Live. Love. Life. Round 2 August 18th

We are so excited to be part of this worthwhile cause being totally put together by radio and TV personality Jane Monzures! Read on:

Gear up for Live. Love. Life.
Round 2: Where Grit Meets Glam 
Saturday, August 18, 2012 from 8pm-12am
Chicago Cultural Center, Yates Room

Buy your tickets today! Tickets available online atwww.live-love-life.org

 

It's a night of fashion and philanthropy where true American style hits the runway while boxers meet in the ultimate showdown.  The entertainment will excite Chicago’s most elite and fashion-forward crowd. Expect high-energy, knockout performances by fusion contemporary dancers and live musical acts plus more surprises to come.

Get down for the count and up for the cause. This year's Live. Love. Life. benefits the Northwestern Memorial Foundation and the Department of Neurology for research of degenerative brain diseases.

 

Follow us on Twitter @L3Chi
Like our Facebook Page Live. Love. Life. 

Favorite albums: Fair Warning

I was perusing through a couple of my favorite sites at our band practice the other night (spotify and grooveshark), which we use to listen to the original versions of the songs that we are learning. I got the idea to pull up Fair Warning which my bandmates were not too familiar with, even though they do like Van Halen. And it is typical of this album - it is overlooked and under-rated. People that like Van Halen sometimes aren't too familiar with it or don't regard it as highly as they should. That is absolutely a shame too because it their best album, in my opinion. 


 It is a band totally at their peak, and is pleasantly devoid of any of the obvious commercialism of their later work and darker and more powerful than their earlier albums. The cover itself is strange and dark. Pictures of people pummeling each other and ramming their head against the wall, are but a few of brutal scenes pictured.
You could read about the artwork used for the cover here.


Listening to it again, took me back to the nights in 1981, when my brother and I slept in the basement and would fall asleep to this record almost every night.  There were only 9 songs on it and one was a weird instrumental (Sunday Afternoon in the Park) featuring synthesizers that lead in to a punk-ish type tune called One Foot Out the Door.  It still had that fat synth going through the following song, which kind of tied the two tunes together.  It was just straight up atmospheric, inventive and tough sounding - everything you hoped a band with such high caliber musicians could be.  Confident in their expression, regardless of if it was commercially appealing.  Even Roth sounds mean and not as cheesy.


What is really awesome about this album for me, is how grooving it is.  The feel is funky, and swinging and Michael Anthony's bass is mixed better than previous albums.  Alex and him are totally locking it down and Eddie is laying over the top of it with impressionistic type genius.  He is taking his totally unique vocabulary to another level, and is doing things he didn't even do on the first three albums.  This is right before the band jumped the shark with Diver Down, which is full of keyboards and cover material.  Granted, Diver was recorded in 12 days, and is fun to listen to, but this is the band at their total artistic zenith.


I could give a blow-by-blow of the songs but hopefully you'll just check it out for yourself.  The opening guitar riff in the opening song, Mean Streets should be more than enough to suck you right in.  It's fierce! Enjoy!