By JAY ROBERTS

The Cassette Chronicles is a continuing series of mini reviews and reflections on albums from the 1980’s and 1990’s. The aim of this series is to highlight both known and under-appreciated albums from rock, pop and metal genres from this time period through the cassette editions of their releases. Some of the albums I have known about and loved for years, while others are new to me and were music I’ve always wanted to hear. There will be some review analysis and my own personal stories about my connection with various albums. These opinions are strictly my own and do not reflect the views of anyone else at Limelight Magazine.

Y&T – DOWN FOR THE COUNT  (1985)

Despite the fact that the Y&T album Down for the Count contains the song that the band is best known for, I had never heard this album in its entirety before listening to it in order to write this article.

While I’ve heard “Summertime Girls” plenty of times, the only other song I’d heard before now was “Face Like an Angel” and that was when I saw the band live a few years back.

So this was mostly a new experience for me. And aside from one song that I could’ve done without, this was actually quite a damn good album. The surprising thing about that for me is that when I was looking up information about the album online, one thing I noticed was the criticism of the band changing their sound starting with Down for the Count so as to fit in more with what was popular in 1985. In other words, to fit in more with the 80s metal (aka hair metal) scene.

Screw it though. Good is good in my eyes (or should I say, ears) and I rather enjoyed the album so the others who didn’t are welcome to their opinion but I don’t share it.

The first side of the album opens up with “In The Name of Rock” which is a hard rocking in-your-face track right from the start. The song’s tempo has a big gripping style to it and it really does get you fired up for the rest of the album.

I’ll admit that the lyrics for “All American Boy” aren’t exactly going to be confused for some great literary writing but for its time, it was a fun rocking track and I loved the guitar work on this song a lot. The song was the 2nd of two songs that were released as singles from the album and it does have a nice hook to it, even if the song didn’t find any chart success.

For the track “Anytime At All”, the song’s racing tempo is enriched by a strong keyboard presence. I thought it gave a nice deeper texture to the song overall so I found the track pretty interesting.

The band really hits full throttle with the next track “Anything For Money”. It’s a full bore audio assault from the get go. And as for the first side’s final track “Face Like an Angel”, it starts off like it is going to be a power ballad with the first verse but as soon as Y&T hit the first chorus, the song explodes forth with straight forward rock and roll power for the rest of the song.

The energetic rock and roll Y&T provides on the first side stays in the forefront for most of the album’s second side. I mentioned that there was only one song I didn’t think much of on the album and that’s their cover of the song “Your Mama Don’t Dance”. It’s not that there is anything particularly wrong with the song, I just didn’t think it was necessary to put a cover on the album. So I would’ve been fine if they’d decided to not include the song on the album. It’s funny that I ended up thinking that here and now considering that when Poison covered the song a few years after Y&T, it went over a little better and was a hit single for them if I remember correctly.

But that’s the only negative I would have to say about Down for the Count. The second side kicked off with “Summertime Girls”. It is their best known hit and it is a standout classic for a good reason. Fast paced and packed with everything you could expect to find in a song that represents the 1980s rock/metal era. But what always gets me is that as the first single from the album, it didn’t really make much of an account on the charts for itself. It peaked at #55 according to what I saw online. That definitely surprised me because of how great and memorable the song is to a generation of rock fans.

The song “Looks Like Trouble” is a pretty straightforward rocker but it is the final two songs on Down for the Count that take you on a huge musical journey as a way to cap off the release.

The song “Don’t Tell Me What to Wear” is an ode to rebellion over clothing choices. While I didn’t know this song back then, I think I would’ve loved it. Back when I was in 7th grade, the schools were just starting to crack down on baseball hats being worn in school but they were being schmucks about it and I was a natural contrarian even then. So when I had a couple of “teachers” try to get high-handed about it, I gave them crap back about it. Let’s just say they weren’t pleased with my refusal to simply buckle down to their BS overreach as if I was supposed to be scared of them. This song would’ve been a personal motto back in the day for me. On top of all that, this song was relentless in how it attacked you musically. Between what the song meant lyrically and the fast paced score, this is a killer track!

And then the final song, “Hands of Time” finds Y&T putting forth not just a great souding hard rocking track. But when they give the song such a dramatic presentation, it ends up lending itself to having an epic scope (or feel) to the whole track.

While it may have taken me nearly 40 years to hear the album in full, listening to Down for the Count has only reinforced the fandom I developed for the band after I saw them in concert a few years ago. Before that, I was a casual fan at best,  but since then I’ve been discovering Y&T’s back catalog and there is so much great sounding rock that I continue to kick myself for putting off checking them out for so long. Or more simply, I LOVE THIS ALBUM!

NOTES OF INTEREST: The Down for the Count album, which peaked at #91 on the album chart, was the last to feature the band’s original lineup of singer/guitarist Dave Meniketti, guitarist Joey Alves, bassist Phil Kennemore and drummer Leonard Haze.

The band used three keyboardists on the album. Claude Schnell played on the songs “Anytime At All” and “Face Like an Angel”. He’s best known for his time playing with Dio.

The “Summertime Girls” song was originally released as the only studio track on the Y&T live release Open Fire. It has been used in the movie Real Genius and the first episode of the series Peacemaker.