Thursday, April 13, 2006

Black and Blue-Nasty, Nasty, 1986

Long before guitarist Tommy Thayer was in KISS painted up as Ace Frehley and long before singer Jaime St. James was singing in Warrant, they were both in this band. The band's self titled debut came out in 84 and got some notice and it was a good album. Their 1985 follow-up "Without Love" was more commercial sounding and it didn't really propel the band any higher. So for their third album they decided to bring in Gene Simmons to produce it. I bought this on cassette like the month it came out and I loved it. I actually wore the tape out by about 1991. I bought an import copy on CD a few years ago hoping it would be as good as I remembered it being all those years ago. Truth be told the good songs are just as good as they were 20 years ago. These include the title track, the awesome "Kiss of death", "Rules" and "Best in the west". Unfortunately there are a few songs that are just okay on the album as well. The bottom line is that it's overall a decent album, but far from great. It may not have been worth what I paid for it, but I listen to quite often. This re-release includes lyrics (which were not in the original lp) and notes about the album which explained something I had wondered about for years. The cassette listed keyboard credits for a song called "Promise the moon" yet the song is not on the album. The booklet explains that this song was recorded but that Geffen made them remove it in order to put "I'll be there for you" in it's place. Black and Blue don't exactly sound like anyone else. Although I would say that if you like Ratt and Kix that you would probably like this album. I also give credit to Gene Simmons because the album sounds sharp all the way around.

8 Comments:

Blogger David Amulet said...

I have heard something by B&B but I can't recall what it is. So is this CD only available by import still ... or do you know if it's had a wider re-release?

Ironic, my iPod shuffle just had Gene's throaty voice singing "Calling Dr. Love" right beofre I read this post. Now it's moved to "Beyond the Black" by Metal Church.

-- david

6:14 AM  
Blogger Metal Mark said...

It has never been released here on cd. However there is a recently released box set called Black and Blue Collected. It runs about $50 at Amazon and has all four of their studio releases plus a dvd of a live show in 1984. The dvd is region 0. I paid close to $70 a few years ago to get all four of these cd's so this sounds like a good deal. If you don't want to spend that kind of money then there is a greatest hits cd called
Black and Blue-Ultimate collection. It has 20 songs total. It has a lot of the better songs from the other three albums, but it only has one of the really good songs from Nasty Nasty. It goes for about $15 new.

10:13 AM  
Blogger Jay Noel said...

I had no idea these two were in a band together. Incredible.

10:30 AM  
Blogger David Amulet said...

I hate compilations, so I think I'll go for the Collected set with all the original albums. Thanks for the tip.

-- david

5:23 PM  
Blogger :P fuzzbox said...

Giving credit to Gene? Bet that was tough for you.

6:46 PM  
Blogger Metal Mark said...

Fuzz- I actually like Gene for a lot of things. I love the first six Kiss albums plus Creatures of the night, Revenge and a few others. He took chances rather than playing it safe at times. They made their live show an event rather than just a tool to promote an album. The heavy metal world owes a lot to Gene and Kiss. However, my biggest problem with him is how he has slapped the Kiss logo on anything and everything just to make a buck. That's mainly just over the last ten years.

7:50 PM  
Blogger Bar L. said...

You have a wealth of knowledge. I won't admit what band came to mind when you said Black and Blue. I'm old. :(

5:06 PM  
Blogger Metal Mark said...

Layla- Thanks, but it comes from many wasted hours of reading metal magazines and liner notes.

5:49 PM  

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