Alice Weiss By Popular Demand Edelweiss Productions 1986

Alice Weiss By Popular Demand Edelweiss Productions 1986 CAT# CR-1086

Alice Weiss is a multi-faceted soprano, at least that's what the cover reads. As far as being a good one, I have no clue, it sounds operatic, so that's something. I assumed if she was great, this wouldn't be on a private label run by her dad or some other family member. The label name, Edelweiss and the back page lists Robert Weiss as the President of Edelweiss productions.

The backside does indicate she did gigs in Europe and throughout the States. There's a big deal made about a New York City performance and quotes from her NYC teacher. But, again, if she was really great opera singer, I think she'd be recording somewhere other than Chapman Studios in Kansas City.

The backside also indicates Alice Weiss grew up in Missouri and attended the University of Kansas before traveling elsewhere to focus on her craft. She has connections to the Lyric theater, but there's nothing out there anymore on Alice Weiss. I'd like to think she's still involved in the KC opera scene or someone's opera scene, but the name Alice Weiss doesn't get many returns. Maybe she got married.

Either way, I don't know, this sounds okay, but opera isn't my hobby.

Various Artists Atlantic Jazz Kansas City Atlantic 1986

Various Artists Atlantic Jazz Kansas City Atlantic 1986 CAT# 81701-1

There are numerous KC Jazz comps out there all of which are good, but this one does a tremendous job showcasing Kansas City as a pioneering city in music. The back liner notes do a much better job than me, but it takes all the artists featured here and connects the dots. From Buster Smith showing up from Texas, Basie from Ohio, and McShann coming from Oklahoma, they all met and played together in Kansas City. They also crossed paths with Charlie Parker. And just as soon as they hit upon a Kansas City sound, they took it nationwide.

What you have hear is the Atlantic Records story of Kansas City. The swing that would transform jazz. The same artists who featured a young Charlie Parker before he revolutionized the genre. And the jump blues performed by Big Joe Turner that would eventually lead others to rock n' roll and be heard in soul records. It's not the complete story, but the selections here are all amazing and tell some of the best parts to it.

Jay McShann Jumpin' At the Woodside

Count Basie and the Kansas City 7 MCA/Impulse! 1986/1962

Count Basie and the Kansas City 7 MCA/Impulse! 1986/1962 (repress) CAT# MCA-5656

Pretty clever album with Count Basie and smaller ensemble...7 as the title implies. It was originally released on the legendary Impulse! label in 1962 and is typically referred to as one of Basie's best outings from the 60s.

This is a MCA Impulse! reissue from the 80's, I guess when Blue Note, Impulse!, and Jazz saw a brief form of coolness in again in the mid-80's. It's a nice pressing, remastered, but it's easy to pick up clean and sounds just fine, although, any snob would tell you an original is the only way to go.

As for the Kansas City 7, it's mostly a namesake and a nod to where Count Basie got his cool from. However, flutist Frank Wess was a native Kansas Citian. Further, most the players did spend time with Basie at his peak in the 50's and throughout the time Basie called KC his home.

Count's Place

Get Smart! Swimming With Sharks Restless/Fever Records 1986

Get Smart! Swimming With Sharks Restless/Fever Records 1986 CAT# 72111-1

Great band that came out of the Lawrence, KS scene of the 1980's. This album represents their second full length on the Fever Records imprint of independent label, Restless Records. It's also representative of the band after their relocation to Chicago, IL. Still, listening to it, it's straight Lawrence 80's scene.

Get Smart! pal'd around with the likes of the Embarrassment, the Micronotz, and other like college bands in Lawrence. Clever, choppy, dance-rock, not too far off from what groups like Pylon were doing in another college scene in Georgia and like Pylon, Get Smart! featured female vocals as well.

This album is basically stripped down new-wave. No synth, more guitar, but dance-able. It's punk at it's heart, but Get Smart! is a bit past the hardcore kids that were rolling through towns in the 80s. They served the college scene well.

Gold to Rust

Kansas Power MCA 1986

Kansas Power MCA 1986 CAT# 5838

Good news that if I've actually had to pay for a Kansas LP, I haven't paid over a dollar.  Bad news, this is awful.  It's what you'd expect from a band like Kansas in a year like 1986, though.  Just overproduced pomp rock.

I like Kansas for the most part, well, it's kind of a love/hate thing, but I can certainly respect them.  They have a very devoted fan base, but I can't imagine those fans call out for songs from this LP at shows.  It was a reformed band at this point, Steve Walsh who was previously out was now back in, Phil Ehart was still on drums, but Kenny Livgreen left along with John Elefante.  Instead of prog. rock, you get douchy hard rock.

Even the sole attempt at prog. on this LP, "Musicato", is filled with simple guitar licks and tons of cheesy 80's studio effects.  Such a disappointment.  Despite that, the band still managed a minor hit out of the song "Power" and a top 20 hit out of "All I Wanted".  Good for them, I guess.  The fact that people were still interested in Kansas in 1986 is a testament to their popularity and success.

All I Wanted
Power

Shock Up and Coming Greenworld 1986

Shock Up and Coming Greenworld 1986 CAT #GWD90504

Oh fuck!  What a craptacular turd of a metal band these guys are.  Yet, there's so much the band Shock gives you talk about, where to start...

I'll start with the looks, clearly, that's what the band is concerned about.  My copy has a bright pink hype sticker proclaiming, "SHOCK ROCK | Debut 9-Track Album From Kansas City's Most Outrageous Psychedelic Glam Rockers!"  The hype sticker should be the first clue that this is going to suck.  But, maybe the idea of psychedelic glam-metal turnsed heads in 1986, Enuff Z' Nuff played that card, they had some success, right?  And, they are proclaimed to be the "Most Outrageous" in KC, I mean, c'mon, it's KC, that's got to be pretty outrageous.  And if the hype isn't enough, you see the photo, tough guy posing, dressed and done up like women.  No one was doing that in mid 1980's, right?

The back sleeve is pretty awesome, too.  You see the band in better light, they got make-up on and are surrounded by what I assume are "groupies."  Are these KC girls?  Did their moms approve of this?  Out of the 6 girls, I'd say only two are slutified for the photo and none of them appear all that "hot."  That should speak to the quality of the music, if you can't pull in KC's slutiest and hottest groupies, you probably aren't that good.  Oh, they did the nickname thing, too.  Because you can't have big hair and tight pants without a quasi-porn star nickname.  There's Carlos Gunn on bass, Eric Saxan on drums, Max Maddux on vocals, and Damien Shepard on guitar.  I assume the nicknames benefited them later in life in that they could always lie about being a member of this band since very few would know the band's real names.

Below the names is a "Notice" that states the following, "This album contains weird psychedelic metal currently the rage in the American headbasket.  Consider yourself warned."  Okay, again, when was psychedelic glam-metal a thing?  I'm pretty sure the band has no clue what "psychedelic" entails in relation to music.  They also give a classy copyright notice that states, "Warning from Shock:  Unauthorized duplication of this work is prohibited by law and subject to prosecution and nasty treatment of your younger sister."  That, I'm not sure I get.  Who has a younger sister?  The 18 to 21 year old chick you want to bang?  Because, that would make "younger sister" a felony in a likelihood.  Or, did they assume dressing in spandex and using lipstick and eyeliner was going to attract full grown men to their music?  Again, hair metal was cool to a lot of people, but not metal heads.  Those dudes listened to Anthrax and Metallica.  Hair metal was all the rage with middle school age boys and teenage girls.  So, again, it's either referencing girls that are going to be far too young, or, you're picking a fight with a bearded guy in a jean jacket with Maiden and Black Sabbath patches.  I don't think you want to encroach on that dude's sister, regardless of age, while you're wearing hyper-color spandex and make up.


Also, on the backside, you see an actual label invested money into this band.  What the fuck?  Someone funded this?  Someone at a record label green lighted all this nonsense.  Seriously, I've had this for about a year, I always assumed it was a private press local thing.  But after some research, I discovered Greenworld Records is an actual label out of California, with a diverse catalog.  They signed a simlar KC band called Vyper, they did some thrash metal, some hardcore punk and even some King Diamond stuff.  Why they decided to release KC hair-metal is beyond me.  No one I know in town references the glory days of the 1980's KC metal scene.

So, now the music.  Yeah, again, I stress someone funded this.  It sounds awful.  It was recorded at Kondor Recordings in KC, which after hearing the quality, I'm pretty sure is someone's basement.  In fact, that's confirmed as the recording address is the same as the Shock Fan Club address.  But, to the recording, the levels are all over place, there's unattended distortion, the drums are buried.  And the vocals, they are terrible.  I don't think Max Maddux is a bad singer, but he could have tried a litter harder, done a few more takes, especially when your voice cracks or your metal yelp is poorly timed and not in key.  It's as if they did the demo, sent it to the label and the label agreed to put it out as is.

And the self-proclaimed "psychedelic metal".  Fuck.  I'm pretty sure that means a ton of useless feedback effects, a single backward vocal effect, and bass lines that other metal bands weren't using (but plenty of funk bands were).  Because it has nothing to do with hard English psych-rock like Wimple Wench or the Pretty Things.  It has nothing to do with mid-60's American Garage.  And, it obviously has nothing to do with well known psych like Piper at the Gates of Dawn or the American San Francisco scene of the late 60's.  It doesn't even have anything to do with 70's stoner-rock.  The dudes draw 80's pop-metal like Quiet Riot and Twisted Sister.  Lots of hardcore chorus chants, guitar solos, and meaningless vocal yelps.

Admittedly, I was surprised that the band is hard-edged as they are.  When I found it in a dollar bin, I thought they'd be along the lines of Poison, Bon Jovi, that ilk of shitty chick-metal.  Instead, they came from the Motley Crue school of glam metal which isn't metal at all, but hard rock for morons.  They only do one ballad, they like charging rhythms and they sing about stuff they dealt with when they were going through puberty.   The want to touch girls' boobs, hate authority (parents included), and brag a lot about getting drunk.

The lyrics are the best part, because they are hilarious.  Listed below are some of my favorite lines:

"The night is almost gone, there is no more beer, freshen up the air up, I think the cops are here."  From the tune, Shock Rock.

"White leather stretches your every little curve, I like to look but you're getting on my nerves, I'm up on my toes you keep me so alert, I'm meat and potatoes but I always need desert."   From the title track, Up and Coming

"You always bitched about the debts I owed, and getting drunk down on Westport Road, coming home at 5 A.M., bloodshot eyes and twenty empty cans."  From the song, BFD.

"Undercover lover with your lipstick lies, I'll give you sensations you cannot deny, you said you won't sweat it, you're trembling with freight, so much misery to the sinner's delight."  From the track, Out For the Kill.  

Pretty stellar, right?  I mean, who could pass up this much absurd bullshit for the MSRP of $6.98 in 1986.  And, if you get the lyric sheet you also get some classy action shots along with a great set of liner notes.  The band gives a "SHOCK Up Yours Awards" on the thank-you's, dedicate the album to all the headbanger's (wherever they live and breed) and cites Kansas City as a "totally happening metal nest."

I can't find any suck-ass Shock songs to share, but I bet this guy on Facebook knows what I'm talking about

The Rainmakers S/T Polygram 1986

The Rainmakers S/T Polygram 1986 CAT# 0704

1980's production sucks.  Disco may have died, but the uber-slick production never went away.  In the 80's the slick production style dominated, wet drums, vocal effects, synthesized horns, and guitars that sometimes don't sound real.

This album suffers from that, a lot.  It's unfortunate, the songs, the lyrics, it's all there.  You sense the roots rock and you can tell what the Rainmakers sounded like live, but that part of the band gets lost in the production.

When starting this project, I was excited to explore this band further.  They are an 80's KCMO band that just recently released a new album.  Their lyrics were featured in Stephen King novels, they had moderate chart success in the states, they were featured in Rolling Stone Magazine and always well reviewed.  They were also absurdly big in Scandinavian countries, having the equivalent of gold records in Norway.

Having never heard the band, I was excited to find this at a good price ($5.99 at Half Price Books).  All the reviews talk about the roots rock appeal of the band and Bob Walkenhorst's literate lyrics.  The lyrical aspect of the band isn't lost in the production, even a dumb title like "Big Fat Blonde" drops J.D. Salinger into the mix.  However, I cannot stress how much the production lessens this LP's appeal.  You can tell the twang, jangle, and boogie rhythms were originally intended.  But, in the 1980's it was apparently only going to make it on the radio if you made things sound plastic.  The guitars don't rumble, they pierce.  The drums don't bang, they splash.  Good luck picking up on the bass, it's there, but as vanilla as possible.

Let My People Go-Go
Steve, Bob & Rich Pre-Rainmakers Live in 83 Big Fat Blonde