smoe.org mailing lists
ivan@stellysee.de
| From | William Rabeneck <largro13@yahoo.com> |
| Subject | Re: The Best Albums You've Never, Ever Heard (Well, Probably Not, Anyway) |
| Date | Wed, 18 Apr 2007 17:23:12 -0700 (PDT) |
[Part 1 text/plain iso-8859-1 (5.1 kilobytes)]
(View Text in a separate window)
Hi Will,
Thanks for the list. I saw maybe three things that I'll have to pursue further, they sounded interesting.
I've got a few "great unknown albums" that I'd like to suggest:
Balaam and the Angel - "Live Free Or Die"
-I had this cassette while in college. It was one of those good albums that didn't do anything chart-wise. And by the time I was trying to convert my music collection to CD in the early 1990s, it was no longer in print. I think it took me about 10 or 12 years to get a CD version, finally found it on e-Bay. This was one of the better albums of the Hair Metal-era. I think the release date on this one is 1987. I was introduced to this album by a clerk at Hot Dog's Records in Jonesboro, Arkansas named Mike. I was in college in Jonesboro at the time, and Mike had a great ear for music, and was always selling me excellent new things. "Live Free Or Die" combines the best elements of bands like Van Halen, Z.Z. Top, AC/DC and the Cult. In fact the singer sounds a lot like Ian Astbury, to the point where some people might think these are 'newly discovered' classic Cult tracks. The strange thing about this album is that I loved it so much that I got the one before, and
then in a couple of years when it was released, I got the one after; and neither of those albums hold a candle to this one. It's kind of like the planets aligned, and let these guys do their one great album. On the album before "Live Free Or Die", they sounded like pale Beatle wannabees, and that I didn't like it bodes poorly for it, because I usually like Beatle wannabees. The album after "Live Free Or Die" sounds like they decided, "We should be Bon Jovi," and they missed the mark on that one just like they did on the one where they tried to be the Beatles. But "Live Free Or Die" is a magic album.
John Kilzer - "Memory In The Making"
- Another album from roughly the same time era; I think the release date is 1988. Being in college in Jonesboro, Arkansas, most of the radio stations that were available were Memphis, Tennessee stations, and John Kilzer was a local Memphis musician. He had an interesting backstory: I think he was actually born and raised somewhere a bit further East in Tennessee, around Nashville or Knoxville, but he came to Memphis State University to play basketball for the Tigers. He got his bachelors degree, and also either a masters or a doctorate; whatever kind of degree he had, he was an instructor at Memphis State when he released this album. Eagle Rock 103 (102.7) Memphis played the heck out of several of the songs off of this album; I think this was probably before Clear Channel aquired them, but I don't know. If Clear Channel owned them at the time, I think they had a freer hand in programming the local bands than they do nowadays, because in the late-80s they were
playing local bands like: John Kilzer; Tora Tora; and Jimmy Davis and the Junction pretty regularly, and they don't play local stuff anymore. Eagle Rock 103s DJs usually billed John Kilzer as the singing college professor (english & literature), or emphasised his basketball background and his height (I think he was 6' 7" or 6' 8"). And this album was actually a major label release; it was released on Geffen who seemed to do well with everything that they released back then. I don't know why they missed on this one. It was recorded at Memphis' famous Ardent Studios. The music on "Memory In The Making" is kind of a bluesy/soulful AOR. Kilzer's voice sounds kind of like a Southern Bryan Adams, and the songs run from sort of John Cougar Mellencamp/Bruce Springsteen-ish roots-Hard Rock to smoother more Bryan Adams AOR-like stuff, some songs are even sort of reminiscent of Foreigner, there's some kind of Stevie Ray Vaughn-like stuff, and even kind of a jokey Delta Blues
number "My Dishes Are Dirty". Kilzer did radio interviews on 103 where he claimed that John Lennon was one of his biggest influences, and that was probably more apparent in his lyrics than in his music, but Kilzer was a very literate, creative lyricist. In fact the song "If Sidewalks Talked" was based on John Lennon's assassination, and dedicated to Lennon; it talks about the apartment near Central Park, a musical man lying on the ground, and broken eye-glasses. This is a very nice album to have if you can find a copy. I absolutely don't think that there's a bad song on the album. This guy also really played a lot of night club dates in Memphis, Little Rock, and Hot Springs in the late 1980s/early 1990s. There was a follow up album, also on Geffen, about 1990 or 91 called "Busman's Holiday"; it wasn't as good as "Memory In The Making", but it was worth having. He eventually got out of music, I think, due to his lack of success. I saw an article about him in the
newspaper a few years ago; he had become a born again Christian. And I think that he had recently written a Christian-based story book for children.
Peace,
W.D.
---------------------------------
Ahhh...imagining that irresistible "new car" smell?
Check outnew cars at Yahoo! Autos.
For assistance, please contact
the smoe.org administrators.