Budgie – Breadfan

Dio: Stand Up And Shout

Whilst I could never claim to be as big a Dio fan as Abe, they’ll always have a soft spot in my heart. For starters Rainbow were ace because of Ronnie James and Heaven And Hell is the most underrated Sabbath album. Holy Diver is an album I turn to again and again whilst other albums I bought at the time have gathered too much dust and eventually must find their way to the charity shop/ebay. Last year Ronnie and the band played the entireity of Holy Diver at London’s Astoria further cementing this album’s classic staus.

Anyhoos enjoy the video and enjoy the fact that it was filmed for Live Aid in Japan in 1987. Metal was conspicuous by it’s absence at 2005’s Live8 affairs making this video all the more extraordinary.

REO Speedwagon: Roll With The Changes

Well it’s been a while I won’t bore you with why I’ve not been here for a while suffice to say work and holidays have played a major part. Anyways better late than never.

Having seen Abe’s posts on glitter rock it was time to dig out some of my own guilty pleasures and here’s the first, REO Speedwagon. And what a guilty pleasure they are. And who can resist bands with 3 solos per song (one before the first verse), loads of organ and backing singers? Great stuff in my book, my first introduction to the ‘Wagon came in the form of those awful soft metal/rock compilation LPs that you can pick up in charity shops for next to nothing. In amongst the Heart, John Farnham and Whitesnake, REO Speedwagon stood out as a bunch of honest to goodness to rockers (albiet soft ones) with Can’t Fight This Feeling. A little further investigation of their back catalogue revealed this gem of a track. There were a whole bunch of versions of this on the mighty ‘Tube but I plumped for this one due to outrageous bubble perms, pastel coloured flouncy shirts, guitar histrionics and general arena rocking atmosphere.

Enjoy.

Mud – Crazy

Last night I went down Glitter Rock road on YouTube and watched a bunch of Bowie videos from the early 70’s. Holmes was on point! I’m not going to post any here tho as he doesnt fall under the auspices of 21st Century Greensleeves banner. This band however is called Mud. I know nothing about them. This song is pretty far off the beaten track of our regularly scheduled programming, but I’ll be damned if this song isn’t super badass in its own proto-new-wave-rock-cum-plaid-suit way. Tell me these dudes didn’t rock 3 or 4 future steezes at once in this video. And they do synchronized moves…

Slade: Cum on Feel the Noize

So yeah, I knew that Slade had originally written the excellent (at the time) Quiet Riot song Cum on Feel the Noize. Slade had written a lot of songs later covered by US bands that became hits. Mama Were All Crazy Now, God Gave Rock n Roll To You (oops, that was Argent…)are the two at the top of my dome. So its was a pretty great 80’s hard rock song end of story right? Wrong…

Coop dropped a bunch of Sweet and Slade videos on his blog and of course the top hat made me stop and take notice. I imagine one day when I’m a fancy artist with gallery shows and whatnot I will have the money to have this selfsame suit made for me, But until then give a listen to this version, I can’t tell if its the video compression or not but I’d swear the drummer was busting a skiffle and let not get into the mirrored pharoah (is he flashing the horns at the end?) dear god this is a stellar performance…

Slayer: Raining Blood/Silent Scream

For my money Slayer are one of the greatest heavy metal bands of all time. When I was young I thought they were the most extreme music I’d ever heard but as I grew up I came to appreciate the craft of their aggression and pick up on the melodies hidden beneath the chugging, and boy do Slayer chug! My favourite chugging being in the build up to “Raining blood… from the lacerated skys”. Awesome for a spot of headbanging.

I was super stoked to find this clip firstly as it’s got Slayer as the fresh young pups they were, amazing to think this is from SEVENTEEN years ago. And secondly the footage was recorded for a BBC documentary about metal and I vividly remember videoing the programme when I was 14 and flipping out to all the metal on it. Highlights of the programme were Black Sabbath touring their hometown and scenes from a metal disco of people moshing to Ace Of Spades at Nottingham’s Rock City. A metal disco!?!?!?! Being fourteen this was something of a revelation to me. Perhaps one day I’d be old enough and cool enough to find this “Rock City”. As it turns out I did but that’s another story…

Crimson Glory: Lonely

As a young man of 13 the world of heavy metal was a strangely male place. At school all my heavy metal friend were male, scouts was still to admit girls and the delights of pubs and clubbing were a long way off still. That didn’t stop me from thinking about what metal songs would be awesome to seduce girls with (or more realistically force them to listen to). Crimson Glory’s Lonely was always pretty high amoungst such a list, hell it was a song about being lonely and in love! What girl could not fall for it’s charms especially as the band toned down there usual histronics for what is a classic rocking ballad(ish). As well as being perfect for the ladies this song also has a faint chugga-chugga in the verse and a kick ass solo for the boys. Needless to say I never had the opportuinity to woo ladies to this slice of melodic metal but I’m pretty sure if I had had the chance they would have been putty in my hands.

As for the video there are several points of interest

• What the hell happens to the girl’s hair after she wakes up? From relaxed hair to full on 80s bouffant in 4 minutes
• How much dry ice?
• Awesome stance from the band with the drummer in the middle
• Nice almost revealing what lies benath the masks at the end
• How much hair? Surely the biggest hair to feature on 20th Greensleeves to date…
• How much dry ice?

Venom: Black Metal

Here we have the mighty Coiners of the Phrase, Venom. Perfoming their massive genre defining song, Black Metal. Honestly, when I was a wee teenager, I got a rich new wave girl to buy me Redd Kross’ Teen Babies from Monsanto on the strength of the Deuce cover. It didn’t live up to the hype in my book tho so I summarily traded it for Black Metal. Excellent cover, and any band that sings an ode to Angel Dust cant be all good. All in all I did wish I didnt trade my Red Kross Record tho…

On a side note? Best record covers since Motorhead!

Annihilator: Stonewall

Annihilator were not only one of the first thrash(ish) bands that I got heavily into but they were definitely the first band who’s logo I could properly draw on a computer. Needless to say once I had everything I owned was covered in their classic angular logo.

Whilst many consider their first album their best I was never a big fan of Randy Rampage and his screeching high notes. I much prefer Coburn Pharr with his classic power metal style. Anyways this song is a prime example of Jeff Waters fitting in his trademark clasical sounding snippits between some prime chugging action. The lyrics warning of impending environmental seemed a little far fetched at the time but listened to nowadays you begin to wish if only the whole world had listened to this song years and years ago. The video strangely makes little reference to this instead having a girl in a nightdress wander around a lake. Of course.

I had the pleasure of seeing Annihilator at the mighty Hammersmith Odeon supporting Judas Priest on their Painkiller tour. We went mainly for Annihilator as me and my friend incorretly asssumed Judas Preist to be has been dinosaurs. Needless to say Annihilator rocked and as soon as we got over the hilarity of Rob Halford arriving on stage on a Harley Judas Preist rocked too. This concert happily coincided with me smoking weed for the first time in the park on the way home. I went white as a sheet and felt a wee bit sick. How fucking metal is that?

Over to you Abe-o-war.

Accept: Balls To The Wall

OH. MY. GOD.

I’d never seen this video before but surely it must contain the finest display of sycronised rocking out ever.

I first came across Accept at a scout camp aged about 11. Starting out on a journey into metal I was eager to hear as much new metal as possible. When someone told me that there was a band that had recorded a song called Balls To The Wall I had to find out more. As an 11 year old anything with swearing in or even that alluded to rudeness was awesome with this song by Accept being a classic case in point. To this day I’m not really sure why having your balls to the wall is important but the way Udo’s veins on his throat bulge I’m pretty sure it’s essential.

Note for Abe: I tried in vain to find Fast As A Shark so you’ll have to settle for this.

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