"Great White"Searched high and low for this debut album, and FINALLY found it. All the essentials are here: "Stick It", "Streetkiller", "On Your Knees", etc. They changed the lyrics to The Who's "Substitute" a little bit; instead of "I see right through your plastic mask," they say, "I see right through that Satan crap." Hmm, that was a totally uninteresting tidbit.
"Shot in the Dark"Oh dear, looks like this CD went out of print...well, I got lucky and managed to score a dirt cheap copy on eBay, phew! The key track here is "Face the Day", one of Great White's best songs ever -- and it's a cover, did you know that? Originally by Angel City... The other songs aren't that spectacular, and their cover of the Spencer Davis Group's "Gimme Some Lovin'" is pretty lame.
"Recovery: Live! + On Your Knees"It's been a very long time since I owned this one on crappy vinyl, but the one thing I remember is that all the different formats (CD, cassette & vinyl) had completely different artwork, and in some cases, different track listings! The first 5 songs come from their long out-of-print demo LP -- except for a curious false ending to "On Your Knees", they suck. Tracks 6-10 are from a live show in 1983, pretty cool except I *hate* how "Stick It" fades out at the end. Tracks 11-15 are a collection of studio jam cover songs they recorded specifically for this album. "Immigrant Song" and "Rock and Roll" are Led Zeppelin tunes, of course (the band seems to have a Led Zep fixation, they recently did a tribute album called "Great Zeppelin" [see below]...and the year this album came out, they played "Since I've Been Loving You" in concert when they opened for Whitesnake. Oh yeah, another tidbit about that concert, they got the plug pulled on them -- literally! -- for playing too long, and the whole crowd started screaming, "BULL-SHIT!! BULL-SHIT!! BULL-SHIT!!" But I digress...) "Red House" is a Jimi Hendrix song, and "I Don't Need No Doctor" is originally by Humble Pie, I think...oddly, W.A.S.P. did a cover of that song that very same year! "Money", of course, has been covered by so many damn people that I don't think anyone remembers who did it originally...
Oh, I should add that this CD's been out of print for several years, so finding a used copy ($6.99 at the Wherehouse) was quite a score. :-)
"Once Bitten"Picked this up dirt cheap during a CDNow sale, and now I understand why I lost interest in Great White past their first album. "Rock Me" is a timeless classic, of course, but the rest is dull & boring as hell. Oh yeah, I totally HATE how they started printing the song listing on the back liner...all the titles jumbled together, and not even in the right order!!! You have to look at the CD itself to see which song is which, and it's awfully hard to read when you've got it in the player...
"...Twice Shy"This one's actually something of a surprise, with a lot of great road songs ("Move It", "Hiway Nights") and not nearly as cheesy as the previous CD. I was going to hold out for the rare 2-CD version, which features a couple bonus tracks (including "Bitches and Other Women") and a shitload of live tunes, but let's get real...
"Stage" (live album)I've been working on getting an official copy of that Led Zeppelin song "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" which appeared on the CDR compilation that used to be listed at the bottom of this page (and has since been "decommissioned"), and my original intent was to score the 2-CD version of Sail Away off of eBay, since it went for pretty cheap and contained a lot of the studio tracks from that CDR. Unfortunately, I had the absolute WORST luck in getting that disc -- normally it sold for around $10, but every auction I bid on would spark a total bidding war that drove the price into the $20+ range!! The final straw was when I bookmarked an auction that was going for VERY cheap, but just a few hours before I could bid on it, my computer's power supply exploded in a spectacular shower of sparks and smoke. (The auction went for about $4.50, if I remember right.) Well, that very night, I went to the used CD store to drown my sorrows, and what do I find but this live disc, featuring that song plus other live tracks from the bonus Sail Away live show. And since Great White has always been a better live band than they ever were in the studio, and I *really* don't want to open up my collection to more studio albums, I made an executive decision to buy this disc and cross Sail Away off my Need-It list for good!!!
Okay...the only real downside here is that the band plays a VERY laid-back show, filled with slow, bluesy numbers that make me nod off before the halfway point. Only on "Face the Day", "Rock Me", and "OBTS" do they sufficiently rock out. (Would it kill them to play "Streetkiller" again? Probably not in this lifetime...)
"Great Zeppelin: A Tribute to Led Zeppelin" (live)It's only fitting that one of the world's most Zeppelin-influenced bands (that isn't an outright clone) would do their own tribute! Recorded live in December '96 in their hometown of Santa Ana, Calif., this 76-minute collection of songs is performed with gusto and perfection. Granted, it's hard to screw up Zeppelin, since the songs are so timeless. Oh, and kudos to the band for knowing how "D'Yer Mak'er" is properly pronounced. :)
Back to Index
Next Band