Once again, a couple of short thoughts on some records:

♦Damn Yankees – Don’t Tread: Jack Blades (Night Ranger), Tommy Shaw (Styx), and Ted Nugent, all relatively heavy hitters in the 70s and 80s, joined forces in the 90’s to form this “super group” and had several hits, a couple of which were on this, the second (and last) record featuring this lineup (Shaw and Blades kept going as…”Shaw/Blades” for a couple of albums after Ted left to go solo, shoot things, and campaign for a certain Alaskan ex-governor). Like a lot of these discs I talk about, I don’t remember buying it, but again, I bought a lot of things in the ’88-’94 time frame, and this fits with my general hair-metal friendly worldview – or again, somebody could have left it behind; I don’t know. The record itself isn’t bad – Blades’ and Shaw’s vocals blend well, especially on standouts like “The Silence is Broken,” even if by ’92 or thereabouts when this came out the polished hair metal sound was already kind of played out. There’s a bit of the gruff “Motor City Madman” guitar attitude on display here, even if this is from the period where Ted wore a floor-length zebra-striped vest and Oakley sunglasses instead of the trademark loincloth. Of course, it’s almost all filtered through the distinctive sound of the Eventide Harmonizer, a guitar effects processor that was as ubiquitious in the early 90s as overcranked Autotune is today on pop vocals.

♦Kane Roberts – Saints and Sinners: Through my teen years, I was a huge fan of Bon Jovi. As much as I was able (in the days before the internet), I tracked down rare b-sides, guest appearances, and songwriting credits from members of the band, because I’m more than a little bit obsessive-compulsive. That’s how I ended up with this record, the second solo project for Roberts, guitarist from Alice Cooper’s band throughout the 80s. The “hit” single from this project was “Does Anybody Really Fall in Love Anymore?,” a lesser power ballad composed by Jon Bon Jovi, Richie Sambora, Desmond Child and Dianne “why Aerosmith sucks now” Warren. It’s obviously a Bon Jovi-affiliated composition, but the band never felt it was worthy to record it themselves (originally, it was tossed to Cher on one of her 80s comeback records, presumably because she and Sambora had been hooking up at the time). The rest of the record, while catchy and well produced, is an aggressively Desmond Child project, with his signature crunchy-yet-impeccably-polished guitar tone and shout-along gang vocal choruses on every. single. track. (which, I suspect are there in part to fill out the reediness of Roberts’ voice when he hits the higher register). Still, it’s an interesting artifact of the waning years of pop metal that I enjoyed listening to from a guy who according to Wikipedia is now primarily a video game programmer.

♦Syn’D Cats – Catophonic: I picked this record up at one of the band’s shows in a bar in Central PA at some point in the mid-90s; the ‘cats were one of the crop of bands that filled out that particular scene in the early 90s that won a lot of awards and some high profile gigs, but never snapped up a major label deal like Live or The Badlees. The band’s sound was very 60s-70s electric blues; the lead singer always reminded me of Joe Cocker with his looks and presence (and on a side note, he gave me a drunken “Great set, Dude!” after I did my 15 minutes’ worth at a Harrisburg open mic one time, so there’s that). Lots of fun tunes great for dive bar sing-a-longs like “Broken Smile,” “Junkyard Women” and “60 dollar bill” that really do deserve more attention than they got as part of the B-team line-up from a B-team music scene. This is a record I never stopped listening to; it’s had a pretty regular place on my mp3 players for the last decade.

♦Todd Snider: Songs for The Daily Planet: Here’s another one I must’ve picked up at a used record store, given the “for promotional use only” sticker on the jewel case; which I’m sure I probably did. I remember “Alright Guy” getting some radio play off of this sometimes snarky, sometimes sincere alt-country ode to Generation X; which is probably why I picked it up. While it’s got a definite 90s slacker satire sensibility (witness “My Generation Part 2*” and “Talkin’ Seattle Grunge Rock Blues”), the whole record is really a bit more timeless; it owes just as much to the sixties folk and troubador tradition espoused by Arlo Guthrie (“Talkin'” again) and Pete Seeger (“That Was Me”) as it does to anything else. It’s a great collection of songwriting that’ll make you laugh as well as touch you (in a totally non-creepy, non-sexual way).

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* – “…verse three, chapter four, jackson five, nikki sixx,” which is perhaps the best way to start of an album I can think of, ever, except for maybe going right out there and refus(ing) to do acoustical versions of the electrical songs (you) had refused to record in the first place.