A little fire to start your week off just right. I know I need something to get me going right about now.
Deep Purple’s “Burn” was not a favorite of mine. I’m a HUGE Ian Gillan fan and when he wasn’t on this album, I was more than turned off. In fact, “Burn” was the last Deep Purple album I bought. Anyway, a little more burning to get your Monday started.
So Nick lives up to his name…
“I spell my name ‘Danger’.”
Me thinks he did a little too much LSD back in college… 🙂
Didn’t we all…
I wonder if he was the protagonist of the Thomas Pynchon novel Inherent Vice, who was a weed-smoking hippy private eye in 1969 Los Angeles.
Jinkies!
What kind of catch-phrase is “jinkies” anyway? Poor Thelma… stuck with the silly glasses and the baggy orange sweater (but hot short skirt). Forget Daphne… I’m in the van with Thelma any day.
🙂
One van that no longer shall be a rockin.
Yep, time to retire the old Mystery Machine. Bud needs a new car.
🙂
A black Trans Am, perhaps? Beer run, anybody? 😀
Careful; you’re venturing mighty close to “Truckabilly*” territory there, pard!
*Yes, I once actually heard someone describe “Smokey and the Bandit”‘s music as “Truckabilly”.
Never heard of “truckabilly” before. Rockabilly, yes, but not that one. And my uncle was a union truck driver all his life, so would have thought I’d heard of that one.
Smokey and the Bandit rocks… so hokey it’s great. “Hang on to yer ass, Fred…” Jerry Reed was originally cast as the Bandit, did you know that? He bowed out to friend Burt Reynolds and took the role of the truck driver. Can’t imagine the movie with Reed as the Bandit at all…
😛
Did you at least fill up the tank before you gave the keys to your son?? haha
AT 30 miles to the gallon, his new car only has a 10 gallon tank! He’s loving that part for sure.
🙂
Much of a fan I am of the Gillian Purple, I love “Burn.” It’s one of the first headlong balls-out high-speed adrenaline rockers, and to this day, I adore those songs. (Yeah, I know – the live version of “Highway Star” and the furious onrush of “Speed King” beat it to the punch, but I did say “one” of the first. 🙂 ) Glenn Hughes’ live version of this song is a powerhouse, even with a backing band inferior to Deep Purple. Hughes may be a dick, but this song still rocks my bones.
It’s funny – for all that hard rock has a harder slam now than it did back in the ’70s, I feel like there’s an intensity of purpose there that other, newer bands just try to make up for with thick production and sheer aggression. Much as I enjoy bands like Wolfmother, Undun, System of a Down or Metallica, I haven’t heard something with the gut-kick potency of “When the Levee Breaks,” “Ace of Spades,” Dissident Aggressor” or even “Draw the Line” in ages. Volume and speed don’t make up for songwriting chops, kids! Under all that fury, there still has to be substance.
Maybe I’m just an old dude, but when I listen to my 15-hour History of Metal playlist (ranging from Sabbath’s “Iron Man” to Gorjira’s “The Silver Chord, plus an additional “prehistory” mix that starts with Robert Johnson and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins), it’s still the ’70s stuff, with occasional flickers in the ’80s and ’90s, that sounds heaviest. A lot of the later stuff – Cannibal Corpse, Deicide, Napalm Death, Cradle of Filth, etc. – just feels like endless screaming, riffing and growling to me. Gimmie Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Motorhead and Deep Purple any day over those dudes!
That said, there’s a stretch of that playlist covering the late ’80s into mid-90s that’s like a Hell’s Angels gang beating. Starting with Wendy O. Williams’ “Hoy Hey – Live to Rock,” wrapping up with Kittie’s “Spit,” and spanning Pantera, King’s X, Guns n’Rose, L7, Nirvana, Metallica, Alice in Chains, Body Count, Limp Bizkit, Korn, Ministry, Skinny Puppy, Type O Negative, Danzig and a bunch of other stuff, that portion of the mix takes no prisoners. Listening to the back-to-back volley of “Man in the Box,” “(Down With) the Sickness,” “Killing in the Name Of,” “Break Stuff,” “Cop Killer” and “Got the Life” is like taking a hammer to your skull… adding a jackhammer a few songs later with a span of Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, Skinny Puppy, Marilyn Manson, L7, Mayhem, Thrill Kill Kult, White Zombie, Tool, Rollins Band, Slipknot and Kittie. Man, the ’90s were an angry decade! Very little metal since then has even come close to that level of intensity.