I originally bought From the Inside from a cutout bin somewhere around 1980 - 1981; I was a stupid kid hoping to find something on par with “School’s Out”. Other than the gatefold cover nothing about it really piqued my interest so I ended up giving it to a buddy of mine who was big into Alice.
So here we are thirty years later, and thanks to the magic of Spotify I run across this again. I gave it another shot and you know what? It’s fucking fantastic. It may end up being my favorite Alice Cooper album.
Based on his stay in a sanitarium, the album is a combination of autobiographical songs and songs based on people he ran across. It’s pretty serious stuff with only a couple of songs (”Millie and Billie”, “Nurse Rozetta”) played for shock. Even “Veronica”, about an inmate who misses his dog tears me apart.
My personal favorite is “Serious”.
All of my life was a laugh and a joke
And a drink and a smoke
And then I passed out on the floor
Again and again and again and again and again
The song comes across as a party song but there’s such a tragedy beneath that.
The worst part of the album is the 1978 quasi-disco production but even that’s not overbearing.
Now if only I could track down a reasonably priced copy of Marvel Premiere that was based on this album…
So for Black Friday I ended up just getting this and the Jimi Hendrix Christmas EP. Love Garden didn’t have any copies of the Sinatra album and the Black Keys 2-LP set was $40, but I still might end up going back and picking it up.
I’m still not 100% sure why I got this. Metallica’s a great live band, sure, but I’ve got a buttload of live material from them and this didn’t really have any songs I couldn’t find elsewhere. I suppose I was hoping playing for the small crowd (~150) would result in a looser performance with some suprises. To a certain extent I suppose it is but not as much as I had hoped. There’s a lot of chatter in between songs where the band tries to act like an up and coming act, but they go back to the well too often for that and it becomes tedious.
The album has the following songs:
- No Remorse
- Fuel
- Havester of Sorrow
- Welcome Home (Sanitarium)
- For Whom the Bell Tolls
- Master of Puppets
- Sad But True
- Motorbreath
- Seek and Destroy
At the end of “For Whom the Bell Tolls” there is an impromptu version of “The Frayed Ends of Sanity” with what sounds like an audience member singing.
Metallica’s another band who has a pretty tight sound based on lots of touring and that’s on display here. Despite the size of the crowd, they don’t half-ass it and play just as hard as they would for an arena. With the exception of “Fuel”, every song on here is a favorite of mine and I like that they left out overplayed songs like “One” and “Enter Sandman”.
Overall a pretty solid effort and since most of the recent live stuff I have is digital, it’s nice to have Metallica live material in a physical format. It’s definately cool of the band to offer something like this to independent record stores, I feel like they went above and beyond on this one.
First thing’s first here: this cover sucks. I seriously think it might be one of the worst album covers ever made, mainly because it makes Dean Martin look like a douche, and in real life he never looked that goofy. They’ve got him dressed up in some lame outfit and on top of it whoever created this is making look like he’s dancing a jig. It’s just horrible. I keep wondering if Dean had to sign off on this cover or if it was just something the record company pushed through. The thing is I’m convinced that if they had used a photograph instead of a drawing he could have pulled it off. Don’t believe me? Check out how cool the guy looks for his country album:
Okay so enough about the cover. The concept of Swingin’ Down Yonder is that Dean is doing songs associated with the American south. It’s such a bizarre release from someone associated with Italian love songs, but the guy absolutely nails it. The songs are lighthearted without being silly and it doesn’t contain a single moment where you roll your eyes in embarassment. The music is created by traditional instruments instead of Dino’s usual orchestral music and his voice blends with it perfectly. The only complaint I have is with the bonus tracks included on the re-release that I have; they don’t fit in with the concept and it’s a little jarring when they start, but really that’s a small quibble.
There are a lot of good Dean Martin albums but I would rank this among my top two or three studio albums. Despite the terrible cover and the odd concept this is a great display of his talent.
Without any conscious effort I’ve somehow ended up with all of Ozzy’s studio albums and that trend certainly didn’t stop with his recent release Scream. So despite having all of them I got a little hazy on what he did after No More Tears and had to look it up on Wikipedia. That says a lot about his recent output - I never thought anything was terrible but not particularly memorable. Down to Earth was so boring I completely forgot about its existance.
Unfortunately the same holds true for Scream. It certainly sounds like an Ozzy Osbourne album and I suppose there’s a certain amount of comfort in that like revisiting an old friend. The problem is that there’s nothing particularly outstanding on it so many of the songs just seem interchangable. Part of the problem may be that the songs on the album were co-written by Osbourne, producer Kevin Churko, and keyboardist Adam Wakeman. I had high hopes when I saw that guitarist Gus G was added to Osbourne’s band, but his abscence from the writing credits translates into boring guitar parts throughout the album. Plodding, repetitive riffs are the norm here, and not in a good Tony Iommi way either. If Ozzy puts out another studio album I would hope that Gus G gets a more active role in writing which should result in a better product.
There are a couple of bright spots though. “I Want It More” is better than most of the stuff on his recent albums, and the first two songs are good but not great. I’m going to see Ozzy at the Sprint Center in January and I’m hoping these songs translate better live than they do in the studio.
The story with Seventh Star is that it was originally supposed to be a Tony Iommi solo album but due to urging from the record label it was released under the unfortunate name “Black Sabbath featuring Tony Iommi”. The album is overall less heavy than a typical Black Sabbath album and in some spots a lot more radio friendly (for better or worse). Despite that, it’s always been my favorite non-Dio Sabbath album. Glenn Hughes’ vocals (again, which aren’t anything like anything Sabbath has had before) are typical of mid-80s metal but there’s something about the band that clicks. Every song is strong - I even like “No Stranger to Love” which seems to be the one everybody hates. Even now, 25 years later I’ll occasionally pull it out and really enjoy listening to it.
This month Sanctuary released a deluxe edition of Seventh Star, adding the US remix of “No Stranger to Love” and a second disc of a live show performed by new vocalist Ray Gillan, who joined after Glenn Hughes left after the beginning of the tour. First off the new version of “No Stranger to Love” is horrible, it adds even more 80s production (keyboards and female background vocals) to a song that really didn’t need it. The live disc is interesting at best. The sound quality isn’t that great and the performance is average. I’m a huge fan of Ray Gillan’s work in Badlands and had high hopes for this but it doesn’t deliver.
I can’t really recommend the deluxe version, which runs about $32.00 at Amazon which is a little steep. If you’ve already got the album the new material doesn’t warrant picking it up again and if you don’t have it just get a used copy of the original off Amazon.
