One side effect of the recent iPod invasion is sorting through all my old CD's looking for ammo. Some of this stuff I haven't listened to in years...one of the consequences of marriage is a certain restriction on your viewing and listening habits. Not that the wife strikes a pose with a frying pan and makes proclamations, but my enjoyment of a lot of stuff is environment dependent.
It's not much fun to tuck in to a wire-fu classic with someone who's not on board for arterial spray and ninjas sailing through the forest on giant spinning blades, for example (she's lucky that way, because I'm as down for a minimalist subtitled Swedish tragedy of manners as a movie chronicling the various adventures & swordfights of a deposed Shogun's disgraced executioner).
Same goes for Motorhead...they're a delicate flower that needs a receptive audience to fully blossom.
Today the wife is gone, so I threw on a platter I haven't heard in far too long- Rock n Roll, home to Eat the Rich, one of their greatest tunes.
The album as a whole isn't a career-defining high point like Orgasmatron, but it delivers the rock with a minimum of pretense & only one AOR-friendly power ballad (which is worth a listen just to just to hear Lemmy rupture something vital while straining to sound tender and caring).
So, listening to it nearly 20 years on (yes, I owned the original on vinyl) I noticed something odd that didn't register on the fresh pink shells of my youthful ears- this is the only metal album I've heard with slide guitar solos. There's one capping Eat the Rich and another couple tucked away in various corners of the album.
Motorhead being one of the most straight-ahead hard rock outfits ever, it's an unexpected bit of flavor that stands out to my mature (some might say 'grizzled') musical palate...and an excuse to make the wife listen to it!
"no, no wait...you gotta hear this slide guitar thing at the end...."
bonus music note:
TV on the Radio's latest drops sometime next month. I'm all aflutter....
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