By JAY ROBERTS

As this 8th year of The Cassette Chronicles comes to a close, it is time to once again look back at ten of the albums I wrote about in the series this year.

There were 24 new articles this year and I enjoyed writing about each album that the series covered. That shouldn’t be too much of a surprise to anyone that has been reading the series for any length of time. Heck, even if there’s an album I don’t care for too much, I think I usually have a good time writing about the reasons why it didn’t really resonate with me.

The great news is that thanks to the continued support of Jay and Katie from Limelight Magazine. The Cassette Chronicles will be returning for a 9th year in 2025. I’m not sure exactly when the first new piece will be up but it will be either January 2nd or January 9th.

I wanted to thank everyone who has read the articles this year. Whether you’ve gone directly to the site or clicked on a specific link on whatever website or social media page I’ve posted the articles on, your support for this series is greatly appreciate.

Here’s to another great year in 2025 but until that starts here’s the ten albums I’ve chosen (in no particular order) to spotlight for 2024.
See you next year!

(Please click on the cassette title to read the article)

1 – SAVATAGE – EDGE OF THORNS

2 – THE SCREAM – LET IT SCREAM

3 – SURVIVOR – CAUGHT IN THE GAME

4 – DEF LEPPARD – ON THROUGH THE NIGHT

5 – HEART – LITTLE QUEEN

6 – MELISSA ETHERIDGE – BRAVE AND CRAZY

7 – SUICIDAL TENDENCIES – LIGHTS…CAMERA…REVOLUTION

8 – BATON ROUGE – LIGHTS OUT ON THE PLAYGROUND

9 – MR. MISTER – WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD

10 – IRON MAIDEN – SEVENTH SON OF A SEVENTH SON

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.

(WRITER’S NOTE: THIS IS THE LAST CASSETTE CHRONICLES ARTICLE OF 2024. THERE WILL BE A BEST OF 2024 PIECE COMING NEXT WEEK. I WANT TO THANK EVERYONE FOR CONTINUING TO READ THE SERIES AND I HOPE THAT YOU WILL CONTINUE TO DO SO BECAUSE THE SERIES WILL RETURN WITH NEW ARTICLES AT THE BEGINNING OF JANUARY 2025!)

GREAT WHITE – GREAT WHITE (1984)

I’m sure you will be shocked…shocked I say…to learn that I’ve never listened to Great White’s self-titled debut album before now. I’m a little surprised myself but I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a copy of this album (in any format) out in the wild before a recent excursion.

Now, that’s not to say I’m not at least somewhat familiar with some of the music from this album. In fact, two of the songs on Side One of the album are two of their better known songs even now.

I’m pretty sure I’ve heard both “Stick It” and “On Your Knees” both on the radio back in the day and through the greatest hits compilations I have in my collection. But before I talk about those songs, let’s pull back a little and talk about the tone or rather sound of this album.

When I was looking up information about the album, the one thing I noticed is that most articles describe Great White’s sound as being a lot more metal (aka heavier) than what we generally think about the band’s music. And while I do think the music leans more heavy and rocking than pretty much the rest of their catalog, singer Jack Russell’s voice still makes the music pretty identifiable as GREAT WHITE. He just has a readily identifiable sound so whether metal or blues rock is the musical style, Jack Russell still stands out.

This is the fifth Great White album I’ve written about overall but because I haven’t listened to it in full before, there was plenty to discover.

So now we can get back to those two songs I mentioned above. In regards to “Stick It”, the music is certainly in-your-face and so is the attitude the vocals project in the song. Particulary when Russell is intoning the song’s title. Being 1984 and metal developing a certain style that prevailed in the decade, the music also had a kind of echo to the production at times.

The song “On Your Knees” was co-written with Don Dokken and it is a hard-hitting straight forward rocker. I can definitely understand why it is still a well known track from Great White’s catalog.

Oh, and it is one of three tracks that originally appeared on the Out of the Night EP, even though the versions on Great White were fully new recordings.

The song “Out of the Night” itself opens up Side One and I noted pretty early on how fast and heavy it sounded. Definitely more of a metal track. But I tell you, despite what their record label and maybe other fans themselves might think, I thought this track was fantastic! Definitely showed the earlier style the band was employing at the time but it’s a darn good song no matter what.

For me, “Bad Boys” was OK. Solid rocker but of the five songs on the album’s first side, it is the one that left the least impression on me. 

But you know what song actually really surprised me and blew me away? It was the cover of The Who song “Substitute”. HOLY CRAP!  For me, I’ve been a fan of the many and varied songs from The Who that get played on the radio over and over again. But as surprising as this may be to some readers, I don’t actually own any of their catalog. And to the best of my knowledge I’ve never heard their original version of “Substitute”.  As I was listening to Great White’s quite masterful and rocking rendition, I was really getting into the song. I love the lyrics a lot but I thought Jack Russell did a fantastic job with his vocal performance as a whole. So much so that I actually find myself a bit fearful of looking up the original song on Youtube because I don’t want to spoil my feeling and/or love of this version.

For Side Two of the album, the song “Streetkiller” sure sounds like an 80s metal song title. But the song’s intro starts out establishing a moody almost eerie vibe. But as that intro ends, the music kicks in full burst and rocking pretty fast. I found myself getting into this track a lot.

But the song “No Better Than Hell” was a song that took more work to appreciate. It’s mostly got a mid-tempo delivery but the music seems like it was hushed a little, as if it wasn’t coming through the speakers in a full throated style. Maybe that was the planned method for establishing the feel of the song or something. But while the song does come off as interesting enough that I don’t hate it, I found that it wasn’t quite as intriguing as I might’ve hoped. 

On “Hold On”, Great White started out with a more subdued delivery of the song, picking up the pace a bit for the song’s choruse but by the end, the song was fully uptempo, albeit not quite as fast as a track like “Out of the Night” or anything. Okay song overall.

But the pacing picks up in full with the song “Nightmares”. It’s got a creepy sound to the guitar solo and just one of the tracks that does lend itself to that description of this album being a completely different sound than the rest of Great White’s discography.

That fast pacing continues on the album closing “Dead End” (which is the 3rd song re-recorded from the Out of the Night EP). It’s got a thunder and lightning delivery that I really found enjoyable and the vocals are delivered with Russell sounding at times as if he’s delivering the lines in a rapid fire manner. The band goes out a very high note with this song.

While there are of course definite differences between this first full-length Great White album and the slightly softer blues rock driven sound they adopted after it, I’d be remiss not to say that the band’s talent shines through with their songwriting and performances on the Great White  album. Sure it may not be perfect considering a couple of songs gave me pause but overall, this one turned out to be a very welcome surprise as I edge closer and closer to completing my Great White studio album collection.

I love Great White the band and Great White the album is the early primer on why that came to be. Check it out for yourself and I’m sure you’ll be as pleased as I ended up being.

NOTES OF INTEREST – The Great White debut album (which peaked at #144 on the Billboard album chart) was reissued on CD in 1999 with 5 cover songs included as bonus tracks. It was done by a French record label who re-titled the album as Stick It.

The four members of the lineup (singer Jack Russell, guitarist Mark Kendall, bassist Lorne Black and drummer Gary Holland are credited with writing the 9 original tracks on Great White. They shared writing credits with producer Michael Wagener on the song “No Better Than Hell” while the band’s manager Alan Niven provided backing vocals and got co-writing credits on two songs.

Gary Holland was a member of an earlier version of Dokken and was briefly a member of the band Sister which would eventually become W.A.S.P. He is credited with appearances on 2 Ozzy Osbourne releases and worked on albums by Twisted Sister, Autograph and Don Dokken as well.

Keyboardist Michael Lardie was not yet a member of the band but he is credited on this album as an assistant engineer and provided backing vocals. 

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 underappreciated 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.

LIZZY BORDEN – TERROR RISING (1987)

While I knew that this Lizzy Borden EP existed, I didn’t realize that it came out in 1987 until I was looking up research information for this article. The reason that struck me is because 1987 was also the year that the band released what is considered their masterpiece album Visual Lies.

I would tend to agree with that assessment of that album. It was actually the first one I heard and bought from the band and it still ranks as one of my own personal favorites.

So realizing that the Terror Rising EP came out in the same year was a bit strange because the releases are so diametrically opposed. While Visual Lies has incredible songs and strong production, Terror Rising is mostly made up of cover songs, remixes and a live track. And to call the production sound rough is a bit of an understatement.

Three of the songs on this EP came from previous releases. Things get going with a remixed version of the song “Give ‘Em The Axe” from the 1984 EP of the same name (I’ve written about that one for this series by the way). This new version is fine but it isn’t like it really brings all the much in the way of “new” to the song.

What follows that track is a cover of the Jefferson Airplane song “White Rabbit”. Now, I’m not strictly beholden to the idea that the original of a song is always the best but I’ve heard the original version of this song a lot over the years. While I can’t claim to be a huge fan of Jefferson Airplane or anything, I can say that this particular huge hit of theirs does NOT lend itself well to being covered in a heavy metal style. So as you might imagine, I really didn’t care for this one.

The first side of the cassette closes out with a live rendition of the song “Rod of Iron”. The song comes from the 1985 album Love You To Pieces as well as the Give ‘Em The Axe EP. I wrote that I thought it was the lesser of the five songs on that EP and I can’t say that the live rendition did much to improve my assessment of the song. When and/or if I get around to writing about the Love You to Pieces album, I’ll be interested to learn if the inclusion of the song on that release is a re-record or the same version that appears on the EP.

The second side of the cassette kicks off with the song “American Metal” which appears on the Love You to Pieces album and remains a song I love no matter how rough it sounds production-wise. Definitely a memorable anthem track from the band.

As much as I wasn’t enthused about the cover of “White Rabbit”, I was actually more impressed with the cover of “Don’t Touch Me There” from The Tubes. Maybe because the lyrics referenced leather or something made this feel more like a song that would suited to be a metal cover. With singer Betsy from the band Bitch as a guest performer the track as a duet came off pretty cool sounding to me.

The closing two songs are the only original songs included on Terror Rising. They really don’t offer much in the way of a preview of what was to come later in 1987 on Visual Lies though. “Catch Your Death” was a hard driving rocker that I ended up liking well enough but the EP’s title track was a grave disappointment to me. Most of the song was more of a spoken word performance with singer Lizzy Borden having a back and forth battle of wits with a voice in “his head”. It certainly keys into the group’s sense of the theatrical but I wish it had been more of a straightforward musical performance.

Overall, while not so bad that I regret listening to it, I wasn’t totally sold on Terror Rising but I am still glad to have it in the collection as where Lizzy Borden the band was coming from with another release before they unleashed the Visual Lies album.

NOTES OF INTEREST: Joey Vera, who at the time was the bassist with Armored Saint, played on the final three tracks of the EP’s second side.

Guitarists Alex Nelson and Tony Matuzak are credited on two tracks apiece on Terror Rising. Nelson passed away in 2004 while Matuzak died in 2021.

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.

HEART – LITTLE QUEEN (1977)

While I normally try to stick to the 80’s and 90’s when it comes to the albums I write about here in The Cassette Chronicles, I do occasionally branch out to other decades as well. 

This week’s trip to the late 1970s was inspired not by grabbing a tape out of the Big Box of Cassettes though. Instead, the choice of Heart’s 3rd album Little Queen was inspired by someone else writing about it.

In my other writing “job”, I review mystery novels. That has led to some friendships being struck up with a number of the writers whose books I read. One of them has a daughter who has surprisingly good (and old-school) taste in music. Recently she has been doing a series of posts on her own Facebook page and she did a post about Little Queen that I enjoyed. 

This led me to deciding to follow suit and write up a piece of my own. 

Fair or not, because there are a number of great songs on the album, I think the reason Little Queen is such a big cog in Heart’s success is because of the lead track “Barracuda”. Yes, I’m not exactly breaking new ground with that opinion but since it is the first track on the album, I figure I might as well get it out of the way first.

The song was written in outraged response to deceptive and disgusting marketing created by Heart’s first record label (I’ll let you look up the story for yourself). Funny how rage spurred such creativity, no? The song’s opening chugging riff is instantly identifiable, a masterpiece of what is now considered “classic rock”. Between the fiery music and Ann Wilson’s take-no-BS vocal performance, the idea that anyone could not love “Barracuda” seems just wrong to me. It is a tentpole rocker for the 1970s decade to me.

What makes the first side of Little Queen so interesting to me is the way “Barracuda” serves as an opening salvo and yet, the middle three tracks lean more towards a kind of softer rock singer-songwriter vibe for the most part.

Okay, “Love Alive” mainly gets that kind of tag for me for its intro, which is way more low-key than the intro for “Barracuda”. I like the way the guitar comes in after that intro and you can feel the build the song has going for it until it does finally burst into much more of a full on rocker type track.

“Sylvan Song” and “Dream of the Archer” are kind of a themed duology. With “Sylvan Song” you get an instrumental that starts with some ambient nature sounds before you get the guitar fading in. As the song continues the guitar work is fully at the forefront of the music and while I’m not always a fan of instrumentals myself, this one left me feeling quite entertained even with its just barely over two minute run time.

But when the song ends, it feeds directly and thematically into “Dream of the Archer”. While the song title would seem right at home as the title of a fantasy novel, I thought the music had a kind of cinematic flair to it. It’s definitely softer in both focus and delivery but when you combine the two tracks, it does make for an interesting listen.

And while those three tracks are not quite as aggressive in tone and delivery, the first side of Little Queen does have a straight up rocker in “Kick It Out” serving to close out the side and bookend it with “Barracuda”. The song’s ferocious delivery and hard driving rhythms helps the track live up to its title. And while it was wasn’t overly successful as the album’s third and final single release, the song is still a damn good slice of rock ‘n’ roll.

Before digging into the album’s 2nd side, I thought mentioning the album’s cover art was in order. Most of the time I see comments about the artwork, they are talking about how the band looks like they are at a renaissance fair or something. But for my money, I thought the art was closer to portraying the band as gyspies. I think it makes more sense given how much touring they were doing at the time. It, for lack of a better term, made them rock and roll gypsies.

The 2nd side of Little Queen opens up with the album’s title track. It has a mid-tempo pacing but thanks to the drum work of Michael DeRosier, it also has a bit of a stomp feel to it as well. While it failed to chart as a single, it is still a pretty good track that I’m always happy to hear when it occasionally pops up on the classic rock radio station I listen to.

If there’s a song that doesn’t truly catch fire for me on Little Queen, I would have to say that it is the track “Treat Me Well”. Written by guitarist Nancy Wilson, the low-key delivery might have something to do with why I don’t really find myself getting too into the song whenever I play the album.

That reticence goes away though when I get to the song “Say Hello”. It’s another mid-tempo track but this one has a nice rhythmic vibe to both the music and the way Ann Wilson delivers her vocal performance.

Meanwhile, the song “Cry To Me” has a slower and way more understated style. While it doesn’t blow me away, I do like the way this one was constructed. The album’s closing track “Go On Cry” does seem to go thematically with “Cry To Me”. It still manages to grab me though. The one thing I didn’t like was how long it seemed to take in the intro for the music to fade in and get the track fully underway.

While Little Queen may have just one stone cold classic track on it in terms of singles success, you’d be doing yourself a bit of disservice to simply dismiss the rest of the album. It’s chock full of some great songs that run the gamut of what you could expect from any rock band coming out of the 1970s. You get hard rocking tracks alongside songs that convey more of that singer-songwriter vibe to you. But what makes the album a winner in my book is how well it all works when you take in the album as a whole. Little Queen helped cement Heart’s status as rock royalty and even in the here and now of 2024, Ann and Nancy Wilson maintain that royal status.

NOTES OF INTEREST: The Little Queen album has been certified triple platinum. When the album was reissued in 2004, the CD contained two bonus tracks. The first song “Too Long a Time” is actually an early version of what would become “Love Alive”. The second is a live recording of the band covering “Stairway to Heaven” from a 1978 show in Seattle, WA.

Because of various contract disputes and timing, when everything was said and done the first three Heart albums (Dreamboat Annie, Magazine and Little Queen) were all on the album chart at the same time.

What amazes me is that despite its status as one of the band’s signature songs, “Barracuda” peaked at only #11 on the singles chart when it was originally released.

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 underappreciated 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.

BATON ROUGE – LIGHTS OUT ON THE PLAYGROUND (1991)

It has been more than four years since I wrote about the Baton Rouge album Shake Your Soul so I figured it was about time that I got around to the group’s 2nd album.

Of course, I came to that realization after discovering that they had a 2nd album in the first place. Since Baton Rouge was a band that essentially slipped through the cracks for me back in the day, it should be no surprise that I really didn’t know much about their recording history even after writing about their first album. In fact, when I saw a copy of the cassette at a local record shop, I found myself wondering how I’d missed that they’d had that 2nd release. And that comes with initially knowing that information when I ended up writing about their debut album. Time may heal all wounds, but it also seems to make me forget things too.

Not counting the song “Desperate” which is a cover of the Babylon A.D. track, I’d never heard any of the material on this album so once again I get to approach the release as a totally new experience.

Since the first Baton Rouge album was a commercial flop, the band ended up on a new label for the 2nd album. And while it once again failed commercially, I was intrigued to discover what the album had to offer me.

First up was the song “Slave to the Rhythm” which had a great riff powering the song right from the start of the track. It helped fuel the fast pacing the song enjoys. The vocals from Kelly Keeling had a nice little extra bit of gravel mixed in and the big gang vocal during the chorus helps sell the song. I even found myself digging the guitar solo, even if it felt like it got cut short for some reason. I will say that I hated the abortive way the song ended though.

“Full Time Body” was another jacked up hard driving rocker that employed a similar creative construction as “Slave to the Rhythm” but I once again found myself drawn to the guitar playing, particularly the solo.

On “Tie You Up”, the song starts out a bit slower in tone, but after the first part of the opening lyrical stanza, the tempo explodes forth for the song’s chorus. Lyrically, the album title comes from a line in this song. That back-and-forth tempo switch settles in for the 2nd lyrical stanza as well. 

After these first three songs, I found myself thinking that if I had actually paid attention to Baton Rouge during the time of the album’s release, I probably would’ve liked them instead of only barely being aware of their very existence for so many years.

The band’s re-do / cover of Babylon A.D.’s “Desperate” is a bit of a mystery to me. Not for the performance which is good and I love the way the vocals come through. But the original version from Babylon A.D. was only two years old when Baton Rouge’s version was released. Was it really necessary to re-do this song? Also, in a bit of a coincidence, the song is the fourth track on both albums.

After the power ballad stylings of “Desperate”, the album picks the pace back up with the song “Tokyo Time”, a fast moving rocker that I felt did a nice job of delivering a jolt of energy to the proceedings. That faster pace continued on “Vampire Kiss”, which has such a great hook to it that I found myself kind of bopping along to the song as it played. I’d venture to say it is one of my favorite tracks on Lights Out on the Playground.

While the song has a ballad-like title, the song “The Price of Love” is actually a pretty entertaining rocker. The music offsets the vocal in a point-counterpoint style in the main lyrical passages. Weirdly, I found myself thinking the vocals were similar to what I might hear on a Survivor album when David Bickler was their frontman. Well, at least in parts. Maybe I’m just imagining things here. But it was cool to me. Of course, in the chorus the uptempo style meant you got that big gang vocal and you can’t help but feel carried along as the song blazes to its conclusion.

It is at this point that I realized how much I was enjoying the album in full. The song “Dreamin’ in Black and White” was another shot of pure energetic adrenaline. I was really digging this track as I listened to it. Of course, at the same time, I was kicking myself for not keeping on top of things back in 1991 so that I could’ve been enjoying the album since that time.

“Down by the Torchlight” is an uptempo song but it is not a blitzkrieg of fiery notes. Instead, there’s a slower burn feel to the music even as you get a solidly paced thump to go alongside of it. There’s a somewhat bluesier feel to the music and the vocal turn is impressive. However, the one drawback to the song is the lame way it peters out at the end.

Baton Rouge takes a step back a bit with “Light at the End of the Tunnel”. It’s got everything you’d expect from a power ballad from that time period. It’s decent enough overall, though I liked when the presentation was more intense musically a bit more myself.

The track “Tear Down the Walls” alternates the vocal delivery between a more measured tone in the main passages and a harder edge comes in the build up to the song’s chorus. And the chorus was definitely a full-throated roar. And that guitar solo was pretty cool too.

The album closes out with the song “Hotter Than Hell” which ends up eschewing the more overt 80s metal trappings for a more blues rock driven song. The music is intense but you definitely get that more of a slow burn to the delivery and tempo. It’s got a great groove that draws you in as a listener and lets you see a different side to the band. And vocals are incredible!

I know that in terms of commercial appeal that Baton Rouge was a rather big failure, but here I am more than thirty years later, enjoying the hell out of Lights Out on the Playground. It’s an album full of great material. And while it may be considered out of step with today’s rock and roll scene, back in the latter days of 80s metal heyday, this was some damn good music to hit the scene. I am glad that I FINALLY discovered this but I’m still kicking myself for taking so long to come around to this appreciation of Baton Rouge’s second album.

NOTES OF INTEREST – Producer Jack Ponti was once again heavily involved in the writing of the material for Baton Rouge. He had co-writing credits on pretty much every track on Lights Out on the Playground. And that includes the song “Desperate” which he wrote with Babylon A.D. singer Derek Davis and originally appeared on the self-titled debut album from Babylon A.D. Sadly, Ponti passed away on October 7th, 2024.

Ex-Keel guitarist Tony Palmucci replaced David Cremin in the band ahead of the recording of Lights Out on the Playground. He would go on to collaborate with Dee Snider on his solo projects.