Rating: Compilation
Label: Eagle Rock/Armoury 2011
Review by Urban "Wally" Wallstrom
Attention - SMF's all over the world!!! It's yet another Twisted 'Fookin' Sister release (originally released by Spitfire Records in 1999) and now reissued by Eagle Rock/Armoury in twenty eleven. Not quite sure why they've decided to re-release "Club Daze Vol: 1 - The Studio Sessions" though? especially since it's basically the same old packaging, booklet, liner-notes, production, and mastering as the Spitfire release in the late nineties.
Nevertheless, when everything's said and done, this is pretty much essential 'must-have' material to any die-hard fan of the band. Why? simply because it contains rare studio versions of original songs performed by the band while playing the New York, New Jersey and Connecticut club scene between the years of 1974 to 1981 (tracks 1-8 were recorded in studio in 1978, 9-12 in 1979 by Eddie Kramer at the Electric Lady studios, and the closing track "Shoot 'Em Down" in 1981). Clearly not the best of sound quality at times, yet strangely better than your average Frontiers' release??
The oldest tracks (Follow Me, Can't Stand Still, TV Wife) are typical "Glam" and basic meat and potato rock songs of the early/mid seventies (The Hoople, Grand Funk, etc). They're all written by Jay Jay French and "Follow Me" from 1973 as a homeage to The Raspberries hit 'Go All The Way' (there's a Starship connection). Jay Jay took care of lead vocals between the years of 1972 to 1976, when at the suggestion of the band's agent, Dee Snider joined as new lead vocalist and eventually songwriter. This about the song, "Pay The Price", and I quote: "That was the first song I/Dee ever wrote. I was not the songwriter in the band, I was the new guy and I wasn't very happy with the material that was being written for the band. And I remember clearly having a meeting where I was complaining to the band about it, and the guys said to me 'Uh, could you write songs? do you write songs?' And I said 'Yeah' and they said 'what have you written' and I said 'nothing!'. And they said ' then shut up until you've got something better'. At that point I started writing, and I thought 'oh I'll show you writing' And I started to overwhelm the band with material", end quote.
Final words: Are the songs just as great as in their eighties "heydays"?? No, of course not, some of them are crap indeed, however... any die-hard fan of the band would be a fool to leave out this CD of your collection. Play It Loud -Mutha!!!
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