AckaDacka . Being Australian, AC/DC will always hold a special place in my extraordinarily large heart, an awesome, endearing Australian rock band. Despite the fact they have lived in the US for most of my lifetime. In fact, AC/DC is really TWO bands, the Bon Scott AC/DC band, and the Brian can't-remember-his-last-name AC/DC band. And while Brian technically has been the lead singer for many, many moons longer than Bon, and though Brian spends a good deal of his stage time belting out tunes once screeched lovingly by Bon, and though I haven't done a tally but I'm pretty sure the Brian version have released about three times more albums than the Bon version...AC/DC will forever be all about Bon Scott for me. Despite the fact the man died when I was six, and Brian's raspy vocals on "You Shook Me All Night Long" seemed to play ad nauseam all through my high school career (as though it was our non-so-much-angsty-as-boozed-up youth-anthem). So Bon Scott themed tunes for you today, Dear Reader. Good Goddess what dags those men were. Can't blame it all on the 70's either I don't believe. Here are some of my favs, head bang and rock out with glee, Dear Reader...
Here it is Dear Reader, your Flashback Friday, brought to you by...Hot Metal magazine, issue number three! See, nothing to do with "Cold Wood", get it!? Oh, my sides. This mag is, believe it or not, some 20 years old. Wow, way to make a gal feel ancient. Being an efficient hoarder, I found a bunch of these old music mags in my old wardrobe at my parents. There were once many many more, but where they went is any ones guess...hopefully to where ever good magazines go. I must have rabidly covered many of my school books with pics from this issue, as there are more pages with large parts missing than those without. Without further ado, from "Australia's Hard Rock, Thrash and Heavy Metal Monthly":
Even the skull that separated the "Hot" from the "Metal" is missing. It is a cute skull though. You will see it in further Flashback Friday editions. Is it just me, or did Kiss suck after they took off their makeup? If you ask my brother, they always sucked...Now they just kind of seem lecherous. Creepy old men. I choose just to remember the early music I was enamoured of in infants school, when my best friend and I would sing "Shandie" in the playground. Good times.
Oh how I would have loved to have gone to the Hordern to see Metallica on this tour. But I was only 14, and none of my other friends were really into Metallica. My lovely parents did take my best friend and I to the Sydney Ent Cent when we were 15 to see Poison, but I think the Metallica crowd would have been a little different! And oh how I loved the image of Justice bound, I thought it just so damn clever and meaningful.
The requisite album review page - click to enlarge if you would like! I have all but the Rush and Brittany Fox albums, and when I say album, I mean on vinyl. I have since bought the Ozzy album and The Cult on Cd, because I adore them still. I grew out of Vixen pretty quick, and I think I only played the Tesla album a couple of times, I couldn't even tell you what any of the songs were now. So what will we play? Has to be something from these albums. My fave Ozzy song on this record is Crazy Babies:
And just because it is hilarious, and I mean HILARIOUS, I have some Vixen for you. Why do I remember all of the words to these songs? Why couldn't I remember my Uni work that well? Can you believe the amount of hair product? I love how hair styles for men and women in the heavy metal scene were identical. Have fun!
Yup, The Flashback is a little late, Dear Reader. It's been one of those weeks, you know? . This weeks flashyness comes from Anthrax. I so desperately wanted to put "Got the Time" here, but Universal Music Group saw fit to disable embedding on every single bloody upload of the clip on You-tube. How rude. But it still an awesome song, so go watch it anyway. Instead we will make do with another Anthrax classic, with the added bonus of Public Enemy. Anthrax was one of those bands that one likes in their youth from the periphery - I had one album, and I always head banged with abandon when one of my friends played their Anthrax collections, but I didn't obsess and buy all of their stuff, or seek them out in mags like Hot Metal, or Kerrang! Listening to their stuff now, many many moons later, I can appreciate it more. I think. Or I could just be waffling. Or it could be the dementia, you know, things from your youth seem sweeter. Sigh. Actually, there is a tub of old Hot Metal, Hit Parader and Kerrang magazines out in the garage, I should take photos, it would all be so hilarious, darlings. I'll get right on that. For now, get your groove on.
Happy Friday 13th!!! . Today for Flashbach Friday, Dear Reader, the amazing Alice in Chains. A band with a sound like no other, thanks mostly of course to the rock god that was Layne Staley. I would listen to their albums over and over, but now when I hear them I am just saddened to know Layne won't be making any more music, not in this space and time anyway. I think two clips are in order, then, don't you? The first is "Man in a Box", the very first thing I had heard of AIC, and the film clip and sound both disturbed and delighted me, the second, "Would" is one of my absolute favourite songs. Ever.
Today, Dear Reader; White Zombie, fronted by The Man himself, Mr Rob Zombie. I love White Zombie, and I love Rob's solo music stuff - I'll be honest, I find the man very attractive. More so now he has dispensed with the crazy dreddys, though they were very cool at the time too - he was quite the breath of fresh air, for me at least. I am just not so sure about Rob's movies. Have you seen House of 1000 Corpses? Dear Goddess what was that? All kinds of bizarre. I guess it was supposed to be high-art-horror? I know parts of it made me dizzy. And I don't think I will ever get the fat-arse clown-like guy out of my head *shudder*. All this and I like a good horror film. Oh well. I am yet to see his re-do of cult classic Halloween - a movie I first saw on a birthday sleep over with my friends when I was a 'tween'. Maybe we should do that again, get a bunch of gals together for a night of sleeping bags on the lounge room floor, horror movies, stupid games that entail things like cutting up bars of chocolate with knives and forks, and the requisite announcement from Dad that it is very, very late and time to go to sleep (read: oh dear god stop with the girly squeals and giggles). How did I stray so far from th topic of Mr Zombie? Well, here it is, the first song of White Zombies' I had ever heard, and the one that started this whole love affair: More Human than Human.
Flashback Friday is going obscure, Dear Reader. Underneath What. Bet you've never heard of them. Nor would I have heard of them but for my constant watching of Countdown Revolution and Rage when I was 16. Obscure metal-ish Brit band, with an American or Canadian lead singer. All with the requisite copious amounts of hair, and tight, tight jeans. As far as I know, they only released one album, which I proudly bought from an awesome little heavy metal obsessed shop in Martin Place, Sydney, whose name now eludes me. And yes, it is an album I own, real vinyl, like much of my collection. Such a shame I am bereft of a turntable! One day, Dear Reader, one day. They had a great song "Eggs, Bacon and Suicide", but alas there is no film clip. We shall settle instead for the equally worthy "Firebomb Telecom". I recall them telling of a rather crazy Australian fan of theirs that kept trying to blow up Telecom phone boxes (back when it was called Telecom here too) as a way of, lets say punctuate, his adoration of their song. Kooky.
Metallica. Oh how I loved thee. Up until the Black album. Oh sure, I liked a couple of the songs on Load and Re-load. And the Mission Impossible song was alright. But for me, Metallica is Master of Puppets, Ride the Lightening and ...And Justice for All. I'm not going to even acknowledge St Anger (which, thanks to JJJ will forever be "stanga" to me), lets just forget it ever happened. And I haven't bought the new one yet, might work my way up to it (once bitten, twice shy). But back to the 'good' Metallica, the Metallica of my youth. I was so excited when the film clip for "One" was made, Metallica's first ever film clip! Because they hadn't previously bowed to commercial giants request! You guys, so cool. But then they didn't stop did they, oh god why didn't they stop? Who told them "Some kind of Monster" was a good idea? Have you ever heard so many grown men whinge and moan and bitch and feel so self important? I mean really, Lars? James? And poor ostracized Jason. And honestly, Dave get over it, it has been 20 years, move on! I wish I could erase it from my memory, my rock gods were really just, well, men. Whiny, petty little men. And don't get me started on James hunting bear. Shudder. So in my mind, I am forgetting all Metallica after the black album, and just remembering the metal giant that was! Prepare to don some skin tight jeans, black of course, and fling your hair around!
WASP. Surely one of the most misunderstood bands by the fun that was the PMRC in the 80s/90s. What happened to the PMRC? Do they still exist? Remember the warning labels that used to come on albums and tapes? Their misguided antics were a source of amusement anyway, their sensationalism and scare tactics serving only to confuse and concern uneducated grandparents, and perhaps parents who hadn't bothered to listen to the music their children thought was awesome. WASP copped a lot of their brunt, and while Blackie was a consummate 'Wild Child', his performances harked more to Alice Cooper than Satan himself. We salute thee, Mr Lawless, and we honour your ever present spandex pants and drop-saw-blade bracelets! This was my fav WASP song with accompanying video (so many good ones not released as singles), we'll wind it down with a wee ballad then shall we?
Malaria. My absolute favourite LA Guns song. I loved, loved, loved this band - and I still like listening to them. If you remember your metal history, guitarist Tracii Guns was bestys with Axl Rose, and they formed Guns N Roses. Then Tracii came to his senses and saw the writing on the crazy Axl wall and formed LA Guns. This is one of the afore mentioned bands currently touring - I saw some footage, they have not aged well let me tell you, but the music is still good. And because you are such well behaved Readers, you get two videos today!
