The top 10 pages on Glamrock Aftershock

A check on the Google Analytics stats for this site over the last three months threw up some notable trends. Naturally I'd expect the homepage to be at the top, and it's not a massive surprise to see bands with the stature of the New York Dolls and the Manic Street Preachers taking positions 2 & 3. I'd like to say that The Rockit Dolls are at number 4 on merit but I know full well that the majority of that page's hits came via a posting on the Swindon Music Forum. Still, I'll take a number 4 placing any day.

Numbers 5 to 8 however are what really caught my eye. None of Gunfire Dance, The Last Of The Teenage Idols, Soho Roses or Uncle Sam are household names. In their time they managed five albums between them (three by Uncle Sam, one each by the Last of the Teenage Idols and Soho Roses) and four singles/EPs (two each by Gunfire Dance and Soho Roses), all of which were on small labels and/or self-financed and all long-deleted.

Over the last couple of years the collected recordings of Soho Roses and Gunfire Dance have been reissued and MySpace has also helped bring their music back into the public arena.

Their high positions will have been helped by the comparatively small pool of sites available to anyone searching for them; but it's heartening to see that people ARE searching. I suspect most of these readers are of a certain age (i.e. roughly the same as me), have warm, possibly rose-tinted, memories of these bands (ditto) and probably feel that their equivalents today don't come close to matching them (double ditto).

Van Halen feud spills over to 'Guitar Hero'

I never really cared much for Van Halen but this seems a bit petty towards Michael Anthony. Not quite up to the standards of Ozzy and his re-recording of the rhythm section on the 2002 remastered editions of 'Blizzard Of Ozz' and 'Diary of a Madman' but not far off!

Word verification programs - are they truly random?

Or did Ticketmaster just not want my business?

Glitzinet - new forum

Anyone who's having trouble accessing the Glitzinet forum needs to go the new board here.

Seems an ex-moderator took it upon themselves to delete the old board ...!

Smashed Gladys - Social Intercourse

Based in New York (but originating in Toronto) and so immediately differentiating themselves from the slew of west coast 'glam' bands, Smashed Gladys released a low-key debut before grabbing the major deal that resulted in Social Intercourse.

Their other key difference (or should that be 'USP'?) was female vocalist Sally Cato - whose take on being a frontwoman in an otherwise all-male band in a largely male industry was to simply be one of the boys.

Her gravelly vocals gave Smashed Gladys an edge, and lyrically you'd be forgiven that this was a band driven solely on testosterone (bookending the album you have the not-difficult-to-decipher opener 'Lick It into Shape', while closer 'Sermonette' talks of being in a band 'to get laid').

Musically Smashed Gladys had a certain amount of bar-room cool, and this easily qualifies as one of the better US releases of the late 80s. On last listen - admittedly a couple of years ago - it hadn't stood the test of time too well (the production in particular ties it to the period), but if you haven't heard this band check out the tunes over on MySpace.



http://www.myspace.com/smashedgladys1984

So far in 2009 ....

As noted in a previous post, I managed to get to the end of 2008 without any albums released that year troubling my ears. Thanks to a little application on my part I'm pleased to report that almost halfway through 2009 there are already a handful of albums that are making my daily commute more bearable.

As well as the latest releases from the New York Dolls and the Manic Street Preachers, Iggy Pop's french-jazz Preliminaires, the new Eels album, Hombre Lobo, and Jarvis Cocker's Further Complications have all succeeded where every album released in 2008 failed.

At this rate I'm on course for a year-end top 10.

The New York Dolls - Cause I Sez So

For those of us frustrated at there only even being two New York Dolls studio albums (the second of which was vastly inferior to the debut), the arrival of the album that doubles the tally, Cause I Sez So, whilst also out-performing 1974's Too Much Too Soon is most welcome.

The title track has been on the net for a few weeks as a taster, and along with 'Muddy Bones' it's immediately clear that the album has at least two songs that would hold their own in a live set. Hopefully that live set wouldn't contain the reggaefied re-recording of 'Trash' that turns up here - an unnecessary revisit. Indeed it seems that whenever the modern-day Dolls look back they falter; 'Rainbow Store' on 2007's One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This was reminscent of 'Great Big Kiss' (as featured in the Dolls repertoire back in the 1970s and later recorded by Johnny Thunders on the excellent So Alone) but was little more than a throwaway number.

Having failed to catch the New York Dolls live since the Royal Festival Hall shows in 2004, I think seeing them again is this year's priority. Not sure that the Lovebox festival is the way to go, so will be banking on a few dates being added in the week after before they head off to France ...

New York Dolls tour dates



See also:
New York Dolls - Royal Festival Hall 18/06/04
Nina Antonia - The New York Dolls: Too Much Too Soon
Johnny Thunders - So Alone
Motorcycle Boy - Popsicle