My Musical Evolution – Page 22 – Mapping Influences Over Time

My Musical Evolution – Part 203 The Metal Years High ‘N’ Dry

Oh look. Another band that has a song named after the previous album. That was a coincidence unless subliminally, I had it planned all along and just was not consciously aware.

After completely enjoying Def Leppard’s Pyromania I had to get more. At that time more meant On Through The Night or High ‘N’ Dry. I gambled on High ‘N’ Dry and I feel like I won. To this day, I don’t think that I’ve ever heard On Through The Night. Maybe I should check it out.

One of the early observations that I had was that the lyric structure on Let It Go was very similar to Quiet Riot’s Metal Health. Here are the first few lines of Metal Health. Go ahead and cue up Let It Go then see how well these words fit.

Well I’m an
Axegrinder,
piledriver
Mother says
that I never, never mind her
Got no brains
I’m insane
The teacher says
that I’m one big pain

OK so it is not perfect but you get the idea. High ‘N’ Dry was a little more raw and under produced compared to Pyromania. Which was welcome at that point in The Metal Years. Although I played this one quite a bit, it never could overtake Pyromania on my list of favorites. It does contain another one of those Rise & Fall Of ’84 crossover songs, Bringin’ On The Hearbreak.

Sadly, this would be my last Def Leppard purchase. By the time Hysteria would be released, The Metal Years were all but over and I really couldn’t get into the direction they were heading. Pour Some Sugar On Me just wasn’t the Def Leppard I knew.

Let It Go

High ‘N’ Dry

Switch 625

Lady Strange

Mirror, Mirror (Look Into My Eyes)

My musical Evolution – Part 202 The Metal Years Heavy Metal Love

Helix? What? Are they Canadian? Of course I had to by Helix’s No Rest For The Wicked. They were the Heavy Metal Love guys fromt he radio. Maybe No Rest For The Wixked wasn’t the heaviest or the metalist but the album had a few good cranker-up-ers.

I seem to remember reading somewhere that Helix had this habit of naming their ablums after songs that would appear on the following album. For example, the album that came out two years prior to No Rest For The Wicked was called White Lace And Black Leather which is the last track on no Rest For The Wicked. Of course that rumours seems to fail here because this album features a song called No Rest For The Wicked. So nevermind I guess.

I didn’t play this one as heavily as Shout At The Devil or Balls To The Wall. I’ve been through half of it this evening and I must say that I’m enjoying it. It doesn’t seem to hold the sentimental nuggets like some of the other albums of The Metal Years but still worthy.

Of course the most memorable track Never Want To Lose You changes the entire course of this record. That song belongs firmly inThe Rise & Fall Of ’84. In fact, I’ll probably hold that one back for later. Maybe I’ll put a link to it here later, just incase you want to jump right to it.

I actually just replaced this album with a Compact Disc just about a year ago. That should kind of give you an idea of the priority.

Does A Fool Ever Learn

Heavy Metal Love

No Rest For The Wicked

Don’t Get Mad Get Even

Dirty Dog

That was pretty good after all!

My Musical Evolution – Part 201 The Metal Years Stung Like A Hurricane

With all the great Scorpions music out there, I’m almost ashamed to admit that my entry point was Rock You Like A Hurricane. Sure, that is a good song too but I tend to skip over that one most of the time. Maybe it is just a victim of being played to death. This album is full of great tracks and yes Rock You Like A Hurricane is one of them. It was probably the right choice to introduce many young Americans to Scorpions.

Do you remember the video for Big City Nights? That was a great compliation of clips that romanticised life on tour. It was fun to watch. Oh wait, scroll down at watch it. Unfortunately, I suspect that life on the road is not so glamorous, but it still makes me wish I was a globe trotting rock star.

I bought my copy of Love At First Sting at the Woolworth’s on West State Plaza. That was back when Woolworth’s had a record section and West State Plaza had a Woolworth’s. I don’t know why I remember that. Perhaps is was because of the alternate cover. I guess some folks felt that the cover you see pictured here was a little too risqué. So they issued a second version that just featured the band standing in front of a white back ground.

It was cause for confusion for me as I looked at the two Scorpion albums that had the same name, same songs but different covers. I eventually convinced myself that they were in fact the same record on the inside. So I had to choose which cover I wanted. Hmmmm? How can you turn down side boob?

Bad Boys Running Wild

Rock You Like A Hurricane

I’m Leaving You

Big City Nights

My Musical Evolution – Part 200 The Rise & Fall Of ’84

In August, Lisa had encouraged me to take part in some church weekend for teens. She was a Catholic girl but in the style of Biily Joel and not Frank Zappa. How could I refuse her. So I went to Our Lady Of Good Hope and actively participated. I wanted her to know that I was commited.

It was an overnight deal that was all designed to bring kids closer to God. I made a few friends there that weekend that I completely lost track of a few minutes later. I don’t know why but I keep wanting to make fun of it. I’ve retracted it all so far except the for the lost track of a few minutes later. Originally I called the place our Lady Of Soap On a Rope. See that’s just disrespectful. Why do I feel this way? Was it the organized religion aspect? Was it that I wasn’t really invested in it? Could it be because that weekend was the tipping point of The Rise And Fall Of ’84 where I had reached the peak. I had gone as high as I was going to get and even though I wouldn’t know until a week later, the Fall had begun.

Bryan Adams -Kids Wanna Rock

The Power Station – Some Like It Hot

The Cars – Heartbeat City

Billy Joel – Only The Good Die Young

England Dan & John Ford Coley – Love Is The Answer this was our group’s TEC song and I wonder what it be would be like to listen to this song and not have it represent the Apex of The Rise And Fall Of ’84

My Musical Evolution – Part 199 The Metal Years Headhunter

I sometimes wonder if the Metal side of me made surviving The Rise & Fall Of ’84 any easier. The Metal music and accompanying persona was more rebelious and driven to party.

Krokus was another one of those bands to come out of frozen Europe. The Germans, the Swiss, the Norwegians, they all had this similar quality. Maybe it’s the accent.

I haven’t listened to Krokus much since The Metal Years. It has been cool digging them back up for this project. Night Wolf and Russian Winter are two good songs that I’d all but forgotten about.

Even the metal albums had songs about heartbreak and loss crushed in between the songs about speed and destruction. Headhunter was no exception. The big song on the radio was Stayed Awake All Night but Screaming In The Night was where I was headed.

Headhunter

Screaming In The Night

Night Wolf

Stayed Awake All Night

Russian Winter

My Musical Evolution – Part 198 The Rise & Fall Of ’84

Even during the Rise part of The Rise & Fall Of ’84, there recurring issues with Lisa’s ex. The wooly cotton brains of memory seemed to have smoothed it over but if I look deeper into it, it was a frequent problem. Did I not see it? Did I bet too many chips on hope? Was I seeing only what I wanted to see? It was emotionally bothersome but I always seem to be getting enough signals to hang on. Knowing what I know now, I can see it coming but at the time either I didn’t or didn’t want to.

Bon Jovi – Runaway

Bryan Adams – Summer Of ’69

Huey Lewis & The News – Heart And Soul

Nena – 99 Luftballons

Chicago – Stay The Night

Eddie Rabbitt – I Love A Rainy Night This song originally came out a couple years earlier but seemed to make a resurgance during The Rise & Fall Of ’84 One rainy night Lisa and I heard this in the car and counted the number of times he says “I love a rainy night”. It was 28 I think.

My Musical Evolution – Part 197 The Metal Years American Rock Festival

On May 27th, 1984, Brian and I were at the American Rock Festival at the Timber Ridge Ski Resort in Kalamazoo, Michigan. It was an all day show. The concert goers were spread out all over the ski slope and the stage was set up in front the base lodge. It was certainly a festival atmosphere. There were thousands of people in attendance. I remember there were guys selling acid. They would simply walk back and forth in the crowd holding up a little picture card about half the size of a business card.

The bands at the show were Ratt, Accept, Night Ranger, Mötley Crüe, Quiet Riot, Ozzy Osbourne, and Triumph. How cool was that? Six bands that I was into and Triumph with whom I was at that point unfamiliar.

Based on the crows reaction during the show, I would have put Quiet Riot on ahead of Mötley Crüe. The crowd wanting more Mötley Crüe and it kind of bled into Quiet Riot’s set. Of course that was nothing compared to the way that Triumph must have felt. After Ozzy left the stage, the crowd started leaving in huge numbers. Maybe that was the plan. The organiziers may have realized that there would be a traffic problem so they put on Triumph last hoping that half the crowd would disperse while they played. I felt bad for them because it was supposed to be their return and most everybody walked out on them.

Ratt – Round And Round This video says live March 18,1984 which was just a couple momths earlier.

Accept – Balls To The Wall

Night Ranger – (You Can Still) Rock In America

Mötley Crüe – Shout At The Devil

Quiet Riot – Metal Health

Ozzy Osbourne -Crazy Train

Triumph -I don’t know, we left.

It was a great show but sunburn followed.

My Musical Evolution – Part 196 College Intermission

I met Aric that spring. He was kind of seeing my sister at the time. He was just finishing up his senior year at North Side High School. Aric and I would eventually start hanging out together and we would even share a house. That was still a over a year away but we’ll get there. Aric’s musical evolution began with KISS as well. Alive! was his first album. He was getting into the heavy metal scene too. On top of that, he liked M*A*S*H.

Bruce Springsteen – Cover Me

Bananarama – Cruel Summer

Prince – Let’s Go Crazy

Huey Lewis & The News – I Want A New Drug

The Police – Wrapped Around your Finger

My Musical Evolution – Part 195 The Metal Years Paranoid

I liked Black Sabbath but I was hardly what you would consider a true fan. To me a fan, a true fan , will seek out more. I knew a lot more about Mötley Crüe than I cared to find out about Black Sabbath. I had Master Of Reality and now, Paranoid but I couldn’t tell you who played bass. I knew Ozzy and Iommi but who was on drums? I didn’t know how many albums they had. At my level of interest, it didn’t matter I guess. Maybe I was a bigger fan than I thought but compared to some fans I’d meet in coming years, I was just a casual Sabbath listener.

I can live with that. Even though Paranoid is an amazing album, at the time I was more likely to listen to Ratt or Def Leppard. Paranoid had a string of must haves like Paranoid and Iron Man. It also had Planet Caravan which is this album’s Goodbye To Romance. It was the softer, slower song that got in the way back in The Metal Years but now, just like Goodbye To Romance, it has become not only my favorite track on this album but one of my favorite Sabbath songs over all.

Is it for the same reason as Goodbye To Romance? You know, it was skipped so often back then that it hasn’t been played to death. Maybe it is a reflection of some maturity in taste. Maybe it was my Heavy Metal answer to Chuck Mangione. It might even be due to my subsequent turn to New Age music of which Planet Caravan shares some qualities.

War Pigs

Paranoid

Planet Caravan
Here’s

The story behind Planet Caravan

Iron Man

Electric Funeral – I love the guitar on the intro

My Musical Evolution – Part 194 College Intermission Summer Job

In the summer, a temp agency placed me in a factory that made truck parts. Using an array of hydraulic presses, tourches and stamping devices, they turned flat pieces of metal in various thickness and density in to all manner of things that are used in building trucks. It was here that I discovered how labor unions have killed productivity in America. I know this doesn’t have anything to do with music but I’m putting it out there because I was there in the summer of 1984.

I don’t recall how i heard this but the shop was two years behind in delivering parts ordered. How ridiculous is that for starters? The people working there didn’t seem to have any kind of motivation to be productive. They stood st their stations and pressed out the parts with no sense of urgency at all. It was really boring work. Whenever I hear about more manufacturing jobs going overseas, my first thought is “Good. Let them have those boring jobs.” Of course the reason those jobs are held so dear is that the are typically the most overpaid jobs that require the least amount of expertise to master. I was 19 at the time and I didn’t think of the job as an 8 hour shift. I was looking at that pallet of steel that needed to be turned into giant washers. I wanted to get it done as fast as I could so I could do something different.

I swear that I could have gathered up 20 friends of mine and we could have gotten that shop back up to date by the start of the fall semester. I was actually told by some of my co-workers to slow down. Can you believe that? That place was porbably operating at less than 20% of its capacity with those guys.

The shift ended at 3:00pm but the work stopped at 2:30 when everybody would go to the bathroom to wash their hands. The last 15 minutes of the day were spent standing in line next to the timeclock with time card in hand just waiting for it to tick over to 3:00 when they would punch out and go home. It wasn’t even my business but it infuriates me. The union made it basically impossible to fire an underperformer which made them all underperformers. That shop went out of business in 1990’s. Do you think those guys in China stand around the time clock for 15 minutes every shift?

I’d work 6:00am to 3:00pm, go home, shower, go to Lisa’s house, stay there until it was late, then go home sleep, for a few hours, promise myself to go to bed early tomorrow, then repeat.

Back to the music.

Donna Summer – She Works Hard For The Money

Michael Jackson & Paul McCartney – The Girl Is Mine

Elton John – I’m Still Standing

Corey Hart – Sunglasses At Night

Adam Ant – Goody Two Shoes Another time where I liked an artistbefore they became big. I had been listening to Adam Ant for years.