Roughly a fortnight after I became a teenager, I attended my first rock concert. Yes, that's the actual ticket stub from said show! Not long after that show, I started buying records with my own money. My parents had given me a copy of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band that they found at a yard sale when I was twelve, but that was the only record I had that wasn't a children's record.
Even during this early phase of record buying, I was already doing the buy-it-'cause-it-looks-interesting-and-it's-cheap thing. I found this Ian Lloyd album at a huge rummage sale held at the same place I'd seen Kiss earlier. I bought it and Slayed? by Slade, who looked a bit thuggish (this was a positive; I wanted loud, tough music); I think they were 25¢ each (the albums, not the members of Slade). I hated the Slade album (love it now, though), but the LLoyd one I listened to a lot. It certainly didn't rock as hard as Kiss (especially not on this track!), but the songs were catchy, and I liked it.
Some time in college, I sold off a ton of records when I was getting heavily into hardcore punk, and this was one of the casualties. A few months ago, I started getting a hankering to hear it again. This urge was partially inspired by my obsession for all things Starz (featured here this past October), as Starz guitarist Richie Ranno had played briefly in Lloyd's pre-solo group Stories before becoming a Brother Louie
(please, see below). My interest was also piqued 'cause I couldn't even remember what it sounded like!
Looking around town proved fruitless, so I turned to the 'net. It didn't take very long for a sealed copy to appear on eBay for a reasonable price, and off a-bidding I went. When it arrived, the songs sounded only vaguely familiar, but I still liked many of them, lo these many decades later. I debated between a few, and this song kept popping into my head, so here 'tis.
Geez, I even saved the newspaper ad for the above concert! But hey, it was my first (not counting my daddy taking me to see the Jackson 5 when I was eight), and Kiss were the hottest band in the land!
A pack rat at an early age . . .
NOTA BENE: Today's entry gets the before they were famous tag, in addition to after, as it was writ by Mick Jones, who played guitar here and not long after shot to megastardom with The Clash Foreigner, whom I never particularly liked (but they were at least more palatable than Boston).
