Scorpions thread for SS11

[Darky]

Okay dude, here it is... rating each album I have out of 10, and the highlight tracks. Don't know how you'd go getting them off Napster these days, depends on how well you guess their disguised names. The CDs are generally available for around $18-20 and go for 35-40 minutes each. The absolute killer tracks are marked with a **.

Album : Lonesome Crow (6/10)
Vocals : Klaus Meine
Lead Guitar : Michael Schenker
Highlights : I'm Going Mad (Track 1), Lonesome Crow (7)

Album : Fly To The Rainbow (7/10)
Vocals : Klaus Meine, Uli Jon Roth
Lead : Uli Jon Roth
Highlights : Drifting Sun** (3), This Is My Song (5), Fly To The Rainbow (7)

Album : In Trance (9/10)
Vocals : Klaus Meine, Uli Jon Roth
Lead : Uli Jon Roth
Highlights : Dark Lady** (1), In Trance (2), Top Of The Bill (4), Robot Man (6), Sun In My Hand** (8)

Album : Virgin Killer (8/10)
Vocals : Klaus Meine, Uli Jon Roth
Lead : Uli Jon Roth
Highlights : Pictured Life (1), Catch Your Train** (2), Hell-Cat (6)

Album : Taken By Force (7/10)
Vocals : Klaus Meine, Uli Jon Roth
Lead : Uli Jon Roth
Highlights : I've Got To Be Free (3), Riot Of Your Life (4), Sails Of Charon** (5), He's a Woman, She's a Man (7)

Album : Lovedrive (6/10)
Vocals : Klaus Meine
Lead : Michael Schenker/Matthias Jabs
Highlights : Loving You Sunday Morning (1), Another Piece of Meat (2)

Album : Animal Magnetism (7/10)
Vocals : Klaus Meine
Lead : Matthias Jabs
Highlights : Make It Real (1), The Zoo (8), Animal Magnetism (9)

Album : Blackout (8/10)
Vocals : Klaus Meine
Lead : Matthias Jabs
Highlights : Blackout (1), Can't Live Without You** (2), China White (8), When The Smoke Is Going Down (9)

Album : Eye II Eye (4/10)
Vocals : Klaus Meine
Lead : Matthias Jabs
Highlights : Very farken few!

Album : Moment of Glory, with Berliner Philharmoniker (8.5/10)
Vocals : Klaus Meine
Lead : Matthias Jabs
Highlights : Hurricane 2000** (1), Moment of Glory (2), Wind of Change (4)

The band switched to doing power ballads in the early 80s, and I think started losing it in 1979 when Uli Jon Roth left. They re-gained Michael Schenker who had been in UFO (and whom Roth previoulsy replaced in Scorpions in 1972).
They were commercially huge throughout the whole of the 1980s, but their most brilliant stuff was in the mid 1970s when they were innovative rather than just very good at pumping out 3 1/2 minute commercial numbers.

 

[SS11]

thanx darky

ive only got two, but Sails of Charon kicks major arse.

napster is dead i think, cant get nothing off them.

 

[Darky]

New Scorpions album, "Acoustica". Recorded live in Portugal in February 2001, it's another one of these bloody unplugged thingys.

Not bad for an acoustic set, the material being well chosen and routinely (but well) performed.

A few new songs among the old classics, a pretty decent listen if you're after something a bit different.

Highlights are mainly the songs I mentioned in the previous post on this thread, and one of the newies, "Life Is Too Short".

The blistering "Catch Your Train" off the Virgin Killer album is given the acoustic treatment, harmonica, piano and all. It's pretty strange at first, but it works fairly well for a song that was originally played at a million miles an hour, and had breathtaking guitar soloing all over it.

Track listing :
1.The Zoo
2.Always Somewhere
3.Life Is Too Short
4.Holiday
5.You and I
6.When Love Kills Love
7.Dust In The Wind
8.Send Me An Angel
9.Catch Your Train
10.I Wanted To Cry
11.Wind Of Change
12.Love Of My Life
13.Drive
14.Still Loving You
15.Hurricane 2001

Rating :6.5 out of 10

 

[Darky]

Originally posted by Darky

Track listing :
1.The Zoo
2.Always Somewhere
3.Life Is Too Short
4.Holiday
5.You and I
6.When Love Kills Love
7.Dust In The Wind
8.Send Me An Angel
9.Catch Your Train
10.I Wanted To Cry
11.Wind Of Change
12.Love Of My Life
13.Drive
14.Still Loving You
15.Hurricane 2001

Neglected to mention...

Track 12, Love Of My Life, is a Queen song, and done reasonably well.
Track 13, Drive, is a Cars songs, and done brilliantly, probably the highlight of the whole CD, and better than the Cars' version.

 

[FitzroyJamesDio]

darky...love at first sting is quite a commercial album but very good

kudos for owning all the early stuff

tokyo tapes is a fantastic live album...one i only have on vinyl and that i still adore ..up there with rainbow on stage, ufo strangers in the night, and thin lizzy live and dangersous

i aint heard eye 2 eye..but i hear its very different..im still very curious to hear this one

and the accoustic one im still curious in that one too?

darko do you have a burner..maybe we can do some cdr trading?

 

[Darky]

Originally posted by FitzroyJamesDio
darky...love at first sting is quite a commercial album but very good

kudos for owning all the early stuff

tokyo tapes is a fantastic live album...one i only have on vinyl and that i still adore ..up there with rainbow on stage, ufo strangers in the night, and thin lizzy live and dangersous

i aint heard eye 2 eye..but i hear its very different..im still very curious to hear this one

and the accoustic one im still curious in that one too?

darko do you have a burner..maybe we can do some cdr trading?

Ok.. one by one...

Early Scorpions - I prefer this over the 80s/90s commercial stuff. Uli Jon Roth's guitaring just sends me onto another planet, much like Blackmore's does. Also very good listening when you're on the piss.
The commercial stuff goes in one ear and out the other here, but The Scorpions are very good at it and I won't knock them for that.

Tokyo Tapes - Well... UFO's "Strangers" is on my CD player as I type this... got the re-mastered version the other day (already owned the old one), has two bonus tracks and a re-arranged track order. One of the best live albums ever, without a doubt.
If Tokyo Tapes comes anywhere close to it, it's a "must have"! Next on my ordering list, I think. All Scorpions Live CDs since then have focused almost entirely on the 1980s commercial stuff with Matthias Jabs on guitar, and it pisses me off INFINITELY that the brilliant 1970s work of Uli Jon Roth and Michael Schenker is all but ignored. That's why I appreciated the fact that Uli's "Catch Your Train" was on the acoustic thing, even though the original version is one of the most electifying pieces of guitar wanking ever written.
Of the Rainbow lot, I prefer the double-CD of Live In Germany 1976, although "On Stage" is practical, being on one CD, and a great CD at that. Favourite Blackmore live has to be Cal Jam with DP from '74. Also got that Thin Lizzy Live CD, picked it up for $7 (new) at JB HiFi, Highpoint recently. Good value, but probably wouldn't have bought it at full price.
If I had to rate my top few live sets, they'd be (in no order) :
UFO - Strangers In The Night (US Tour, 1978-79)
Deep Purple - California Jam (1974)
Iron Maiden - Maiden England (Birmingham NEC, 1988). Yes, I reckon it shiits on "Live After Death"!
Motorhead - No Sleep 'Til Hammersmith (1981)
Rainbow - Live in Germany 1976
Manowar - Hell On Stage & Hell On Wheels (2 separate double-CD sets recorded on various tours between 1997 and 1999)
Judas Priest - Unleashed In The East (recorded either live in Japan or in a studio in London, depending on which story you believe )
Sodom - Mortal Way of Live (1987-88) and Marooned (1993-94), both great live albums
Led Zeppelin - BBC Sessions

Eye II Eye - Hmmm.... I reckon it's your general run of the mill "old codger rockers still trying to prove they've got it even though half the band has departed and they've got some unknowns playing for them to give them a youthful look" type CD.
Line up is Klaus Meine (vocals), Rudolf Schenker (rhythm guitar), Matrthias Jabs (lead guitar). Ralph Rieckermann (bass), James Kottak (drums). I think James Kottak used to be in Kingdom Come... don't know if that works in his favour really.
Same line up for the Philharmonic effort and the acoustic jobby.

CD Burner - Hmmmm again... sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I use it predominantly for data saving these days, it's not too often it has actually completed a whole CD recording, either of MP3's or a CD duplication. Always some error message popping up.

 

[FitzroyJamesDio]

if youve never heard tokyo tapes i think youd dig it..

unleashed in the east...well apparently it was done in the studio..same as ac/dc's if you want blood youve got it live opus which i also dug big time as a jnr.

on a side to uli ...have you heard any of the zeno roth material..very commerical hard rock but very good for what it is

ive only got the old ufo strangers in the night..7 bucks for the remaster with the extra tracks is sensational!

i dont think they many live albums have the charm like they used to in the day...yes i own the rainbow in germany double disc..on stage does it for me more so..ive also got a live video from german tv..and a short medley of songs and interviews from oz television..other fave live albums vary in style from rock to metal - angel - live without a net, journey - captured, rush - all the worlds a stage, kiss alive 1 & 2,

john norum - live in japan and msg - unforgiven live are probably
the most recent live albums ive had a buzz for but theyre still not the same calibre of days gone by

yes i also own the manowar one..

are you going to the espie to see vanishing point and kymera on friday the 13th?

 

[Darky]

Yes, going to the Espy tonight. Never been there before, believe it or not!

 

[FitzroyJamesDio]

sound was pretty ordinary...i thought kymera were very cool..especially their light show..lol

 

[Darky]

FJD,

Didn't end up going to Vanishing Point & friends - had a very very ordinary night's sleep Thursday night, skipped work Friday but got bugger all sleep and was absolutely stuffed again by about 11pm.

Wasn't all that disappointed in missing out on Vanishing Point, as I had it confirmed during the day that Australia's true metal kings PEGAZUS are playing ET's on August 3 and that makes up for it twenty-fold!

 

[FitzroyJamesDio]

you missed a great night

corey the bass player of pegazus is in Kymera...their singer Gio is on fire!