Category: songs

by Badlands

~ Raw blues goes heavy ~

Badlands were the side project launched by former Ozzy guitarist Jake E Lee, who promptly got replaced in Ozzy’s band by Zakk Wylde (who himself launched a few different side projects but managed to never get replaced by Ozzy). Badlands also ended up with one-time Black Sabbath singer Ray Gillen out front, and even with both of those guys, the most successful sidekick in the band was future Kiss drummer Eric Singer (who I actually got to meet backstage at a Kiss concert on the “Revenge” tour when they came through Fayetteville in ’93). It says something about ‘Sidekick week” that the entire first paragraph for our first band just talks about where else these guys played, and not at all about the song, huh?

“High Wire” and “Dreams in the Dark” were the MTV hits, but this was the real standout, that tried to give listeners a solid, raw blues riff in the context of a hard rock song, and it works really well. You get Jake’s skills both carrying a tune on a great riff, and shredding some lead lines, in a type of blues he’d never get to play with Ozzy, and you get Ray unloading a powerhouse voice while the rhythm section holds down the fort. I may have very, very drunkenly performed this once or twice. Badly, I can assure you.

Badlands made it through 2 albums before music industry apathy torpedoed them. Unfortunately, their sidekick names weren’t enough to carry them through to greater success, but they did show that a bunch of talented guys didn’t have to live in someone else’s shadow to make great music.

This week we’re showcasing bands that were founded by guys who made their names as someone else’s sidekick.

by Red Hot Chili Peppers

~ The outlier of the outlier album ~

This whole album is full of things you wouldn’t expect from the Chili Peppers. Much more melodic vocals, and much more hummable melodies than you would ever expect from the punk-funk fusion that they were known for.

This album has John Frusciante all over it, as he was the primary songwriter for the majority of it. But even this is significantly different than you usually get from him. What’s interesting is that among an entire album of more mellow Chili Peppers songs that could almost get lost in a sea of mid-90s alt-rock, this one really sticks out as a louder, heavier, faster number.

The verses of the song aren’t even necessarily fully connected lines. The stray ‘nouns’ that pop up at the beginning of each verse don’t really seem to be connected at all, almost as if Anthony Kiedis was doing some sort of weird Rorschach test in the studio while recording it. The actual vocal lines are delivered in traditional Kiedis style with far more spoken word inflection than actual singing before a very singable chorus starts to show up.

Overall, this is the one song on the album that sounds the most like the Chili Peppers and it’s weird because it’s from the album that sounds least like the Chili Peppers.

by John Mellencamp

~ Really late nights ~

Somewhere along the way, I ended up with a mixtape of things I had recorded off of the radio, and this was one of them. While it was a classic rock station from back when I was in high school, this particular mix included a whole bunch of pretty mellow tunes that were good for very late nights over the summers when Headbanger’s Ball had already ended, and I was winding down to actually get to sleep. It’s far from Mellencamp’s best tune, but it fit very nicely with that playlist, and has always found a place on my mellower mixes ever since then. There’s not a lot of specific nostalgia associated with this song other than that odd independent feeling of those 2:00 a.m. unconstrained bedtimes

by Boston

~ The definitive song from this band ~

It’s not one of the well-known hits, or one of the power ballads. It’s a perfectly engineered track by the Masters of their craft, and not only tells the story of the band but sums up their sound as perfectly as any other song does for any other band.

If aliens landed on the planet and ask you who these Boston guys are, you could just play this song for them and it would answer all their questions.

by Amaranthe

~ Melodic Hyperactivity ~

Somehow this band is really only a three-piece on the instrumentation, with three separate and distinct lead singers in front of them. as noted before, they’d be best off to drop the death growl guy as it’s not at all charming and lends nothing to the song. The rest of the band really knows how to rip the top off of some intricate arrangements underneath what is a fairly standard song structure.  It’s an unabashedly Scandinavian metal tune with some definite pop hook sensibilities underneath it.

And it doesn’t hurt that the video is a trailer for what’s probably a kick-ass heist movie waiting to be made…

by De-Phazz

~ The weird stuff you would find on file trading apps* ~

It was around Christmas time one year that I was in a Brookstone, probably looking for some goofy and largely useless gift for someone that probably didn’t need it, but that I likely felt obligated to give one to. I do remember the interesting electronic music that was playing on the overhead. It wasn’t your typical shopping mall K-lite 105 crap, but had a better, more euro groove to it.

When I asked the clerk what it was that was playing, he handed me a two CD set that Brookstone was busy selling. Instead of buying the CD like any other intelligent human, I tried to remember some of the artists from the back of it to go look them up later and see if I actually liked more of their music than just what was on the compilation. I should have bought the damn CD, given that I actually liked the songs on the compilation as evidenced by asking the clerk what it was I was listening to.

By the time I got home, the only one of those bands I could remember were these guys. I had looked them up and found a couple of different tunes from them to sample and see what I liked. This was the first of three songs that really grabbed me, and I’ve mixed it into car playlists for years. Later, I managed to track down a bunch of singles from these guys and I now have a decently robust collection of De-Phazz tunes. 

But… I have no idea what song that was playing in Brookstone 20 years ago they got me started on this trip in the first place.

* allegedly… I can’t imagine anyone who might have personal first-hand knowledge of such nefarious activities, unless it’s the RIAA and Big Champagne.

by Queen

~ The best performers on the soundtrack ~

The lead single from the Iron Eagle soundtrack, this quintessential Queen rocker dispenses with all their artsy pretentiousness and just cranks the power chords under Freddie’s glass-cutting vocals.  The production work is layered and stellar, and there are parts where the band trade off instruments and give dual drummers or an extra overdubbed swirl on the guitar.  The bridge after the solo with the heavy Dio-style keyboards doesn’t feel the least bit like a patented Elton-John-vibe-killer, but rather like an important part of building the song.  The video swoops its way through the highlights of the movie, and was honestly a better trailer than the actual movie trailer.

And make sure you listen to the inventory of the to-go-bucket at the end of the song as Freddie asks to you “gimme gimme gimme….  FRIED CHICKEN”

Note that there’s also an extended version of the song and video, without the movie highlights.