Tag Archives: Van Halen

Fargo Rock City

I recently re-read Chuck Klosterman’s ‘Fargo Rock City’. If you ever owned even one metal record in the 80’s and haven’t read it, it’s a must-read. Period. It’s a bit dated now, but still fantastic. As such, I’m rolling through my old cassette collection from back in the day thanks to the modern magic of Apple Music. A forgotten gem right here – Bulletboys. I didn’t realize these cats were a: still putting records out; b: had such the revolving door of members over the years including the likes of DJ Ashba, Stephen Adler, Keri Kelli and more. These guys were fringe back in the day but their videos for ‘Smooth Up In Ya’ and ‘For the Love of Money’ got heavy rotation on MTV. Listening back now, they had a lot of Van Halen going on in ‘em – in a good way. I was just commenting to @tyler how I preferred my metal vocalists to be more of the ‘gritty’ sound than the more operatic (i.e. Jani Lane) sound. Marq Torien fit that bill, and apparently is currently the only original member of the band. Works for me. Excuse me while I do some scissor kicks. 

Mixtape Archive 1

Back in another lifetime when I was living in a house with anywhere from 5-7, dare I say what would now be referred to as Dude Bros, my buddy and I made many mixtapes for the purposes of ‘rocking out.’ Parties. In the car on the way to hockey. Workouts. Whatevs. We hand a bent for what was then deemed ‘classic rock’ partly due to our access to both his Dad’s and his older brother’s CD collections. That combined with our complete Rush catalogue (our fave band, Prog Rock Dude Bro bonding at it’s finest), and some other CDs we were buying at the time was the bulk of what we had to pull from. Things like infinite Apple Music libraries were a pipe dream. I still have huge box of cassettes in the garage. I play them when wrenching. They work good in the cold. There’s many store bough albums or complete duped albums, but some mixes as well. Many are ambiguously labelled or with no label at all. Figured I’ll start sifting through the ‘unknowns’ and see what’s on em. First up, this one labelled simply, ‘MIX’. Track listing:

Side: First Side I Played

  • The Ocean – Led Zeppelin 
  • Dogs of War – Pink Floyd
  • Working Man – Rush
  • Carry on My Wayward Son – Kansas
  • The Punk and the Godfather – The Who
  • Life in the Fast Lane – The Eagles
  • La Villa Strangiato – Rush

Side: Other Side

  • White Room – Cream
  • Sister Disco – The Who
  • Rhythm Method (Live Drum Solo from ‘A Show of Hands’) – Rush
  • Feels So Good – Van Halen
  • Walking Towards Paradise – Robert Plant
  • Locomotive Breath – Jethro Tull
  • Emotion Detector – Rush
  • Run Like Hell [Live, Delicate Sound of Thunder] – Pink Floyd
  • Foxy Lady [Live at Winterland] – Jimi Hendrix Experience
  • Limelight – Rush