, you can guess what body part Gene’s talking about. “Larger Than Life” works because of the combination of Gene’s “monster plod” riff with Bob’s sweet guitar lightning. Finally a cover of the Dave Clark Five hit “Any Way You Want It” closes Alive II, quick and catchy. Kiss have a way of adapting their blocky rock style to covers and making it work. Suddenly the Dave Clark Five sound like Kiss, rather than vice-versa.
Alive II arrived in stores on October 14 1977, exactly two weeks ahead of the much-hyped movie Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park. There are some who would consider this the end of the beginning. But Kiss weren’t done releasing albums before the big solo projects came to fruition. We know today that making Alive II was a financial move rather than an artistic one, but the reality is it was conceived as a product. At least it was a quality product. As usual, Kiss and Casablanca rewarded fans with goodies inside the original LP. It had a gatefold cover, a booklet entitled “The Evolution of Kiss”, and temporary tattoos. Good luck finding those intact. Our recommended edition: The four disc 2006 box set Alive! 1975-2000. The set contains four volumes of Kiss Alive, deliciously remastered, with each album fit onto a single CD without losing any songs. There’s even a bonus track: the single edit of “Rock and Roll all Nite”, from the original Kiss Alive! This 3:23 version is from the 7″ single, edited down from the 3:59 Alive! album version. It was the first CD release of that version.
Today’s rating:
4.5/5 stars
Uncle Meat’s rating:
4/5 steaks
Meat’s slice:Alive II is an album that for me, gets kinda lost in the shuffle amidst the Kiss discography. Not because it’s not a good live album, but more that it’s very much Alive-lite. There are definite highlights on this record of course, but it doesn’t pack the consistent hit-parade punch as the first “live” record. I also have never really understood why side four was all studio tracks. Kiss did get a minor hit out of “Rocket Ride” though, a pretty good Ace tune here, and a sign of things to come with an Ace song on the charts. The other studio tracks feature some good guitar work, but not memorable overall. If Kiss has played any of these songs live at all I would be surprised, but I’m sure LeBrain will have some Turkish B-side thingy that will prove me wrong. [I don’t. – LeBrain]
I was wond’ring aloud (purposeful and cheap Tull shout-out there) earlier about the whereabouts of a good “God of Thunder” cover in an earlier review, but perhaps that cover is right here. Kiss plays it live here in double time and I like the feel of it. “Shock Me” shines on this album. So do a few other Kiss classics. I just see a few unnecessary garnishes on this plate.
Favorite Tracks: “Shock Me”, “Detroit Rock City”, “Shout it Out Loud”, “God of Thunder”, “I Stole Your Love”
Infinite isn’t even out yet and we already have two CD singles in our hands! Deep Purple are wasting no time in getting the new music out there. The last single, “Time for Bedlam” had four tracks, including three brand new pieces of music. “All I Got is You” has five tracks, two of which are brand new. These singles are well worth buying, and won’t be obsolete when the album is released.
Age has done little to blunt the cutting edge. “All I Got is You” has old and new elements. It sounds like Deep Purple, but not like prior Deep Purple. Its jazzy intro misleads, for this is a pissed off song. It is difficult to describe except to say it’s busy, but still barely commercial enough for a single. As usual, Steve Morse and Don Airey’s instrumental work stuns the senses. If these new singles are what we have to judge by, the new album will be typical Morse-era Deep Purple: still them, still restless.
The bonus material is varied. “Simple Folk” is a lovely little guitar instrumental, reminiscent of the ballad “Never A Word” from Bananas (2003). Don’t be surprised if the melody shows up elsewhere in the future. It’s too good to relegate to a CD single, and it is exclusive too. Also exclusive: an instrumental mix of “Above and Beyond” from the last album Now What?!. Instrumentals of songs you know well are always an interesting ride. It is fun to listen to the music you couldn’t hear before, under the lead vocals. “Above and Beyond” was of course a single in its own right in 2013. Then, even better, we have the first take of the first single “Time for Bedlam”, complete with Bob Ezrin’s talking (and praise). This too is an instrumental version, but if you ever wanted to hear what Deep Purple sound like completely unleashed in the studio, give it a spin. I think I like it better than the actual single.
The only bonus track that will be re-released later on is the live version of “Highway Star” (yes, another one) that will be included on in the Infinite box set version. That set will contain lots of vinyl including three 10″ records that together will comprise The Now What?! Live Tapes Vol. 2. Sharp readers will recall that Vol. 1 came out with the deluxe “gold” edition of the Now What?! CD. As for “Highway Star”? Well, this one is 6:09 long and was recorded August 8 2013 in Denmark. I don’t know how else you can differentiate versions. My Deep Purple folder has 58 listings for “Highway Star” (albeit some of those would be the studio version on compilations).
As fans gear up for the Infinite album (and box set), they would be advised to get these singles too. There is enough extra material on them to complement the album nicely when it’s finally out on April 7.
JUDAS PRIEST – Ram It Down(Originally 1988, 2001 Sony remaster)
Judas Priest seemed pretty lost in the late 80s. They were bigger than ever, but they lost focus of their musical direction. Producer Tom Allom had cursed them with a robotic plod, far removed from the lively firepower of yesteryear. When they released Turbo in 1986, they had gone as far down those roads as possible. It was am ambitious departure, but 100% a product of the 1980s.
For Turbo, Priest had written enough songs for a double album. Twin Turbos, as it was to be called, was supposed to reflect all facets of metal, but the record comany got cold feet and a single disc was issued. It contained the most techno-commercial tracks, while Priest held onto the rest for another day. That day came in 1988 when Priest (again with producer Tom Allom) released Ram It Down, largely made up of Turbo outtakes. The album was hyped as a return to the heavy Priest of yore, and this was at least partly true, but fans were unconvinced by it. In comparison with Turbo, yes, Ram It Down was heavier. But Priest had gone as far as they could with Allom. Ram It Down was too sterile and bogged down with filler.
Certainly the title track opens Ram It Down on a thrash-like note. As if to silence to critics, it was a proud metal statement with an opening Rob Halford scream that curdles the brain. The weakness is drummer Dave Holland on his final Priest outing. Only when Scott Travis joined Priest in 1990 did they acquire a drummer who could play the kind of beats at the speed they needed. On Ram It Down, Priest were held back by the drummer and clunky production, two mistakes they fixed on 1990’s Painkiller. The lyrics also seem dumbed-down for the 80s. “Thousands of cars, and a million guitars, screaming with power in the air,” is cool but cliche.
“Heavy Metal” is more of the same lyrically, an ode to the power and glory of power chords. Rob Halford’s performance is fantastic, and the man has rarely sounded as fantastic as he does on Ram It Down. You can’t say the same for the words, the highschool equivalent of poetry. On the music front, Priest were now following rather than leading. They were on the same clunky metal trip as bands such as Scorpions at the same time. There audible Kiss and Whitesnake influences on the album, with Rob sometimes sounding like he was trying to write a Gene Simmons tune. “Love You to Death” on side two sounds right out of the Demon’s closet. The embarrassingly terrible “Love Zone” and “Come and Get It” both sound as if Coverdale co-wrote them on the sly. Whether Priest were consciously copying other bands or just lost, who knows. (“Love Zone” is one of the few songs that Halford almost seemed to write gender specific. “With your razor nails and painted smile” are not specifically referring to a female, but certainly that was the general assumption.)
There are definitely a few cool tracks that deserve mention. The first is “Hard as Iron” which had to be one of the fastest Priest songs to date. It’s still held back by the production, but has some serious energy to it. Like metal espresso injected right into the brain! The other standout is “Blood Red Skies”, a forgotten highlight of this album and indeed of the Priest catalog in general. (I actually used “Blood Red Skies” in a poetry project for school. A girl liked it so much she asked for a copy of the lyrics.) Using the synth effectively, “Blood Red Skies” paints a Terminator-like future with humans hunted by beings with “pneumatic fingers”, “laser eyes” and “computer sights”. Halford pours power and anguish into it, as a human freedom fighter. “As I die, a legend will be born!” Cheesey? Absolutely. Priest perfection? Yes indeed!
There are also two mis-steps on Ram It Down that must be addressed. The first and most obvious is “Johnny B. Goode”, from the 1988 movie Johnny Be Good starring Anthony Michael Hall and some guy named Robert Downey Something. This track should have been kept off the album. As a novelty single, sure, you can dig it. It’s a stereotypical cliche-ridden metal cover, and that’s fun for a goof. As a Priest album track, it only serves to completely destroy any momentum that Ram It Down managed to build. Then there is “Monsters of Rock”. This awful excuse for a song is only 5:31 long, but seems twice that. It is the prototype for the even more awful “Loch Ness” from Angel of Retribution. Most buyers probably didn’t finish listening to the album because of this bloated and aimless track.
The Priest Re-masters collection had two bonus tracks per studio album. Ram It Down provides two completely unrelated but great tracks: live versions of “Bloodstone” and “Night Comes Down”. The liner notes don’t state when they were recorded, but live versions of either are always welcome in any Priest collection. It’s interesting that bonus tracks from these actual sessions, such as “Red, White and Blue”, were used on other CDs but not Ram It Down.
Priest may have known Ram It Down wasn’t the metal album they hoped to make. They cleared house afterwards. Dave Holland and Tom Allom were done, and there is no question that Painkiller was superior to Ram It Down because of that.
JUDAS PRIEST – Turbo 30(2017 Sony Legacy 3 CD set)
It is sheer delight to see Judas Priest’s once maligned Turbo to finally see some vindication. There was a time this album was shied away from completely. They played no tracks from it on the 1990-91 Painkiller tour. In 1990, Priest finally pulled themselves out of a slide into dangerously commercial territory. For a long time, Turbo was considered a musical detour that did more harm than good. However the frost thawed quickly and Priest began to put the title track back into the set around 2001 for their Demolition tour with Tim “Ripper” Owens. Today there is no longer any shame in cranking Turbo while hoisting a tall cool one.
The 30th anniversary edition of Turbo contains a freshly remastered edition and two live discs. The sound is greatly improved from the 2001 version from the Priest Re-masters series. As you can see by the waveform below, the 2001 version at bottom was a victim of the “loudness wars”, and much of the dynamic range was lost by pushing it to overdrive. The 2017 version at top has more peaks and valleys. The new version wins for overall for having more warmth.
What the 2017 version does not have are the two bonus tracks included on the Priest Re-masters version. They were a live version of “Locked In” (which would be somewhat redundant here) and an unreleased studio track called “All Fired Up” which sounds like a Ram It Down outtake. For a complete review of Turbo and these bonus tracks, please refer to our review of the Turbo 2001 CD edition. The rest of this review will focus on the two live CDs inside Turbo 30.
The Fuel For Life tour that followed Turbo was one of Priest’s biggest. Their stage featured a riser that “transformed” from a race car to a robot that would lift Glenn Tipton and KK Downing in the air with its claws. It was commemorated by an album (Priest…Live!) and a separate home video from a concert in Dallas, Texas. This new double live comes from a show in Kansas on May 22 1986. It is 100% superior to Priest…Live! by every measure and could supplant that 30 year old album in your collection.
The set list varies a little from Priest…Live! but hits the same key tracks. The ballsy synth ballad “Out of the Cold” still opens the set, a brave move even in 1986. It is certainly the most unexpected of all Priest’s openers, so bravo. “Locked In” is restored to its spot in the set; it was not on Priest…Live! A version from an unknown concert (the liner notes are vague) was on the prior edition of Turbo as a bonus track. “Locked In” isn’t a major track but still important due to its place as part of the “Turbo Lover” music video duology. This live version is the best yet, loaded heavy with plenty of guitar thrills not present on the studio original. From there it’s on to “Heading Out to the Highway”, nicely in the pocket. Rob Halford’s screams are ferocious. Next is the march of the “Metal Gods”, another version far more lively than the one on Priest…Live! Seems there is much less mucking around with the recordings this time.
“Breaking the what? Breaking the what? Breaking the what?” It’s that silly yet tried and true song intro. Post-British Steel, you just can’t have a Priest live concert without “Breaking the Law”. But always remember, that in the dead of night, “Love Bites”. From 1984’s Defenders of the Faith, “Love Bites” was very different for Priest but still a set highlight. (Incidentally, British Steel and Defenders of the Faith are the other Priest albums that had recent triple disc deluxe editions with live albums.) Then more from Defenders: Two killers in a row, “Some Heads are Gonna Roll” and “The Sentinel”. Two songs that fans never tire of, and some credit must be given to the mighty guitar duo of Tipton and Downing. Their trade-offs are sublime, and Halford curdles the blood.
Back into new material, “Private Property” was one of Priest’s more obvious grasps for a hit. It’s far from a must-have, but better at least than the version on Priest…Live! A mere five minutes later you will be transported to the “Desert Plains”, a Point of Entry deep cut that was excluded from Priest…Live! It is far faster live and stay tuned for a long voice-shredding breakdown by Halford. (Rob was clean at this point in his life. Rob Halford recommends vocal rest between shows, menthol eucalyptus gum, and herbal tea to maintain a strong voice.) A frantic “Rock You All Around the World” from Turbo ends the first disc with a filler track that is again better here than on the prior live album.
Screaming for Vengeance brings the fury for disc two, “The Hellion” (taped intro) and “Electric Eye” bring the focus clearly back to heavy metal, just in time to go for a spin with “Turbo Lover”. This song is now a beloved classic, finally appreciated for its sharp songwriting and adventurous production. Downing and Tipton pushed synths into heavy metal in a big way, but with integrity and ingenuity. Better run for cover indeed, and fast…for next is “Freewheel Burning”, a natural for keeping with the theme of turbos and the like.
As the disc roars to its close, we are treated to some serious historic Priest. The oldest track is “Victim of Changes”, from the immortal Sad Wings of Destiny (1976). This most dramatic of Priest compositions is always welcome in the set, yet was not on Priest…Live! probably to avoid overlap with 1979’s Unleashed in the East live album. This one boasts a blazing hot guitar solo and some of Rob’s most impassioned wailing. This stretches out for nearly nine minutes of pure metal brilliance at its most vintage. But the vintage metal gift-giving is not over, because “The Green Manalishi” (1979’s Hell Bent for Leather, via Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac) delivers the greatest of all riffs.
It’s nothing but the hits from there: “Living After Midnight”, “You’ve Got Another Thing Coming”, and “Hell Bent for Leather”, the standards that everyone knows. “Another Thing Coming” is stretched out with Rob’s annoying back-and-forth with the crowd, but it is what it is. “Heavy metal communication”, he calls it. Nobody is buying this CD for another version of that song anyway.
“You don’t know what it’s like!” So get this package, the triple CD set, and you will!
TRAILER PARK BOYS – Season 11 (2017 Netflix)
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