Friday, July 11, 2014

Jeff Dahl - I was a Teenage Glam Fag (Volume 1)

Jeff Dahl has had a long and illustrious career in punk rock - from working with the Angry Samoans and Vox
Pop in the late 70's/early 80's to his own Jeff Dahl Band (where he played with luminaries such as Cheetah Chrome and Bruce Duff) to his solo outings - and he has consistently released high quality punk rock'n'roll. While living in Cake Creek, AZ., he built his own studio and was able to record as he pleased with Jenni Sex on bass and Anna Conda on drums (both who turned out to be Jeff himself). This is one of the projects he did, where he cut his own versions of 70's glam rock songs that he grew up with and loved. Apparently, there is a Volume 2, but I do not have it and seeing as this volume was a limited edition of 500, I'm probably out of luck (unless Jeff still has some - Jeff?!).

As he explains in his liner notes, none of these were meant to be note-for-note copies, these are his interpretations, done from memory and given the Dahl-treatment - stripped down punk rock with his own harmonies, some cool licks and some damn interesting changes added here'n'there. Some are very well known - "Caught in a Dream" (Alice Cooper - the band), "I Need Somebody" (Stooges), "Personality Crisis" (Dolls), "Ziggy Stardust" (Bowie), "One of the Boys" (Mott) - and some a bit more obscure - "Chez Maxine" (Hollywood Brats), "Living in the 70"s" (Skyhooks), "Glycerine Queen" (Suzi Quatro), "Candy's Going Bad" (Golden Earring), "Aggravation Non-Stop" (David Werner) and "Long Legged Lisa" (Silverhead). All are great though and while I knew most of these (I'm not that far off from Jeff's age so we have many of the same influences), there were a few that were fun discoveries.

While the packaging is pretty sparse, Dahl's liner notes are cool and informative and shows where he's coming from and proves his love for rock'n'roll (as if he needed to do that!). All of his work is worthwhile but definitely pick this one up if you can find it anywhere!