Time to once again sort through the pile of free CDs I’ve amassed from buying rock magazines, many or most of which I’ve read but few if any of whose discs I have listened to. It’s been a little while since I first decided to do this, and it was perhaps rather predictably a progressive rock track we looked at. I was impressed, but then I had expected to be, as this had been a song I had already heard, in fact one which stood out head and shoulders among the rest of the tracks on that disc, good as most of them were.
This time out I’m looking at a different genre, though still of course one that will be naturally associated with me: AOR. This is the covermount from issue four of “Classic Rock presents AOR”, the newest of the “Classic Rock presents” stable, and the disc contains tracks from bands old and new, ones I know and ones I don’t, with the likes of White Widdow, House of Lords (thought they were prog?) and even my old mate Freddie Frederiksen, about whose album I enthused so warmly in “Bitesize” some time ago.
But I want to go for one I know nothing of, and the name that leapt out at me was
(To be honest, I have no idea whether that’s the band’s logo, and given that there’s some baseball team called the Charleston Riverdogs, this is the only logo that has come up and is obviously not that of a sports team. Also, the link mentions “Spirit of metal”, so I think we’re onto something here.)
Rather amazed to find, when I looked them up to see if there was any information about them that I could impart to you before listening to their offering on this disc, that the legendary Vivian Campbell --- he of Dio, Whitesnake and Def Leppard fame, to say nothing of Sweet Savage, whom I featured in the most recent installment of my NWOBHM story --- was instrumental in getting them signed, and played with them, though the apathy of their label led to their splitting up. Riverdogs had got together in 1990 but up to 2011 had only released three studio albums plus one live one. Essentially they are split up, but get together on occasion and it seems the last time they did they came up with the album “World gone mad”, from which the song I’m looking at is taken and is in fact the title track.
World gone mad
Riverdogs
From the album "World gone mad" (2011) on MelodicRock Records
I must say, they don’t look like a rock band on the cover of that album! More like some indie popsters.. But surely with Campbell in the lineup (he returned for this, their third album) there’s bound to be some fretburnin’ fury? Here’s how the band lines out for the album. Riverdogs have gone through some personnel changes over the last twenty years, with one of their number becoming a respected session drummer and another carving out a career for himself as a producer, while Vivian Campbell’s rise to fame has been well documented. But of the band members playing here, it would seem all of the original lineup are present. They are:
Rob Lamothe (Lead vocals)
Vivian Campbell (Guitars)
Mark Danzeisen (Drums)
Nick Brophy (Bass)
They had a keyboard player at one point but whether or not this album, and this track, features key I don’t know, because this is the first time I’ve ever listened to it, or indeed any Riverdogs material. Let’s redress that right now and press PLAY, see what, if anything, I’ve been missing.
Okay well it’s old school rock and you can certainly hear the influence of early Def Leppard here. I can see right away that there’ll be no keyboards here: it’s totally guitar driven in almost a Led Zep way, great work from Mister Campbell, and the vocalist Rob Lamothe is good, his voice really suits the music. The subject matter is a little trite, a tad cliched and I know more than one band has tackled the idea of a world gone mad before, but from the off, though it’s decent rock I struggle to hear where this is any kind of AOR. That genre of music is normally typified and characterised by big blasting guitars, trumpeting keys and piano runs and a general, for the want of a better word, oomphiness about it. I don’t hear that here.
Not that the music is bad, just nothing I would personally consider AOR in any shape of form. Oddly enough, the disc that came with the magazine seems to want to play different music (Robin Thicke?) and I wonder if I got a dud, a crossover copy from some other mag that was mislabelled? There’s an address to send it back if it’s defective, and once I confirm this by running it through some other CD players I may return it just to see what happens. That’s what waiting too long to check out the CD does for ya! Anyway I hoped to find it on YouTube but no dice, however Spotify came up trumps, so here we go.
Good solo there from Vivian, but of course you’d expect nothing less from the man, and a nice bridge with what sounds like piano, and if it isn’t then it should be, as it would fit in here nicely and give the song something less of a third-rate rock track feel. As it is, I like it okay but it certainly does not blow me away, and I have no particular desire to search any deeper into Riverdogs’ catalogue. Might explain why they never made it, although that could be judging them too harshly, going on the strength of only one track. Still, for their fans’ sake I hope Riverdogs have more bite in them, cos this puppy wouldn’t have a prayer in a fight against the big dogs of AOR. Definitely small time.
(Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, I can’t find a YouTube of this song, but if you want it the album is on Spotify, which is where I heard the song.)