TASTE OF AUSSIE ROCK

In my humble opinion, Taste were magnificent, and one of the great things about the band was that they  had  the first "real twin guitar attack" that i'd seen. The whole vibe of the band got me, I saw them on, hmm, probably, on Sounds with Donnie Sutherland...in hindsight they seemed to have had a pop image similar to that of Queen circa "Night at the Opera" which means they were Pomp Rock at its very best- both LP's reached the top twenty in the Australian charts and are absolutely fantastic hard rock classics.

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.At the peak of their career they played to crowds as large as 13,000 people and owned 7 Marshall stacks ! They appeared on every major concert and TV show including Countdown, Hey Hey its Saturday, The Don Lane show etc. and toured with Suzi Quatro, The Sweet, Skyhooks, Sherbet, TMG and Hush. Funnily enough Taste were much admired by Brian May and Roger Deacon of Queen and to get ready for a gig Queen played Taste's "Boys will be Boys" every night on tour before they went on stage..hows that for coincidence and or irony..... Unfortunately (and quite regularly in aussie music) due to management problems and bad marketing Taste never achieved the success they deserved. They were asked to tour America with Queen and signed to Sire Records in USA but broke up before releasing anything.

Released in 1976, The LP "Tickle Your Fancy" is a tight batch of quirky hard rock songs brimming with a unique melodic point of view. Considering the young age of the band, alot of the material here is surprisingly accomplished, both in performance and songwriting. Though the hooks are very subtle, the entire album taken as a whole is a rewarding listening experience through and through.....

Richard Guillianti reviewed the band in December's RAM #48..(remember RAM, great mag and not near as cynical as NME)..anyway its said and I quote,"Taste have been pulling some pretty neat reviews for their LP Tickle Your Fancy and for their new single 'Boys Will Be Boys'. But its not only yer hack cub reporters who've been taking notice of 'em....In Sydney, they performed at the Bondi Lifesaver with none other than Sherbet, the All-Stars, Rockwell T James and Kevin Borich in attendance. Afterwards, (Sherbet's) Tony Mitchell congradulated the group on the 'tightest set he had seen from a band for years'. Adelaide was also good to them, there, they broke the attendance record for one of the dances they played".

All in all...I liked 'em, saw a couple of times at the Lifesaver, hell, even bought the albums

 Band Members

Ken Murdoch ( Lead Vocals / Guitar)

Joey Amenta (Guitar / Vocals)

Michael Tortoni (Bass Guitar)

Virgil Donati (Drums)

COME WALK WITH A ZOMBIE

I've always been a BIG fan of Alice Cooper and people of a similar creative thought process, Coops songs paint mental pictures that are just brilliant...WELL... I went and found myself someone else whose tunes do the same bloody thing to me...Ladies and Gents, dead and Un-dead alike, allow me to introduce Wednesday 13..

.I first saw the film clip "I walk with a Zombie" somewhere, the video had clips of all the old classic horror flicks dispersed through it, and that was me hooked ...got into his stuff and I've got to say if you like tongue in cheek humour with a dash, well, gallons of blood and guts , then this guy is for you....get amongst him, I dare ya.....oh and if your sensitive to swearing, block your ears, cause in some tracks he lets rip...dont say I didnt warn ya...;)

Joseph Poole, better known as Wednesday 13 (born August 12, 1976), is  from Charlotte, North Carolina....I have to wonder how much he stuck out when he was a kid in the dirty south, If he looked anything liked he looks on the Zombie vid, then I imagine he woulda been a bit ostracised, ANYWAY, "I walked with a Zombie" video was a truly outstanding clip and has a truly outstanding guitar hook....I've seen them at Big Day Out and I musta been the oldest dude there, I was getting some weird looks, that much I know.

Poole (Wednesday) embarked on his career in music in 1992 with Maniac Spider Trash. He left the group in 1996 and formed Frankenstein Drag Queens from Planet 13 with fellow "Spider Trashers" Abby Normal and Sicko Zero. The band managed to release five full-length albums and six EPs over the span of five years before calling it quits in 2003 as a result of Poole's rising success with his Murderdolls side project. In 2004, Poole formed Wednesday 13, releasing the EP 6 Years, 6 Feet Under the Influence. It was followed in 2005 by the full-lengthTransylvania 90210: Songs of Death, Dying, and the Dead. In May 2006,Wednesday 13 put out a six-CD/DVD box set called Little Box of Horrors, followed by Fang Bang later that September.

Wednesday currently resides in Los Angeles, among other things he is a fan of campy horror movie parodies and mildly macabre TV shows such as The Munster's and The Addam's Family (the latter being the source of his "Wednesday" moniker), which influence his tongue-in-cheek lyrics. He also created a set of cartoon characters with his ex-wife called the Thirteen Dead Kids, which was released as a clothing line

Murderdolls

2002: Right To Remain Violent

2002: Beyond the Valley of the Murderdolls

2010: Women and Children Last

Wednesday 13

 2004  - 6 Years, 6 Feet Under the Influence
2005 - Transylvania 90210: 
Songs of Death, Dying, and the Dead
 2006 - Fang Bang 
2008 - Skeletons  
2008 - Bloodwork

2008: Fuck It, We'll Do It Live

2010: From Here To The Hearse

2010: Xanaxtasy - Single

2011: Re-animated - EP

2011: Calling All Corpses

and
           Spook & Destroy Wednesday 13
The Dixie Dead The Dixie Dead

YEEEHAH...Its Rebel Son

I was looking around Facebook a while ago and a friend of mine..STAND UP AND BE NOTICED DONNA SMITH....posted a clip of a band called Rebel Son...I believe it was "You cant turn a whore into a lady"...dug the tune, went for a hunt on the boys and now have a a sizeable collection of their tunes....be warned if you are easily offended, these boys will flip your switch, I shit you not, BUT...if you could give a flying rats about cussing and such, then your gonna fkn love 'em.

           Lee Johnson - Guitar & Vocals,  Dave Schneider - Bass, Tom Warwick - Drums

the boys are a hybrid honkytonk & rockabilly band based out of Raleigh, NC.
The members are guitarist/singer/songwriter Lee Johnson, drummer Tom Warwick & bassist Dave Schneider, Rebel Son delivers an intense set of finely crafted original songs with a strong homage to the Stars'n'Bars, yep , these lads are rebels to their musical core....all I can say is,  get amongst it

Their music, in addition to their display of Southern heritage, is, in reality, defining & expressing the thoughts, feelings & occasional unlawful actions & behaviour of "everyday" people living in an "everyday" world.

Not for the faint-of-heart, Rebel Son will electrify you with a high octane journey as they proclaim...their blue-collar doctrine proudly with little to no regard for your sensitivity.... alienating the easily offended is guaranteed...Basically, they wouldnt have lasted  5 minutes in 70's Queensland

To put it simply, they're a foul-mouthed redneck rock band that just doesn't give a shit.
So, if you think you've heard it all before, you haven't heard anything like this.

REBELLIOUS.

Enjoy...seeya

RECKY

SLADE : GET DOWN , GET WITH 'EM

I can vividly remember walking up to Roselands shopping centre one saturday morning in 1974 with  the express purpose of expanding my L.P collection, I walked into Palings, for they were the shop to go to for all your musical requirements, now, I may very well be part magpie, cause a very red lp cover got my attention..the album, Slade ALIVE...I'd seen Slade a year or two before when a mate's dad took us to a gig with Status Quo and Slade at Randwick racecourse ( I think)..but now I could listen to 'em whenever I wanted...COOL, or whatever the appropriate 70's terminology was....I took it home slapped it onto the turntable plugged in the cans and cranked it....WOW...just plain WOW...and thus began my fandom of one of the greatest ROCK bands too ever come out of Blighty, be it Noddys vocals, Dave Hill's mad appearance, Don Powells thunderous drumming or Jimmy Lea's tunes, more than likely it was the combination of the lot...but as far as I'm concerned ...SLADE RULE

They came from Wolverhampton and rose to prominence during the glam rock era of the early 1970s. With 17 consecutive Top 20 hits and six number ones, the British Hit Singles & Albums names them as the most successful British group of the 1970s based on sales of singles. They were the first act to have three singles enter at number one, and all six of the band's chart-toppers were penned by Noddy Holder and Jim Lea.

Total UK sales, at a recent count, stand at 6,520,171, and their best selling single, "Merry Xmas Everybody", has sold in excess of one million copies.

The band's popularity had started to wane, but was unexpectedly revived in 1980 when they were last minute replacements for Ozzy Osbourne at the Reading Rock Festival. The band later acknowledged this to have been one of the highlights of their career. The original line up split in 1992 but the band reformed the following year as Slade II. The band has continued, with a number of line-up changes, to the present day. They have now shortened the group name back to Slade.

A number of my favorite bands have said that Slade was an influence including Kiss, Mötley Crüe, Twisted Sister, Quiet Riot, Poison and Def Leppard, Cheap Trick and Oasis.

The members all come from the Black Country area of the West Midlands, you know where Heavy Metal started,  both the drummer Don Powell, and bass guitarist Jim Lea were born and raised in Wolverhampton, lead vocalist Noddy Holder was born and raised in the nearby town of Walsall, and lead guitarist Dave Hill was born in Devon and moved to Wolverhampton while a child. Writings by and about Slade frequently mention The Trumpet public house in Bilston as a band meeting place, especially in their early days.

The group dominated the UK charts during the early 1970s, out-performing chart rivals, such as Wizzard, Sweet, T. Rex, Suzi Quatro, Mud, Smokie, Gary Glitter, Roxy Music and David Bowie. The band achieved twelve Top 5 hit singles in the UK between 1971 and 1974, three of which went straight to number one. Of the seventeen Top 20 hits between 1971 and 1976, six made number one, three reached number two and two peaked at number three. No other UK act of the period enjoyed such consistency in the UK Top 40 and this feat was the closest any group had come to matching The Beatles' twenty two Top 10 records in a single decade (1960s). Slade sold more singles in the UK than any other group of the 1970s. In 1973 alone, "Merry Xmas Everybody" sold over one million copies globally, obtaining gold disc status.

The band moved to the States in the mid-1970s, in an attempt to break into the American market and although this was largely unsuccessful, they left their mark on a number of US bands who have since cited Slade as an influence. During the late 1970s, the band returned to the UK following years of commercial failure both at home and abroad. Slade's career was unexpectedly revived when the band were asked to perform at the 1980 Reading Festival when Ozzy Osbourne pulled out at the last minute. For the next two years, the band produced material tailored towards the heavy metal scene and by 1984, they finally cracked the American market with the hits "Run Runaway" and "My Oh My." This new-found success did not last long, however, and despite a top 25 UK hit in the early '90s the band split shortly after in 1992.

Slade II was formed in 1993 by Hill with Powell and other musicians. The suggestion to call the group Slade II came from Holder but Lea was not happy with the Slade name being used at all. The group's name was later shortened to Slade. Working solidly on the UK theatre circuit during the winter months and throughout Europe the rest of the year; the band released one studio album in 1994 entitled Keep on Rockin' which featured Steve Whalley on vocals. The album was not successful and nor were the singles "Hot Luv" and "Black and White World". The band have seen many line ups but Hill and Powell have remained constant throughout.

Slade were reunited for two events during 1996, the funeral of long time Slade manager Chas Chandler and an episode of the television show This Is Your Life which featured Holder as the subject.



Slade released over thirty albums, three of which reached number 1 in the UK Albums Chart.The band spent a total of 531 weeks in the UK charts during their career and have notched up a total of 23 top 30 UK hits to date



SLADE HALL OF FAME

1969–1992 
Dave Hill - Guitars / vocals / bass guitar
Noddy Holder - Vocals / guitars / bass guitar
Jim Lea - Bass guitar / vocals / keyboards / violin / guitars
Don Powell - Drums / percussion

1993–1997 
Dave Hill - Guitars / vocals
Don Powell - Drums
Craig Fenney - Bass Guitar / vocals
Steve Makin - Guitars / vocals
Steve Whalley - Vocals

1998–2003 
Dave Hill - Guitars / vocals
Don Powell - Drums
Steve Whalley - Vocals / guitars
Dave Glover - Bass guitar

2003–2005 
Dave Hill - Guitars / vocals
Don Powell - Drums
Steve Whalley - Vocals / guitars
John Berry - Bass Guitar / vocals

2005–present 
Dave Hill - Guitars / vocals
Don Powell - Drums
John Berry - Bass Guitar / vocals / violin
Mal McNulty - Vocals / guitars

Beginnings (as Ambrose Slade, 1969)
Play It Loud (1970)
Slayed? (1972)
Old New Borrowed and Blue (1974)
Slade in Flame (1974)
Nobody's Fools (1976)
Whatever Happened to Slade (1977)
Return to Base (1979)
We'll Bring the House Down (1981)
Till Deaf Do Us Part (1981)
The Amazing Kamikaze Syndrome (1983), re-released in 1984 as Keep Your Hands Off My Power Supply
Rogues Gallery (1985)
Crackers - The Christmas Party Album (1985)
You Boyz Make Big Noize (1987)
Keep on Rockin' (1994) (as Slade II),
[ re-released in 2002 as Cum on Let's PARTY]

MY OH MY..they can rock