Lost/Forgotten Album #25

[Jon]

 

(Dedicated to Noodles, my rock 'n' roll buddy)

 

I'm going to try something a bit different this week by featuring an fairly unknown album that I found out about from reading one of Martin Popoff's series of "The Collector's Guide To Heavy Metal" books. This week's album comes from the first volume in the series, strangely subtitled "Volume 1: The Seventies" (strange since volume 2 was the 80's and volume three was, well, you can probably guess).

 

I had heard of Ram Jam before from their version of "Black Betty" that came out in 1977. Cool song, but never bothered to go out and find an album from the band. However, this changed when reading the first volume because Martin really, really liked the album and my interest was piqued so much so that I had to find the album somehow, someway. 

 

Not an easy find however since the album had never been released on CD. So, I had purchased volume one in 2004 and for the next few years checked out Amazon regularly to see if the album would ever be released. And then one day, after going awhile without checking because I had basically given up, there it was: a pre-release date for April 2006 and I was in.  

 

So what do we have? Pure 70's hard rock: something to put into the CD player, roll the windows down and cruise. For a total blind buy, never having heard a song from this album, this was well worth the purchase. (For those wondering, this album was graded as a 9/9 in the book: 9 out of 10 for heaviness and 9 out of 10 for how much Martin liked the album.) 

 

Going forwards, I'm going to ocassionally toss an album in from one of the three books. THere's quite a few albums and bands I had never hard of or didn't pay attention to until reading these books. Indispensible as reference books that you will find yourself picking up repeatedly, I highly recommend you hunt them down and purchase...as well as this week's album, of course.

 

 

Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Ram

 

1. Gone Wild*

2. Pretty Poison

3. The Kid Next Door

4. Turnpike*

5. Wanna Find Love*

6. Just Like Me*

7. Hurricane Ride*

8. Saturday Night*

9. Runway Runaway

10. Please, Please, Please (Please Me)

 

 

Availability: Not sure if this is going OOP again, but can be found for around $15.

 

MSoTW: I'll give last week's to (gasp!) Rjhog! Congrats, you won nothing. This week we're back on track because he won't get it. Oh well.   

 

 

[Niels (Mod)]

I kind of like this album. Some good oldfashioned heavy-rock. A friend of mine had the "Ram Jam-album", and maybe I should have bought some music from this band too. I considered it, but I never did.

MSoTW I know nothing about.

[Scott]

My best friends older brother had the Ram Jam album with Black Betty on it.  I think we wore that sucker out, at least that song.  But on the occasions when we let the album play past Black Betty there was some ok stuff on it.  Inevitably we always lifted the needle and replayed Black Betty so we could try to sing that "Famble Dam" part over and over.  Never heard the other side of the album, so all that said to say this is my first listen an entire Ram Jam album, and I gotta say, its not too bad!  I'm about 50/50 on this

 

MSoTW?  Kind of has a Megadeth feel to some of the vocals, but I don't think that's it, so no other ideas.  But I will not hold out any hope of others discovering anytime soon.  haha, so I will be drawing on my ample lyrical search skills to flesh this one out...

[RJhog (Admin)]

Breaking News...I do not know the mystery song, or artist, or year it was released, or label, or guest artists that perform on it.

 

I'm kind of in the same ball park as Scott with Ram Jam.  I had only heard Black Betty, and as a youngster, thought that was one of the greatest songs ever, but my favorite lyric was "the damn thing gone wild".  As I've gotten older, I change radio stations when that song comes on now.  But, I think this is pretty good as well.  Gone Wild was a cool song, and the riff to Please, Please, Please (Please Me) could be one of those hidden gem riffs that Scott reflected on a while back.  My favorite song on the album is Turnpike.  That song is fantastic.  Good post Jon.

[Scott]

Found the MSoTW.... 

 

Jon please advise, 100% sure on this one and I don't think anyone will get it unless they can match my considerable lyrical searching skills...

[Jon]

Give me the initials of the OTHER band the guitarist was in....the big one, he's done some smaller stuff. And I'll let you know if you're right, Mr Master Lyric Search Guy.

[Scott]

MB

[RJhog (Admin)]

Megabeth???

[Jon]

Scott's trying to do a Mr. Joel thing by being a big shot. Don't mind him....