STEELHEART Title: I’ll Never Let You Go Album:Steelheart Released: May 10, 1990
Why You Remember Them: Previous installments of this award-winning series have included bands with numerous hits, if not multiple albums, to their names, but we bring that streak to a screeching, flaming halt with Steelheart, whose sole contribution to the poufy-hair zeitgeist is “I’ll Never Let You Go,” a song whose fierce, animalistic coda explodes with such visceral fury that it is entirely likely that lead singer Michael Matijevic, a man with a consonant-y name so clunky and Eastern European-sounding that I’m sure we’re related, exploded his carotid artery straining for the last note and is still lying in a pool of blood and Aqua Net in a studio somewhere. It is quite simply impossible to achieve that level of valkyrie screaming without attaching a car battery to your face.
But Suck on This Little Bit of Kevin Bacon Game Madness: Matijevic in 2001 provided the voice for the Mark Wahlberg character in Rock Star, itself modeled on the story of a Judas Priest cover band singer-turned-actual-Judas-Priest frontman. The film featured a version of “We All Die Young,” which originally appeared on Steelheart’s third (!) album, Wait. So, good for Matijevic. (more…)
One day a year or two on either side of 1995, I was sitting in my kitchen — something I found myself doing more and more during the mid-nineties – and the phone rang. I picked it up, and the man’s voice on the other end asked for me, told me his name (I can’t recall it), and said he was calling from Paul McCartney’s office in London. Assuming it was a ruse, but not positive that it was, I proceeded cautiously as the man explained that he was calling to check on my schedule to determine if I would be available to work with Paul during a certain portion of the following winter. Slightly amused, I considered saying “no, I’m afraid I’m busy,” but thought better of it, and assured the voice that I would definitely do what I had to do in order to make myself available. Before he wound up our conversation, I explained that I was delighted to receive the call, and of course I was excited by the prospect of possibly working with Paul, but could he please explain why he called me in particular, given the nature of the music I was known for producing. He replied that Paul always liked to explore all the options, thanked me for my time, and hung up.
I sat in stunned silence for a minute, wondering how he could have obtained my home number – it must be a practical joke of some sort – so I phoned Sandy Roberton, a producer’s manager who represented me for a couple of years during the nineties, and asked if he would mind checking this guy out for me. Minutes later, Sandy phoned back and confirmed that this man indeed did work for Paul in London. More stunned silence for me, reflecting on the fact that Paul McCartney actually knew who I was, and might have even spoken my name. (more…)
Last Friday, I saw my 25th Tori Amos show since 1996. Yes, I said 25th show. That may sound excessive, but believe me, that’s peanuts compared to the number of shows some of my friends and fellow Tori fans have seen.
I saw my first Tori show in August of 1996 in Dayton, Ohio during her extensive “Dew Drop Inn Tour” in support of the incredible Boys for Pelealbum. This was before I had any kind of regular Internet access, so the only way I knew about the show was hearing on the radio that tickets were on sale. I took a friend who wasn’t a big Tori fan and who spent a good chunk of the show out in the hall or in the bathroom, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying the show immensely. I was awestruck by her performance and immediately decided that the next time she toured, I was going to see as many shows as possible
During the “Plugged ‘98 Tour,” which supported her fourth album, From the Choirgirl Hotel, I saw four amazing shows. The show I saw in Dayton proved to be another significant one for me, as I met Tori for the first time at the before-show meet and greet (these meet and greets have been a staple on “Tori Tour” for many, many years). After that, she could’ve gotten on stage and played the theme song from Green Acres twenty times in a row and I would’ve still been over the moon. I had so much fun that day, spending most of it camped out in front of the venue waiting for Tori to arrive, meeting and hanging out with some fantastic people. In fact, meet and greets became an integral part of my tour experience over the years. And even though I haven’t done one since 2003, I am glad that they gave me the opportunity to meet some of my dearest friends, who I still talk to regularly and see at shows I attend. (more…)
Myron Grumbacher, a drummer whose history includes a stint with Pat Benatar, became involved professionally with Lita Ford some time before I produced Lita’s album Dangerous Curves. I mention Myron because he was a great guy, a great drummer, and a great help with the album. Possessing a healthy sense of humor, he was able to offer suggestions all the time without seeming to butt in or to try to do other people’s work for them. He was a pleasure to work with. Lita, too, was very upbeat, funny and really pleasant. The one difficulty we had with the recording was vocal pitch.
While Lita was a good singer in a live situation, there was something about the headphone scenario that gave her trouble. She was just a hair off pitch when she sang with those headphones on. We tried opposing speakers for monitors ( you can try placing speakers directly facing each other on either side of the microphone, like giant headphones, and this should allow the singer to hear the mix while the two speakers theoretically “cancel each other out” so that the microphone hears only the vocalist), but this method is only occasionally successful. (more…)
As those of you who were present during the Jefitoblog days may remember, my original mission statement was “poking pop culture’s soft, white underbelly with a sharp-witted stick” — a goal that, insofar as it was ever truly achieved, was attainable mainly because of my deep and abiding love for said underbelly. We try to be a little more inclusive here at Popdose, but if you’ve followed the site at all, you know we try to focus on things that the other 1,175,000 music sites aren’t already covering — and to that end, we’ve given ourselves free rein to follow our muses all over the map. The less mainstream, the better.
All of which is my way of telling you that, if you live in the Connecticut area, next Friday is your chance to do two things:
Meet up with me, Jason Hare, and our pal Michael Parr from Ickmusic
See television heartthrob Jack Wagner perform live and in concert
What’s that, you say? You didn’t know that the guy who played Dr. Peter Burns on Melrose Place was a singer? Oh, for shame! You must not remember his #2 hit “All I Need,” which clambered up the charts in late 1984 while Wagner was making love in the afternoon as General Hospital’s singer/adventurer/cop/superspy Andrew “Frisco” Jones. Allow me to refresh your memory: (more…)
It has been over two weeks since I sent the two emails to Dee Snider’s web site and to his publicist. No reply so far, so I guess I won’t be holding my breath.
I was called by my colleague Derek Shulman at Atco Records (Atlantic) regarding Kix in 1987. I wasn’t very familiar with them, but I did know that they were a high energy band who were very much in the AC-DC vein. I recall the night I first saw them that year, because they were playing at a Long Island rock club on a weekday night, and I had a difficult time understanding why their official start time was 1 AM. Even for a guy who considered himself a nighttime sort, this was absurd. I checked into the hotel next to the Nassau Coliseum, and spent the evening thinking that I should be in my pajamas, but tried to maintain enough energy and enthusiasm to leave the hotel for the night’s activity at 12:30 AM. I think the club was L’Amour’s, but I can’t be sure. It was a gold mine, jammed wall to wall with kids who by the midnight hour were drinking with a fair amount of abandon, and needing to hear some hard rock immediately.
The club was vast, and I waited around in front of the stage for about 45 minutes until the band came on at 1:30 or so. Sure enough, they kicked serious ass in that club, and I really liked their frontman Steve Whiteman. I also liked the guitar players, Ronnie Younkins and Brian Forsythe, who were serious shredders, but had a very calm and easygoing personal manner offstage. In stark contrast to Steve’s humor and Brian and Ronnie’s calm was Donnie Purnell’s angst and paranoia. He was the undisputed leader of the band, and the bass player and main songwriter. He rarely smiled, and seemed to feel that people were naturally going to try to take advantage of him. He was a fine musician and a dedicated professional, but he simply wasn’t very much fun to be around. (more…)
With the exception of whichever one Mase was in, perhaps no musical genre has endured a swifter or less celebrated mainstream extermination than Hair Metal, whose predominant 1980s celebrants – generally uncomplicated fellows who came to town with nothing more than hearts of gold, dreams of fame and lady makeup – wanted nothing more than to have a good time, even if you couldn’t get one to write a decent lyric about it by electro-shocking him in the shoulder pads.
Once that floating naked baby record and the flannel people materialized, of course, such bands couldn’t do much but struggle to quote-fingers evolve (anyone remember Poison’s gospel-tinged ode to individuality “Stand?” Pfft.), but surprisingly, most fans resisted the abruptly spiritual carpe-diem stuff emerging from the very same people who just minutes prior were panting out songs like “The Hunter” and “Wanted Man” and “Slip of the Lip” and “You Are The Saint, I Am The Sinner” while thrusting, into the MTV cameras, anything attached to them that was thrustable. Eight minutes later “Beavis and Butthead” put a dingus named Stuart in a Winger T-shirt and the coffin was closed. For a while.
Because these days, a great many hairtacular bands have circled their wagons on the middle-tier nostalgia package-tour circuit looking, if not to conquer the Earth, to at least ruin some more of its ozone. These are the lucky ones, of course, as some are surely moving used cars in Lexington, some are assembling weird simulacrums of their former bands and releasing “Chinese Democracy” and still others are smacking their noses into parts of the Tony Awards. It’s a mess, is what I’m saying. But regardless, somewhere on its plummet down from the wild ’80s schmaltz-glitz years of Bon Jovi, Poison, Motley Crue and the 250 bands that started with W, hair metal — and this was really nice of it — forgot to die. (more…)
Before I wrap up my case against the defendant – that man over there with the plaid sportcoat, golf pants and bad haircut, the one who has refused to wipe that shit-eating grin off his face at any point during these proceedings (or, indeed, during his entire career) – I’d like to congratulate each of you for being selected to pass judgment on the serial crimes committed against rock ‘n’ roll by this defendant, Mr. … Lewis? (Actually, his given name is Hugh Cregg the Third.)
Take a look around you. You, my friends, are the soul of Popdose’s vast readership, the very backbone of music-blog culture! And that makes you – let’s face it – cool. Hip. Happenin’. You are steeped in music history and well-versed in the loose morals and bad attitudes that make rock ‘n’ roll what it is and always has been, at its best: Cutting-edge. Rebellious. Dangerous. You know perfectly well which music lives up to those standards, and which does not. You know which artists have provided major contributions, and you know – perhaps more than anyone – that with a fat recording contract and a complacent rubber-stamp from radio, a swill merchant like Mr. Lewis can do enormous damage to this music, this culture, this … industry of cool in which we are all invested.
And make no mistake – the crimes we’re discussing here are not trivial ones. The defense has tried to convince you that Mr. Lewis was just making “good-time music,” having fun, giving the people what they want. But the fact is that Mr. Lewis and his band, having built their career by stringing together a nice series of hits while presenting themselves as a bunch of regular Joes – a run-of-the-mill bar band made good – proceeded to engage in years of shameless, chart-topping hackery. (more…)
Tori Amos is a powerful woman, and a very influential lady. She’s the reason many people love music; she’s the reason many people play music. Her ability to inspire and evoke emotion is unparalleled, and her unequivocal passion, honesty and commitment to her own muse have moved audiences the world over. On her tenth and latest studio album, Abnormally Attracted to Sin, the minister’s daughter takes on the role of liberator by redefining sin. Exploring how we come to be controlled, she offers a new concept to the dialogue – erotic spirituality – and, through the women in her songs, reclaims power from the patriarchal belief systems that use their definition of sin to shame and control. The result is an album that’s as uncompromising as it is emotionally salient, purposeful and full of transformative power, much like the artist herself.
Drawing from the diverse sonic architecture she’s amassed over the course of her two-decade career, Amos brings out the full arsenal of instrumentation on Sin’s 17 tracks, and continues to push her own boundaries on the production and compositional fronts. The carefully crafted album features haunting piano balladry (“Curtain Call”), classic Tori waltzes (“Ophelia,” “Maybe California”), spacey synth baths (“Give”), proggy Zeppelin-esque riffs (“Strong Black Vine”), showtune flare (“That Guy,” “500 Miles”), and sometimes all of the above (seven-minute closer “Lady in Blue” and single “Welcome to England”).Neil [Gaiman] is still there when you need him – “Neil is thrilled he can claim he’s mammalian / ‘But the bad news,’ he said, ‘Girl, you’re a dandelion’” (“Not Dying Today”) – and another influential character, Doug Morris, Amos’ mentor at Atlantic Records whom she credits for breaking her into the mainstream, returns behind the scenes for the first time in 14 years via her new joint venture with Universal Republic.
The album hints back to the logic in art and packaging of Scarlet’s Walk(Epic, 2002) with its secret website and accompanying 16 “visualettes,” or silent movies. Directed by Christian Lamb, these visualettes are comprised of footage he shot during Amos’ American Doll Posse tour, along with live footage and new material, and were integral to the process of Sin.
Popdose caught up with Amos on the phone at her home in Cornwall, England as she prepared to take Sin on a three-month world tour, which kicked off in Seattle Friday, July 10. (more…)
I’d just like to start this very, very belated follow-up to my piece on Wonderboy’s Napoleon Blown Apart album with a profound and heartfelt apology to the man who sat still for an extremely long time and answered my every question: Robbie Rist. We had a great conversation about his entire career, and I felt like I couldn’t do it justice unless I split it into two parts. The problem, however, was that I kept setting aside the second part of the conversation and intending to transcribe it when I got a free moment. What I forgot was that I never have free moments…and as a testimony to this fact, I am typing this intro while my three-year-old daughter is leaning against my arm, asking, “When are you going to be done, Daddy? Because I want to show you the seashells I got at the beach today.” Clearly, I’m a terrible father.
Okay, wait, she says, “No, you’re not.” So let’s just say I’m a dedicated journalist.
Anyway, I hope everyone who enjoyed the first half of my conversation with Robbie returns to check out this second half, as we discuss various artists he’s worked with during his career in music, and we also finally get around to asking him about his acting…and, yes, that includes Cousin Oliver. So let’s get back to where we left off, having just chatted about Napoleon Blown Apart and starting to ask about some of his other work…
I wanted to run through a couple of other albums that you played on. I hope to do a column about the Barry Holdship Four’s The Jesse Garon Project, because I love that record.
Oh, right on! Yeah, I did some playing on that. He’s an awesome guy. (more…)
STEELHEART ![paul-mccartney-picture-1[1]](http://popdose.com/wp-content/uploads/paul-mccartney-picture-11.jpg "paul-mccartney-picture-1[1]")
One day a year or two on either side of 1995, I was sitting in my kitchen — something I found myself doing more and more during the mid-nineties – and the phone rang. I picked it up, and the man’s voice on the other end asked for me, told me his name (I can’t recall it), and said he was calling from Paul McCartney’s office in London. Assuming it was a ruse, but not positive that it was, I proceeded cautiously as the man explained that he was calling to check on my schedule to determine if I would be available to work with Paul during a certain portion of the following winter. Slightly amused, I considered saying “no, I’m afraid I’m busy,” but thought better of it, and assured the voice that I would definitely do what I had to do in order to make myself available. Before he wound up our conversation, I explained that I was delighted to receive the call, and of course I was excited by the prospect of possibly working with Paul, but could he please explain why he called me in particular, given the nature of the music I was known for producing. He replied that Paul always liked to explore all the options, thanked me for my time, and hung up.
As those of you who were present during the Jefitoblog days may remember, my original mission statement was “poking pop culture’s soft, white underbelly with a sharp-witted stick” — a goal that, insofar as it was ever truly achieved, was attainable mainly because of my deep and abiding love for said underbelly. We try to be a little more inclusive here at Popdose, but if you’ve followed the site at all, you know we try to focus on things that the other 1,175,000 music sites aren’t already covering — and to that end, we’ve given ourselves free rein to follow our muses all over the map. The less mainstream, the better.![3944[1]](http://popdose.com/wp-content/uploads/39441.jpg "3944[1]")
I was called by my colleague Derek Shulman at Atco Records (Atlantic) regarding Kix in 1987. I wasn’t very familiar with them, but I did know that they were a high energy band who were very much in the AC-DC vein. I recall the night I first saw them that year, because they were playing at a Long Island rock club on a weekday night, and I had a difficult time understanding why their official start time was 1 AM. Even for a guy who considered himself a nighttime sort, this was absurd. I checked into the hotel next to the Nassau Coliseum, and spent the evening thinking that I should be in my pajamas, but tried to maintain enough energy and enthusiasm to leave the hotel for the night’s activity at 12:30 AM. I think the club was L’Amour’s, but I can’t be sure. It was a gold mine, jammed wall to wall with kids who by the midnight hour were drinking with a fair amount of abandon, and needing to hear some hard rock immediately.
![RS430~Huey-Lewis-Rolling-Stone-no-430-September-1984-Posters[1]](http://popdose.com/wp-content/uploads/RS430Huey-Lewis-Rolling-Stone-no-430-September-1984-Posters1.jpg "RS430~Huey-Lewis-Rolling-Stone-no-430-September-1984-Posters[1]")
Take a look around you. You, my friends, are the soul of Popdose’s vast readership, the very backbone of music-blog culture! And that makes you – let’s face it – cool. Hip. Happenin’. You are steeped in music history and well-versed in the loose morals and bad attitudes that make rock ‘n’ roll what it is and always has been, at its best: Cutting-edge. Rebellious. Dangerous. You know perfectly well which music lives up to those standards, and which does not. You know which artists have provided major contributions, and you know – perhaps more than anyone – that with a fat recording contract and a complacent rubber-stamp from radio, a swill merchant like Mr. Lewis can do enormous damage to this music, this culture, this … industry of cool in which we are all invested.
Tori Amos is a powerful woman, and a very influential lady. She’s the reason many people love music; she’s the reason many people play music. Her ability to inspire and evoke emotion is unparalleled, and her unequivocal passion, honesty and commitment to her own muse have moved audiences the world over. On her tenth and latest studio album, Abnormally Attracted to Sin, the minister’s daughter takes on the role of liberator by redefining sin. Exploring how we come to be controlled, she offers a new concept to the dialogue – erotic spirituality – and, through the women in her songs, reclaims power from the patriarchal belief systems that use their definition of sin to shame and control. The result is an album that’s as uncompromising as it is emotionally salient, purposeful and full of transformative power, much like the artist herself.
I’d just like to start this very, very belated follow-up to my piece on Wonderboy’s 
