Welcome one and all to episode 370 of Signals from Mars. I'm your host Victor
and for this episode I bring you the audio version of a recent livestream
where we discussed our favorite debut albums. Much like other episodes I had a
ton of people vote on what their favorite debut album was for all types of
hard rock and metal and beyond. Check it out next. I'm ready. Let's do it!
Much like all the other episodes that use the same premise, livestreams, podcasts,
whatever that I do on Signals from Mars, I had people vote on their 10 favorites.
Those 10 are assigned points. Number 1 gets 10 points, number 2 gets 9 points, so
on and so forth down to number 10 which gets 1 point. I reached out to a lot of
different people on a lot of different platforms and I've even, you know, I've
posted about this on social media and it shows the importance of social media.
Folks, if you can, subscribe to the Facebook page or group, to Instagram, to
Twitter, X, however you want to call it, or any of the other social media platforms that I
do use in relation to the podcast. I'm updating the list on the website. It will
be updated within the next few weeks and it's important that you guys stay in the
loop because when it comes to voting for these things, I can only do so much with
touching base with people and some people respond, some people don't respond.
Not everybody wants to play podcaster per se, so it's one of these things
where I try to cast the biggest net possible, but sometimes it just isn't
possible to do something. And what I mean by that is reach out to absolutely
everyone who might be interested in taking part. And I get it, everyone's busy,
so not everyone either is in the know, has time, or even wants to be part of one
of these shows. So go to signalsfrommars.com, you'll find a one stop shopping
place for everything related to Signals from Mars, and that's any of the social
media platforms, any place where you can subscribe to the podcast or watch the
live stream as it is taking place. Your voice is very important to me and I'm
not bullshitting you when I say that. There's a lot of shows that talk about,
oh you know my fans are great, but they end up ignoring them. You know, I've
known people that have reached out to me and said, hey you know I was on so and
so's Patreon and I was largely ignored. Why is it that some random person online
who isn't backing the show is getting recognition while I'm paying 20 bucks a
month and they've never mentioned me by name on the show. So I mean look, I try to
do the best that I can. I can't speak to what other shows do. I try to do the best
that I can to give people the experience that I want myself. On Patreon I do what
I can to try to do that. I try to give you guys new music to check out, new
music from bands you may know, bands that you may not have known in the past, and
again I'm trying to expand things and cast a larger net with various social
media platforms that I haven't tried out in the past. Come along for the ride, you
know, all you have to do is click on like or share with your friends or whatnot.
You know, I get it that Patreon isn't for everyone. If you're so inclined to spare
two bucks a month, please do so. If not, it's cool. Whatever you can do to support
is greatly appreciated one way or the other. So I do want to thank everyone who
has been joining us during the live streams and those who are currently
patrons. I'm not gonna name everyone for this episode. I have another episode
coming out later this week. Just a lot of technical issues have stopped me from
putting out anything sooner. In any event, thank you guys. I appreciate you listening
and here we go with the show.
Welcome one and all to the December 15th, December 15th. Let me say that again.
December 15th edition of the Signals from Mars live stream podcast replay,
depending on when you are listening or watching this. This is an exciting
episode, an exciting concept. And I just want to mention this before I bring my
guests on the show, the Cavalier ish group, this Cavalier ish cavalcade of guests
that I have. This is a podcast. This is a show where your voice is appreciated and
heard. There are many other shows that claim to be about the people for the
people, so on and so forth. And they're full of shit. I actually have people vote
and we come up with these lists and we come up with these excellent discussions
and shows. And I hope that you guys enjoy what we have planned for you today. So
let me introduce our guests. Now we'll get on with it. From California, Mr.
Metal Dan. Greetings. The man that came up with the concept, Jeremy Welpman in
the UK. Good evening. All right. Sweden, Johan, I don't dare pronounce your last
name so that you don't laugh at me. Welcome to Signes from Mars.
You go. Hello to Sean Richmond, who is in the chat. Hope you're doing well, sir.
He voted as well. From the new home base of Yard Metal in Idaho, Mr. Brad Doll.
Cheers. And joining us from Ireland, Anthony Mackie. Hey, good. Cool. So as I
mentioned off air, over 150 albums were voted for. This was the largest turnout.
I will say that I also shook a lot of trees this time around to get voting from
a lot of different social media platforms, from sites like Quora, from other
podcasters, from journalists, from people that span the gamut of just music, music
fans in general. I wanted to make sure that we had a good representation, that
there was a lot of stuff. There's a lot of stuff that people voted for. And
there are a certain amount of albums. The top 12 got a lot of votes. I will say
that. But they must be good, then. I think that they're all very good. And
there's a lot of stuff here that there's stuff that I need to check out. There's
other stuff that, as I mentioned, as I was setting up albums behind me, I
thought, wow, I didn't vote for this one. But would I have included it in my list?
Come to mind, over my shoulders, I have the first Down album, which I think is an
absolute classic. But that didn't make my list. It didn't make anybody's list.
Also the first Fight album, which I think is one of the greatest albums of the
1990s. That isn't on here either. That isn't among the 150 something albums
that were included. So without further ado, we are going to focus on the top 25
because that will take us plenty of time to discuss. There are some surprises in
here. I will say that. At least surprises to me. Maybe other people will say,
what do you know? Of course, that album should be there. But at 25, an album
that was huge back in the day when it came out, an album that still has songs
played off of it on the radio, probably newer, quote unquote, the album is 20
years old now. But it is Fallen by Evanescence. This got voted on by quite a
few people. And this is an album that I really think marked a difference in time
because it not only brought this band to the forefront, but it also brought a
style of music. Maybe it helped commercialize certain aspects of symphonic
metal, perhaps. The biggest track off of this, Bring Me to Life had some rapping
on it as well. So it was a mix of a lot of different things. It was the launch
pad for Amy Lee. And Say What You Want, I saw them in concert and I've seen them
blow away plenty of metal band on a festival bill. I was impressed by them.
But I think that this album is important because of that. I think it did mark a
before and after or whether people want to admit this or not, female fronted
bands and adding certain aspects of metal to pop culture, if you will. Anyone
else want to mention something about this album? Okay, moving on then.
We've got plenty to talk about. Yes, I always say this from Smokey and the Bandit,
we've got a long way to go and a short time to get there. That's what Snowman
would sing. That's true with all bands. Anyway, At 24, an album that Mr. Yardmetal
and I have been discussing offline. At 24, it's a self-titled debut by Boston.
This got voted on by quite a few people as well. And this was something that Brad and I talked
about because when I recently guested on the Ghost Cult podcast, Brad and I talked about other bands
that you can possibly say were the greatest American rock band from the 70s. And I brought
up Boston as being an example of maybe somebody that you could bring up. But
Brad, you brought up a good point. They really only had two big albums. I mean, the other
two, three albums that they've released over the years are nowhere near as big.
I mean, Mr. Schultz revolutionized how guitar was recorded. I mean, let's be honest with that
huge sound. He recorded everything at home. He didn't use any amps. So he left the mark.
But it was voted 24 as far as one of the most important debut albums. Anyone want to mention
something, Brad? You're shaking your head kind of. Yeah, yeah. Being at that time of my life in the
70s, I was quite the musical snob. And when this album came out, I was just like, oh, what is this
crap? And I was like, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going
to do rap. And everybody loved it. I mean, everybody at my high school, it was like Boston was
the best thing that ever happened. And of course, that probably rubbed me the wrong way as well.
Because it's like, no, no, there's other bands that are a lot more important that you don't even
know anything about. But the funny thing is the first time I ever listened to the whole album was
probably within the last year. OK. I was asked to comment on, compare it to
and rank it with some other album.
And I thought, well, I can't,
I'm not gonna talk about something
that I don't know anything about.
So I'm gonna listen to the whole thing.
And I was surprised,
there was only maybe like two songs on there
that I had not heard.
Right.
So that is incredible for like an album I've never owned,
but yet I've heard every song, but maybe two of them.
And of course, a lot of the problem,
well, a lot of the situation is there's like four or five
songs that sound exactly the same.
I mean, he kind of had a thing there
that he kind of just kept writing in the same vein,
which is cool.
But yeah, I mean, that says a lot about an album.
And I kind of expected this to be in the top 10 actually.
Okay.
Well, as I've mentioned to Johan a few times
during the course of these thousand shows,
we have to consider the magnitude of the albums
that lie ahead.
So Johan, what do you want to say?
Yeah, question for Brad as a musical snob
when Boston released the first LP,
what was the snobbish albums?
Oh God, that's a whole nother show, Johan.
There was so, what, that I liked?
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, there's basically really in my world,
there were four bands.
Unlike my brother who there was only one band,
but we would share that band, that's Black Sabbath.
He always said that four of his top five favorite bands
are Black Sabbath and the fifth one is Iron Maiden.
So yeah, so Black Sabbath definitely was something
I was very into, listened to a lot.
Other huge band for me, Blue Easter Colt and Jeremy,
I'm glad to hear that you're getting
on the Blue Easter Colt train.
We'll have to have a side chat about that
because they were like my first favorite band.
And I just thought everything they did was fantastic.
My very first concert.
Number three for me was Kiss.
And I have a feeling we're gonna see them
on this list somewhere.
And yeah, Kiss is what taught me how to play bass,
that very first album, dropping the needle on that
and playing along with that album.
That's how I learned how to play bass.
Fourth band was a band that hardly anybody knew about,
a band called UFO.
Back then in the early 70s, nobody had heard of them.
And I'm not even sure how I ended up hearing,
oh, I know how it was.
There was a band at my high school
that played one of the dances and they played Shoot Shoot.
And I was like, holy crap, what is that song?
So I went up and cornered them after the dance
and they said, I need to know what that song was.
And they said, oh, it's by a band called UFO,
called Shoot Shoot.
And I went out and got that album for us,
still my favorite UFO album.
So there you go, those are my four,
the four snob-proof bands.
If you don't like any of those,
there's something wrong with you.
I like them all.
Yeah, I think I would take any of those four over Boston.
Yeah, unfortunately, not all of them
had really good first albums, but we'll...
Well, that's something that Jeremy and I
spoke about the other day.
It's interesting how,
and I think we're gonna have to do
somewhere down the road a follow-up to this
and not do debut albums, but second albums by bands.
Because I think a lot of bands came into their own
with their second album.
Johan has a t-shirt of a band that comes to mind instantly,
which is Rush.
Absolutely, that's...
Perfect example.
Yeah, perfect example, yeah.
So, all right, so moving on here at 23.
All of these were voted on by several people.
So for me to say voted on by a bunch of people
is gonna be kind of redundant here.
The warning by Queensryche.
Who wants to take a stab at this one?
I will if nobody else will.
Well, I can say that they're gonna play it in the entirety.
So that's next year in the US with Armored Saint for support.
So I caved and the tickets weren't overly expensive.
Another topic we often discuss here.
And I'm gonna go.
And because I think the new replacement singer
does pretty well at Jeff Tate's old voices
without using backing tracks, I think.
And I know that back in the day,
they did the other album Operation in its entirety.
So now they're gonna do this album.
So, fascinating.
I think it's a good material.
When this new replacement band has done
this music from this album,
it's gone over really well with me.
So I'm looking forward to it.
Okay.
Well, here's my question.
Will they dress up like they did for the original tour
and video during this new tour?
Of course.
They have to.
Well, that was a funny thing when Armored Saint did,
I know you're not talking about them,
but when they did their anniversary,
so for Metal Blade, they put on a bunch of fake wigs
and they put on a bunch of chain mail
and they got into the gimmick
and they laughed about it amongst themselves.
And they took it off after the first song,
which might've been March the Saint, I don't remember.
So that was kind of cool.
So they made fun of themselves by doing that.
But with Armored Saint, Gonzo hasn't changed.
I don't know how the guy doesn't age
and loses hair over 40 years,
but everybody else kind of lost the hair for the most part.
So I'll let you know.
It's next year in March or something.
Okay.
You'll be seeing Armored Saint in March,
March of the Saint?
Yeah, yeah, I will.
I think it's in March and I might go again in May
and I'm not going to the UK, but back to you.
The band will march on without you.
All right, Brad, go ahead.
The warning.
I was gonna say, when this album came out,
I think it was my brother that hit me to it
because he was living in LA at the time
and KNAK, I think was the big station in 84.
Am I right, Dan?
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, KNAC.
And anyway, he told me, he says,
hey, I heard this song by this band, Queensryche.
He said, you gotta get the album.
So of course I didn't have hardly any money back then.
So I walked on down to the record store,
grabbed it, brought it back, threw it on.
And I was like, holy crap, this is really, really good.
Even the snob in me loved it.
Yeah, and then I got to see them on this tour.
They were warming up for Kiss.
It was the Animalize tour and they were incredible.
I mean, they were so good.
And I mean, especially the vocals.
I mean, Jeff Tate back then was just so spot on.
And Chris DiGarmo actually was the guy
hitting a lot of the high notes,
which I didn't realize, listening to the album.
And they were just so good.
They were so perfect as a unit.
They played so well together
and haven't played that well together since.
What song did your brother recommend?
He didn't know any names.
He just recommended getting the album.
So Take Hold of the Flame was a single.
And I remember putting that on.
And of course by today's standards, it's like,
oh yeah, that kind of, I could see that being a single.
Back then I was like, holy crap, this is their single?
Really?
You guys are like just saying,
hey, this is what we are, like it or not.
And I loved it.
I loved everything about that album.
Well, it made my top 10.
First one here on my top 10.
A song that back in the old talking metal days
that got played a lot was Walk in the Shadows,
which is off of that album.
That's actually the second album.
That's great.
Okay, my bad.
That's all right.
That's the one you're thinking of
as far as the outfits.
That's good.
Okay.
All right, moving on, I will shut my trap.
Well, that's the show, folks.
Yeah, there we go.
All right, at 22.
Jimi Hendrix, are you experienced?
I am not the biggest Hendrix fan.
I appreciate what he did.
I think he's a pioneer for rock guitar,
but I cannot profess to be a huge fan.
So anyone wanna take this album on?
Yeah, I didn't actually vote for this at all,
but I do have a copy of it.
My auntie gave me a copy.
She bought it back in the day.
I think it was released probably around when I was born,
at 66, 67, around then, I suppose.
And it's got some amazing songs on it.
I mean, it's really, I think it's quite a tight album as well.
Some of the Jimi Hendrix stuff later on,
especially the live stuff could go on and on
and the guitar solos would be endless.
But I think this one had some really shorter tracks on it
and all the hits really that you know him for.
So yeah, I think it's a great album.
All right, cool.
Moving on to 20.
I possibly may be the only fan of this album here.
Did I miss one?
I thought we were on 21.
Oh yes, yes, yes, yes, you're right.
Thank you.
Not my day.
All right, 21 is an album I know nothing about.
I know the band.
I know their Reptilish album,
which is probably their biggest album
because of a huge ballad that they had.
So perhaps this is a band that's been on Yarg Metal
a time or two, or if not, Jeremy can speak about it.
But the self-titled debut by the band from Florida,
Florida, it is Saigon Kick.
Wow.
Brad, anything on this one?
I actually don't have a lot on that.
Okay.
No, but yeah, I like what the Jason Bealers doing now though.
So. Okay.
Good.
Come on, anybody here vote for this one?
No, none of you guys did, but several other people.
Yeah, I know Mark Striegel was really in love
with this band, wasn't he?
Well, it's interesting because this band was voted on
by people that voted for a bunch of other rock bands
with a lot of melodies, which Saigon Kick is also known for.
I don't want to give too much away.
One of them is Cheap Trick, who is one of the bands
that was voted on, but we won't be discussing,
but another band we'll be discussing shortly.
And I don't want to give that away.
Okay.
So Jeremy, anything on Saigon Kick?
No.
Okay.
All right.
So see you later.
I could have skipped over 21.
All right.
So at number 20, it is over my shoulder over here.
It is Pretty Hate Machine by Nine Inch Nails.
This was an album that initially I thought,
what in the name of Sam hell is this?
I remember somebody that I was in high school with
brought this in.
I remember my late girlfriend had seen them at Lollapalooza
on the very first Lollapalooza.
And all these people were talking about Nine Inch Nails.
And I kept thinking of something that we referenced
during the Iron Maiden show, how Bruce Dickinson said,
you can't do heavy metal with keyboards.
Trent Reznor took Depeche Mode and took metal
and kind of fused it together.
He did it more so on the followup on the EP Broken.
But this was definitely to me a landmark album
because it broke open the floodgates
for a lot of industrial hard rock
and a lot of metal bands that came after.
So this album belongs on here.
It did not make my top 10.
It was a late album that was pushed out of my top 10,
more so because I like a lot of other music
in their catalog more than this one,
but I get why it's here and it does deserve to be here
in my opinion.
So I don't know if anyone else wants to speak
about this album, if anyone else is a fan of it.
All right, moving on.
No, that's fine.
I mean, this is a very different list of albums.
So at 19, an album that has been reissued,
I don't know how many times we've talked about this
during our Thrash special,
but it is the debut by Megadeth,
Killing Is My Business and business is good.
Anthony, you're saying yes.
Yeah, and you used the correct cover.
I don't know, was this on my list?
I think it might've been.
No, I don't think it was actually.
I knew this would happen with this,
that I would see albums come up that I'd go,
oh, right, I forgot about that,
because I was like, oh, I'm not gonna do this.
I'm gonna do this.
I'm gonna go, oh, right, I forgot about that,
because the first albums,
it's very easy just to go through your favorite bands
and pick their first album,
but sometimes that's not their best album.
And yeah, this is great.
I bought it at the time.
If I'd have thought of it,
I probably would have put it in there,
but I didn't.
Yeah, for a lot of people, the common theme was
getting it down to 10 is hard,
because there's so many great debut albums.
I mean, for me, I think I whittled it down today to like 15,
and then like you're saying, Anthony,
as I said, all right, this is my 10.
I was like, oh shit, well, what about this other album?
Oh, what about this other album?
I forgot about this one.
So the list kept growing.
I'm like, no, I gotta get this done.
So I understand what you mean.
Anyone else on Megadeth?
Great debut album.
I bought it, of course, after I bought the pieces,
but who's buying?
So typical, but that one is good.
It's a bit strange sounding, but good one.
Even stranger after a bunch of solos got changed,
but it is what it is.
All right, at 18 is the other band that I alluded to
that a lot of people that voted for Cheap Trick
and Saigon Kick also voted for this band.
And I have a feeling I know who's gonna discuss this band
more than anyone else.
We have a resident expert on this band.
And I'm thrilled that this band is here.
It is at number, what did I say?
18, Kings X.
Very good.
Great.
I'm happy to see it there.
And it's a respectable position.
Several people voted for it, like I mentioned.
How does this album, in your opinion,
compare to what the band did after?
And how important do you think it is
in the grand scheme of things?
This album, sort of like most of these albums,
it just laid the blueprint for what was to come.
I don't think it's their best album,
but it was very important album.
Do you know what I mean?
And it sounded like nothing else at the time.
What was this, 80, 88, I think it was?
Right.
So you got 88 and they're downshifting.
And it was the first, I remember King was the first,
that dun, dun, dun, dun, dun.
It was like, I'd never heard a riff in,
kind of a drop D riff before.
It just stood out at the time.
They're hugely influential.
It's a good album.
I think they did better albums as they went on,
but this is, it has a few of their live staples in it.
It's a really good album.
It's a strange, weird sound as well.
It's a weirdly produced album,
but that's what another thing
that made it so unusual at the time.
The other thing with King's X2
is that as they were coming out with this
and Gretchen goes to Nebraska and what happened after
with the band, it was interesting
because you could see all types of hard rock
and metal fans that were into this album and into the band
because you started seeing their t-shirts
on members of Anthrax, on members of Pantera.
So you saw a lot of bands that were a lot heavier than them
that were really into the instrumentation,
that were really into the melodies
that the band brought forward.
So they were mixing a lot of things
to the point where they probably don't get the credit
that they should.
I know that a lot of people say,
oh, well, they should have been bigger than what they were.
Yes, I agree with that.
But at the same time too,
they were doing stuff that was unique at the time.
Setting aside Galactic Cowboys and other bands
that tried to be them to an extent,
there were other bands that I think that they influenced
in other ways.
So I agree with you.
And I do think that this album should be there
because of its impact on the overall scene at the time.
I think it made a lot of other bands kind of take notice
and think about what they were doing.
Yeah.
Yeah, and it was a really transitional time.
It's like, this was how I remember getting into this.
Well, I got into Gresham first,
but I was aware of this album.
And hearing songs like Shot of Love,
and it was just so unusual.
It really didn't know what to make of it until years later.
Right.
And it was like, this was coming from Garden,
Faith and the More.
It was a real transitional time in rock music.
Yeah.
I am a mostly fan of the band.
And I was looking at this one.
Somebody mentioned Nebraska,
and that immediately triggered Gretchen Gozen Nebraska
every time probably for me.
And I was trying to weigh to myself,
which is my favorite album.
And I think this one is out of the side of my mind,
my favorite Kings X album as a whole.
I knew about it when it first came out.
I listened to it.
It's the bass tone of Doug's,
probably the tone that if I wanted to be a bass player
anywhere, I would want to do his with the guitar
and the bass, the way he's hooked up the two
and made this sound.
I dig it.
Cause the bass stands out.
So that's probably my favorite album out of the whole thing.
They went and I saw them in the beginning.
They were on tour with Fates Warning.
What a package.
Fates opening up for Kings X in Orange County.
Wow.
Yeah, it was cool.
What a time to be alive.
Awesome.
Great.
Yeah, it's cool hearing all the bands
that are getting thrown in there
and all this stuff that you mentioned, Anthony.
I mean, it's very cool.
I mean, it's obviously different shades
of hard rock and metal.
And I think it's why that time period,
late 80s, early 90s, and even throughout the 90s,
a lot of people that poo poo that stuff.
It annoys me because I think that there's a lot
of great stuff that was still going on at that time.
Really before a lot of music kind of became homogenized.
A lot of just like factory stuff being put together
and just thrown out there on the radio.
Anyway, we could talk about that for hours on end,
but we're here to talk about Day View albums.
Keep it moving.
My producer's giving me the sign in the background
to keep things rolling.
17, I think I know who's gonna talk about this one.
Diamondhead, Lightning to the Nations.
Mr. Weltman, I think that you probably have a word
or two to say about this one.
Yeah, yeah, I really, really love Diamondhead.
I always liked them from the start.
I bought a couple of the singles when they first came out
and then this album I sort of went back to a little bit
because I think they produced it very early on
and there were very few copies originally.
It's been re-released since, sort of reproduced
and also re-played by the current band.
It's got a lot of their hits on.
It's influenced Metallica as we know,
but it had a very different sound in the sort of new wave
of British heavy metal era than some of the other bands.
And they were sort of talked about as the next Led Zeppelin
which kind of probably did them in really,
because once you talk about that with any band,
they're never gonna have reached that level.
But they're a great live act
and they still play a lot of the songs off this album now
and I think it's great.
Excellent, anyone else on Diamondhead?
Yeah, I have to say that it's an album I hadn't listened to
till probably the last two years
and mostly because of Jeremy talking about it.
And it is really a good album, a very, very good album.
And I know recently we were driving in the car
and something off of this album came on
and Nathan was with me and he said,
hey, is that Metallica?
I said, good ears.
It does sound like Metallica, doesn't it?
Hmm, curious.
Yeah, so if you like Metallica
and you don't have this album,
there's something wrong with you.
So.
There you go.
And for Edgar Winterson,
who from time to time is in the chat and says,
oh, it's definitely an American list.
This is gonna be the second
of three bands out of the UK mentioned.
So coming in at number 16,
you can say a lot of things about this album,
who recorded it, who didn't record it,
who was in the band, who wasn't in the band.
But at the end of the day, nevermind the Bullocks,
here's the Sex Pistons.
So who wants to tackle this one?
I can say a thing about that album.
I didn't vote for this one because
I think I thought it was punk rock
and outside the Cygnus from Mars,
Lane, but that album is really good.
I didn't vote for it, but that's a favorite
along with if we stay in that genre,
it's Ramone's first album.
So good one.
That's a really good first album.
Subvision, I remember Subvision.
Submission.
Submission, yeah.
It was great.
Yeah.
So see that, Brad busting out his punk cred.
First he tells us that he was in a
social distortion cover band,
and now it turns out that he's schooling us
on the Sex Pistons.
Who would have known?
Who knew?
Here you go.
Full of surprises.
All right, at 15, an album that I am so happy is on here,
because time after time, Sean Richmond is in the chat,
at least he was before.
Sean voted for this one.
Time after time, there's one person that is on screen
who always votes for this band,
and the planets have never aligned until now.
At number 15,
script for a jester's peer from Marillion.
Oh, Marillion.
No way, I'm very surprised it got this high.
Even though-
Beat that to Sex Pistols, Marillion.
Yeah, proper order.
I'm sure my votes were quite high,
probably nine or 10, maybe, I don't know.
Can't remember.
But yeah, like, you know, what can I say?
I love it.
Love it.
First album, and it's the first album I heard by them.
And, you know, that changed the course of my life.
How different was it for you compared to what you were
listening to at the time?
It was fairly different.
Fairly different, let me see, I probably bought it in 84.
I think their second album was out.
I bought it purely because it was a picture disc,
and I didn't have a picture disc before,
and it's got a kick-ass cover.
And I had heard Garden Party, I think, maybe Top of the Pops.
So, and I'd seen them in crying,
so that was the seal of approval.
Like, okay, they're in crying.
I like whatever's in crying, I'm gonna like this.
So I bought it, and put it on, and it was just so different.
But back in those days, you know, you bought something,
you had invested money in it, so I was gonna listen to it
over and over again, and that's the kind of music,
that style of listening pays off.
And by the time you're on your fifth listen,
and you're 14, it becomes everything.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I've had that discussion many times,
how the difference between streaming something
to actually owning it, where if you stream something,
and a lot of people at the first try, you know,
they don't like it, that's it.
They'll never give the album another shot.
But if you spent X amount of money on an album,
you're like, I need to like this,
because I invested money into this.
Yeah, it becomes embarrassing, you know,
oh my God, I spent a tenner on,
well, I don't know what it was back then,
I think it was like six pounds or something,
I bought it in England.
So, you know, I wasted money.
I'm gonna give it my best shot.
Yeah, so there you go.
Sean is saying that he is here.
Sean, Anthony, you guys helped get this on the list.
There's a few others that voted for it as well.
So, Jeremy, anything Marillion?
Yeah, just that that particular album
has Forgotten Sons on it, which is an amazing song.
I really love that song, I think it's brilliant.
Yeah, plus they were sort of, you know,
they were a prog rock band,
but they weren't so proggy as, you know,
band like Yes or whatever.
They had really good melodies,
they had proper songs that you could really
get your teeth into.
And I think that's why they became really successful.
So it took on the Genesis vein, you know, at the time,
and pushed it on in a different direction.
That amazing voice by Fish, incredible.
Which is probably why they rumored that Fish
was gonna be the one replacing Phil Collins
for how long in Genesis,
and that never ended up happening.
So.
Yeah.
Yeah, interesting thing here,
this album charted seven in the UK.
In Sweden, it was 42, it was as high up as it got
in the charts.
In the US, 175.
There you go.
Not bad.
That's why we didn't know anything about it, okay?
I mean, it just, it didn't make any waves over here.
This album was huge.
Like it was.
Yeah, seven, I mean, that is huge.
Like this is their first album,
and on this tour, they were doing like, what?
Three Nights in Hammersmith Odeon or something,
and they were second on the bill at Reading Festival.
Like that's, I know in England,
they like to jump on new bands,
but they really, they really were big.
Yeah, but also because it was the style of band.
I mean, this is a country where Pink Floyd
are a massive band, you know?
So if you've got a lot of people who like that kind
of music, very proggy rock, you know,
and have a, there's a real tradition of it here.
Yeah, that's a good, that's a very good point, Jeremy.
A lot of people, I think, forget about that,
forget about the fact that with how huge Pink Floyd is,
that they're actually a very proggy band,
and we're used to hearing them on the radio all the time
on rock radio anyway.
So Sean is saying that he has the picture disc as well.
All right, so.
All right.
Sorry, sorry, go on.
Go ahead, what were you saying, Anthony?
No, I was just saying I still have it.
Oh, okay, cool.
All right, so at 14, an American band,
but it was voted on mostly by people that are in UK
or Ireland, so this is kind of interesting.
So at 14, we have the self-titled debut by Montrose.
So I found that.
That's a little close to me.
Yeah, well, there were other people that voted for this,
and I was like, wait a second, California band,
and the world's introduction to Sammy Hagar as well.
But Jeremy, you had this on your list.
Yeah, it's the only Montrose album
that is actually worth listening to.
That's the first thing to say,
because after that, they didn't produce anything
particularly great, but it actually has quite a few
of the staples that Sammy Hagar went on to play
in his solo career.
It's got Rock the Nation on it, it's got Bad Motor Scooter,
it's got Space Station Number Five,
and I got The Fire as well.
So it's...
No, I got The Fire as the second album, Paper Money.
Sorry, you're right.
Yes, I stand corrected, yeah, I went too far.
Anyway, I have played almost every one of these songs
off this album in a band at one time or another.
So yeah, I know this album backwards and forwards.
So yeah, it's a great album.
Yeah, I think it's a really rocking album, it's good.
Yeah, Rock Candy was one of the first songs
I learned to play on the bass, actually.
All right, anyone else on Montrose?
All right.
It's a great album.
If you don't own it, you need to get it.
The next one, I think is gonna throw a wrench
in a lot of people's works here.
But this was another band where...
A Spanner.
I can remember hearing their first single
and thinking, what the hell is this garbage?
And I remember getting up for work every morning
at four o'clock in the morning,
and MTV was playing the video for this.
And I'm thinking, first of all,
it was one of the only videos that they were playing.
It was the only rock-like video.
So after about a week of hearing this song every day,
it started getting in my head and I got into the band.
So I think that this is a huge landmark album as well.
It is the self-titled debut by another California band,
this time out of Bakersfield.
Corn.
How'd you know that, Brad?
Well, because how many bands are out of Bakersfield?
There's a few, but they're the...
Really?
Yeah.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, I think they opened the door for a bunch of others.
Okay.
All right.
Are you versed in corn, Brad?
No.
No, I just eat it once in a while.
Okay.
I was thinking maybe you were gonna all of a sudden
surprise us and say that you detune like Fieldie
and sometimes decide to play with the bass down
and around the level of your shins.
No, no.
No, yeah.
I kind of have a little respect for him being different
in everything as far as his tone and that,
but yeah, that's nothing I've strived for in my bass line.
Okay.
Yeah, this album really much set the table for new metal,
brought in aspects of hip hop and rap that were being used
and they actually used instruments to do a lot of the effects
that people were doing in samples and using keyboards
and stuff like that.
It was really eye opening for a lot of people.
They started a movement.
I think like every other movement in any genre of music
I think the waves A and B are usually pretty good.
Once you get to levels, waves D, E, F,
things start to suck and beyond that, it's just horrible.
But I think that again, another band that marked
a before and after with what they did.
So at 12, I think you could say something similar
about this band.
Specifically given what a monumental unit they were
and I think with them carrying on the name
and the band to this day with two main components missing
is definitely driving that point home for me.
Jeremy, we spoke about them the other day.
It is Queen. So let's see here. Queen is a band that,
Jeremy and I talked about the other day at length.
We talked about their whole catalog, which is similar
to what we discussed before where maybe they were
playing in the same band.
So I think that's a good example of what they were doing.
And I think that's a good example of what they were doing.
What we discussed before where maybe they're in Queen's case,
it probably wasn't until their third or fourth album
where they kind of came into their own.
But I don't think you can deny the power that the band had,
what Freddie's voice was like.
Freddie's voice is the, when they, people say that
the voice is another instrument.
Freddie's voice was another instrument.
It was something very different, especially at that time,
what they did with layering his vocals,
what they did with a lot of different things.
Whether you want to talk about, oh, well,
they were just a pop rock band.
Listen to the Prophet song off of this.
It has some pretty heavy riffs on there.
Listen to Modern Times Rock and Roll,
which is something that maybe could go ahead
and influence stuff like Metallica afterwards.
We know that they did Stone Cold crazy,
but a song like Modern Time Rock and Roll,
which had Roger Taylor on vocals,
is a fast straight ahead two minute song.
So I think that it opened doors
and changed a lot of things as well.
It wasn't them, they hadn't perfected the recipe yet,
but it was a great starting point.
Anyone else want to mention something about this album?
All right, let's see.
Sean is chiming in in the chat.
He is saying got the Megadethon picture disc
with the cover shown by Victor.
All right, I've seen that before, actually.
He's saying he never heard of Montrose
and he didn't expect the Queen album on here,
but I do have it and like it.
This album, surprise, surprise,
especially from a bunch of journalists that chimed in,
actually voted for this one.
I'll need to listen to it.
You've never heard this?
The first Queen album?
No, parts of it, but not the whole thing.
Have you seen Queen in a closet somewhere?
No, but I remember in the mid 70s when they came out,
there were people like, hey, you got to listen
to these guys and I probably would put on a Watt album
and I was just like, I don't know.
It's just not grabbing me.
It's not doing it for me.
So of course that was during my snobby time.
I was gonna bring up that snobbish period.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You really had to work hard to break through to me
and in my teenage years.
All right, so moving forward to number 11,
a band that a lot of people associate with being
from down under, but their roots are in the UK.
Is there any actual member of ACDC that is from Australia
who wasn't actually born in the United Kingdom?
So at number 11, it is High Voltage from ACDC.
Was Bon born in Australia?
I'm not sure.
I can't remember.
I thought he was born in Scotland.
He was, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I know the youngs were anyway.
Yeah.
He's born in the United Kingdom in Orfar.
So, all right, anyone wanna talk about High Voltage?
Yeah, sure.
High Voltage is amazing.
It's amazing how many times you can listen to it
and not get bored of it.
I think it's amazing how many times
you can listen to it and not get bored of it.
I've discovered that when, in the early years of my son,
my first son, we used to listen to it a lot.
Yeah, so look at it.
What more can you say, ACDC?
Excellent.
Okay, anyone else?
High Voltage album also TNT.
They brought out the two at the same time, didn't they?
In different parts of the world
and there's a couple of tracks that are different or whatever.
Well, the High Voltage that we now know to be High Voltage
was a mixture of the cover,
the High Voltage that Victor just put up and TNT.
Right, yeah, yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, and it was not released in the US
until I don't know how many years later.
A lot of the early ACDC, I think,
nothing before Dirty Deeds was released in the States
until Dirty Deeds came out,
until Dirty Deeds hit the radio and became big.
That's when, and even the 74 Jailbreak EP,
that was released in the 80s.
That was never released in the US in the 70s.
All right.
Sorry.
No, go ahead, go ahead.
The High Voltage that we know and love now,
it's the mixture of the two albums
and it's better than the original version,
but it's not their first, this wasn't their debut.
So, right, there's a technicality there.
Okay, cool.
Yeah, I think we should throw it out.
All right, so at number 10,
we have another band from California,
originally from Huntington Beach, I think.
Let's find out.
I could be wrong, although their drummer is from Denmark.
Ooh.
So at 10, Kill'em All, Metallica.
Johan, anything on Kill'em All?
Never heard it.
No.
Actually, I think that it's a proper placing of that album.
It's a classic, of course, but there's so many good albums
in front of that album.
So, but Kill'em All is good, I would say.
I would say from now on or from it's all 10 out of 10 albums I guess.
So let's hope so.
Let's see if everyone agrees on that.
As it should be.
Yeah, these all got voted from the Queen album up.
12 up are the ones that got the bulk of all the voting.
They all appeared or not all of them, but most of these albums appeared on everyone
who voted's list.
At least one of them appeared someplace.
Yeah.
All right.
Okay so anyone else on Kill them all?
All right.
Moving on then at number nine.
An album that reintroduced somebody to the world of music.
I think a lot of people thought he was down and out.
And then he pondered upon or found someone who's known for polka dots and bow ties and
vests and Brad knows exactly who I'm talking about.
It is Ozzy Osbourne, Blizzard of Oz, the cacophony of Ozzy with Randy Rhoades.
Brings us to number nine.
Brad this to you was your number one.
It's my number one.
This album is, I mean not only was it huge and it still lives today.
I mean so many of those songs you can barely go throughout a day anywhere in public and
not hear crazy train.
So I mean not just for me personally this album I mean it saved Ozzy and I think it
really did a lot for music at that time for metal and for making it much more popular
and probably helping a lot of other bands along the way.
Because I mean let's face it man when Ozzy was kicked out of Sabbath I don't know that
anybody really expected him to do anything.
And this album was just when I again dropped the needle on this thing I was like holy crap
this is something special.
And the album is.
That's why it was my number one.
I think I've listened to it a lot and still love it.
And I think you know for so personally for me it's number one but I think you throw on
the historical aspect of it and what it did for music what it did for Ozzy what it didn't
do for Bob Daisley and Lee Kerslake.
But it's a great album.
So that's why it ended up number one for me.
Yeah and I also think that a lot of people always talk about how much of an influence
Tony Iommi had in Sabbath.
But I think Randy Rhoads has a huge influence on what players did afterwards.
I think it's a shame obviously.
For not mentioning that either because I mean I know so many people that have named their
kids after Randy you know some aspect of that and and well guitar players.
I mean one of the guys I'm playing with tomorrow night you saw his one guitar.
Well he actually has quite a quite an armory there with Jackson V's and custom made Randy
V's.
So I mean yeah there's hard to find a lead guitar player who's not influenced by Randy
Rhoads.
And this album.
This album is huge.
And I think that this album especially you listen to Revelation Mother Earth that whole
acoustic intro.
I think if you talk to Eric Peterson of Testament, Kirk Hammett you know a lot of these thrash
players that started incorporating acoustic passages in their songs as intros.
You know you think of a song like Battery by Metallica.
I think it's directly influenced by Randy and and that specific track.
So all right moving on at number eight.
It is the self-titled debut by Kiss.
Anthony Mackie is laughing.
Much to his chagrin.
It had to happen.
I almost made this my number one just for my personal like I said it's the album that
taught me to play bass.
And but yeah you guys have listened to me enough today.
So anybody else want to talk about this album?
No?
Yeah I think it's a fantastic album.
There's some really cracking songs on it.
There's songs in there that you know the band play regularly in their set list.
It was released what in 74.
So it's quite an old album.
And it's you know it's I think it's just fantastic.
I think it's one of their best albums to be honest.
And I often read about this album by people critics who say oh it's not their best album
you have to wait.
They they got much better in the in the later career.
But if you go back and listen to it really sets the stall out as what Kiss was at the
time you know the the songs are just very catchy.
And it's got probably my favorite song that opens it up Shutter which is just amazing.
That's a great song.
Yeah.
To your point when somebody posted their top 10 Kiss albums and they were asking for people
to vote on it or whatever they mentioned Alive as their number one.
And I said that's kind of a bullshit move.
I'm like you're picking a live album as your favorite Kiss album.
Well that's when they came into their own and you know this sounds more true to them.
I said OK fine.
And I get it that they re-recorded the album in studio.
But the original blueprint is on the you know on the self-titled debut as you're saying
Jeremy songs like Strutter and Deuce and Black Diamond.
You know these are songs that they played all the way up until the end.
And to me they're they're cool songs.
I mean I think Deuce is one of the greatest things they ever did.
So yeah.
There's you know and at the end of the day I think either get it or you don't.
That's cool too.
So that's fine.
Number seven moving on a band that has borrowed a lot from Kiss over the years a tremendous
amount for makeup to saying that they were never going to do meet and greets to platform
shoes to everything else.
Not everything but a lot of stuff.
Too fast for love by Motley Crue.
And this is funny because when I mentioned this to somebody they said you know a lot
of bands have put out great debut albums.
Well Motley Crue didn't.
And I'm thinking are you serious.
You know my first train of thought was OK.
I get it that you might say that shout at the devil is better but I would have a hard
time positioning anything else that they've done over too fast for love.
I listened to this album recently and as raw and as undercooked as the album is it's part
of the beauty of this album and it has great melodies on it.
It's got Mick Mars doing some fucking ridiculous guitar solos on it.
The band is on fire.
Nikki was literally on fire on stage.
But you know this is this was such a statement made by this band and that's why I always
have a hard time with them bitching about oh oh so many bands copied us after.
But you guys kind of copied yourselves and kind of became a parody of what you were because
they never touched these first two albums again in my opinion.
It's just my dumb opinion.
But there's just something raw and magical about this album.
It's the perfect storm.
It was a perfect launching pad.
So anyone else want to say something about too fast for love.
Yeah sorry Brad.
I bought Shout of the Devil first.
My Shout of the Devil is magical.
But when I heard this album I was a bit confused at the first couple of listenings but after
that it was I think it's a that's a that's a real debut album.
It's simple and it's raw and it's the recording is bad to say in lack of another word.
But I mean it's the melodies are so good and we all have read the dirt.
So I think it's a soundtrack of a time that most of us love.
So it's great album and by the way that wire is that's a great heavy metal tune.
I think everyone can agree on that.
So yeah that's that from that.
Thank you.
Brad, go ahead.
Johan said it all man.
Yeah it's a landmark album.
It really is.
I mean and look at all the stuff to follow those guys coming out of LA and other places
too.
I mean they were hugely influential but then you're right Victor they stole almost everything
from somebody else but they use that to kind of put together something that was at least
at the time original.
Right agreed.
Anthony what were you going to mention?
I don't know other than this is Head and Shoulders they're my favorite album.
Instead of saying their best album you know I think I did vote for this because basically
what you've everyone has already said in terms of debut albums it stands out.
Yeah it was year 10 actually.
So a band from the other side of the pond and also man this album is huge but I think
the opposite of Motley Crue I think what came after this kind of this was this first album
set the blueprint and the band really exploded afterwards in my opinion.
Exploded like the album cover I should say.
Led Zeppelin with what we all know now as Led Zeppelin 1.
Anyone Led Zeppelin 1.
Somebody must have voted for it.
I didn't vote for it but I did buy it quite early on not when it first came out and I
liked the bluesy sounds on it.
They did a lot of blues in the early days and you could tell the class that they had
on this album and it possibly isn't their best album but it's got some great songs
on it and shows the quality that they've got and the sort of technical prowess of Jimmy
Page.
So it's certainly up there and I think probably if I'd have been around at the time it came
out when it was actually released and was really into it then and I was in my 20s then
I probably would have been blown over by it because if you think about the sort of stuff
that was getting released around that time it probably was one of the better releases.
So just so you guys realize the magnitude of this, US radio to this day still plays
and this is every single day these songs get played on terrestrial radio.
Good times, bad times, babe I'm gonna leave you, you shook me, dazed and confused, your
time is gonna come, black mountainside, communication breakdown and from time to time you'll hear
how many more times.
That's like the one that gets popped in and out.
So outside of one song which is I Can't Quit You Baby, the rest of this album gets played
every day on US radio.
Dan go ahead.
Every day that it does come on I change the channel and find something else to listen
to.
So I want to say one other thing, I didn't use Rolling Stone magazine to come up with
my top 10 list.
Okay.
Ooh.
Fair enough.
Well I will say this Dan, yours is one of the most diverse and you'll see when I post
the full list, you'll see that there's a lot of different stuff out there.
The thing is, like I said, 12 through one got a lot of votes.
So I think close to what you're saying with Zeppelin up to what?
Houses of the Holy maybe?
Almost every single song gets played on the radio.
I mean it's one of the reasons why we stopped listening to terrestrial radio where I worked
because Zeppelin, Aerosmith, ACDC, Ozzy, Van Halen, we didn't want radio to ruin these
bands for us because Rush was another one actually as well.
We didn't want radio to ruin the bands for us.
So we decided that we wouldn't listen to radio anymore.
But I get what you're saying Dan.
Now I can listen to Zeppelin once a year.
I get my fill and then it's okay.
Let's put it away for 365 days.
It's a formula that they use.
It's obviously some sort of success.
I've taken part in radio listening party of what we should listen to and give my opinion
and they paid me whatever money to participate.
But I'm sure I was useless because I don't feel like everybody else that I've already
heard those songs enough time that I like to hear something different and something
new and yeah, you know.
It is called the Abrams Report.
It is the stupidest fucking thing that was ever invented.
The Abrams Report are the 50 songs that are recommended that you should play every single
day on radio.
Eagles Hotel California.
Oh yes.
So we can come up with the 50 quickly because it's the same damn songs and it's been the
same songs since the late 80s.
How many Fleetwood Mac songs are on that list?
Oh my God, it's fucking maddening.
Must be a few journey ones.
This finally got a little bit of light.
Did I put a spark in this shit?
Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles, Jackson Brown.
It's shit that I think makes it rain every time that these songs are played.
I mean, it's and I'm going to bust this out quickly, but Mr. Mark Striegel, we would always
have these discussions off air.
You'd be like, you like the Eagles, don't you?
No, I don't.
You don't?
Like, no, I fucking hated hearing, you know, the same 10 Eagles songs on the radio every
day was one of the only rock songs that my ex-wife liked was Desperado by the Eagles.
He'd played all the fucking time.
It drove me nuts.
So my counterpunch to that was playing Crush by Anthrax all the time, which he hated.
So anyway, moving forward at number five, the self-titled debut of an album that scared
the shit out of a lot of people.
I think Brad is laughing because it's probably one of the albums most heard in his house.
At least CEO Dave plays it all the damn time.
Still today.
It is the title debut by Black Sabbath.
I played too often on the Sirius XM, Ozzy's Boneyard with Striegel that I'm getting for
free right now is this shit.
And I could rather hear the Ronnie stuff than that.
And they just, they replayed the same thing over and over.
Wow.
Yeah.
What Sirius has become and thankfully I stopped subscribing years ago because it's become
terrestrial radio.
It has.
I mean, it's, you're paying to hear the same shit that you hear on regular radio all the
time.
But anyway, who wants to speak to, go ahead, Brad.
I just have to say that on Yard Metal, we have a Black Sabbath song coming up in four
songs and it's falling off the edge of the world.
And I think that Jeremy's introducing this song.
You want to hear a very passionate Jeremy talking about this song when we're done.
Jeremy are you getting that royalty check?
Because Brad's telling me that mine is in the mail, but I've yet to see it.
He's telling me.
Jeremy's is in the mail too, but I keep hearing that they're on strike over there.
My lawyers have sent a cease and desist letter immediately to stop him playing my track.
Johan, you raised your hand.
Go ahead.
Yeah.
Just want to say that in the eighties in Sweden, early eighties, we were still like DDR here.
And when I bought that album, it was because of the album cover.
It was scary and it was mystical.
And when I put on the record, I thought it was, I needed some time to light that record
when I was around 13, 14 and I light multi crew on the side.
But it took me perhaps two or three listings to that album.
And I loved it.
It's so good.
And it's such a nice rock album and I don't know about you guys, but I think it's the
cover and the songs are matching together.
It's one of those albums.
So it has earned its place on the top of the bill.
Okay.
Yeah.
And you have to remember that this album came out, was it 1970?
So I was like three years old when this came out and didn't obviously didn't hear it when
it first came out.
It was much, much later.
And it scared me to shit.
I was absolutely scared to shit when I heard it.
I must have been probably 10 years old.
Somebody brought it, looked at the cover and then they played that first track really loud
as well.
And I just thought, fucking hell, what is this?
Either I'm going to get into this kind of music or I'm just going to hate it.
But I actually liked the sound of it.
And N.I.B. I think on the album is amazing riff.
And there's just three or four songs on the album where you just thought that is absolute
class.
Some of the other songs were not so good.
They sort of got better, didn't they?
I'm paranoid.
But yeah, it's an incredible debut really, if you think about it, because it's very different
to anything else that was out there at the time.
There were no Dancing with Girls to Black Sabbath by Black Sabbath.
All right.
So at number four, another band out of California, a band that I think with this album, we thought
that we would be getting 10, 15, 20 albums out of them.
And to date, we've gotten four without counting a covers album.
It is Appetite for Destruction by Guns N' Roses.
Another huge album that I remember this came out.
And I've told the story a million and one times, probably as many times as Sweet Child
of Mine has been played on the radio.
When this came out, I mean, that was and still is my automatic skipper on the album.
But I remember telling everyone here, they're going to be big.
No, they're not going to be big.
They've got all this profanity.
They've got this.
They've got that.
And sure as shit, I came back from vacation here and Sweet Child of Mine was everywhere.
It was nauseating.
But anyway, I love the rest of the album.
I mean, I still listen to it from time to time, more so the deeper cuts than the actual
singles, because the singles have been played to death.
But I get why it got voted so high.
Anyone else want to mention something about Appetite for Destruction?
I don't like that album.
No, I and it's an honest opinion.
It's not.
No, I have never listened.
I don't own it.
And I it's not my I don't know.
It's a good album now.
I can understand.
But back then, no.
And now, no, no, that's not my band.
OK, sorry to say, but it's not my band.
No, that's that's I'm very honest about that.
So but I'm I know that I'm that a lot of people don't agree with me right now.
But no, no, I think there's a lot of people that actually do agree with you because Axl
Rose is an acquired taste, I do think, even though I enjoyed I know that there are a lot
of people that do not like his voice or his attitude.
But Dan, this yeah, we can agree to disagree.
It's OK.
It's a perfect album for me.
But then I grew up in it.
I knew when it was coming out, I was here in the Hollywood area when the scene was what
it was.
So that's all we heard.
Not all my friends even like this band, this album.
So they could be in a different stuff.
But I it's a perfect album.
It's the way it's mixed.
It's the way if you listen to it on headphones, you hear each guitar in each year and you
can hear different things going on.
And I like that it was, you know, mixed different.
I wish other bands had done that.
And yeah, I thought that there was more to come from this greatness of this album.
And then it all went downhill.
So to say, you know, a top 10 debut album, and then it kind of all went downhill from
there, that this is a good example of that.
And what he's done now is ruined his not his legacy, but it's a shame Axl's voice is not
what it is.
And he can't do it without help.
What's that?
OK.
And the current songs are not nowhere near as good.
I mean, if you look at this album, there's probably about six tracks on there that are
absolute classic songs.
And to be on that one album, you know, the debut album is incredible.
I remember when it came out and a friend of mine played it to me and I just thought it
was really, really classy sounding, you know, hard rocking album that I had not heard anything
like it at that particular time.
And I just thought you could just tell this band was going somewhere, even if they didn't
produce so many great albums afterwards.
They just became massive, didn't they?
Quite deservedly so, in my opinion.
They're still massive.
And you can argue that that's really just one album.
Yeah.
They're almost the definition of a band that is living off their first album.
And we're like all people here are probably of an age where we witnessed this album and
this band getting big.
Like I was certainly into this album when it was just a few people knew about it.
You know, I'm not saying I was into them first or anything, but they certainly were listening
to this album before it was big and witnessed them getting bigger and bigger and becoming
enormous.
And then producing albums that weren't as good.
But they made a mistake.
They shouldn't have done Use Your Illusion 1 and 2.
They should have just compacted it into one album and picked the best tracks.
And if they'd have done that, they may have had a much better career out of it because
they would have had a really good second album.
Yeah.
But it's like the first album was so big, so quickly that their heads just got fucked
up and they made stupid decisions.
Like, you know, so they're like of all the bands like who are, I'm sure how many songs
from this are they still playing?
Probably the majority of their set.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
And the stuff they're producing now is absolutely dreadful compared to that, compared to this
debut album.
I mean, you wonder if they can actually make a proper rock song.
You know, the amazing thing is they're one of the few rock bands that can still headline
a stadium and sell all the tickets.
Yeah.
It's incredible.
Really based with just one album.
Yeah, it's a legacy thing, isn't it?
It's just because of their characters as well.
And also because of Slash.
Slash carries them a lot.
Yeah, but you look at Slash on his own, he's not packing, he's not playing big places in
America anyway.
I mean, when his solo band comes out, they're playing kind of larger clubs here.
Right.
They're quite big over here.
He fills out, you know, decent sized places here.
Anyway, we're going off topic a little bit.
That's all right.
They're an enigma to me.
I mean, the fact that you can have one really big first album and yet have a whole career
without doing anything else great and still be huge.
It's unbelievable what they've done.
I don't think you can see there's any other band like that.
No.
Yeah.
My intro to them was Cowbell and that first chord in Night Train.
Night Train.
That's my favorite song.
That was I remember Eddie Trunk played it and I was like, what the hell is this?
It was so different.
And that's when, you know, he would play Night Train.
He played it for a few subsequent weeks on his show.
And then then I heard Welcome to the Jungle.
And then I had a friend who wanted to borrow my Number of the Beast single.
And he says to me, is there anything that that you want to borrow of mine?
And his favorite band was Striper.
I said, what do you have that isn't Striper?
I got this tape by this band Guns N' Roses.
I'm not sure if I like them or not.
I said, oh, that's that Night Train band.
I'm like, yeah, I want to hear that.
So that's how I got turned on to them.
And just to answer your question.
So in their last show, they played a little over a month ago.
Let's see.
They played It's So Easy, Bad Obsession, Chinese Democracy, Slither, which is a Velvet Revolver
song, Mr. Brownstone, Pretty Tied Up, Welcome to the Jungle, Hard School, Reckless Life,
Absurd, Strange, You Could Be Mine, Perhaps, The General, Live and Let Die, Knockin' on
Heaven's Door, Rocket Queen, Anything Goes, Double Talking Jive, Civil War.
Now that's Slash's solo, Sweet Child of Mine, November Rain, Patience, Don't Cry, Coma,
Night Train and Paradise City.
So out of 20 songs, eight are off of this album.
Yep.
It's incredible.
So anyway.
And nobody's standing up during the rest of those songs.
Wow.
Go get beer and go to the bathroom during a Guns N' Roses show.
We only bought their friend.
They came to our attention because they covered Rose Tattoo on their first EP.
So I was like, oh, this is a band that's covered Rose Tattoo.
Cool.
Right.
And I think isn't a whole lot of Rosies on that as well.
Yeah.
Yep.
All right.
So number three, a band that this show knows a thing or two about.
Hmm.
Could it be Armin?
So say on the new thing, guys, come on.
Yeah.
If you hadn't let all these other people vote, Victor, this would have been number one.
You know, that's funny.
I didn't think of that.
Do the numbers again with just the patrons.
Guarantee Iron Maiden will be number one.
I don't know because the number two kind of surprised me.
Number one.
Number one, I had a hard time not making it my number one, but it was high for me as well.
The top three are there on my.
A lot of these are on my list for God sakes.
Anyway, we talked about Iron Maiden at length last week.
We voted for Iron Maiden.
Anyone else want to add anything about the self-titled debut by Iron Maiden that wasn't
discussed last week?
Dan, you weren't here.
Anything you want to say?
No?
Okay.
So, Brad, you're probably right.
It would probably be number one if it was just the patrons.
Yeah.
All right.
Number two.
We're talking about picture discs.
There's a picture disc over here and it is the number two album.
It has Murray on the cover with a priest.
Wow.
Dio.
Holy diver.
I did not expect this to be that high.
It was my number two.
A lot of people voted this number one and number two.
My number one.
Your number one.
So, Johan is not wrong.
Johan, holy diver.
Yeah, it's, you know, it's.
Yeah, Sean is right.
I mean, when it came out, it was here in Sweden.
It was a really big hit.
Everyone liked it.
Both, you know, girls and boys.
And it was a good cover.
And the song, holy diver, was, you know, kind of a hit.
For me, it was the song, stand up and shout.
It was amazing and still is today.
Best opening song to a concert to this day.
So that album is, I mean, I feel like Ronnie saved up to release that album.
So that was a good one.
And like the climate of the world in the 80s, that cover was a bit, even here in Sweden,
a bit, you know, it was a tough cover.
I can only imagine how it was in the USA.
So it's now I think that's that is a really good album cover wise and song wise.
Thank you.
OK, Brad, anything to add to that?
Johan said it all.
I think we've talked about Dio before.
This album is just it's a landmark album for our genre of music.
And it's just remarkable that he would be again out of Black Sabbath.
My top two albums were guys that had just left Black Sabbath and did albums.
And just unbelievable how that worked out.
Plus, you had Black Sabbath on the list as well.
So you kind of covered all bases.
If it wasn't for this album, we, you know, the world wouldn't really know much about
Ronnie James Dio.
I mean, this this this album propelled him and he unlike G&R, he followed it up with
other good albums, too.
So it wasn't that he only had one good album.
He's had an incredible career.
Think of think of the streak.
Heaven and Hell, Mob Rules, Holy Diver and Last in Line.
How many bands alone, not just one artist, can string four monumental albums in a row
like that?
You.
Sorry, Victor.
I have to jump in there.
But Long Live Rock and Roll, Rising and Rainbow debuted.
So there you go.
You've got this streak even more.
That's like seven seven albums you just mentioned right there.
If we combine everything.
So I mean, think about that.
What other band has done that?
Maybe Iron Maiden with their first through Seventh Son.
Are there many more artists that have strung a bunch of strong albums like that together?
I mean, that was the funny thing that came out later with Vivian not getting paid, as
Ronnie said, I did all this music, all this great run of albums.
I never got paid.
I finally got to Holy Diver and I got paid.
Fuck Vinnie and he can't have his money.
That's how I look at it.
Good one, Dad.
Anthony, was there any special attention with this album in Ireland because Vivian was Irish
or is Irish?
I don't remember that being a thing.
Everyone knew he was Vivian from Sweet Savage.
No, I don't think he got any particular.
This album was and a lot of metal at the time was underground music here.
And this was a big underground record, you know, but it wouldn't have been it wasn't
news or it wasn't, you know, people didn't know who Dio were.
Okay.
Like you might say, like people wouldn't know.
People would have known who Twisted Sister were maybe, but not Dio.
Okay.
Wait, is that going to be our number one?
Well, we're about to find out here.
Considered by some the greatest American band of all time.
Is it Kansas?
Yes, Kansas.
I had to do that for you, Brad.
You thank you.
Thank you, Victor.
This is going to be a running gag for me from now on.
That guy on the ghost cult thing suggested that Kansas might be the greatest American
rock band ever.
I I'm like, what are you drinking?
What are you smoking?
What the hell is going on over there?
I mean, thank you.
Thank you, Victor.
You made my night.
Brad sent me just for those of you that don't know this, Jeremy's the only other person
that I mentioned this to.
Brad sent me his list the other day and Kansas is number one.
And I'm looking at it and I'm thinking he's he's got to be fucking with me.
There's no way that Brad voted Kansas number one.
And I'm you know, I'm being cordial.
I write back.
I say thank you for your list.
Cool artists, whatever, you know.
And then 10 minutes later, I get another message.
So you're ready for me to give you my real number one?
All right.
Perfect.
I like things.
I let that go.
That's.
Yeah.
So anyway, at number one.
Who's missing?
Who do you guys think is number one on here?
Halloween.
That was on your list.
Ha ha ha.
Found Hale and Shirley.
Yes.
Jeremy's right.
It's Van Halen.
You're right.
Dan, I regret not having Alice and Chains facelift on my list.
Good one.
After later, but it's not it.
Probably Van Halen amongst others.
Debuts is obviously I mean, you've got to say Van Halen cannot be outside the top 25.
Must be number one.
It must be.
It's not only a great debut album, but it's an album that changed music.
It changed everything.
Yeah.
Facelift is right there, Dan.
I actually just picked it up the other day on vinyl.
So I had to put debut albums behind there.
And let's see, is it?
That doesn't give it away as much as maybe this.
All right.
At number one.
It's Striker, isn't it?
Yes.
It is Van Halen with Van Halen 1.
There you go.
When I did that Kiss episode the other day and I was asked if Kiss was the greatest 70s
American rock band.
And after hearing Kansas and the Grateful Dead and The Doors, my instant thought was
it's David Lee Roth Van Halen, maybe Boston, but it's a Kiss episode.
No one else is saying Kiss.
So I'm going to say Kiss.
But Van Halen with David Lee Roth.
I mean, again, this album gets played every single day on American radio eruption.
And you've really got me.
Just quintessential music.
I mentioned Iommi before, but who has influenced guitar more than Eddie Van Halen?
I mean, we can talk about how big this album is.
We could talk about his solo on Beat It, which whether if you're a rock fan or not, if you're
just into pop music, you've listened to him at Nausium as well.
Thanks to that song.
Just so many things that, again, this is an album that I think marked a before and after.
It's not my favorite Van Halen album, but I get why so many people voted for it.
So Dan, you're out in California.
What does VH mean to the scene that you grew up in?
It was the start.
It was a lot to do with the clubs.
It was a lot to do with parties.
And they did it out in Brad's area.
And Brad was there too.
And it was the sound of Southern California.
That's the sound of summer.
Somebody asked me what summer is.
That is the music.
So that's that.
It's huge.
I mean, from without getting into the Laurel Canyon stuff that Anthony mentioned before,
like Fleetwood Mac or like the Eagles or Jackson Brown and all that stuff.
This was the first big Californian band that really Californian hard rock or just straight
up rock band that really left a stamp that I think really marked a before and after.
I mean, is there any other band that you can think of that was as impactful as Van Halen?
The Eagles.
But being there, Brad, same thing.
Was there any band that you noticed could the Eagles be considered bigger than Van Halen
at that time in Southern California?
I don't know.
Yeah, the Eagles, I don't think they were really considered California, even though
you got the hotel.
I guess.
What do I know?
I was into rock and rocking out.
And so, yeah, Van Halen is leaps and bounds above anything that was ever done by those
wonderful lads in the Eagles.
OK, anyone else want to mention something about Van Halen 1?
Yeah, it's an incredible mix of songs, I think, isn't it?
I mean, and also they did a few covers on it as well, but they did them really well.
You know, you really got me and you've got Ice Cream Man, which is probably one of my
favorite songs on the album because it's fun.
And that was the thing about Van Halen, they did everything with a smile on their face.
It was all fun.
You know, Dave Lee Roth was the ultimate frontman in the day.
You know, he was just incredible.
And a real mix of songs, really great playing, great bouncy bass.
Michael Anthony's bass is amazing.
And they set the scene for what was quite a few good albums that they released afterwards.
And like you say, probably there were one or two that might have exceeded this one,
but it was incredible.
And the opening track, Running With The Devil, is still one of my favorites from any band.
It's a really great track.
Yeah, most of this album, again, similar to some of the others that I mentioned, were
all over rock radio in the States, Running With The Devil, Eruption, You Really Got Me,
Ain't Talking About Love, Jamie's Crying, Ice Cream Man, and then even the deep tracks.
I mean, I think by the time I got to this album, I went backwards because my brother
had Fair Warning first.
But I remember I skipped over all the radio songs because I'd never heard I'm The One.
I'd never heard Atomic Punk or Little Dreamer on Fire.
And some of those songs are just so good and so different that Van Halen to me, you know,
was an album band because the songs were so good from from beginning to end, especially
during the Roth era, where even if a song didn't get on radio, you felt that, oh, OK,
they picked the wrong single because it should have been this song because this song is as
good or better.
So I mean, I'm looking at this now.
They released five singles off of this song off of this album.
They released You Really Got Me, Running With The Devil, Jamie's Crying, On Fire, and Ain't
Talking About Love.
I never heard On Fire on the radio ever where I grew up.
So that's it.
Oh, wait, it was a single in Japan.
So my bad.
That's why.
The other thing is it sounds so polished.
I mean, this was released 1978 and two years later in the UK, you've got bands who can
hardly play their instruments coming out playing heavy metal.
And, you know, this is like so far advanced than than anything at the time.
The sounds it was creating on the guitar is amazing.
Yeah, it sounds like it could have come out last week.
You know, it's amazing sounding.
And that's probably because it's so stripped down, really, you know, there's no there's
a couple of guitar overdubs on it, but like not many.
Yeah.
And for all of you kiss haters out there, there is a Van Halen Kiss Connection.
Oh, yeah.
There's Kiss Connections to everything.
They just whether the greatest American rock.
There you go.
No, but I was going to say that's that's what they want to think anyway.
But Gene Simmons did, quote unquote, discover them and produce the original demo, which
if you've never listened to the demo, it is really cool.
A lot of times you listen to some of these demos that have been passed around through
the tape trading days and they, you know, they're scratching, they don't sound well.
The songs on there are just as good as the first album with a different production set
to it.
There's a few songs different House of Pain, which appears on 1984 is on there.
It's a shame that there's some of the other tracks that that I guess ended up on a different
kind of truth, but a song like Bullethead, which they had back in the day, which was
really cool in the demo format.
But again, that isn't I don't think Gene produced that.
But anyway, enough about Kiss.
This is Van Halen.
Voted number one, not by a huge landslide.
Nine points separates that nine points between one and two, nine points between two and three.
And actually two points between three and four and four and five.
So the voting at the top was was was pretty tight.
In any event, I do want to thank everyone who's joining us.
Brad in Idaho, Anthony in I almost said Idaho again.
No, it's Ireland.
Look at that, Brad.
You did it again.
Now you're just doing it on purpose.
You're showing off.
Johan in Sweden, Jeremy in the UK and Metal Dan in California.
Thank you all you guys for joining me.
Thank you, Sean, for joining us in the chat.
Thank you to everyone who is listening or watching the replay of this.
It is greatly appreciated.
This was a jumbo sized episode, so there's really little else I can say.
I got to find the exit video.
How about that?
Anyway, guys, thanks everyone for joining us.
We'll see you next time right here on signals from Mars.
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