Captain Howdy

So been a bit quiet the last week as was finally admitted to hospital on Friday 1st April for my final treatment, the big one. Had my heavy dose chemo last weekend which essentially destroys my bone marrow, a few rest days and then had stem cell infusion on Thurs. Doing well for the most part right now but fully expect a bit of a down turn as it's pretty much par for the course, but all about moving backwards to move forwards. Will be in for around 3 more weeks depending on how it goes. Will try to pop back in here and there as hospital WiFi is free.

Remind me of Towers Of London (well their first album, not the shitty 2nd one)

New single, Rotten Romance, out April 1st

I had no idea Guy Richie was in the band I thought it was Guy Griffin. ha ha

One of the most random things ever

Also a UK tour in October around the time the album comes out, and sharing the bill with Winger. https://planetradio.co.uk/planet-rock/news/rock-news/skid-row-uk-tour/ Tickets are a bit pricey for the venue, but with Winger on the bill and two other bands (Phil X & The Drills plus Collateral) makes it a fair price. As for that Aussie tour, I am sure Reckless Love will help them shift some tickets as well.

My guess is it is something similar to the LA Guns situation with Steve Riley. He was not a founding member, and although was in the liner notes, did not even appear on the debut as he joined the band after it was recorded. Early on a lot of these bands probably did not go through all the legal name ownership stuff til they got signed, and then when they did they probably split the band name ownership between them all or certain members. Griffin was not a founder, but apart from Spike, is the only member to have been on every single album release since the debut, so my guess is he co-owns the name due to a deal in the early days or through the years. And let's not even go into the whole "who owns the name Ratt" debacle. When you have been in a band together as long as those two, I guess they probably felt they had a level of trust and never expected anything like this to happen. Maybe we will end up with two Quireboys bands.

Closer to 38 years. First got together in the mid 80s (around 1984/1985 I think) and released their first singles in 1988. Without Spike it will basically be a bunch of dudes nobody knows. Even Griffin, who has been around since the start is hardly known to anyone outside diehard fans.

Skid Row, easily. As I have said many times, pre Erik H.E.A.T. never did anything for me, but I will say the new song sounds musically a lot more like Erik era, so of course I will give it a chance. With Skid Row, it is not so much about Skid Row as I have not given a shit about them post Bach, it's about Erik. If it captures any of the Skid Row sound that is great, but otherwise I am looking at it as an Erik solo album and will judge it on it's own merits rather than as part of the Skid Row discography.

Have to say this album really has surprised me, to the point that every song (except the intro) has made into my playlist. Yes I still love the first three albums more, but I think this is their most consistant album, start to finish. And forget about the synth, Pepe still rips on the guitar. Invader had some good moments, but was overall a patchy affair, so it's nice for them to return with such a banger of an album.

Well its better than repeating one word over and over again.

The style hit me straight away as being similar to the debut, but listening back to it a couple of times and I think they have purposely dropped in little segments of various songs to emphasise it. I might be over analysing it, but that's how it sounded to me.

As someone who was never a fan of the first two albums, it will come as no surprise that I prefer the Skid Row song (it cannot be a coincidence they both dropped the same day, surely). That said, this to me sounds better than the first two albums as musically it has more in common with Erik era H.E.A.T. I did like the song and gives me hope that I will still enjoy H.E.A.T. now Erik is gone, but repeating Nationwide as the chorus was a bit shit though.

Just listened to the song again, and at 2:09 I thought they were starting to play Rattlesnake shake. Edit: actually the more I listen to it the more I hear little exerpts of other songs from the debut. A bit of Sweet little sister here, some Piece of me there.

Me likey.

Yer getting old and memory is failing, Geoffrey.

Funnily enough this was just recommended to me on YouTube so had a listen. Kinda reinforces my opinion that the other original guys in Skid Row are just as douchey as they accuse Seb of being. Not once would I say that Seb is not part of the problem, but I will say I think they are all to blame, and in this day and age I am starting to side with Seb more and more. I think Seb has carved out a pretty decent solo career in the last few years and has done other stuff like stage shows and TV shows, so I do not think he needs Skid Row, but he is the one up for it while SR has continued to bury their legacy. Just listening to Sabo talk about Harnell and Solinger in this interview makes me dislike him even more. With every nice comment he makes, he says something else shitty, and it just seems that the reason they cannot hold on to a singer is because those three are too controlling and want a puppet to manipulate as their front man. God I hope they can see value in Erik as a creative person and let go of their attitude of "we do things this way, and we ain't gonna change". As Seb says at the end of this video, he has worked with a lot of people who have no issue with him, and the last time these guys were even in the same room together was during the 90s, so what he was like now and what he was like then are not necessarily the same. We all know he is loud, cocky and opinionated (plus can be annoying), but you only have to look at his social media to see that Seb now is not the Seb who wore a "AIDS kills fags" t-shirt, many years ago. I hope to god this works out for Erik, and I would love to hear some cool as fuck Skid Row music again, but I am not convinced this will work out, sadly. We are all too old and too ugly to be holding onto grudges, and these guys need to learn that. If the guys in GNR and Motley can put aside their feelings to work things out, if Eddie and Dave could put aside theirs, and Ozzy and Sabbath could put aside theirs, then so can these miserable old bastards.

I think the thing is, Erik is probably a far bigger name right now than Skid Row. Yes they are a legacy band, but without Seb they have struggled to retain a fanbase. I reckon H.E.A.T. albums sold more copies world wide than the last few Skid Row releases. I do think the biggest benefit they have with him is vocally he can probably match Seb vocally, which not many can do. He will be just as good at the classic ballads as he will at the harder Slave material. They have certainly picqued my interest in the band again.