Nazareth - Hair of the Dog - 1975
This one is one of those albums that I haven't listened to much in quite a while. It has two big hits, which are great classics, and those have been appearing quite often in my playlists, but other than that, I can't remember how long it's been since I gave it a listen.The band had already released five previous albums, with which they gained some quite a bit of recognition in the UK, and this one was their international breakthrough album.
I've enjoyed listening to this in full again, because of how straight forward and unpretentious it is. Hard rock at its best, simple, raw, and a lot of fun to listen to.
I really never knew much about this band, I'm pretty sure I have one or two more albums by them to spin in the future, and listening to this one, I think I want to give more of their discography a try.
A fundamental album for every hard rock fan.
- Of course, just in case, those two big singles are "Hair of the Dog" and "Love Hurts". The latter was actually not theirs, but an Everly Brothers cover.
- Actually, there's a good chance that "Love Hurts" was the first hard rock song I ever listened to. There was this compilation album called "In Concert", which didn't have one single live track but had a very varied list of songs and artists, mostly pop (I remember Boney M with "Ma Baker", and Al Stewart's "Year of the cat", among others). And it also had Nazareth with "Love Hurts", and I remember loving it even back then.
- And now I can't make up my mind on what to put here, because "Hair of the Dog" is a hell of a badass song, and "Love Hurts" is so beautiful and tragic sounding. But there's also this track called "Please don't Judas Me", which is massively brilliant, and a less well known song by the band, so I'm posting this one. Check the bonus tracks though.
You can do what you please
Kiss - Dressed to Kill - 1975
The first thing that struck me was how often they were releasing albums back then. This is the third album they released in roughly a year.
The second, which is related to the first, is that this one only lasts half an hour, which was remarkably short even back then. I can't really remember, but apparently the spacing between songs was extended in the original vinyl, to make it look a bit longer.
And both these things are clearly related to the fact that, by then, while they were already a massive success in live concerts, they still weren't doing all that well as far as records sells goes.
The result is what you would expect, actually. While it sounds much better than the previous one, and it has a few of the best known Kiss classics, there's a lot of filler here too.
And some of the best songs, like "C'mon and Love me", "Rock Bottom" and "Rock'n'Roll all Nite", will always sound to me like they were born to be played live, and sound a bit pale in comparison here. I know it's mostly because I first listened to Alive! before ever listening to the album, so probably I'm biased.
It's not a bad album at all. But sometimes I wish they had released only one album with the best tunes of this one and its predecessor, and that would be a great album.
- The one other song that, while also being in Alive!, doesn't sound too washed out to me here is "She". It's a really good song and also has an interesting guitar solo, influenced by The Doors' "Five to One". Also, apparently the solo was pretty much copied by Pearl Jam for their song "Alive". So that's the song I'm sharing here.
Bonus tracks
- You know I'm not gonna pass up the opportunity to put some Supernatural here, don't you? Especially not when the song is "Hair of the Dog". As I said, badass.
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