Rockin' out with Michael Schenker
There were four of us in the same grade growing up: Kevin at the top of the street, me in the next house down, Mario across the street from me, and Robert two houses down. When we started buying records in junior high we planned for maximum variety, coordinating our purchases so as not to duplicate each others' collections, taping the records that the others bought. Add in taping off the radio (the new album in its entirety every night at 11:00 on WAVA) and we amassed pretty sizable cassette collections. But of course the cassettes are long gone, and I never got around to replacing most of them with records or CDs. In 1980 Kevin bought Michael Schenker's first album after leaving the Scorpions (again) and helming the new Michael Schenker Group. I've been longing to hear "Feels Like a Good Thing," so I snapped up a copy of the album at last weekend's record show, and here it is, aw, yeah!
Like the Piper track I posted a while ago, the drums at the beginning are some tempting sample fodder. And Schenker has always been a great soloist; he may have the most fluid playing style in all of hard rockdom. Deep Purple's Roger Glover produced the album, I really like the balance here, just before turning the snare up to twenty-two became all the rage. The four of us saw MSG at the late, lamented Capital Centre, where we saw so many concerts during our teenage years. They would run a summer series of B-level acts with tickets for just eight bucks! I think that was the deal with MSG. They may even have been the opening act, but I can't remember who the other band was. Was it Foghat? No, I think they were paired up with Molly Hatchet. Anyway, I don't remember the show at all, but I do remember the concert jersey I bought: black with white sleeves, with the MSG logo and Schenker's trademark white Flying V on the front, tour dates listed on the back. I wore that one a lot.
