FIELD NOTES
Whenever I’m out of town, I love to go record shopping. To be fair, I love record shopping at home too, obviously. But the excitement of checking out a new store in a new city always hits me hard. I try to seek out records that are harder to find, or things that don’t pop up very often around me so it makes the trek more special. I never understand when I watch record collector videos, and people drive or even fly out to other cities, and bring home a stack of records that’s just new, sealed pressings you can get anywhere. When I visited Las Vegas about six months ago, I stopped in at the great Zia Records, a west coast music shop chain. I had been once before in Tucson, Arizona over a decade ago at this point but hadn’t been back. Since I was in Vegas, a stone’s throw away from rock n’ roll’s capital Los Angeles, I was hoping to find some old school hard rock and metal albums to add to my collection. Vintage pressings in the genre have started to garner big collectability, leaving the only affordable option reissues if they’re even available. I just love the sound of classic hard rock and metal on original vinyl, it’s one of those nerdy collector things. The guitar tones just don’t sound the same on a reissue, CD, or streaming service (even if the songs technically sound “better” on those formats). Two of my most wanted records are the first and second L.A. Guns albums, 1988’s L.A. Guns and 1989’s Cocked & Loaded. They haven’t been in print in years, and originals in decent shape go anywhere from $65 to $100. The band do have some albums available, I have their fantastic latest record Checkered Past from 2021, the Record Store Day issue of Waking The Dead from 2002, and a “greatest hits” compilation Riot On Sunset from 2012, originally titled Sex, Booze N’ Tattoos from 2007, which contains new recordings of the old tracks. I wasn’t necessarily expecting to find these albums or any similarly hard-to-find, mistakenly-priced gems, but was hoping for at least a better selection of the genre than I have at home. What I came to realize is, much like trying to find clean industrial albums locally in Chicago, I think it’s just as difficult to find clean hair metal albums on the west coast. Because that area is full of people who appreciate that music the most and don’t want to let it go. Maybe Zia wasn’t the right spot to look either. It’s a really impressive place with a ton of inventory, but they have way more new records than used records it seemed. I was maybe naively thinking with all the hard rock dudes who live in Vegas now, there’d be more records to find. I didn’t come away totally empty-handed, though. Of the three records I brought back home, one of them was 1982’s Oriental Beat by influential Finnish hard rockers Hanoi Rocks (a 1985 US pressing). I’m no Hanoi Rocks expert or superfan, but definitely enjoy what I’ve heard and know their original vinyl is not plentiful “in the wild” as they say. Of course, it was just announced that Oriental Beat would be getting a 40th anniversary vinyl reissue in May, with an all-new mix supervised by Hanoi Rocks vocalist Michael Monroe. Not only that, but a career-spanning CD box set entitled The Days We Spent Underground: 1981-1984 will follow in June (it is unclear whether or not the Oriental Beat CD here will contain the new mix). I haven’t decided yet if I’ll be trading out my Oriental Beat Vegas vinyl for either of these releases. It’s very cool how and where I got it (and actually when I got it, purchasing on my 27th birthday), but if it’s going to be few and far between to hunt down originals of the rest of the catalogue, I might take the easy route and order one of these as a replacement. I could have separate diatribes on how I collect records and what my goals are, perhaps for a different Field Notes entry down the line.
THEME MUSIC: ‘Friends With Benefits’ by Steel Panther (2023)
If there was ever a “glam metal revival,” it didn’t last long, and the bands in question couldn’t withstand the power of Steel Panther. The LA hard rock outfit has been putting out albums for almost 15 years at this point, and was active as early as 2000 before the 2009 debut Feel The Steel. For those not familiar, Steel Panther play the same high-octane hair metal of bands like Mötley Crüe and Poison, but with extremely adult themes and off-color topics (see ‘Gangbang At The Old Folks Home’ from 2014’s All You Can Eat). While they’re heightening the genre’s libido to tongue-in-cheek (tongue-in-clit?) levels, the band is also extremely proficient musically, with an expert vocal range from Michael Starr and dizzying solos from lead guitarist Satchel. ‘Friends With Benefits’ is the third single from their latest album On The Prowl, about the symbiotic relationship between men and women who won’t commit to dating but will “drive my maserati” in exchange for “shower[ing] in your piss.” It’s not an unwelcome argument that Steel Panther is a one-joke act this late in their career, but what makes them still enjoyable is how lewd they can get, so many times over, and still creating, unfortunately, very catchy tunes. It’s like the hair metal equivalent of Peaches or The Bloodhound Gang, and in 2023 someone still has to fly the filth flag, so let it be Steel Panther. You can watch the hysterical, Shark Tank-inspired, NSFW video linked above.
PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Cheap Trick at Rivets Stadium, Loves Park, July 4 2021
My first big concert out of lockdown was seeing Cheap Trick for the very first time, just outside their hometown of Rockford, Illinois. They performed at the Rockford Rivets’ baseball stadium in Loves Park for the 4th of July, alongside another iconic Chicagoland power pop group, Off Broadway. That band was short their lead singer and songwriter, Cliff Johnson, due to illness. Johnson would sadly pass about a year later in July 2022. I’ve gotten to see Off Broadway once with Johnson on lead vocals, and it was really an incredible moment. Their fill-in singer that night, friend of the band Jim Cunningham, did a solid job rocking through classics from the 1979 On album like ‘Stay In Time’ and ‘Full Moon Turn My Head Around.’ Local pop-rock favorites 7th Heaven played in between Off Broadway and Cheap Trick, breaking up the show’s flow a bit but offering a decent performance of originals and covers, ending with an impressive 30 covers in 30 minutes medley. But this was Cheap Trick’s turf, as iconic as a local band show gets. They were even presented with the keys to the city of Loves Park at the end of the show. Being a longtime Cheap Trick fan, it was a strong setlist of mostly hits, or what they would play at a large festival. A couple deeper cuts would have been favored, like the excellent ‘She’s Tight’ from 1982’s One On One (which Steel Panther does a great cover of, featuring Cheap Trick vocalist Robin Zander), but it was a treat to finally hear classics like ‘Elo Kiddies,’ ‘Voices,’ and ‘I Want You To Want Me’ live. They also performed a few tracks like ‘The Summer Looks Good On You’ and ‘Boys & Girls & Rock N Roll’ from their latest album, 2021’s instant classic In Another World. Original bassist Tom Petersson was also not able to perform due to health concerns, but his part was done quite well by Robin Zander’s son Robin Taylor Zander. Alongside lead guitarist Rick Nielsen and his son Daxx Nielsen on the drums, this felt like a very special set to see with all the family men together on stage. A great way to spend a Sunday summer night, despite the patriotic stench in the suburban air.
COMPOSITION SOUNDTRACK: Ozzy Osbourne - The Ultimate Ozzy (1986 CBS Fox Video)
As far as original metal vinyl grails go, Ozzy Osbourne’s The Ultimate Sin from 1986 and No Rest For The Wicked from 1988 are quite high on my list. Those have gotten crazy expensive over the years, and haven’t been reissued in a while either. With the excitement around the 30th anniversary No More Tears reissue in 2021, maybe these will come around again, but I’d really love the first issues. Ozzy’s tour for The Ultimate Sin was documented as the TV special The Ultimate Ozzy the same year, and it’s a similarly hard release to get physically. It hasn’t been released in its entirety on DVD, Blu-Ray, or streaming since the original 1986 Betamax, Laserdisc, and VHS. Six tracks did appear on the Memoirs Of A Madman DVD set in 2014. No brave soul has uploaded the entire video to YouTube, but those DVD clips are on there. Equally as frustrating, the audio from the concert has also never been made widely available outside of bootlegs. The source I used to score this edition of Hunter’s Log is Kansas City 1986 Complete, released in 2018 on Japanese label Zodiac Records. This must have been sourced partially from the original King Biscuit Flower Hour radio broadcast, but the sound throughout the CDs are so stellar and include songs that weren’t on that original broadcast, I’m not certain how Zodiac got these tapes. At the very least, The Ultimate Sin deep cut ‘Secret Loser’ is one of the lucky six on Memoirs Of A Madman, and that or the Zodiac Records CD is worth purchasing for that alone.