Howza bout, for a change, something from those hard rocking early 1970's? Last one for a while I promise, the updated and super-energized BigScott62/DaveSez colloboration on the truly best Au Pairs post EVER will finally be ready for tomorrow! But for today, examine these discs from Adrian Gurvitz, Paul Gurvitz, and a variety of drummers (Carmine Appice, Buddy Miles, Mike Kellie of Spooky Tooth, et al)......not exactly Led Zeppelin or anything, but reinforcing my point that the five year span that began the 1970's produced an almost embarrassing volume of HARD ASS MOTHERFUCKING ROCK N ROLL.......some good, some not so good, but point being that the "not so good" stuff is at least fun, unlike say the hair metal of the dreaded kidney stone of a (musical) decade, the 1980's, which is not only "not so good", but "boring beyond belief"......
Rising from the ashes of Gun, the first album credited to Three Man Army was 1971's "A Third of a Lifetime"......pretty basic power trio rock n roll, nothing spectacular by any means, but an interesting track or two, "See What I Took", "Daze" (perhaps the highlight),and the oddball "Butter Queen" (sample lyric: "If your name is Barbara, how come the call you butter queen?"....the question, unfortunately, is never satisfactorilly answered)......maybe at best a (very) poor man's Cream....Spending a couple years to think up a title for the follow up, they finally settled on "Three Man Army", recruiting a permanent drummer (Tony Newman) and cranking out a fairly generic set of hard rock tunes, notably "Hold On" and "Come Down to Earth".....again, it's nothing spectacular, but I do have a soft spot for the minor league hard rockers of this era, as you may have determined.
Their third and final effort sports perhaps the most hilarious album title in history, wait for it, "Three Man Army Two" (?), it's a fair to decent Led Zeppelin imitation, if you've heard anything off of it, likely it is "Polecat Woman", after which Three Man Army would march off in a blaze of non-glory.....Well. My encyclopedia-like mind must have failed me once again, for better or worse as we shall see (and remember, sniff, I nearly died from sleep apnea and suffered some minor brain damage in the incident. Please send me money).....I thought for certain that I had these three gems of the Nixon era on my shelf, so very certain that I wrote this thing up without checking......I'm usually right about these things, but this time, no thai-stick. However, gentle reader, you will be releived to discover that what i DO have is the (are you ready for this) TWO DISC BEST OF/COMPILATION (I wonder what the level of demand for such an item was), which pretty much DOES contain damn near everything on those three albums, certainly all of the highlights I alluded to above......knowing these dopes it's a wonder they didn't insist on calling it "Three Man Army III" or something, actually it goes by the much funnier "Soldiers of Rock", includes everything I could possibly ever want to here from these boyos, and is actually programmed quite well (randomly and not chronologically, but it works), probably (one of the somewhat rare cases) in which I'd recommend such a comp over the original albums....now, who knows what happened to my three original discs? (I found "A Third of a Lifetime", where are the other two?) Anyone know? I am about to go into ass-kicking mode.....I wonder if Scott Andridge or the gay agenda guy took them just out of pure meanness.
SOLDIERS OF ROCK DISC 2-01 Irving/02 The Trip/03 Butter Queen/04 Together/05 Come Down to Earth/06 Agent Man/07 Today/08 Nice One/09 A Third of a Lifetime/10 Can't Leave the Summer/11 Midnight/12 See What I Took/13 Space is the Place/14 Doctor/15 You'll Find Love/16 Don't Wanna Go Right Now
OK, Au Pairs bonanza tomorrow, maybe something over the weekend that will be far from the early-70's hard rock groove I've been in this week......we can only wait and see, I suppose, but you know it will be earth shattering.