Angel - Angel a Helluva Band

I found these a while back, and they got filed away and eventually ended up at the bottom of the pile, and the pile just kept getting bigger. I decided maybe I should shuffle things around a little and see what's in there. Well, boy howdy, here are the first two albums by Angel: their debut and their follow-up Helluva Band from 1976. I remember finding these and being kind of stoked to hear them. I recognized Greg Giuffria's name from "Call to the Heart" back in '84, a song that was pulled right out of the Journey playbook, but I always liked it. So there.

The Angel albums were on Casablanca, the label KISS was on ... for me, this was the label of the gods. Except that the label would become only become profitable when they moved into disco and unleashed The Village People like a virus on the people of the world. The Angel albums came out back in '75 and '76 and, as you may have guessed, these records, while really, really cool, didn't exactly make the band a household name. Shit, even the Wiki page for Casablanca doesn't list the band among the notable acts signed to the label, but somehow Lindsay Lohan gets a mention.

Sigh.

I honestly didn't really know what to expect, but right out of the gate the album overdelivered with the opening track "Tower," which was heavy on keyboards, big on guitars, and featured the soaring vocals of Frank DiMino, whose voice seemed like a blend of Rik Emmett and Geddy Lee, which isn't exactly right, but I'm trying to give a sense of how he sounded. Just saying he had a killer set of pipes doesn't quite cut it.

The band was firmly on the hard rock side of things, but they were employing elements of prog that leaned more toward the pop side of things, accentuating the songs rather than going off on long, meandering tangents. The songs were grandiose, and boy, they sound good loud. Of course, if you're not into the big, loud excess of the mid-'70s, this album will be about as pleasant as getting bamboo shoots shoved under your fingernails.

The guys wore white satin suits and looked like a glam band, and I guess with their musical chops and penchant for going over the top, they certainly made it seem like they were part of the genre, but this was just rock and roll ... then again, I'm not great at identifying genres, so take whatever I say with a grain or three of salt.

Helluva Band picks up right where their debut left off, and the band was still comprised of:

Greg Giuffia on keys
Barry Brandt on drums
Frank DiMino on vocals
Punky Meadows on guitar
Mickey Jones of bass

Keeping with the same production team of Derek Lawrence and Big Jim Sullivan, Helluva Band didn't mess with the formula, and the songs were all pretty good. Now, I'm not going to gush and say this is the best stuff I've ever heard. However, it does grow on you, too.

I guess with so many bands vying for attention, having yet another band mining the same musical vein and not really doing anything overly original (some could argue it was generic and highly derivative) made it a hard sell, and not everyone was buying. Of course, listening now with fresh ears, you can tell there was something special about the musicianship. Greg was a top-tier keyboard player, and Punky Meadows was no slouch on guitar. Maybe he didn't qualify for guitar-hero status, as his playing tended to service the songs, but his solo work was tasty without being overly flashy.

I really enjoyed these albums, and while I'll admit that this era of '70s rock wasn't quite my jam, there was more than enough here to bear repeated plays. I will say that of the two albums, I was partial to the debut. Angel would drop an album a year until 1979, and then a live album in 1980 before the band ended their initial run.

It was fun having these on vinyl, and it's too bad my copy of Helluva Band was a little more well-loved than I like (a couple of songs on side two sounded particularly crackly), but it happens. Still, if you're curious, the box set Angel: The Casablanca Years (2018) is out there to be streamed.

Billy Rankin - Growin' Up Too Fast

Growin' Up Too Fast was never widely released on CD (if at all), and it was one of the albums I really wanted to get back after a basement flood wiped out my vinyl collection in the '90s (when no one really gave a shit about records, and my insurance gave me a couple hundred bucks for an appraised $10,000 collection). Way back in 1984, my (dearly departed and greatly missed) buddy Dave let me borrow his cassette copy, which included a bonus track of "Get It On (Bang A Gong)." When I eventually bought the album, I didn't know it was a bonus track, or even what a bonus track was. If that sentence was hard to read, just go back and skim it. I'm sure you'll get the gist. I'd find out later Billy was an off-and-on-again member of Nazareth and wrote some absolutely killer songs for them. At the time, though, all I knew was this guy laid it out cold with the opening cut, "Baby Come Back," then proceeded to lay down one killer tune after another bef...

Styx - Paradise Theater

Styx was hands down one of my favourite bands as a kid. They were a strange band, even back then. They were a hard rock band, almost progressive at times, who had a penchant for sucky ballads. I know there's a tendency for people to zero in on "Babe" as the song that killed the band's credibility. The roots go way back to almost the beginning when Styx released "Lady" on their second album. It showed a side to the band that needed to be kept in check, and for the most part the band kept things on a pretty tight leash. The band had been setting a gruelling pace, releasing an album a year (two in 1972) and by the time they released Paradise Theater (if I end up writing theatre later it's because that's how we spell it here) in 1981 they'd dropped ten albums in less than a decade. I snapped this up as soon as I saw it, and it became a fixture on my turntable. Like the band had announced on "Borrowed Time" from 1979's Cornerstone , ...

Lighthouse - Sunny Days

Bin diving at my local record store where there were more than a few choices to make. After picking out a half dozen treasures, I figured I'd stop looking and leave before I caused myself trouble at home. Lighthouse was one of those ridiculously large bands in the early 70s I didn't understand. I mean really, BTO was just four guys, The James Gang was three, until they weren't, what in the world do you do with a dozen guys in a band? Of course I had a radio — it was the first significant purchase I made with my money from cutting lawns. I think at the time it cost about 35 bucks, and had FM and other high frequency things I never got to use living out in the suburbs away from the reach of the big city FM signal. "Sunny Days" was a great song. I remember thinking it was cool and didn't switch to the other AM station when it came on. A few years later, when I got my first record player, the obligatory K-Tel anthologies would feature a myriad of cut up and edited...

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