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.

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.

GREAT WHITE – …TWICE SHY (1989)

When I first decided that I was going to write about Great White albums in back-to-back articles, I was planning it as a tribute to singer Jack Russell. And while the first article (on the Once Bitten album) certainly came out that way, I think part of why I kept the plan to write about …Twice Shy this time around was because of the group’s manager Alan Niven.

The streaming service Paramount+ released a 3-part documentary back on September 17th, 2024 called Nothin’ But a Good Time: The Uncensored Story of ’80s Hair Metal. While the documentary series had plenty of talking head appearances from people that were in bands back in the day, I thought it was Alan Niven who made the biggest impression for me. Because he didn’t seem to give a rat’s ass about looking back at the 1980s decade with rose-colored glasses at all. He was witty and profane and didn’t hold back all that much it seemed. There were a couple times when I burst out laughing at something he said.

Take that and add in the fact that along with being the band’s manager, he also co-wrote and co-produced the album (with keyboardist Michael Lardie) and it seems fitting that writing about the album can be seen in part due to his involvement.

(By the way, Jack Russell was in the documentary as well. I’m not quite sure when his parts were filmed but of all the rockers featured in the series, he just looked and sounded awful. Seeing him like that reminds you of his passing and how it came about.)

The first thing I noticed when I was looking up information about the album is that the track listing online for the standard version includes the song “Wasted Rock Ranger” as the album’s closing track. Well, I don’t know what happened but the cassette copy of the album that I’ve had since it was originally released doesn’t have that song on the album. It ends after nine songs, not ten. I don’t know if that is a mistake online or not.

The …Twice Shy album featured three songs that were released as singles. And the first two ended up being the two most successful charting songs of the band’s career.

The 2nd single was the ballad “The Angel Song”. While I don’t think it has quite the staying power that the song “Save Your Love” does, it did end up hitting #30 on the singles chart. The piano-based ballad has a soft pedal delivery through the first part of the song. It combines quite nicely with a great vocal turn from Jack Russell. The song’s tempo picks up at the point of the guitar solo when the band comes in fully then. It’s a good song and in 1989 definitely fit the mold of the “power ballad”.

Of course, I mentioned “The Angel Song” first despite it being the 2nd single (and side One closing track” because anyone who was listening back in the day knows that the cover of Ian Hunter’s “Once Bitten, Twice Shy” became one of the biggest hits of the decade. It hit #5 on the singles chart and when I first heard it back then I really liked the song. It was quite a lively delivery and had that killer hook that drew you in. But like a lot of hits, it became less of a favored song for me because it was being played to death! Between radio play and MTV putting the video in rotation so heavily, I don’t mind saying that I ended up being sick of the song. In fact, it’s been a while since I listened to the …Twice Shy album and it is probably because I just didn’t want to listen to this song close out the album’s second side.

However, I will say that as I listened to the album in order to write about it, that deliberate distance I put between me and the album ended up allowing me to enjoy the song again for the first time in a while. I’m not going to be putting the song into a regular rotation or anything but I had that same initial thrill of hearing the song as I did back in 1989.

Going back to the first side of the album, the song “Move It” opens up the album and it is a pretty vibrant rocker that made me think of it as a driving kind of song…a road trip track if you will. That rocking vibe continued on “Heart the Hunter”, which pretty much bleeds in from “Move It” without that expected brief pause in between tracks.

Great White really brought the higher intensity rocking soundtrack to open up …Twice Shy as the album’s third track “Hiway Nights” doubled down on that road trip driving song feel and intent that I mentioned with “Move It”.

On the second side of the album, you get “Mista Bone” as the opening song. It’s a got a down and dirty kind of bluesy and grittier edge to it. It doesn’t quite go full throttle in terms of pacing but I have always liked the way the song (including Russell’s vocal) draws you into the song.

The guitar playing is pretty good throughout the album but I liked the way the song “Baby’s On Fire” was heavy on the guitar in the intro of the song and then kept those six-string fireworks going on throughout the rocker! Mark Kendall was on fire with this song.

“House of Broken Love”, which was about the break-ups Kendall and Russell were going through at the time, is a bluesy slow ballad that once again opens up musically when the band hits the guitar solo portion of the song.

For a more straight up ballad that keeps the slower and more dramatic presentation from start to finish, you get the song “She Only”. In all honesty, I kind of forgot about this song. I liked it when I listened to it for this piece but it you’d asked me to name all of the songs on the …Twice Shy album, I probably never would’ve been able to remember this one.

I was graduating from high school in 1989, so this album which was released a little more than a month before I was out of school was probably very important to me when it came out. I mean, it is filled with some great songs, whether my own personal favorites or the ones that Great White’s fan base have embraced at some of the band’s best work. Given that the ’80s metal movement was still at its peak during 1989, Great White gave fans a heck of an album to represent that time and era.

NOTES OF INTEREST: The …Twice Shy album went double platinum, officially recognized so in September 1989.  The Japan and UK editions of the album at the time included two bonus tracks. One of them is “Wasted Rock Ranger”, so I don’t know what’s going on with it being listed as a track on the standard version for the US edition. The other song was called “Bitches and Other Women” which is a medley of The Rolling Stones song “Bitch” and the Foreigner track “Women”. The 2005 Japanese remaster features the bonus track “Slow Ride”.

While he appeared in a video during the Once Bitten album promotional period, this album was the first to feature contributions from bassist Tony Montana. He is credited with co-writing the song “Mista Bone”.

The models featured on the …Twice Shy album art were Traci Martinson (who was on the Once Bitten album cover) and Bobbie Brown, who we all probably best remember for being in Warrant’s “Cherry Pie” video.

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.

GREAT WHITE – ONCE BITTEN (1987)

I’ve written about two Great White albums in the past (Shot in the Dark and Hooked) but I’ve kind of purposely avoided writing about the band’s two biggest albums. The reason I decided to tackle one of them now is to pay tribute to singer Jack Russell who passed away on August 7th, 2024 (RIP).

I’m not sure how many people were into Great White prior to this album but Once Bitten was definitely my entry point to the band. There were any number of mega-selling classic albums that came out in 1987 and while I love a lot of them, I would be remiss if I didn’t include Once Bitten as one of my favorites of that year.

The band’s 3rd studio album features nine songs on it and I would challenge anyone to name any song that is less than stellar in conception and execution. I’ve listened to the album a lot over the years but when I pulled this one out of one of my holders, I ended up realizing something I hadn’t noticed before.

For an era that seemed as if it was focusing on 4-minute songs that would get plenty of airplay, Great White had four songs that topped well over five minutes in length. And their big hit “Rock Me” was over seven minutes long!

But it isn’t like length was a problem here. Instead, it let the band have some room to establish themselves and/or establish a mood or atmosphere within some of the songs.

I was a little surprised that there were only two tracks officially released as singles. “Rock Me” which was on Side One of the album is still one of the band’s best known tracks. Even the edited version used for radio play was superb despite the cuts. Surprisingly enough, the song never cracked the Top 40 Singles chart. It actually peaked at #60. I don’t spend a lot of time looking that information up so I was a bit surprised the single didn’t do better.

The other single was, no surprise for the era, the band’s ballad “Save Your Love”, which was the closing song on Side Two. And yet, this one barely did much better on the singles chart for the band. This really amazes me that the two songs that are their best known songs weren’t technically “hits”.

Not that that affects how much I like either song. For “Rock Me”, even though it is best classified as a rocker track, it actually starts out rather understated and it has a real bluesy feel and undertone to the start of the track. In fact, the more rocking side of the track doesn’t really come in until the song’s chorus. But once it cuts loose, it is like a switch was thrown to give it an entirely new dynamic. And the guitar playing from Mark Kendall is phenomenal.

As for “Save Your Love”, it’s got everything you could want or expect from a power ballad of the 1980s era. Of course, one of the main reasons I still like the song is I carry the memory of the performance I saw when Great White played a show at the Great Woods Center for the Performing Arts in Mansfield, MA.

When the song started, the lighters came out as was tradition back then, but Jack Russell’s performance on that night made the song something otherworldly. He was absolutely in the groove on that night and delivered a performance that got a rousing standing ovation when the song finished. I know Russell had numerous issues over the years but I will never forget that singular performance he gave that night. It was like a magic spell had been cast or something.

I mentioned the guitar playing from Mark Kendall a couple paragraphs back. And it should be noted that any number of the songs featured some incredible shredding on his part.

On Side One, the album opening song “Lady Red Light” has this fantastic opening riff that always manages to make me take notice when I play the album. The fast moving track feeds off Kendall’s guitar playing no doubt.

Another thing I noticed while preparing to write about the album is how the album tracks are so good AND so overlooked. Side One has “Gonna Getcha” which may not strike anyone’s fancy based off the song title alone but there’s such a great vibe and style to this track, I found myself somehow gaining a new appreciation for it.

The side closing “All Over Now” was a song that I thought might’ve been a single before I started researching information for this piece. I have a strong memory of it for some reason but I don’t know why. Or maybe it is because the song is just a full throttle rocker that finds all five members of Great White utterly locked in unison for the track.

On the second side of Once Bitten, Kendall’s playing once again comes to the forefront on the song “Mistreater”. There’s a bit of that bluesier feel in the song intro but that soon gives way to a hard driving and rocking rhythmic style. You can almost see Kendall’s facial expressions in your mind as he just wails on the guitar for this song.

Another one of the album tracks that is far more than you’d think is “Never Change Heart”. The difference for me this time is that I’ve loved this song all along. It is definitely one of my favorite songs on the album.

There’s a slow burn start to the song that grows into more of a hard rocking tempo. And there’s something about the way Jack Russell’s phrasing on the song’s chorus that tickles my fancy every time I hear it.

I was struck anew by the song “On The Edge” which is a pretty straight ahead rock song. As for “Fast Road”, that song sure lives up to the first half of its title. The musical performance has a relentlessly set pace from start to finish and you almost feel out of breath once it comes to an end.

I’ve only seen Great White that single time in concert and it is doubtful that I’ll ever see them again since they never seem to play the Northeast anymore (for reasons that are pretty obvious, I’m sure). But whenever I put on one of their albums, I am pleased with just how much well their music holds up. I have slowly built up my collection of their latter day albums recently and I’m looking forward to checking them out. But for my money, the Once Bitten album is the perfect way to demonstrate how good the band was in their heyday.

NOTES OF INTEREST: The Once Bitten album peaked at #23 on the album charts when it was originally released. It would end up achieving platinum sales status. There are two different track listings for the UK and International versions of the album. The former drastically alters the release by using a number of songs that had been used for the Shot in the Dark album. The International version flips the running order a bit but with all the same songs as the US edition.

This was the first album where keyboardist/guitarist Michael Lardie was listed as an official member of the band. Meanwhile, this would be the last album to feature bassist Lorne Black. However, new bassist Tony Montana appeared in the video for “Save Your Love”, not Black.

Alan Niven, who co-produced and co-arranged the album with Michael Lardie and Mark Kendall, also co-wrote all of the songs except “Save Your Love”.

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.

KINGDOM COME – KINGDOM COME (1988)

If you include all the studio albums, plus a live album, compilation album and a box set, there are a total of 16 releases under the Kingdom Come banner.

But I don’t know if any of those other releases made anywhere near the impact that the band’s self-titled debut album (and it’s big single “Get It On”) had on the music world. Hell, when I pulled this out of the Big Box of Cassettes to write about, I discovered I had another one of their albums in there as well…and never realized it!

When I looked up the Kingdom Come discography online, I had no memory of any of the album titles. And when you add in the fact that I’ve never listened to this album as a whole, I found myself rather looking forward to what was going to be a mostly new experience for me.

Now, I know all about the crap the band took for essentially trying to sound like Led Zeppelin so let’s just acknowledge that right here and now so I hopefully don’t have to go back to that kind of commentary too often for the rest of the article. They did it, we know it, let’s move on (for now).

Featuring the lineup of Lenny Wolf on vocals, Danny Stag and Rick Steier on guitar (Steier also played keyboards), Johnny B. Frank on bass and James Kottak on drums, the Kingdom Come album knew how to make you play the waiting game if you had bought the album simply for the “Get It On” song. That’s because it is the opening song on the second side of the album.

For the album’s first side, things kick off with the song “Living Out of Touch”, a track that opens with a killer sounding guitar riff and fiery opening salvo from the band as a whole. That guitar sound continues throughout the uptempo track and I love the way it sounds. 

But I did immediately notice one thing that bothered me…Lenny Wolf’s vocals. Not the vocals themselves, but rather how they are recorded. During the main lyrical passages of the song, his vocals sound as if they are recorded in an echo chamber or something. You can hear the echo or whatever the effect might be. I can’t decide if it ages the song badly or what but the only respite in “Living Out of Touch” from that feeling is during the chorus when the music swells up and it levels out that echoing sound a bit more. It’s a shame that the vocals distracted me so much because musically, the song really gets you fired up.

The fast moving tempo continues on the song “Pushin’ Hard”. James Kottak’s drumming has a brief spotlight in the intro to the song and then I noticed that my ears kept seeking out his contributions to the song from that point onward. 

And yes, you can hear the high pitched vocal style, patterns and phrasing from Wolf that definitely recalls Robert Plant’s work. That’s something you can say about the song “What Love Can Be” as well. The track’s opening smoky, bluesy guitar sound combined with the various yelping and yowls from Wolf will make you feel as if you are either sitting in a bar room at 1am with your “last call” drink or in a courtroom being sued for plagiarism.

I know I said I was trying to avoid mentioning Led Zeppelin too much earlier in the article, but given that I’ve never heard most of these tracks, I can’t help but shake my head as I was listening to the album thinking, “What the hell?” to myself. Greta Van Fleet is getting all the crap in the here and now (deservedly so) but you can’t avoid the Zeppelin comparisons with Kingdome Come no matter how much you’d like to. And you certainly can’t blame the other musicians in the band because except for two co-writing credits, Lenny Wolf wrote all the music. And only one of those co-writes was by a member of the band. In fact, the other band members had more credits for co-writing the lyrics than the music.

The song “17” has an extended musical intro before the vocals come in. The song is a fast moving thumper and I did rather enjoy how the track sounded.

The first side of the album closed out with “The Shuffle”. The band comes out firing on this one. The guitar work is pretty damn good and the way you can feel your blood pumping and your foot tapping sure made this song one you’d remember.

For the second side, as I said previously, the band’s best known song “Get It On” opens things up. Now I have heard the song before. And when it got regular radio airplay, I heard it a lot. But it has been years since I can rightfully recall hearing the song. So you’ll understand how as I listened to the song for this article, I was struck almost anew by just how much this sounds like a Zeppelin song. Many years too late, I have to sit here and wonder how the members of Led Zeppelin didn’t sue. I have to admit that I sort of liked the song back in the day but this realization now sort of taints the song for me. 

The song “Now Forever After”, is an uptempo rocker. It’s got a nice kind of groove to it and kind of washes away a bit of that newfound disappointment in “Get It On”. It let me just enjoy the song which is something I strangely found myself in need of doing as I listened. 

For “Hideaway”, you get another fast moving number. I really liked the guitar work on this song, particularly during the song’s chorus when there’s a bit of a quick step added to the playing. “Loving You” takes the opposite direction, slowing down for the most part. And musically, at least for the first part of the song, it is mostly fueled by guitars only. Wolf’s vocals do get a bit strident at certain points but overall, the way the band steps back to more of an acoustic driven style lets this track turn out pretty well.

Aiming to go out on a high and rocking point, the song “Shout It Out” does that pretty effectively. Full of vim and vigor, the song starts out rocking and stays that way right through the last notes of the track.

I guess you could say that I found that it is just impossible to ignore just how much the Kingdom Come debut album sounds like a Led Zeppelin release. And the criticism the band received would seem to be well-earned even if a lot of critics did go a wee bit overboard in said criticism. But does that mean you can’t enjoy the album for what it is? Well, no. You can enjoy it. I can say that I did like a lot of the music, regardless of its real origins. But would I be listening to this all the time now that I’ve finally heard the whole thing? Eh…maybe, maybe not. That echo chamber effect on Lenny Wolf’s vocals is a real annoyance. But if I pop this album back into the cassette player every once in a great while, I think I would end up sitting back and just taking it all in for what it is.

NOTES OF INTEREST: The Kingdom Come album peaked at #12 on the Billboard album chart and was certified Gold. There was a CD remastered edition released in 2004 that contained the 12″ promo mix of the song “Get It On” as a bonus track.

While “Get It On” and “What Love Can Be” were released worldwide as singles, the song “Loving You” was released as a single in Japan only.

Drummer James Kottak, who was on the first two albums Kingdom Come put out before departing the band, passed away on January 9th, 2024. He’d been back in the band lineup since 2018 after playing with Scorpions (and a bunch of other acts) for a number of years.