{"id":141,"date":"2020-03-28T21:50:25","date_gmt":"2020-03-28T21:50:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/joeviglione.com\/?page_id=141"},"modified":"2020-04-28T18:41:40","modified_gmt":"2020-04-28T18:41:40","slug":"hotline-to-the-underground","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/joeviglione.com\/?page_id=141","title":{"rendered":"Hotline To The Underground"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

April 27, 2020 Gold Dust, Brian Walker, Dick Wagner Hotline for Monday April 27, 2020 by Joe Viglione https:\/\/thesomervillenewsweekly.blog\/2020\/04\/28\/hotline-to-the-underground-april-27-2020-by-joe-viglion\/<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Needham\u2019s GOLD DUST still rocking\u2026
Twenty tracks on the blue and gold Hard Love album from Gold Dust offer an audio display that sizzles as driving as 80\u2019s Ozzy Osborne, Motley Crue, Ratt and other hitmakers from metal\u2019s glory days. \u201cJourney Through the Darkness\u201d is a terrific opener with David Kiah\u2019s lead vocals and bass working alongside drummer Jay Couper\u2019s solid time-keeping and his twin brother Scott Couper offering blazing guitar. Scott has performed with Jon Butcher Axis and other Boston luminaries over the years. The band rocked the Paradise in the 1980s \u2013 Boston\u2019s Best Concert Club with local press to back up what the crowds at their concerts knew.
The album was produced and engineered by Jay Couper who also wrote the lyrics on all twenty tracks. The title, Hard Love, comes in at three minutes and forty seconds. Like a train intentionally going well over the speed limit, the crisp production reflects the precision of the musicianship.
The original Gold Dust vinyl lp has gone for $700.00 in Europe and is now on CD with its black letting against white part of the band\u2019s album uniformity. Hard Love is gold lettering against blue with previous albums having the same identical font white against black, red against black. \u201cCarry On\u201d features heavy keys alongside an even heavier guitar riff. Kind of like Lesley West and Mountain having a battle of the bands with the group Kansas.
Photos from the first Gold Dust lp. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Walker\u2019s \u201cRemember 17?\u201d single is now out on Big Hello Records. You can find this bright pop love song on YouTube https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=xaTnUsxqaws<\/a> and Spotify \u2013 distributed by Warner Music Indonesia.
SPOTIFY REMEMBER 17? https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/album\/7Li2UfJ1jrksHe8hNltt52?highlight=spotify:track:3gWpAGdB7ZnWDG98NokP0v<\/a>
The great David Pomeranz wrote two Barry Manilow hits, \u201cThe Old Songs\u201d and \u201cTrying To Get The Feeling Again.\u201d Wikipedia notes: \u201cIn 1999, Pomeranz recorded the CD Born For You \u2013 His Best And More, a compilation of past and new love songs that became the 13th best-selling album of all time in the Philippines. So if you wonder about an artist being signed to Warner in Indonesia as Brian Walker is, think of David Pomeranz and his phenomenal success in the Phillipines \u2013 and the plethora of Boston area bands famous in Paris, France starting with Willie Loco Alexander, the Real Kids and yours truly as we opened the doors for many a New England artist to get recognition in Europe.
\u201cRemember 17?\u201d is a catchy, mesmerizing three minutes and fifteen seconds that have a rhythmic undercurrent that catches you by surprise while the musical movements creatively come at you from different directions. We hope to interview Mr. Walker for an upcoming column.
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FULL MELTDOWN \u2013 Dick Wagner
15 selections from the artistry of Dick Wagner on a compilation entitled Full Meltdown come with the obligatory 4 page liner notes\/insert that we who appreciate classic rock need. So to the xerox machine at Staples I went to enlarge the type and translate it all for you, dear reader.
Five minutes and 20 seconds of \u201cStill Hungry\u201d open the disc, a 1991 production created at Trax Studios in Los Angeles with Jack White on drums, Matt Bissonnette on bass and Fred Mandel on keyboards\/B3. It slips into \u201cBlue Collar Babies\u201d, one of six songs recorded at Gil Markle\u2019s Long View Farm in 1979 with a band called Meltdown, managed by the late Charlie McKenzie, he of the group Boston and Willie Loco Alexander fame.
The 90s and 70s material actually sounds very 80s, infringing on the territory that Eddie Money, 38 Special and Van Halen traveled, though Wagner has more grit than Money and 38 Special and his formidable songwriting skills make these titles a bit more appealing than some of the music that actually made it to radio.
\u201cInsatiable Girl\u201d from the 1991 Los Angeles sessions could be a sequel to the 1989 Grammy winner from Robert Palmer, \u201cSimply Irresistable\u201d while \u201cI\u2019d Take The Bullet\u201d was recorded that same year, 1991, in Lawrence, Massachusetts with Brad Hallen from Ministry and Boston\u2019s Pastiche on bass. This tune and \u201cAnother Twist Of The Knife\u201d which follows would\u2019ve been good for Alice Cooper back in the day\u2026and though the music flips from Los Angeles to Lawrence to back to Los Angeles it is all very consistent. The delightful cover of \u201cStagger Lee\u201d opens with a John Lennon-styled vocal straight out of Double Fantasy\u2026I played this for Buzzy Linhart over the phone tonight (11\/22\/09) and Buzzy thought the arrangement was fantastic (it is)\u2026Linhart calling this one of the greatest songs of all time and one he has his own arrangement for. (Prakash John, Steve Hunter and Penti Glan, all cohorts of Wagners, appear on a recent release of Linhart\u2019s entitled Studio; Buzzy is the guy whistling from the audience on Lou Reed\u2019s Rock & Roll Animal album\u2026with a real\u2026and loud\u2026 whistle, probably on the song \u201cHeroin\u201d)\u2026\u201dStagger Lee\u201d is close to four minutes and the song becomes a Bob Seger-like \u201cHollywood Nights\u201d talk\/song\u2026the material from Long View Farm was lost to the ages until recently, Gil Markle telling GemmZine \u201cMany of these tracks were recorded at Long View in 1979, and lay undiscovered in a mis-labeled packing container for almost 30 years. The members of Charlie McKenzie\u2019s Boston-based band \u201cMeltdown\u201d played on some of them. The rest were recorded a few years later, mostly in L.A. I re-mastered the material for Dick a few months ago in Tobago.\u201d
\u201cEcstasy\u201d nicks a bit of the melody from Van Halen\u2019s \u201cI\u2019ll Wait\u201d (from their MCMLXXXIV CD a.k.a. 1984) but it veers off into a different territory, the riffing and guitars moving from pop\/rock into progressive becoming something totally original in the process. You can listen to Van Halen here just for fun: Van Halen\u2019s \u201cI\u2019ll Wait\u201d
For Alice Cooper fans there\u2019s Dick\u2019s own version of the co-write that he created with Desmond Child and Cooper, \u201cI Might As Well Be On Mars\u201d. Released on Cooper\u2019s 1991 disc, Hey Stoopid, it\u2019s as close to Christopher Cross\u2019s \u201cSailin\u2019 as Alice will ever get\u2026and Dick does a fine job on voice and all instruments as recorded in 1995 at Fenton Woods Studio in Fenton MI as well as Disc Ltd. in Eastpointe MI.
It\u2019s great to have this music produced by Dick Wagner compiled so uniformly, the liner notes precisely telling where and when each track was laid down and who plays on it along with two letters from Dick to the reader\/listener all packed in a good compilation for his long-time followers and those who appreciate superb musicianship and creative songwriting. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Hotline to the Underground Monday April 20, 2020 Peter Calo, K Britz, Jack Phillips, Eddy Davis<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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