Blue Ice "Power Play"

Blue Ice
Power Play
7" single
(Cracked Records, 1977)

I have no idea what the significance of blue ice is, but there are currently four different groups with that name on Discogs.com. What the heck? Is it a drug thing? I'm straightedge as a very bad word, so I'm not hip to all the controlled substance vernacular. Of course, being hip is an old term for smoking opium.

Regardless, this particular Blue Ice was a hard rockin' band from Harrisburg, PA. This was the lone record they released, before new wave had made its way to the wilds of Pennsylvania. They clearly were influenced by the psychedelic sounds of the 6T's, as the flip of this lil' disc is a nice cover of The Electric Prunes' I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night), though they killed the parentheses for some no doubt nefarious, unknown reason. Or it was just a mistake. Evil is more fun than error, though. So there!

So . . .

Power Play

Power Play is what brings us together today.

Power Play, that blessed event. That dream within a dream.

Sorry! Got distracted . . .

While Power Play is, indeed, a slammin' little number, what really sets it apart and above and such is the insane synth solo near the end. The player of said instrument (and second vocalist on this track) was Bill Stump. After new wave came into being (to use his words), he changed his name to Billy Synth and has been sporadically active both solo and with various groups ever since. I highly recommend the two albums recorded as Billy Synth and The Turn Ups.

NOTA BENE: The bass player on this is Roger Deller, who kept his surname and his bass and played on the (Billy-less) Turn Ups' Crack My Face featured here last year.

I Almost Saw God in the Metro "Surveillance"

I Almost Saw God in the Metro
The Sound I Want to Make Is Only in My Head
CDR
(Cracked Egg, 2003)

I found the debut CDR EP by these folks in the bargain bin at my fave local store. It turned out they were locals and a power trio of guitar, synths and drums. The bass end of things was usually held down by the guy who plays just keyboardy things (the guitarist/vocalist also played synths), and I love deep, rumbling, dense synth drone in r'n'r. All of the songs on the EP were on the follow-up album featuring today's song, so I passed it along as a gift to a friend. I never really listened to stuff like Gary Numan (love the song Cars, though), but I imagine fans would find something here of appeal. They released one more album on their own Cracked Egg label, this time on pressed CDs, Silver Dust of the Funk Age, then disappeared, though I did see MiniMoog man Zachary Hollback later play with the rather completely different (but also good) Brodie Stove.