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Dire Straits: I've often shamefully referred to the Dire Straits as the Dire Sh
its on this forum, something I actually regret because in essence they are a great guitar rock band in every sense. I'm not a huge fan of their debut, but I know it is a highly rated album and their core sound was laid down on this album.
John Sykes: Is a great musician and I'm guessing anybody linked with Thin Lizzy or Gary Moore (I'm guessing these two are amongst your fav artists given the amount of attention they've received) is going to be popular with you, anyway I really enjoyed your piece on John Sykes.
Nick Cave:I'm actually working my way through Nick Cave at the moment having just started with his early band the Birthday party.
Spock's Beard: I like this band a lot, but they're not the easiest modern day prog act to get into, their debut album
The Light is a real classic that not many people seem to know too much about it.
Black Sabbath: The
Born Again album! One of the most slated metal releases ever but does it deserve the slating? I first listened to it eons ago and thought it terrible, then again a few years ago and felt it wasn't so bad, I'm now listening to it again and quite enjoying it! Anyway, whats good about it. First up its heavy and there are some great guitar riffs put down by Tony Iommi and the majority of the songs really allow Ian Gillan to show his vocal chops. Whats bad, well quite a lot really. The songs are very similiar with little diversity and you'd really expect a band like Sabbath to bring more to the table here. The songs have a quickly thrown together feel and are just disguised with Gillans vocals and Iommi's guitar and does a song like "Zero the Hero" really need to be nearly 8 mins long? Finally, as for that album cover it has to be one of the worst ever for a mainstream metal band.
Robert Plant v Ian Gillan: I know you didn't do a section on this but you mentioned on your last post what happened to the Robert Plant legend, well his solo work demonstrated that without the guiding light of Jimmy Page he just couldn't do it on his own and his voice just doesn't suit that much outside of a Led Zeppelin song. On the other hand, Ian Gillan is a better vocalist than Robert Plant, but he lacks the flamboyance of Robert Plant. What I'm trying to say here, is that neither vocalist did anything any good outside of Zeppelin or Purple. In essence Ian Gillan's solo work is probably better than that of Robert Plant's (by a whisker) but for some reason Robert Plant's solo discography had more variety and some better individual songs than Ian Gillan could muster, most of Ian Gillan's solo work is very samey samey, but I will say that
Mr.Universe was a good album and easily his best. BTW I'm a huge fan of Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Black Sabbath, also I think the majority of Ozzy's solo work sucks as well.
Previous Questions:
I don't recall the
Angry Machines album by Dio, but the cover looks terrible.
As a huge Neil Young fan I strongly recommend the Jim Jarmusch film/documentary
Year of the Horse about Neil Young and Crazy Horse and you'll see just why Neil is a legend, some of the live performances and jamming on there are just legendary.