Teaze - Tour of Japan

This is the one that got away from me back when I was in high school. There was a great little second-hand store I frequented all the time. It was where I got my used comics and picked up a seemingly inexhaustible number of Robert A. Heinlein paperbacks. Occasionally I'd get a Clarke or Asimov, but Heinlein was my jam.. 

They also had a small section with records. I picked up the first couple of PRISM albums there, along with my once-coveted copy of The Beatles White Album on white vinyl. There in the piles, where I found April Wine's Live!, was a copy of Tour of Japan.

I'd never heard of these guys, but it was a cool-looking cover with an awesome logo, and the inside of the gatefold was really cool too, with an extra panel of band photographs. They looked like they were killing it. I'd pick up and put back that album many times, and then one day it was gone.

Dang.

Fast forward more than a few years (fine ... decades), and I'm digging through a bunch of records and there it is: Teaze Tour of Japan. Oh man. I didn't even look at the price (it wasn't bad), brought it home, gave it a good clean, and a once-through.

My first impression was, goodness, these guys were bordering on metal and they rocked hard. A number of the songs were really long, but they weren't proggy — just long, delivered with gusto. The band's timing was pretty good, but here and there you could tell the guys were excited to be playing to an enthusiastic audience. The first time through, I didn't think the songs were all that memorable, but the band put everything they had into the performance and, as a whole, it all worked.

The album was fun, and it felt like a live album. You could tell the band was feeding off the crowd and obviously loved Tokyo, because they kept saying it. It's likely that when they went to Japan they weren't really sure what kind of reception they'd get, and I suspect they were more than pleasantly surprised.

When the guys went to Japan, they had two albums under their belt: their 1976 debut, executive-produced by Mel Shaw (yes, the guy who helmed all those killer Stampeders albums), and 1978's On the Loose, produced by George Lagios and engineered by Bill Szawlowski. George and Bill would also be the team behind the console for Tour of Japan.

The album does get better each time I spin it, and I've had it on and off a few times over the past few days. The boys really did have an extra edge to their rock. Brian Danter, the band's bassist and lead vocalist, had a great voice and at times reminded me here and there of Derek St. Holmes mixed with a little Bruce Dickinson. If that sounds good to you, it sounded good to me too.

The band's guitar players were solid, and heck, there's even a talk box solo, which was pretty cool. I absolutely love the white Ovation Deacon that Mark Bradac is playing in the photographs. Ovation really did try to make a go of their electrics in the '70s. It's funny how they were the "it" guitars for about five minutes, and now they're hardly a footnote. Still, the fact that Mark is still playing it today is pretty awesome.

The album is a fun ride, and while I'll admit that, as much fun as it was, it really wasn't quite my thing. I never really went from hard riff rock to the stuff bordering on metal. The guys certainly had a melodic sensibility, and there's a nice balance between the pop elements and the hard rock side of the band.

After Tour of Japan in '78 1979 should have been the band's big year, with Myles Goodwin producing One Night Stands — except, for whatever reason, the band wasn't able to build on their momentum. With the changing musical landscape, the band would release one more album in 1980 and call it quits.

Still, for all that, the band left behind Tour of Japan as the crowning jewel in their short discography. There was something special about the recording that made the total experience greater than the sum of its parts when taken individually. Not a shot — it's a compliment. Through sheer force of will, the guys were captured at their best, and it's there in the grooves for all to hear.

Post Script. Interesting that when I streamed this on Apple, the songs were all mislabelled and out of sequence. Not sure who was responsible, but someone needs to get that fixed.

Post Post Script. Not once but twice I incorrectly associated Teaze with Metal. I think this keeps happening because of the sheer enormity of Brian Danter's voice. The guy has a set of pipes, and there's nothing subtle about his delivery. He is a monster, and in my mind's eye this kind of voice is not something you hear in most hard rock.