ALLMUSIC – 2016
The album that I have, also called Katrina and the Waves, sure looks like a debut album to me and features “Walking on Sunshine”; Waves appears to have followed as their second album, and both came out in 1985. Actually Allmusic has Waves as being third in the list, and then comes Katrina and the Waves as their major-label debut album. In any case, what the band did for the second Katrina and the Waves album was re-record tracks from their first two albums, and the result was given a 4½ star rating by Allmusic, higher than any of their other albums.
(March 2016)
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The opening track on Witchcraft Destroys Minds and Reaps Souls by Coven is called “Black Sabbath”. Coincidentally, or perhaps not coincidentally, the opening song on the debut album Black Sabbath by Black Sabbath is also called “Black Sabbath”. The Allmusic article on this album by Steve Huey, which came out the following year, opens with: “Black Sabbath’s debut album is the birth of heavy metal as we now know it. Compatriots like Blue Cheer, Led Zeppelin, and Deep Purple were already setting new standards for volume and heaviness in the realms of psychedelia, blues-rock, and prog rock. Yet of these metal pioneers, Sabbath are the only one whose sound today remains instantly recognizable as heavy metal, even after decades of evolution in the genre.”
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Lightening the mood some, Betty Blowtorch is an all-woman punk rock band that is more like this month’s UARB than anyone I have talked about so far. Allmusic described the band like this: “Strutting with the guts of Joan Jett and harsh vocals of L7, this hard rock four-piece is truly individualistic and unafraid to be disruptive. Bianca Butthole (bass/vocals), Sharon Needles (guitar), Blare N. Bitch (guitar), and Judy Molish (drums) follow Hollywood’s heavy metal/glam rock scene with a passion for sexed-up anthems of fantasy, and have been honing their nasty rock ways since the late ’90s.”
(June 2016)
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I recently picked up their second album, The Fat Boys Are Back (1984), and it sure is a lot of fun. Alex Henderson says of the album for Allmusic: “Because the Fat Boys acted like buffoons, some people dismissed them as a mere novelty act. But for all their clowning, the Fat Boys had impeccable rapping technique – the skills that they bring to ‘Yes, Yes Y’all’, the title song [‘The Fat Boys Are Back’], and other wildly infectious offerings are first rate. Much to their credit, this album is fairly unpredictable; The Fat Boys Are Back finds them rapping to everything from sleek urban contemporary (‘Pump It Up’) to hard rock (‘Rock-N-Roll’) and reggae (‘Hard Core Reggae’). The latter, in fact, is one of the most impressive examples of hip hop/reggae fusion to come from rap’s second generation.”
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I recently bought the first album by Kid ’N Play, 2 Hype (1988) – mostly because of the hair, I admit, since I really didn’t know anything else about them – and found it to be a really enjoyable record. The cover shot is about as non-threatening as you can get. Allmusic gives the album 4½ stars. with Steve Huey raving: “Accusations of being soft notwithstanding, those qualities are exactly what give their debut album, 2 Hype, its refreshing charm. There isn’t much on the duo’s minds other than friendship, dancing, and dating; and everything stays pretty innocent – Kid even confesses to being shy around girls on ‘Undercover’. If all of this seems safe and lightweight, it’s also a tremendous amount of good, clean fun. Hurby ‘Luv Bug’ Azor’s production keeps things danceable and engaging throughout; the sound is fairly spare, with funky and occasionally club-friendly beats, catchy instrumental hooks behind the choruses, and basic DJ scratching. . . . And even if its sound and style are very much of their time, 2 Hype still holds up surprisingly well, thanks to Kid ’N Play’s winning personalities.”
(September 2016)
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The debut Ramones by Ramones is a landmark album released in April 1976 that initially went nowhere, peaking at #111 on the Billboard album charts. In retrospect, all of the ingredients of punk rock were there, and its influence was enormous. Stephen Thomas Erlewine states flatly in his article on the band in Allmusic: “The Ramones were the first punk rock band. . . . By cutting rock & roll down to its bare essentials – four chords; a simple, catchy melody; and irresistibly inane lyrics – and speeding up the tempo considerably, the Ramones created something that was rooted in early ’60s, pre-Beatles rock & roll and pop but sounded revolutionary.” Rolling Stone lists Ramones as #26 on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time; while in 2002, Spin magazine named them the second best band, behind only the Beatles.
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Mark Deming in Allmusic states: “Although the band had been solid before, the new lineup evolved into a powerhouse; [Bob] Bennett wasn’t afraid to hit the drums hard, Larry [Parypa]’s guitar work had become sharper and more ferocious with time, and when [Gerry] Roslie was encouraged to sing, they discovered he could wail like a leather-lunged Little Richard, and the Sonics quickly became the most talked-about band in the Northwest.”
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Stephen Thomas Erlewine gives the band their due in his write-up for Allmusic: “The New York Dolls created punk rock before there was a term for it. Building on the Rolling Stones’ dirty rock & roll, Mick Jagger's androgyny, girl group pop, the Stooges’ anarchic noise, and the glam rock of David Bowie and T. Rex, the New York Dolls created a new form of hard rock that presaged both punk rock and heavy metal. Their drug-fueled, shambolic performances influenced a generation of musicians in New York and London, who all went on to form punk bands. And although they self-destructed quickly, the band’s first two albums remain among the most popular cult records in rock & roll history.”
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MC5 is a Detroit band and stands for “Motor City 5”. Jason Ankeny opens his article on the band in Allmusic: “Alongside their Detroit-area brethren the Stooges, MC5 essentially laid the foundations for the emergence of punk; deafeningly loud and uncompromisingly intense, the group’s politics were ultimately as crucial as their music, their revolutionary sloganeering and anti-establishment outrage crystallizing the counterculture movement at its most volatile and threatening. Under the guidance of svengali John Sinclair (the infamous founder of the radical White Panther Party), MC5 celebrated the holy trinity of sex, drugs, and rock & roll, their incendiary live sets offering a defiantly bacchanalian counterpoint to the peace-and-love reveries of their hippie contemporaries.”
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In his 5-star review of the MC5 album, Mark Deming raves in Allmusic: “Kick out the Jams is one of the most powerfully energetic live albums ever made; Wayne Kramer and Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith were a lethal combination on tightly interlocked guitars, bassist Michael Davis and drummer Dennis Thompson were as strong a rhythm section as Detroit ever produced, and Rob Tyner’s vocals could actually match the soulful firepower of the musicians, no small accomplishment. Even on the relatively subdued numbers (such as the blues workout ‘Motor City Is Burning’), the band sounds like they’re locked in tight and cooking with gas; while the full-blown rockers (pretty much all of side one) are as gloriously thunderous as anything ever committed to tape. This is an album that refuses to be played quietly.”
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The Stooges (also known as Iggy and the Stooges) are the prototype of proto-punk. Like MC5, they are a Detroit band, or more properly an Ann Arbor band. As Stephen Thomas Erlewine observes in his Allmusic article: “Taking their cue from the over-amplified pounding of British blues, the primal raunch of American garage rock, and the psychedelic rock (as well as the audience-baiting) of the Doors, the Stooges were raw, immediate, and vulgar. Iggy Pop became notorious for performing smeared in blood or peanut butter and diving into the audience. Ron [Asheton] and Scott Asheton formed a ridiculously primitive rhythm section, pounding out chords with no finesse – in essence, the Stooges were the first rock & roll band completely stripped of the swinging beat that epitomized R&B and early rock & roll.”
Writing for Allmusic, Mark Deming says of their debut album, The Stooges: “[The Stooges] didn’t really sound like anyone else around when their first album hit the streets in 1969. It’s hard to say if Ron Asheton, Scott Asheton, Dave Alexander, and the man then known as Iggy Stooge were capable of making anything more sophisticated than this; but if they were, they weren’t letting on, and the best moments of this record document the blithering inarticulate fury of the post-adolescent id. Ron Asheton’s guitar runs (fortified with bracing use of fuzztone and wah-wah) are so brutal and concise they achieve a naïve genius, while Scott Asheton’s proto-Bo Diddley drums and Dave Alexander’s solid bass stomp these tunes into submission with a force that inspires awe. And Iggy’s vividly blank vocals fill the ‘so what?’ shrug of a thousand teenagers with a wealth of palpable arrogance and wondrous confusion.”
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Continuing in the Allmusic article, Stephen Thomas Erlewine talks about the genesis of the Stooges’ third album: “Early in 1972, [Iggy] Pop happened to run into David Bowie, then at the height of his Ziggy Stardust popularity and an avowed Stooges fan. Bowie made it his mission to resuscitate Iggy & the Stooges, as the band was then billed. Iggy and [James] Williamson were signed to a management deal with MainMan, the firm guiding Bowie’s career, and the new edition of the band scored a deal with Columbia Records. Temporarily based in London and unable to find a suitable rhythm section in the U.K., Iggy and Williamson invited the Asheton brothers to join the new group, with Scott [Asheton] on drums and Ron [Asheton] moved to bass. Iggy produced the third Stooges album, Raw Power, and Bowie handled the mix. Released in 1973 to surprisingly strong reviews, Raw Power had a weird, thin sound due to various technical problems . . . [with] many Stooges purists blam[ing] Bowie for the brittle mix.”
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Mark Deming, again from Allmusic: “Kill City never hits as hard as the manic roar of the Stooges’ Raw Power, but the songs are very good, and the album’s more measured approach suits the dark, honest tone of the material. The sense of defeat that runs through ‘Sell Your Love’, ‘I Got Nothin’’, and ‘No Sense of Crime’ was doubtless a mirror of Iggy’s state of mind; but he expressed his agony with blunt eloquence, and his sneering rejection of the Hollywood street scene in ‘Lucky Monkeys’ is all the more cutting coming from a man who had lived through the worst of it.’”
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Some months back, I included a story on the Prime Movers, yet another Michigan band, which numbered among its members Michael Erlewine, the man who started All Music Guide (now Allmusic), along with All Movie Guide and All Game Guide; and James Osterberg, better known today as Iggy Pop. He started out as a drummer, as he was for this band; and the other bandmembers started calling him “Iggy” because he had previously been the drummer for a band called the Iguanas, this month’s Under Appreciated Rock Band. The band name also gave Greg Shaw the name for his long series of Stooges albums, The Iguana Chronicles.
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The Iguanas has taken first place among the least likely UARB or UARA of them all, even beating out the Rip Chords and Wendy Waldman, who was just the second rocker that I wrote about. One would think, with Iggy Pop’s unparalleled punk credentials, that every aspect of his musical life would have been examined in detail in Wikipedia long before now. But not even the band that gave him his name is there. Amazing. To cap it off, the Iguanas band that Iggy Pop was in is listed in Allmusic after another band called the Iguanas, from New Orleans; and they are the third Iguanas band in the Discogs list.
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Another Iguanas album came out the same year, Jumpin’ with the Iguanas on Desirable Discs II. According to Allmusic, with the success of that album, Jim McLaughlin, Nick Kolokithas and Don Swickerath announced their intentions of putting the band back together.
(December 2016)
