Suzi Quatro - Your Mama Won't Like Me

Your Mama Won't Like Me was released in 1975 and was her third album in three years, as well as the follow-up to '74s Quatro. Yes, I know most of that sentence is clunky, but it says what I wanted it to say. Once again she partnered with Mike Chapman and Nicky Chinn, who produced the album and wrote three of the songs. The balance of the material was written by Suzi and Len Tuckey, except for the cover of "Fever," initially made famous by Peggy Lee and since covered by everyone from Elvis to Madonna.

Suzi's band was still anchored by Suzi on bass and Len Tuckey on guitar. Dave Neal was on drums, and Alastair McKenzie was on keys. This was the same lineup as 1974's Quatro. It's strange they weren't credited on the cover ... I guess we were supposed to recognize them from their pictures.

Speaking of credits, the album didn't have a lot of them, but they included Chris Mercer (tenor sax), Mick Eve (tenor sax), Steve Gregory (tenor sax), Bud Beadle (baritone sax), and Ron Carthy (trumpet), all of whom were members of the English R&B band Gonzales.

I didn't really expect much from Your Mama Won't Like Me, and the first time I put the record on I was farting around and not really paying attention. Honestly, my ears didn't perk up at anything going on in the background, so I figured it wasn't going to be that good. By the time I flipped it over I was in more of a listening mood, but still kind of preoccupied and didn't register much other than thinking that "Fever" sounded pretty cool.

It was when I put it on again and actually paid attention that things started to get good ... I mean, really good. I have a few of her records and I always enjoy them. Heck, if I find anything by her in the cheap bins when I'm out, I will add it to the pile. So I'm really not sure why this one seemed to be especially good.

For whatever reason I really hadn't thought of Suzi as a great singer. She was a triple threat: a solid bass player, a fantastic writer, and a killer front woman - but I was sleeping on the singing. Suzi has an amazing voice. From the opening track "I Bit Off More Than I Could Chew" she was drawing a line in the sand. The groove was infectious, and the horn section puts this over the top.

I know this is supposed to be considered glam and all that because of the Chinnichap association, but to me this is just good music. It's not hard rock, but it rocks. It's just so good.

While the first side contains the three excellent Chapman/Chinn compositions, it was the two Quatro/Tuckey songs that really stood out. "Strip Me" is a standout, but to me the best song on the first side was "Prisoner of Your Imagination." The volume swells in the riff were just jaw-dropping. The song just oozes swagger.

Side two featured all Quatro/Tuckey compositions except for the cover of "Fever." The songs are good, but the second side seemed to have a different feel. Rather than the swagger of side one, we got a selection of smouldering songs. "Fever," the song that initially grabbed my attention, is still really good, but it was the slow burn of the closing track "Michael" that really stood out for me. The strings were the icing on the cake, but it was Suzi's voice that gave this song - and frankly the entire album - its emotional centre. My goodness she could sing. I also found it really cool that her voice was recorded without a lot of effects or reverb. There's an immediacy to how she sounds that is really cool. There are a few instances on the album where her voice seems to crack, but it's not strain it's a deliberate affectation.

Suzi Quatro, for whatever reason, never really got the recognition in the US. I think she fared better in Canada, but she was embraced everywhere else and, depending on what you read, sold over 55 million records over the course of her career.

For those wondering about the spelling of Mama versus Mamma, it depends on where you live. For those outside of North America, you got the extra M ... it's like Mom versus Mum, I guess. Does it matter? No. No matter how you spell it, mother isn't going to like her.

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, 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 , "Don...

Gary Numan - The Pleasure Principle

"Cars" was really the only song I knew by Gary Numan. I knew the name of the album the song came from. Over the years bits and pieces of trivia are accumulated, but in terms of his music it was still distilled down to one song ... It would be too easy to write Mr. Numan off as a one hit wonder, and I suppose in terms of actual chart hits this was his defining moment as a solo artist. Of course this really means nothing, as Gary Numan would drop an album a year pretty much through to the end of the '80s. He'd then slow down a little but continues to make music. While The Pleasure Principle was Gary Numan's debut solo release in '79, he actually cut his teeth on a couple of albums in a band called Tubeway Army, first with the band's self titled release in 1978, and then on Replicas that came out in April of '79. By the end of Tubeway Army's run most of the band would follow Gary into his solo career. Paul Gardiner who had been with Gary from the beg...

Old Enough to Forget

Search This Blog