BANG
The situation with Bang was similar: I found their second album Music pretty quickly, but I couldn’t find the one that I had heard, their first album Bang anywhere – and, believe me, I asked! My brother Tom Winfree thought he had found it for me one Christmas, but it turned out to be the first album by Rush instead, though that was another really good one. Finally, I came across it at one of my favorite used record stores ever, the Record Hole in Raleigh. The second side in particular is truly marvelous hard rock. The gatefold cover is really neat: a gunslinger on a corner of the back cover holding a revolver that expands absurdly until the front cover is basically just the very end of the barrel, with (of course) “Bang" in an explosion inside it.
First album cover (1971)
(March 2010)
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Bang coulda been contenders as it turned out: They were being touted as America’s answer to Black Sabbath at one point, but their manager and record company derailed their desire to put out a concept album as their debut album. It is understandable I think: The album had the forbidding name Death of a Country, and the eponymous album they did put out instead, Bang was first-rate hard rock. (Death of a Country apparently remained unreleased until a 4-CD box set came out just last year).
(March 2012)
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Here is the first album by Bang, Bang the one I looked so hard for:
(March 2013)
