Posts Tagged ‘jefferson airplane’
My Life With Lizzy Borden
“Hello suckers!” = Lizzy Borden
The first time I had seen or heard of Lizzy Borden was from a little photo and small article in Circus Magazine. It was a 
cool shot of the band in black and white standing on the roof of a building and Lizzy had a big axe proppoed on his toe. Would love to find that photo somewhere.
I think I first heard them on one of the old Metal Blade Records compilations but it wasn’t really until 1986 that I got into them via a former friend from high school. I remember going to his house and he had the Give ‘Em The Axe EP on vinyl. I was hooked. In subsequent years we all got into Love You To Pieces and the Muderess Metal Roadshow thanks to the VHS they put out, Good times! That former friend from high school and I did Give “em The Axe for our junior year air band contest. I think we won because everyone else was a bit scared.
Sure Lizzy and the band always looked a bit silly and even more so now, but they’ve never really done a bad record. I finally got to see them play at the NORVA in Norfolk, VA back in 2004 opening for Yngwie, not long before their guitarist, Alex Nelson, was killed in a car wreck. He was a killer player. They were all very cool folks. I couldn’t believe they didn’t play Give ‘Em the Axe though! I felt cheated!
So, here’s the review that you’ve so anxiously been waiting for.
Give ‘Em The Axe EP – 1984
This was a cool EP. The title tracks rules. No Time to Lose and Kiss of Death are cool. I never liked their cover of Long Live Rock and Roll (Rainbow). 7/10
Love You To Pieces – 1985
Oh man. This album rules. There’s not a bad track on it but the highlights ae Warfare, American Metal, Rod of Iron and Red Rum. I listened to this tape so much. No telling how many copies I went through over the years. 10/10
Menace To Society – 1986
Another fantastic record by Lizzy Borden but it suffered severely from poor production. It was very tinny and I don’t really know that a bass was used on it. I’m one of the few Lizzy fans who actually thinks this one is as good as the previews album. My faves are Notorious, Ursa Minor and Love Kills. 10/10
Terror Rising EP – 1987
Ugh. This really was a bit of a waste of petroleum based materials. Catch Your Death was a cool tune but the cover version of the Tubes’ Don’t Touch Me There with Betsy from Bitch, the title track and the god awful cover of White Rabbit makes me with I could get my $5.98 back from the Music Man. 2/10
Visual Lies – 1987
Another Lizzy album that I love but it’s a lot different than their previous albums. It’s a little more polished in production terms and a little more palatable for the MTV crowd. They had a video for Me Against the World and the song was featured in the terrible movie Black Roses. I dig the album though. There are some really great tracks like Lord of the Flies, Shock Treatment, the title track and Eyes of a Stranger. Worthwhile listening for sure. By the way, this featured Joe Holmes on guitar who was in Ozzy for a brief time. 9/10
Master of Disguise – 1989
This is where started losing me a bit. While it’s not a bad album, it was missing something. I could never put my finger on it. I think that this was supposed a solo album by Lizzy…allegedly. I haven’t listened to this one in years and years. I won’t anytime soon! 1/10
Deal With the Devil – 2000
This was a good comeback album for the guys. I like this one a lot and still spin it a few times a year. There Will Be Blood Tonight is a good track. Their cover of Alice Cooper’s Generation Landslide was pretty decent too. I really dig Zanzibar and The World Is Mine. 7/10
Appointment With Death – 2007
I haven’t listened to this one since it came out but I don’t remember it striking me like the previous album did. Can’t really even name any songs off of it…so there you go. 0/10
So, as it stands, I always recommend Love You to Pieces, Menace to Society and Visual Lies to everyone.
Pat Travers – Putting It Straight
When I was still collecting vinyl, Iron Maiden was my #1 interest. As you probably know they released a ton of stuff and I had a good selection of it
thanks to Unicorn Records, Skinnies Records, Electric Smiles, Fantasy, eBay and trading through some pen pal type things from the backs of magazines. Oddly enough there were never any problems with the traders. I never got ripped off once. Honest lot those metalheads! As a subset to collecting Maiden stuff, I also was trying to collect everything that Nicko McBrain had played on. Not an easy task as there were some pretty obscure British things out there.
So my former supervisor and I were good friends and he told me about his record collection that had been sitting in his closet for 15 years. Knowing Mark like I did, I knew these were in near perfect condition. The guy was meticulous about everything. So I randomly stopped by Mark’s house one day (1993ish?) when I was in the neighborhood and we were just hanging out and catching up a bit as we hadn’t seen each other in a while. After a while I asked if he still had his records. He said he still had them and wanted to sell them. I wasn’t in the market to buy the collection but I surely wanted to peruse his crates. So he pulls out these 3 huge crates of records and I start flipping through one by one. Tons of 70s rock. You know, BOC, Zeppelin, Stones, Bob Seeger, Poco, America, etc etc. Nothing too obscure and surely nothing that a record collector would have paid more than 3-4 dollars each for.
There near the end of perusal, there it was. It was one of those heavenly “ahhhhhh” moments where it seemed like the clouds parted and the sun shone down on this box of records. Pat Travers’ Putting It Straight with Nicko on drums! Mark still claims to this day that I was shaking when I was holding it. I don’t doubt that I was. I was pretty excited. I said, “How much?” He responded, “Not for sale.” What a douche! But he did tell me to take it with me until I found my own copy. It was in pristine shape. PERFECT even. Shortly thereafter I found another vinyl copy at Skinnies and a year or 2 later he had the original and rare Jap pressing of the CD which I also bought.
I adore this album. It’s got Nicko’s signature drum licks written all over it. My favorites are Life In London, Offbeat Ride, Gettin’ Betta and It Ain’t What It Seems. The album as a whole is good and I highly recommend it if you’re into 70s hard rock.
Around 1994-1995 Pat came to town to play Wicker’s in Portsmouth, VA. I did my usual “show-up-to-the-gig-super-early” routine to hopefully meet the band. I lucked out as they were all inside getting ready to eat. I walked up to Pat and asked him to sign a few things for me and he was really cool. He signed my vinyl copy of this album and my CD cover. I asked him to talk about how it was to play with Nicko and he didn’t have many nice things to say. “Good drummer but a complete asshole after that whole Iron Maiden thing.” Apparently after Nicko joined Maiden, he landed his helicopter in Pat’s yard and bragged about his success. Who knows? I wouldn’t be that surprised if it was true. Not important to me either way. The guy that was sitting with us while we were talking about Nicko was Aynsley Dunbar. Of course I didn’t know that at the time. Had I known he was drumming for Pat, I would have brought my Jefferson Airplane and Journey stuff!
Nicko also played on Makin’ Magic which is also worth tracking down.
The Metal Files 
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