So what if you had records to listen to?

[Krlll Mule]

Man, that brings back memories.  Have you heard Sad Wings of Destiny?  It was my first exposure to JP.  Still sounds good all these years later. I think the lead singer sounded excellent on this album err 8-track.     
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVDlIi1LaEA

I took my girlfriend - now wife - to a JP concert around 1980 and was a little nervous about it because she was a sweet, sheltered, innocent southern belle who never did the stuff I did in highschool.  Her favorite artist was Dan Fogelberg (I like him too believe it or not) and the closest thing to head music she listened to was Pink Floyd's "The Wall". I think the band's name alone kinda scared her.  Sure enough, after the warm up bands are through, the lights come back on and there is a GIANT goats head taking up most of the back wall! I thought to myself then....darn it, I'm not gonna see this whole concert and I was right. We split about half way through.

[|iR|Focalor]

Have you heard Sad Wings of Destiny?  It was my first exposure to JP.  Still sounds good all these years later. I think the lead singer sounded excellent

Oh of course I have. I had every last one of their studio albums (and one live album) on CD at one time. Except the ones with Ripper Owens. Yeah, he sounds a little like Rob Halford, but I never jumped on the bandwagon with the folks that welcomed him with open arms. But alas, I don't have a single one of them anymore after I made the mistake of keeping my old car stocked with the majority of my CD collection all over the passenger seat, backseat, and floorboards and left the car unlocked sitting in the driveway one night back in 04 I think. Someone came along and was nice enough to clean my car up of all the unsightly litter of CD's in their cases. But these days, I don't do much CD shopping anymore. I keep all my music on MP3 now, with a pretty extensive music library folder that's grown to about 110gb last time I checked.

But when I hear the early Priest albums, in a way, they somewhat remind me of Rush. Rush is cool, but like many people, I'm not too terribly enthused about Geddy Lee's vocals. Would've been really cool to hear a guy like Rob Halford on vocals for Rush. Halford had more boom to his voice than Geddy Lee and yet could still reach those higher registers at times. Whereas Geddy Lee just ALWAYS sounded like a cat getting mashed under a truck tire.

I took my girlfriend - now wife - to a JP concert around 1980 and was a little nervous about it because she was a sweet, sheltered, innocent southern belle who never did the stuff I did in highschool.  Her favorite artist was Dan Fogelberg (I like him too believe it or not) and the closest thing to head music she listened to was Pink Floyd's "The Wall". I think the band's name alone kinda scared her.  Sure enough, after the warm up bands are through, the lights come back on and there is a GIANT goats head taking up most of the back wall! I thought to myself then....darn it, I'm not gonna see this whole concert and I was right. We split about half way through.

I tried getting one of my ex's to go with me to a Slayer concert once. Told her how unbelievably insane the crowds always are, how extra-violent the mosh pits usually are too, and that wasn't much of a good idea. And then one time as we were riding in my truck to go get some dinner somewhere, she started reading the lyrics to my new Slayer CD, Christ Illusion. Some pretty decidedly ANTI-Christian lyrics in a few of the songs from that album. After that she was like, "You want ME to go to see THIS? Oh, I don't even think so. In fact I don't wanna even hear this shit played on the radio anymore with me in the truck with you." I had to stick to my "lighter" more female-friendly metal after that, stuff like Type O Negative and Danzig.

Kinda reminds me of the story my folks used to tell me about the time my dad talked my mom into going to a concert with him. Apparently when I was just a baby, my dad got my mom to go with him to the Champagne Jam at the old Fox Theater in Atlanta, I think, not sure about the venue, sounds right though. It was several bands, Aerosmith, Atlanta Rhythm Section, Mothers Finest, several others I forget. And my mom grew up in the late 60's and had plenty of friends that smoked pot and dropped acid, but she NEVER tried it, not even once, and was strictly against it. Well apparently my dad was having a good time, drinking a beer, watching the bands. And then about the time Atlanta Rhythm Section went on stage, everybody around them started lighting up joints and shit, and my mom freaked the fuck out and demanded that they leave immediately, hahah! Good ole mom. Always ready to ruin any good time that happens.

[Krlll Mule]

I loved Atlanta Rhythm Section, although I never had any of their stuff. That was one tasty band, especially the guitarist. I've got to do some utube searches on them.

They might have seen Aerosmith on the "Toys in the Attic" tour. In '76 that was the first rock concert I ever attended. Slade opened for them and I didn't know any of their music, but it was good and LOUD. The Jackson City Council later restricted the decibels bands could play because they claimed everyone at the concert had permanent hearing damage. (That's bull. I've been tested and shown to have excellent hearing,even after all the concerts I attended and the gigs I played.) The coolest thing about Slade was the way they kicked off the concert.  Big black curtains were slowly opening while a booming bass note thumped...then the lights came on just in time for them to be seen jumping off huge speakers and hitting the first chord when they landed on the ground. Whoa! 
Aerosmith was really tight.  Later they all got stung out on drugs and when they came back my friends that attended said they sucked. The sound sucked and they played like they were drunk.  Many people left well before it was over.

[|iR|Focalor]

I consider ARS one of my guilty pleasures. They come from the southern rock family, and I believe they got started as simply studio musicians working at that studio (whatever the name of it was) down in Macon, GA where the Allman Brothers used to record a lot, then some record exec came through and heard them and pitched them the idea that they should just form their own actual band. It sided a good bit more towards lighter rock than actual ROCK, but they had several decent tunes across numerous albums. I know I have a few of them on vinyl that were my old mans. Red Tape, Champagne Jam, maybe one more and I forget which one. Yeah, it's light rock, but I still dig it. Shhh, don't tell nobody.

It wasn't the 76 Aerosmith tour they saw though. My dad still has the t-shirt he got from the show, and if I remember right, the t-shirt either said 1980 or something really close, maybe 78 or 79 since ARS's Champagne Jam album came out in 1978. ARS was the main headline act I guess, and it was kinda like a big all day concert kinda thing. And now that I think about it, it probably WASN'T at the Fox Theater, it was probably at one of the old outdoor ampitheaters like Lakewood or whatever it might've been called back in those days.

'76 would've been a good time to see Aerosmith though, at least in my opinion. My favorite album of theirs they ever did was Rocks in 1976. Although, like you said, and from what I've heard lots of other people say from back in those days, that was right around the time they started getting reeeeeally heavy into drugging and partying, so I guess their live sets at that time probably suffered. But still, for a bunch of dudes coked out of their gords back then, they still managed to throw together what was in my opinion one of the top 5 rock records of the 70's.

I wasn't even born until 1980, but I grew up listening to so much 70's rock and loving it and having so much respect for it that I probably know more about the bands from back then than most of the bands from my own generation.

[Krlll Mule]

Supposedly, ARS were session players and recorded some of their best stuff at Studio 1 in Doraville. I believe I read it was in northeast GA....close to you? They were also known to present the Stars and Bars prominently onstage.  Take that Yankees.......   ....before the age of ignorant politically correct BS.

[|iR|Focalor]

Supposedly, ARS were session players and recorded some of their best stuff at Studio 1 in Doraville. I believe I read it was in northeast GA....close to you? They were also known to present the Stars and Bars prominently onstage.  Take that Yankees.......   ....before the age of ignorant politically correct BS.

Yeah yeah yeah yeah, that was it. I think the first song of their first album was actually the hit "Doraville".  I forgot, that's where they originated. Yeah, it's not too far from me. Doraville/Chamblee area is like right on the northeast side of the city of Atlanta. Today it looks NOTHING like it did back in the days when ARS called it home. Lot of the white folks I know refer to Chamblee as "Cham-bodia" because the majority of the population is Vietnamese and Cambodian. You drive through there and all the signs are in Vietnamese. It's like... "HOLY SHIT, am I still in America? Did I take a wrong turn? WTF!" Nevertheless... the Allman Brothers Band probably did record something there at one point. Or someone related to the Allman Bros Band. A lot of the southern rock bands from back then had many ties to one another. Even Mothers Finest was often kinda considered part of the family even though they were basically a black funk-rock group, and I believe one of the guitarists for Mothers Finest, a white guy I think, did a stint in Molly Hatchet for a while. If I'm not mistaken, one of the members of ARS was somehow either blood related or related by marriage to someone from Lynyrd Skynyrd. And you had Ronnie Van Zant fronting Skynyrd, and then later Johnny Van Zant took Ronnie's place as the singer in Skynyrd. And then there was the OTHER Van Zant brother, Donnie, who fronted another southern rock group, .38 Special.

And so many other bands I could mention that swapped and traded members around, or somehow knew one another from bands before the southern rock era. And most of them I forgot about how they somehow knew each other or toured together at some point. Blackfoot, Dixie Dregs, Black Oak Arkansas, The Outlaws, Marshall Tucker Band, etc etc etc etc etc etc.