Madcap Scene With The Mighty Max Webster

Who the frig are those weirdos?

Max Webster was one of the first Canadian rock bands that I seriously latched onto, after I'd already climbed eagerly aboard the Rush bandwagon. Largely unknown outside their native country, Max Webster did carve out a niche in the nation's music history books. Through their trademark weirdness, visually, lyrically, and musically, Max never failed to surprise their rabid fans. I had the great, great pleasure to see Max on my high school stage, just a year before they began their rather rapid rise to modest fame. 

These clowns loved to ham it up onstage, and certainly didn't disappoint when I first saw them in my school days. After that small town concert, the band went on to release two chart-breaking albums, and built an even larger cult following as they toured as opening act for Rush in the U.S. and Europe in the late 70's. But they were fated to remain largely unknown outside of Canadian classic rock circles, and sadder still, their career fizzled out abruptly thanks to a lack of support from their record label. I feel fortunate to have seen the band live in their heyday, before all of the messy lineup changes and label disputes.

Max Webster's curious mixture of hard rock and melodic progressive explorations led to a very unique sound. Add to that the odd and entertaining lyrics of non-performing band member Pye Dubois, who was responsible for many a barroom anthem. Certainly, guitarist Mitchell had something worthwhile (stunning, more like it) to say instrumentally, and his unmistakable vocal style gave life to Dubois's penmanship.

Lead singer and guitarist Kim Mitchell brought back various incarnations of the band in the 90's for some tour dates. Good ol' Kim was kind enough to swing by my city of choice a couple of times, once - strangely - to play in a country-themed bar/restaurant, and again (more successfully this time, I'll add) at a proper night club where I had a blast reliving the old days with songs like "Here Among the Cats" and "Waterline". That party was higher than the Eiffel Tower. 

Big Clunky Music

If you are somewhere under the age of forty, then you may have no idea what 8-tracks are. Back in my day - the 1970's, 8-track tapes were one of a few music media options for the general public. Not that many people went in that direction, as far as I knew, but my parents invested in a player, and I took advantage of having such a unit in the house. 

I did have a friend whose dad owned a reel-to-reel tape machine, and that looked like something straight out of an alien spacecraft. But I guess audiophiles owned such things in order to record their vinyl albums, store the records in pristine condition, then use the tapes for listening purposes.

I owned a very modest tape collection, probably tiny by most standards. I might have had about ten or so tapes at most. Over the years, some of those 8-tracks have vanished... I'm not sure where or why, but I might have simply decided to pare down this little unusable (because once I moved out on my own, I never owned a player) collection to just a few with interesting album art for display purposes. In fact, yeah, I did display a few of them for a time. 

The first 8-track I ever bought was a nice Elvis hits collection, and I'm happy that that one has survived. When the Bay City Rollers (roll your eyes if you must) took the world by storm, I briefly fell under their musical spell.... hey, they were the next Beatles! Right. Other albums I picked up on 8-track were Queen's A Night At The Opera, Cheap Trick's Live At Budokan, Max Webster's A Million Vacations, and K-Tel's Music Express (a 1975 pop/rock collection), shown below. Plus the tapes shown in the image above. And maybe a few others that I just can't remember.

8-tracks were a weird invention; they were smaller than vinyl records but probably weighed more. They were hefty compared to the compact audio cassettes, which didn't peak in popularity until the 80's, when boomboxes and Sony Walkmans came along. The sound was fine to my ears, but somehow I realized that it wasn't quite as clean as that on vinyl. Now let me be clear here: I was not aware of hi-fidelity in my music - not yet. I mean, I started out playing precious vinyl records on a cheap little kids' plastic portable record player. That inappropriately weighted tone arm and massive chisel of a stylus surely carved canyons into those records. Thankfully, my aunt soon donated her old record player to my early teen cause. That was a turning point, since I didn't have to continue to scotch tape a stack of nickels onto the cheap-o tone arm so that the record wouldn't skip anymore. Not exactly a high-end system, this was serviceable and definitely a step in the right direction for a kid with only a lame paper route for earning income. 

The 8-track thing appealed to me only briefly, for a couple of reasons. First, I hated that on some tapes, a "program" (there were four programs per tape, with songs distributed among them) would end in the middle of a song... the song would either cut abruptly or fade out, then BOWMP! - it would click to the next program, and the song would resume. Secondly, the 8-track player was in the family room, so there was little privacy if I wanted to crank up the Kiss or Queen. Headphones were a necessity, and since my pop hated music, he provided those so I could keep the jungle music out of his canine hearing range. I often sat for hours with the 'phones on, listening to tapes or the FM radio build into the unit. I think those 70's Realistic ear-goggles looked something like this:

But I felt more comfortable in my basement bedroom where I could kick back or jump around to my music without parental disruption. And that meant I continued building a record collection. Again, that was a modest set of music, perhaps no more than about one hundred albums in total. 

Still, there was a strange charm about those clunky old 8-tracks, and that must be why I even kept some of them. 

White Suits and Dancin' Shoes

They played instruments?

I only knew of the movie Saturday Night Fever in a peripheral sense back in 1977. At the time, I had no interest at all in such a movie.... dancing, ugh! Star Wars and Jaws were more my speed at the time. But I did have a small interest in that new thing called disco music. Sure, I'd been hammering away at the heavier stuff like Kiss, but this BeeGees music seemed a bit more grown-up, sophisticated even. Anyway, I never even saw the movie Saturday Night Fever until another ten or twenty years had passed. I have no recollection at all of my first viewing, since it didn't resonate with me then, and even after I gave it another chance decades later.... same reaction.

But back in '77, when a friend introduced me to the soundtrack of Saturday Night Fever, I was immediately hooked, at least on the hit singles. He urged me to buy something by the BeeGees when we were browsing the local record store, so I took a leap and purchased the two most popular 45rpm singles, Stayin' Alive (B-side: If I Can't Have You) and Night Fever (B-side: Down the Road). I played those A-sides constantly and If I Can't Have You also got a lot of attention on the turntable. I wasn't as keen on Down the Road, not that it was bad, just nothing like those slicker dance floor hits from the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. 

The BeeGees and K.C. & the Sunshine Band were the extent of my disco "collection" at home. Nothing else really grabbed me at the time, though over the years, I began to appreciate a bit of Donna Summer's music of that mid-to-late 70's era. You can sense the possibilities in her songs, the foreshadowing of modern electronic dance music. Love To Love You Baby was the song that broke her into the big time, followed by a string of successful albums and singles. Not that I paid any attention back then.... but I do have a compilation of Summer's best stuff now. 

Still got the BeeGee's singles, in pretty good shape, too, after all these years. Here's one:

After all these years... worth more than money to me

The Great and Powerful Ozzy

These trousers are too tight, mate!

Okay, so Ozzy is not so powerful these days. "Has he lost his mind?" Perhaps, but he's still kind of great, given his legendary status as THE voice of the original Black Sabbath. "Has he thoughts within his head?" It doesn't really matter, as long as he can continue to belt out Sab songs, lyrics intact. 

Born and raised in Birmingham, England, the centre of the heavy metal universe, John Michael "Ozzy" Osbourne worked around his ADD and dyslexia to eventually find his calling as a singer in a rock and roll band. That band was called Rare Breed and its founders were Ozzy and some bloke called Geezer. That band evolved into Earth, and then Black Sabbath, who would record eight highly influential albums by the end of the 1970's. And it was by the end of that run that poor Ozzy parted ways with his band-mates. Mind you, he then went on to forge a pretty impressive solo career, enlisting the biggest names in music for his recording and touring. 

Ozzy remains one of the biggest names in rock history. Yes, he's had his issues ever since day one, but the fact remains that he's carried on since Sabbath and recorded nearly a dozen solo albums, many of which are considered heavy metal classics. And of course, he's most recently reunited with Sab for an album and a tour. I have tickets to see one of those shows this spring of 2014. 

I had the dubious pleasure of seeing Ozzy, solo that is, in concert a few times in more recent decades. I had mixed feelings about those gigs because Oz simply wasn't his old self... instead he was an old self, looking frail, weak, and generally unhealthy. He still had the vocal chops, so the shows weren't a total loss. While his band was always top notch, I had issues with Zakk Wylde's overuse of pinch harmonics on guitar. Less is more, I always say. 

But the concerts were chock full of Ozzy anthems and even a handful of Sabbath standards. My, how the weedy haze filled the air of the auditorium as the band cranked out classics like Sweet Leaf. Bang yer head.

Skynyrd Time

I heard and somewhat enjoyed a bit of Lynyrd Skynyrd's music back in the late 70's and early 80's on rock radio stations. Southern-fried rock was slightly in vogue in the 70's, what with the likes of Alabama, Molly Hatchet, Allman Brothers, .38 Special, The Outlaws, Black Oak Arkansas, and Marshall Tucker Band sneaking onto the radio playlists. They were just rock enough to barely fit into the mix. Personally, I wasn't particularly sold on the stuff, but the odd song by the odd band caught my ear. I remember that Molly Hatchet and Skynyrd hovered within my musical tolerances. But that was about it. Well, I don't know if ZZ Top falls into that same sub-genre or not - they always sounded more bluesy than country to me, but I've always loved them regardless.

Then in the early 1990's I went through a brief phase where my interest in Skynyrd was revived. I bought myself a double-CD collection of their hits (Gold and Platinum, it was called). Judging by how little of the compilation I liked, I figured these guys didn't really warrant a 2-disc set to show off their best music. One CD would have done the job: just slide a couple of songs off the weaker disc 2 onto disc 1 and you'd have a really solid batch of songs. Then I probably would have listened to it more and might have even kept the darned thing. But I ditched the CD after a few years of ignoring it on my shelf. It was a big clunky case and if I decided if I wasn't going to play the music even semi-regularly , I might as well pass it on to someone who'd really appreciate it. And to this day, I don't miss that "Best Of Skynyrd" collection. 

But in '92, while I was mixing it up with bluesy and country-ish albums in rotation with my Metallica and Rush, it was announced that Skynyrd was coming to town. None of my friends or I were super keen on the band, but this was at a time in our lives when partying was of prime importance. And music always played a key role in that all-important directive. So why miss the Skynyrd show when we'd hit all of the other borderline concerts that year? 

It was a warm August night at the stadium and we were all properly tuned up for the show. I now have no recollection at all of that concert. And that's just fine. That seems to say that it was forgettable. I guess we had a decent time but it was nothing special. I certainly don't remember hating it. Suffice it to say: I saw Skynyrd. Long hair, twangy, rowdy, loud, and a lot of guys on stage. I've always thought they had too many members in the band. What did they all do? I don't remember that either. Fine.

Here's the ticket stub:

Carly Does It Better

You don't expect ME to sing it, do you?

1977 was quite the year for movies. Star Wars (the very first one, which would eventually be renamed Episode IV: A New Hope), Smokey and the Bandit, The Deep, Orca... not all instant classics, but some were. And that was just the first half of the year. The second half boasted such fare as Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, Damnation Alley, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Saturday Night Fever, among others. 

In mid-July, though, The Spy Who Loved Me hit theatres. Aged thirteen at the time, I was cool with walking across town in the dark at night to see a movie. Even my folks were cool with it. Hey, small town (more like a small city) in the 70's.... serial killers didn't bother with our neck of the woods, so we all left our car doors unlocked in the driveway, and we let our kids roam freely from about age six or seven. No worries.

Back to my story: The Spy Who Loved Me was the first James Bond movie that I saw upon its theatrical release. I'd already become a little bit of a Bond fan, having seen some of the Connery and Moore Bond movies on TV. No, kids, there were no Blu-Rays or DVDs back then. Betamax (heh) and VHS videos had just recently become commercially available, but I'd guess that only the rich and famous could afford the very first home video players. Even laser discs would not appear for another year.

Long story short, I loved the movie. This was Moore's best appearance as Bond, and it sure helped that the luscious Barbara Bach (Ringo's Starr's wife) was the main Bond girl. TSWLM seemed to revive the public's enthusiasm nearly to the point of the 60's Connery-driven Bondmania. TSWLM  also received positive reviews from critics who probably didn't think much of that Roger Moore fellow or his fluffy Bond style. And on another note, composer Marvin Hamlisch received loads of critical attention for his musical score, most notably the theme song Nobody Does It Better, sung by pop vocalist Carly Simon. And that song, my friends, was a winner for me. I bought the single shortly after seeing the film and played it endlessly. Simon's smooth, supple and melodic voice shimmers over the piano and light orchestration. 

Nobody Does It Better remains my favourite Bond movie theme, outranking even the classic 60's-era theme songs, as good as they are. I often wax nostalgic over this song. And I've still got the 45 rpm single!

Sharp Dressed Band

Good ol' boys kickin' up a storm

It is 1991, at least a couple of decades after the formation of that l'il ol' band from Texas, ZZ Top. I have in my hand tickets to see this immortal blues-rock trio. Ever since I first heard the song Cheap Sunglasses on the radio in the 70's, I have had a deep admiration for the cool simmering sounds of the guys with the serious beards (plus the merely mustached drummer, who simply had the last name Beard). Nothing super flashy about their music, but it was built with solid rockin' rhythms that were catchy, fun, and well-suited to an evening of partying.

ZZ Top became quite famous in the 80's for their stylin' videos on the TV music specialty channels. Beautiful girls, shiny vintage cars, fuzzy guitars, and of course - cheap sunglasses. I loved all of that stuff. But they were more than just an image. Yes, they had a sense of humour, and that showed even in their music's lyrics, which included a lot of clever double entendres (though not nearly as many obvious ones as AC/DC). But their music stands the test of time very well... even their earliest albums are still highly entertaining and relevant, not at all dated. The talent of Billy Gibbons, Dusty Hill, and Frank Beard is clear on every tune they crank out. Gibbons has been hailed as a top guitarist in many a poll. 

Way back somewhere in those hazy days of the early-to-mid 80's, I saw a few minutes of a ZZ Top tribute band at a fair, and that reminded me of just how enduring those songs are. So once I finally got to see the real thing, it was a major treat. Let's just say that the evening was fun if rather blurry in the ol' memory banks. I am pretty sure it was Extreme who opened for the Top. Around that time, I didn't mind some of Extreme's music, but I wasn't exactly a fan or anything. ZZ Top's Recycler tour was mostly an exhilarating mash of all of their earlier hits.... there was no pretending that folks really wanted to hear all of the new album. This is the way it goes with bands that hang around this long - please the fans with the old hits and slip in a few of the new tunes to hopefully promote the new release. 

Metal Militia Marches Into Town

You're gonna lose that hand, buddy!

Metallica was one of those bands that took a while to creep into my radar. Back in my college days - the mid-80's, I noticed a long-haired guy carrying an art portfolio case emblazoned with a Metallica logo. Hm, I thought - a band that I knew nothing about, but should investigate someday. 

Fast-forward a couple of years, and as I was settling into my first real job in a brand new city, I met a new co-worker who was all about this Metallica band. The guy sure looked the part: long hair, denim this and leather that, all with metal studs and band patches and pins all over the place. The sort of person whose appearance might frighten your mother, but to me, he was just another music fan. A little to the extreme, but still... just a music fan. 

Anyway, said headbanger and I began swapping concert stories and whatnot and eventually he offered me a tape (yes, pre-CD era, still) full of Metallica's music. The tape is long gone, but I believe the two albums Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets were on there. Possibly a little of the first album, Kill 'Em All, too. Metallica music was brand new to me... the radio stations I frequented didn't play this kind of metal. And I guess I had been hanging around with the wrong crowd all along, having missed out on this extreme and challenging music. 

The Metallica tunes bowled me over. The music was, for the most part, fast, intricate, super heavy, and loaded with attitude. It would take a little while to get to the lyrics, but the vocals were rough and raw and sounded angry just about all of the time. Once the subject matter became more clear to me, I realized this was intelligent writing... at least after the first album. The visceral-cerebral combination appealed to me and it wasn't long until I craved proper versions of Metallica's albums. So out to the stores to grab the cassette tapes, later to be replaced by CDs. I was a hard-core fan by now, wearing the T-shirts and learning the songs on guitar. Woohoo!

When I first saw Metallica in 1989, it was on their ...And Justice For All tour, the first tour after the death of original bass genius Cliff Burton. It would have been fantastic to have witnessed all of the key players of the band's most influential albums, but newcomer on the low end Jason Newsted was competent and generally accepted by the group's legion of supporters.

...And Justice For All, the album, was a bit of a disappointment for me. The songwriting and especially the sound took a backslide. Others may argue that, but I felt that something big was missing on this recording, and the lean, tinny audio just killed it for me. I liked portions of a handful of songs, but mostly, I disliked the album for its lack of bass. Drums were thin taps and bass guitar, if audible at all, sounded like it was plinked on the bottom strings of a 6-string electric. Can't headbang to that.

The concert, on the other hand, was a blast... in every sense of the word. My big gang of fellow Metalli-friends first hit the dive across the road from the arena, where we ate greasy junk food and threw back many pitchers. We got properly primed for that show! The music was loud and violent, as were the fans.... I seem to remember at least a couple of fights breaking out in the crowd, adding even more intensity to the experience. I was huge into Kirk Hammett's guitar playing, but in concert, the ear-shattering volume turned most of his solos into a million razors clattering together. Yet the overall show was pumped full of excitement and adrenaline, just what the doctor ordered. 

I would see Metallica again in '91 and then in '97. The 1991 concert was memorable for its inclusion of songs from the recent release of the self-titled Metallica, which I quite liked at the time (though I admit the album didn't have much staying power). The '97 show represented music from the "new" era of the band - post haircuts (always a bad sign), and though I enjoyed the oldies they played, the most current stuff wasn't even worth a yawn. 

Still, those early discs and tours made for some wild good times....