If it’s too loud, you’re too old

By Rob Kern

If It’s Too Loud, You’re Too Old Dept.: Motor­head have been enjoy­ing a bit of a pur­ple patch for the past seven years. Clos­ing in on the 40-year mark, the band has always remained an under­ground favorite. Front man Lemmy Kilmis­ter has often joked that if every­one who owned a Motor­head shirt bought their records, he’d have a big­ger house and some money in the bank. The bands for­tunes began to gain momen­tum with 2004’s blaz­ing return to form Inferno, and their pro­file has con­tin­ued to rise with the help of a 2010 doc­u­men­tary Lemmy: 49 per­cent M&**&*, 51 per­cent Son of A B$&*#. The seem­ingly inde­struc­tible band still crosses the globe, refus­ing to turn it down and blud­geon­ing crowds with their gritty brand of Rock and Roll. The World Is Ours – Vol. I – Every­where Fur­ther Than Every­place Else is a new DVD/CD pack­age that cap­tures Motor­head tour­ing in sup­port of their 2010 release The World Is Yours. The stark black and white footage cap­tures Motor­head at tour stops in Chile, New York and Man­ches­ter, play­ing past hits “Iron Fist” and “Killed By Death” along­side newer mate­r­ial such as “Rock Out”. Some may com­plain about the black and white footage but it does a fine job of cap­tur­ing the band’s no-frills, in your face attitude.

The Man­ches­ter footage lags a bit with the band seem­ing almost groggy but the full show in Chile and the bonus New York footage finds them in fine­form. Motor­head has not aged like fine wine, they are still loud, bit­ter and nasty as ever and odds are your lawn would still die if they moved next door.

A 3-disc set for around 17 bucks? This one is a no brainer for the met­al­head in your family.

The “M” Word: Buck­eye fans, I’m going to need to you pack away your Michi­gan hatred for a few min­utes, it will be well worth your time. In the 60’s and 70’s Detroit was the breed­ing ground for numer­ous rock bands (not to men­tion Motown but that’s another arti­cle for another time). The Stooges, MC5, Ted Nugent, Alice Cooper and Bob Seger all made the Motor City their home base. Recent notable names include The White Stripes and Kid Rock, do your­self a favor and add Dirty Amer­i­cans to thatlist. Dirty Amer­i­cans have been around for a few years, going the major label route with 2005’s Strange Gen­er­a­tion, a 70’s throw­back foot stom­per that would have sounded right at home in an 8-track tape deck.

Six years later, they finally returned with the 2011 full-length fol­low up Black Feather. Going the inde­pen­dent route this time around, the band was able to flesh out their sound a bit more adding an almost psy­che­delic vibe to the mix of groov­ing riffs and Detroit swag­ger. Equal parts Foo Fight­ers, Lenny Kravitz and garage rock, tracks like “Sun­day In Hell” and “Feelin’ Tues­day” will stick in your ears, even if you are an Ohio State alum. Head over to dirtyamericans.net and give it a listen.

Slipped Through The Cracks Dept.: Every now and again, an artist’s release might slip through the cracks, going almost unno­ticed due to poor dis­tri­b­u­tion, lack of mar­ket­ing or even being out of the spot­light for too long.

Arc Angels (or Arcan­gels, for their lat­est release), a blues rock “super­group” fea­tur­ing Doyle Bramhall II, Char­lie Sex­ton and Ste­vie Ray Vaughn’s rhythm sec­tion Dou­ble Trou­ble (bassist Tommy Shan­non and drum­mer Chris Lay­ton) released one crit­i­cally praised album, 1992’s Arc Angels, then van­ished. Drugs and egos were the cul­prit, split­ting the band in the midst of radio air­play, a suc­cess­ful tour and grow­ing admi­ra­tion from the blues-rockcommunity.

Chock full of tunes such as “Sent by Angels” and “Sweet Nadine” fea­tur­ing the duel­ing vocals and gui­tars of Sex­ton and Bramhall have aged well with time, yet the band has become a for­got­ten foot­note to many. Bramhall even­tu­ally kicked the drugs and was able to patch up his rela­tion­ship with Sex­ton but busy sched­ules kept the band lim­ited to occa­sional one-off shows in their home­town of Austin, Texas. In 2009, the band announced a run of shows in sup­port of a new live DVD, titled Liv­ing In A Dream. This 3-discset fea­tures a live show from 2005, plus a few newly recorded songs.

After the tour, things went quiet on the Arc Angels front and the self-released disc quickly came and went. It’s a shame as this is the clos­est we will prob­a­bly ever get to an Arc Angels reunion. Sex­ton is Bob Dylan’s tour­ing gui­tarist and Bramhall jug­gles pro­duc­ing and tour­ing gui­tarist duties for Eric Clap­ton, while bassist Tommy Shan­non has retired due to health issues. Liv­ing In A Dream fea­tures a sur­pris­ingly fresh per­for­mance from a band that rarely plays together since dis­band­ingn­early 15 years ear­lier. Fans of Ste­vie Ray Vaughn would be well served to track down this over­looked release.

Rob Kern is a con­tribut­ing writer for Clas­sic Rock Mag­a­zine, video direc­tor and co-host of the From Out Of Nowhere Pod­cast at www.fromoutofnowhere.com

Posted by Guest 2 Columnist on Feb 21 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.