MAMMY! DON’T YOU KNOW JEFFREY MORGAN’S MEDIA BLACKOUT #298!

David Lee Roth – A Little Ain’t Enough (Warner Bros.) :: But seriously, this is the greatest Van Halen album that the original line-up never stayed sober long enough to record so you’d better believe that their new one had best come close to being as good as this grievously over-looked melodic hard rock masterpiece is. Bonus points for appearing not once, but twice, in period costume blackface on the inner sleeve’s ersatz 1880s daguerreotypes. Points deducted for not having the diamonds to use said portraits as the front and back cover photos.

Chickenfoot – Chickenfoot & Chickenfoot III (E1) :: How come Michael Anthony and Sammy Hagar didn’t invite Gary Cherone to these exhalin’ alumni albums?

Van Halen – Van Halen III (Warner Bros.) :: Oh, right.

Tyler Bryant & The Shakedown – From The Sandcastle (self released) :: You may recall me telling you about how this young ’un almost smoked Jeff Beck off the stage at Massey Hall last year. Well, this seven track record of his ain’t no different in that it expertly grafts destorto eletrobooze with an unbridled youthful enthusiasm that’ll have you rocking out like all get out while your irate neighbors pound the wall with a broom so’s you’ll shut it down all pronto like but don’t you listen to ’em. Besides, if you play this one as loud I do, you won’t be able to hear them anyway anyhow anywhere.

Rockpile – Live At Montreux 1980 (Eagle) :: These sweet sixteen trax on wax feature Nick Lowe and Dave Edmunds playing just about everything that you’d wanna hear from “So It Goes” and “I Knew The Bride” to “Crawling From The Wreckage” and “I Hear You Knocking.” Bonus points for covering Duke Ellington’s “Take The A Train.” Just kidding; whaddya think this is anyway, a jazz festival or something?

SIZZLING PLATTER OF THE WEEK: Elliott Brood – Days Into Years (Paper Bag) :: So even before I get the chance to slap this guy’s record on the old Victrola, I see him on the telly lookin’ vaguely like a latter-day Jim Morrison what with the long hair and the beard and all and he’s strummin’ away on an acoustic singin’ his songs and I’m thinkin’ to myself: this guy don’t need my help.

But just in case he does, I’d better tell ya that this ten tracker contains electric gitboxes battlin’ with banjos for sonic supremacy while the singin’ songwriter serves up a McCartney-esque mélange of melodic pop songs that echo the marryin’ man at his most heartfelt sincere (“Lines”) and most hellaciously searing (“Hold You”). However, even that ace aural analogy won’t prepare you for “My Mother’s Side” which sounds like Dylan fronting Led Zeppelin at Newport in 1965—only better.

Bob Dylan – The Original Mono Recordings ($ony) :: Anything to make a buck, huh? At least with Miles Davis, the ghoulish graverobbers at $ony had the common decency to wait until Miles was dead.

Be seeing you!