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I remember this one, as well as a few of the band's US hits. They were pretty popular with the Head First album on my side of the pond, but when 1980 rolled around, they were starting the slide down with the Union Jacks album which at least included the Detroit FM Radio hit "Midnight Rendezvous".

Doing some Detroit Drive In research recently, I came across an article in The Detroit News on their first Detroit gig that was not well reviewed. The writer said that the talent was there, especially sighting Waite's singing, but it sounded generic.

I came across their final album, On the Edge, mainly for it being from 1980 and Produced by Keith Olsen (Ex-Music Machine turned super producer). It was more on the energetic Pop side of things with a couple of nice tracks although you could hear the band about to go by that time. I also got (for 25 cents) Waite's Ignition album just to hear what it sounded like while the original image aimed for some kind of MTV-centric Pop stardom that happened with the next album.

Unknown Soldier

To be fair I never liked the rest of the early Heart albums as much as the debut, despite the fact that they had some very good songs. If truth be told I liked their 80s stuff even more, such as the very commercial Bad Animals album.

The band changed their sound after Mike Corby went and when Jonathan Cain arrived the band was even more geared up for the US market. They kind of went from a 1970s melodic hard rock band to a slicker radio friendly sound. As I mentioned earlier both John Waite and Jonathan Cain were homing their skills for their future projects.

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

Unknown Soldier

With the arrival of punk in 1976 music not only got more straightforward after the excesses of the progressive rock era, but it also introduced us to a time that gave out a more aggressive sound, with a somewhat home-made feel to it! In many ways future hard rock and heavy metal acts of this generation, certainly owed a debt to the punk movement and the summer of 1976, as both its home-made approach and its aggression gave the ‘heavy genre’ a much needed boost. It wasn’t an easy start for some of these bands, but after a few years the groundwork laid here would shape the future of the genre. Two great early examples of this were the all-female Runaways and of course Motorhead.

The Runaways consisted of Cherie Currie-Vocals, Joan Jett-Rhythm/Vocals, Lita Ford-Guitar, Jackie Fox-Bass and Sandy West-Drums/Vocals and they used a number of well-known artists as focal points, but a certain Suzi Quatro may have been the most influential on them! From the word go, the band’s ‘in yer face’ hard rock approach put them in the punk borderline camp but unsurprisingly their approach bought them little success in their native USA, but luckily the Japanese market took to them at once, certainly proving as I’ve always believed just how receptive Japanese rock fans were to new and fresh rock outfits around this time. The band put out a number of albums over the next couple of years of which their debut and Queens of Noise are their best regarded. After the band folded most of the members went onto solo careers of which Joan Jett would be the most successful. The Runaways also just predated the NWOBHM chicks Girlschool on the scene as well.

Motorhead on the other hand, would gradually ease their way into things after a number of early setbacks with their record label (as yet again another record label didn’t know how to promote them) The band members though were hardly newbies to the music business, especially frontman ‘Lemmy’ Ian Kilmister who had already been in a number of bands most notably Hawkwind. He was then joined by Larry Wallis ex-Pink Fairies and Phil ‘Philthy Animal’ Taylor already the replacement drummer, and the band issued their debut album On Parole in 1976. But due to record labels lack of interest, the album didn’t get a release and most of the material soon ended up on the following year’s official debut Motorhead. On Parole in its complete form would have to wait until 1979 to get an official release, but of course by then the band had made their breakthrough on Overkill and Bomber, and that is where I will properly review the Motorhead albums!

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

The Batlord

@ Motorhead sharing the same feature with The Runaways. But I love that you included The Runaways. They may be justly mocked as a novelty group, but they were still highly entertaining.

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Unknown Soldier

In a jumble sale you get all types of things bundled together.

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

The Batlord

Your journal really is getting better and better. It's taking you about six months to get through a year these days, but you're filling it with so much interesting stuff that it's fascinating. I really think that if and whenever you finish this journal that it should be moved to the Rock/Metal section and made a sticky, cause it's probably the most comprehensive single thread on any musical genre on this site. You've definitely got my vote for Journal and Thread of the Year this year.

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Unknown Soldier

Wow such praise and I guess it's now starting to look like a substantial journal. I originally started it as a number of people I know (not on this forum) suggested I write about my love of metal in some type of historical and informative way. So I put 2 and 2 together and realised that this forum would be an ideal way for them and also members and visitors on here to see everything in one place.

As I didn't want to get bogged down with a blow by blow account of each year, I decided to base it around the best 10 albums imo from each year, but as you can see it quickly grew out of that and its now the best 10 albums from each year with a whole load of extras. So now its the 10 best albums set into a historical environment for each year.

The top 10 albums are the ones that can take time to write, whereas the extras I can normally knock them out while listening to the album, so it normally takes around 3 weeks for me to cover a year.

I'm going to keep this format until 1980 and then revamp things a bit, as 1980 with the arrival of the NWOBHM blows things up and from then on it's going to be hard just to choose 10 top albums a year.

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

Scarlett O'Hara

I adore the Runaways, I even made a review about them! They were so awesome and proved that females can produce rock and roll just as much as men!

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Unknown Soldier

Not a live album as such, but a soundtrack to a concert film and so certainly qualifies as a live album experience. The Song Remains the Same is basically the footage that was recorded by Eddie Kramer (Kiss Alive) back on Led Zeppelin’s 1973 US Tour and this footage is gathered from their three nights at New York’s Madison Square Garden. As far back as 1969, Led Zeppelin manager Peter Grant had considered a big screen movie documentary for the band, but he would have to wait several years until the right conditions granted him his wish. The film premiered in October 1976 and the soundtrack came out at the same time. The film was a movie of 137 minutes, which if anybody has seen it, will know that a good chunk of the movie is given over to the introduction of the band members in various settings. The rest of the film footage shows the band members in fantasy settings, which further add to the mystique to the band, along with manager Peter Grant’s somewhat amusing outbursts towards a concert promoter about illegal merchandisers amongst other things and a lot of these scenes are interlocked around the actual concert performances. Without doubt watching The Song Remains the Same is the ideal band experience and lasts an absorbing 137 minutes. So if you want to hear Led Zeppelin live from their golden early 1970s period, you’ve either got this soundtrack, the BBC Sessions or the monster triple set How the West Was Won. Both of those recordings predated this soundtrack, but they weren’t released until 1997 and 2003. Therefore The Song Remains the Same, remains the best official live band release between the 1976 and 1997 period, despite the fact that critics did criticise the soundtrack for sounding over produced and lumbering at times….which to be fair it did at certain times. As is often the case, there were some differences between the actual movie and the soundtrack, with a song like “Black Dog” being in the movie but not on the soundtrack and with “Celebration Day” replacing it. Also omitted from the soundtrack were “Since I’ve Been Losing You” “Bron-Ar-Aur” and “Autumn Lake” amongst the other discrepancies to annoy the purists. The album had a running time of 99 minutes and despite certain critics’ reservations towards it, I personally feel it’s a great listen and a must listen to for fans especially “Dazed and Confused” which lasts an amazing 26 plus minutes! Some of the omissions to the album were finally rectified in 2007, when the soundtrack was re-issued and an impressive 30 extra minutes were added to it.

Robert Plant- Vocals
Jimmy Page- Guitar
John Paul Jones- Bass/Keyboards
John Bonham- Drums

Production- Jimmy Page
Madison Square Garden 1973

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

The Batlord

Perhaps instead of year by year for all of metal, a year by year of different genres? After you finish say, the thrash metal years, you go back and cover 80's black metal, and then death metal, and doom metal, so that everything gets covered in a way that is relevant.

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