#coney hatch

[musicmags]

[vinylspinning]

Trooper: Trooper (1975)

Calm down Iron Maiden fans: this ain't your kind of "Trooper," but rather a Canadian hard rock outfit that arrived on the scene 50 years ago armed with this self-titled debut produced by Bachman-Turner Overdrive's own Randy Bachman.

Here's the backstory ...

Ra McGuire (vocals, harmonica) and Brian Smith (guitar) first worked together in a late '60s psych-rock duo called Winter's Green, but by the start of the new decade, they'd added bassist Harry Kalensky and drummer Tommy Stewart, and rebranded themselves Applejack.

The quartet eventually built a dedicated following in their native Vancouver and caught the attention of Bachman, who signed them to his newly launched Legend Records imprint, suggested the name change to Trooper, and produced this LP.

And a fine job he did, too, because the grinding "I'm in Trouble Again" was just about as heavy as rock got in the mid '70s and it made a strong first impression along with the seven-minute "All of the Time," which I'm sure went over like dynamite on stage.

Bachman's fingerprints are also felt on the comparatively bouncy, acoustic guitar-backed grooves of first single "General Hand Grenade": a nonsensical power pop confection that went Top 30 on the Canadian charts.

The similarly upbeat "Baby Woncha Please Come Home" gave the band a second hit, but the sleeper here, in my opinion, is one of the most '70s song there ever was in "Roller Rink," whose lyrics declare:

"I'm gonna go on down to the roller rink ... And roll my blues away. Gonna strap on a pair of roller skates; And roll …"

Rounding out the set, "Eddy Takes it Easy" showcased Smith's slide guitar chops, "Love of My Life" boogied on down with drummer Stewart on lead vocals and more six-string fireworks, and a cowbell takes us home (and, presumably, the cows) on "Don't Stop Now."

And there was sure no stopping Trooper, who graduated from Bachman's Legend to MCA Records on the strength of this LP's twin hits, and proceeded to enjoy an impressive run of success through to the end of the decade.

Their sophomore album, 1976's Two for the Show, apparently went gold, '77's Knock 'em Dead Kid went platinum, '78's Thick as Thieves double-platinum, and '79, Hot Shots quadruple-platinum!

Of course, this was in Canada and classic rock fans south of the border were none the wiser about Trooper's homeland success, or even their very existence, which I suppose makes the pre-MTV, pre-Internet era look like the fucking Dark Ages.

It wasn't, but for some mysterious reason, with the exception of Rush and, to a lesser degree, Triumph, most Canadian hard rock bands of the late '70s (Moxy, Teaze, Max Webster, etc.) simply couldn't get arrested in the U.S., and Trooper endured the same fate.

More Obscure Mid ‘70s Hard Rock: Agnes Strange's Strange Flavour, Armageddon’s Armageddon, Back Street Crawler's The Band Plays On, Baker Gurvitz Army’s Elysian Encounter, Bedlam’s Bedlam, Black Sheep’s Black Sheep, Black Spirit’s Black Spirit, Blackfoot’s No Reservations, Blackfoot Sue’s Nothing to Hide, Bloontz’s Bloontz,  Blue Goose’s Blue Goose, Bux’s We Come to Play, Brownsville Station’s Motor City Connection, Cain’s A Pound of Flesh, Diamond Reo’s Diamond Reo, Dirty Tricks’ Dirty Tricks, Earth Quake’s Rocking the World, Elf’s Trying to Burn the Sun, Epitaph’s Outside the Law, Gedō’s Gedō, Goliath’s Hot Rock & Thunder, ...

Even more Obscure Mid '70s Hard Rock: Good Rats’ Ratcity in Blue, Granicus’ Granicus, Granmax’s A Ninth Alive, Growl's Growl, Hammersmith’s Hammersmith, Hustler’s High Street, Legs Diamonds’ Legs Diamond, Magi's Win or Lose, Mariah’s Mariah, Max Webster’s Max Webster, Mother’s Finest’s Mother’s Finest, Moxy’s Moxy, Murasaki’s Murasaki, Nitzinger’s Live Better Electrically, Nutz’s Nutz, Painter’s Painter, Pentagram’s First Daze Here, Piper’s Piper, Plus’ No Pisar el Infinito, Primevil’s Smokin’ Bats at Campton’s, Reddy Teddy's Reddy Teddy, Silver's Children of the Lord, Starz’s Starz, Stepson’s Stepson, The Storm’s The Storm, Strider’s Exposed, Strife’s Rush, Thunderhead's Thunderhead, Tiger’s Tiger, Truth and Janey’s No Rest for the Wicked, Widowmaker’s Widowmaker.

[metalcultbrigade]

Coney Hatch - Outta Hand. 17/07/1083

[dodinaslesavage]

Coney Hatch - Girl From Last Night's Dream  (1985)

[vinylspinning]

Stone Fury: Burns Like a Star (1984)

Most people who know singer Lenny Wolf (and the list gets shorter every day) do so through his work with late '80s Led Zeppelin doppelgängers, Kingdom Come, but a few years earlier and four decades ago, he was fronting another band called Stone Fury.

Born Frank Wollschläger in Hamburg, Germany, in 1962, the future Wolf honed his vocal and rhythm guitar talents with several small-time local bands and, yeah, it's probably safe to assume they covered a Zep tune or twenty.

By 1983, the renamed Lenny had relocated to Los Angeles, where he assembled Stone Fury with bassist Rick Wilson, drummer Jody Cortez, and lead guitarist Bruce Gowdy, whose past experience included a short-lived sci-fi-themed Disneyland rock band called Halyx!

Yes, of course they performed at Tomorrowland, but don't laugh: the Mouse taught Gowdy some hot licks and I may have just stumbled upon a new rock 'n' roll rabbit hole (or galaxy far, far away, as it were) to explore, but not today ...

1984 saw the release of Burns Like a Star (a Halyx reference perhaps?) through MCA and, though we've all heard Stone Fury lumped in with either Zep imitators (hello, Great White!) or the hair metal set (you know who they are), this wasn't strictly the case.

Instead, competent but risk-averse melodic rockers like "Break Down the Walls," "Don't Tell Me Why," and "Hold It" inhabit that gray area between AOR and hard rock; slotting this LP in the same ballpark as the first Night Ranger and Autograph records ... albeit nowhere near as good.

Digging deeper, we find Stone Fury at their most adventurous on the moody title track, at their most accessible on the arpeggio-loving power ballad "Life is too Lonely," at their heaviest on the driving "I Hate to Sleep Alone," and at their blandest on the near-comatose "Shannon You Lose."

And they do eventually resort to scavenging Zeppelin's barely-cold corpse on "Mama's Love" and "Tease," where Lenny's Plant-ian vocal affectations find their love-match in Gowdy's swollen, Jimmy Page-patented blues riffs and Cortez's echoing, Bonham-aping thunder-beats.

Both numbers are as dull as they are derivative, if you ask me, but they obviously sealed Wolf's inescapable destiny to lead Kingdom Come at decade's end, by which time numerous "Led Clones" (as Gary Moore and Ozzy Osbourne labeled them) like Blue Murder, Badlands, and Whitesnake 2.0 roamed the earth.

Meanwhile, back to Stone Fury, they hung together long enough to record a sophomore album, Let Them Talk, in 1986, but they would obviously be summarily forgotten before too long, and are currently residing in the "Where are they Now" file.

More Melodic Hard Rock & AOR: Bryan Adams’ Reckless, Airborne’s Airborne, April Wine’s Power Play, Autograph’s Sign in Please, Axe’s Axe, Bandit’s Partners in Crime, Pat Benatar’s Precious Time, Blackjack’s Blackjack, Boston’s Don’t Look Back, Coney Hatch’s Coney Hatch, Foreigner’s 4, Giant’s Time to Burn, Sammy Hagar’s Standing Hampton, Helix’s Breaking Loose, Journey’s Escape, Kansas’ Vinyl Confessions, Magnum’s On a Storyteller’s Night, The Steve Miller Band’s “Abracadabra,” Nantucket’s Nantucket, Night Ranger’s Dawn Patrol, Point Blank's The Hard Way, Quartz’s Against All Odds, Rainbow’s Bent Out of Shape, REO Speedwagon’s Wheels are Turnin’, Rough Diamond’s Rough Diamond, Shooting Star’s Shooting Star, Starz’s Coliseum Rock, Styx’s Paradise Theatre, Thunder’s Thunder, Toto’s IV, Trigger’s Trigger, Trillion’s Trillion.

[vinylspinning]

Helix: Wild in the Streets (1987)

For much of their existence, starting inconspicuously in the mid-to-late ‘70s, Kitchener, Ontario’s Helix were the epitome of metallic mediocrity: a band so average and ordinary (hand me that thesaurus) to the point of invisibility, even at a time when the genre’s popularity was exploding.

However, as the ‘80s grew old and tired, a funny thing happened: metallic mediocrity became the status quo, as flaccid, superficial hair metal poseurs like Slaughter (ugh!), Trixter (barf!), and Britny Fox (need I go on?), among others, saturated radio and MTV with middling, mindless cock rock drivel.

So much so that, compared to this vile dreck, Helix (whose only, very modest taste of success had come with 1984’s Bob Halligan, Jr.-penned cheerleader chant, “Rock You”) and their sixth studio LP, ‘87’s Wild in the Streets, suddenly sounded -- GULP! -- pretty darn decent!

Oh, sure, even Helix’s better efforts, including the title track, “High Voltage Kicks” (which ironically sounds a lot like Kix), and “Love Hungry Eyes,” were still entirely derivative of what was popular at the time, but at least the band maintained a somewhat heavy-handed attack and used synthesizers sparingly instead of as a crutch.

Unfortunately, most of their other efforts, including “Never Gonna Stop the Rock,” “What Ya Bringin’ to the Party,” “Give ‘em Hell,” “Shot Full of Love,” and “Kiss it Goodbye” (which invited listeners to “Just bend over, kiss your ass goodbye”), took intentional stupidity to the next level. 

Plus, Helix were still relying on other people’s songs to shore up their own dearth of ideas -- on this occasion, the album’s big ballad, “Dream On” (not the Aerosmith classic, but the Nazareth song from ‘82), and a cover of what was then an unreleased Def Leppard song, “She’s too Tough.”

And then there was the age problem (see the music videos I linked to overhead) as, by ‘87, guitarists Paul Hackman and Brent ‘Doctor’ Doerner, bassist Daryl Gray, drummer Greg ‘Fritz’ Hinz, and, most crucially, singer and face-of-the-band, Brian Vollmer, simply looked ancient!

This, in a hair metal-dominated, visually-driven marketplace, where millions of record-buyers were listening with their eyes, instead of their ears, spelled certain doom for older, frankly uglier, outfits like Helix (see also Twisted Sister, Quiet Riot, etc.), so the writing was certainly on the wall.

Uh, no pun on the red brick cover art intended.

Sure enough, Wild in the Streets stalled at a pathetic No. 179 in the U.S., and though it achieved Gold status in Canada (for sales in excess of 500 units -- just kidding!), Helix’s next studio album, Back for Another Taste, wouldn’t arrive until 1990, by which time very few people cared.

And after Hackman was tragically killed in a van accident in ‘92, Helix’s career officially entered its “where are they now?” phase, marked by endless partial reunions, half-baked LPs (the most recent being 2019’s Old School), and small-time tours attended solely by their Canadian faithful.

In essence, post-Wild in the Streets, the band swapped mediocrity for irrelevance, but such is the fate of most every band, in due time, and I’ll still take this LP over fucking Poison, for what that’s worth.

p.s. -- Proof that pretty much no one bought this record, my copy is a promo, as evidenced by the band bio and glossy included and pictured overhead.

More Helix: Breaking Loose.

[vinylspinning]

Max Webster: Mutiny Up My Sleeve (1978)

This may be unnecessary, but I always feel compelled to clarify that Max Webster is the name of the band -- not any one person IN the band -- whose only remotely recognizable member (north of the 49th parallel, anyway) was vocalist and guitarist Kim Mitchell.

Now, with that bit of housekeeping out of the way, I’ll add that Max Webster was one of the few bands whose NERD quotient challenged Rush’s, but the fact that both groups were Canadian (and commissioned the occasional lyric from Pye Dubois) is nothing more than a coincidence ... or is it?

In any case, Max Webster’s albums reflected their confusing, frankly ridiculous wardrobe (see above), by touching on a mind-boggling range of often incompatible musical styles (prog, pop, punk, hard rock, classic rock, even yacht rock), and appealing to no one in particular, in the process.

Unless, that is, you’re an obsessive, latter-day record collector like me, seeking ever stranger, overlooked artifacts that might have fallen through the cracks of rock history, in which case 1977’s Terry Brown-produced (what, was he the only Canadian producer?) Mutiny Up My Sleeve is for you.

Max Webster’s third long-player in as many years, this plays like a game of chicken between artist and label -- at least based on ill-conceived pseudo pop numbers like “Astonish Me,” “Let Your Man Fly” and “Water Me Down,” doomed never to satisfy the commercial expectations they aspire to.

Not least because Mitchell’s lyrics are oblique, to say the least, positively bonkers, most of the time, and thus far better suited to fearless, genre-straddling art rock mutations like “Lip Service,” “Waterline” and “The Party,” whereupon Kim gives away the plot:

“Now, we’re just musicians; here to thin the thickness of your skin.”

And I’m down for that, as personal favorites like “Distressed” and “Hawaii” pay their debts to Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention, while the mini-epic “Beyond the Moon” (Rush fans who innocently stumbled here, this one’s for you) finally unleashes Mitchell’s remarkable guitar shredding skills.

But this sort of reckless variety was, needless to say, simply too much for most mainstream consumers, just looking to get high, or laid, or both; so Max Webster’s career continued to plateau until the following year’s A Million Vacations finally scored a hit single or two in Canada.

I’m sure I’ll get to that record, too, eventually ...

More Max Webster: Max Webster, High Class in Borrowed Shoes, A Million Vacations, Live Magnetic Air.

[vinylspinning]

Coney Hatch: Outa Hand (1983)

Better uncap that soda bottle before you drink it ... too late!

Let’s get April Fool’s Day started early, shall we?

With a relatively successful self-titled debut under their belts, Canadian melodic rockers Coney Hatch returned to the studio in 1983 to work on their next album with respected metal producer Max Norman (Ozzy Osbourne, Loudness, etc.), leading many to expect a heavier product.

Yet, for all intents and purposes, Outa Hand turned out sounding pretty much identical to its predecessor and, if anything, Norman only helped the band perfect their most obvious radio contenders -- at the expense of the album as a whole. 

The positive results included an excellent, sugar-coated lead-off single in “First Time for Everything” (one of the most memorable of Coney’s career), and arguably their finest hard rocker in “Don’t Say Make Me,” which, despite its silly macho lyrics, for once showed no hesitation to hit hard. 

Unfortunately, Outa Hand also featured unbelievably flaccid, even stupid, fare in “Shake It” and “Some Like It Hot,” while the largely acoustic “To Feel the Feeling Again” was a nice, sentimental departure, but not interesting enough to raise any eyebrows.

And things only got worse (or, should I say, they really got “out of hand”) on Outa Hand’s second half, where made-to-order numbers like “Too Far Gone,” “Love Games” and “Fallen Angel” had nothing to say, lyrically, or musically -- the fact that none are found on YouTube really says it all.

In other words, Coney Hatch’s sophomore LP played it way too straight and safe in a bid for formulaic AOR radio riches -- the band having obviously failed to notice that, by ‘83, this style was already in decline even for top dogs like Journey, Styx and Foreigner, soon to be replace by hair metal.

p.s. -- Some of these words originate in my All-Music Guide review of Outa Hand.

More Coney Hatch: Coney Hatch.