Posts by Bob Lange

They're okay as a short term fix, but, like their older peers, they won't take long to wear thin.

There's a handful of bands out there whose influence has been felt far and wide decades after they made their mark, yet they never enjoyed significant commercial success. The Velvet Underground comes to mind. So does Nick Drake. There are others, but in heavy rock circles, one of these bands rises above all others – Blue Cheer.

Jeff over at Imagine Echoes is a music fan with wide-ranging tastes who, until a year or so ago, had never owned a record.  Now, he has over 150, and in addition to building his collection, he's also the auther of the well-respected blog, Imagine Echoes.

Anomaly is the latest release from Ace Frehley, but it's also a good description of Space Ace himself in a sense. After all, he's the only member of KISS to make any good records on his own. So, score one for Ace. On the other hand, it's been twenty years since he's released a studio album. A long layoff from recording alone raises questions, so it's hard to predict what we'll get.

Coming two years after their promising debut, Trio BC shows a young band that has done some significant maturing as musicians. The album maintains their early punkish edge, but expands the sound well beyond that. Nina Diaz elevates herself to a rough-around-the-edges Patsy Cline, particularly on the yearning, tender melancholy of "El Monte."

Trapped Animal is the first studio album from the Slits since 1981 and comes 30 years after the seminal punk/reggae fusion of their debut, 1979's Cut.

This five song EP, in classic punk fashion, clocks in at just under eight minutes, but we all know it's quality, not quantity, that counts. These tracks, culled from two different shows, reflect GI's hardcore heyday in 1982-83.

Essential Jazz Classics has recently released a set of CDs that collects some of that period's best albums along with some interesting bonus material.

Cheap Trick.  Poison.  Def Leppard.  It's an odd billing to be sure.  Poison and Def Leppard seem reasonable enough, with careers that rode the hair metal explosion of the 80s to multi-platinum success, but Cheap Trick, an 80s power ballad aside, were churning out power pop gems (that continue to influence bands today) five to ten years earlier than their tour mates.  Oddly enough, the tour's oldest band chronologically is its youngest spiritually and that is part of the magic that still makes Cheap Trick matter.

Back in 1985, I bought JFA's Live 1984 Tour LP. It's energy was as unbounded as the possibilities of my new found favorite genre and it quickly found itself in steady rotation on my turntable. Nearly a quarter century later, a new piece of live JFA vinyl is spinning in my basement and it's hard to believe that it still has much of that same thrashy skate punk energy.