If you mixed Zep riffs with Uriah Heep vocal parts, played by Black Sabbath and added in some organ parts ala Deep Purple, you’d be describing the debut album of Lucifer’s Friend. No surprise about the vocals- John Lawton later went on to sing for Heep, but already had that full-throated wail on this record. The band is essentially a German heavy rock band that has been labeled, after the fact, as “proto-heavy metal.” That’s fair, in the same sense that early Sabbath and Deep Purple (and even the Iron Butterfly) anticipate some of the “heavy” rock that followed, before speed... Read More

    These guys were not on my radar during the ‘90s- and after two albums, the lead singer died of a drug overdose in the band’s tour bus outside a venue. Vinyl releases of the first album were extremely limited, and are now very costly. Music on Vinyl (“MOV”) has done a reissue worth buying. That label, which presses through the old CBS plant in the Netherlands, is a prolific reissue house, but source material is often digital files, making it less desirable than other, more “audiophile” reissue labels that promise full analog reissues. (Though astute readers are aware that... Read More

  Opeth- Damnation I had heard of Opeth and even had a couple of their albums- very heavy metal, of the death/speed/black metal variety, that is not my usual fare. An Internet colleague with an impeccable taste for avant-garde music of all types had recommended Damnation and another denizen of the Net, known for his depth of knowledge in all things progressive, clued me into the recent Steve Wilson remix. The album was, at the time, apparently an outlier for Opeth; the crunch and growling voices were replaced by natural vocals and far more melodic themes. Although Wilson had mixed the... Read More

  Blodwyn Pig- Ahead Rings Out   On the heels of our recent look at early Jethro Tull, it is worth spending a little virtual ink on Blodwyn Pig’s first album. Tull’s debut, This Was, a blues-drenched mix of hard rock was, in many ways, a “one-off.” Mick Abrahams, Tull’s guitarist left, and the band’s direction on the next album–the seminal Stand Up—and thereafter, was shaped by Ian Anderson. Some Tull fans were disappointed that it didn’t continue as a blues-rock band. I’m not. The common wisdom was that Abrahams wanted to continue in a blues vein and Anderson... Read More

Led Zeppelin fans have long tolerated less than ideal recordings to enjoy moments from the band during its heyday. I’ve considered doing an extensive shoot-out of some of the original Zep albums in my quest to obtain the best sounding copies, but while I’m still pondering that, here’s one that is worth the coin- cheap, in fact, for what you get: Jimmy Page & The Black Crowes- Live at the Greek. These performances, recorded in the post-Zeppelin era, are well worth owning. Although touted as the first release of these recordings on vinyl (not true, a vinyl set was released in... Read More

  I was a young lawyer working in the business when this album was released. An older colleague, more buttoned down than me, was slated to speak on a panel at the then industry-important “New Music Seminar” (a sort of New York City version of SXSW). He asked me for a recommendation because, as a speaker, he got a free pass to hear a show. I urged him to see Bad Brains, who were performing at a club on the Lower East Side with the Circle Jerks and Vernon Reid and Living Colour. The next day, he told me what happened: “I showed up at the club early, wearing my suit and tie,... Read More

  Billy Joel was unavoidable in the ‘70s- Piano Man and The Stranger were hugely popular in the era, and many of the tracks were (and remain) soft radio staples. Although Joels’ first album, Cold Spring Harbor, contained some eventual hits as well (“She’s Got a Way”), that album was sonically compromised and did not enjoy the commercial success of his later work. This album more than makes up for that- a live performance of some songs from “Harbor” album, along with other early, classic Billy Joel tracks performed by Joel’s then-regular touring band and recorded with... Read More