Alcatrazz: Dangerous Games

DANGEROUS GAMES (1986)

1) It's My Life; 2) Undercover; 3) That Ain't Nothin'; 4) No Imagination; 5) Ohayo Tokyo; 6) Dangerous Games; 7) Blue Boar; 8) Only One Woman; 9) The Witchwood; 10) Double Man; 11) Night Of The Shooting Star.

As Steve Vai must have realized the error of his ways, he reasonably quit, and, in a last attempt to keep the band going, Bonnett hired Danny Johnson in his place, whose main credits up to then included playing on several Rick Derringer records, as well as Rod Stewart's Tonight I'm Yours and Alice Cooper's Special Forces. This suggests several possibilities, some good, some bad; the reality is such that, in Johnson's hands, Alcatrazz' last album sounds like a cross between what it used to be and Rod Stewart: a mix of dumb hard rock and equally dumb electronic pop.

But even under these conditions, it is still the best album Alcatrazz have ever released, although I am voicing an opinion here that is entirely my own. The usual consensus over Alcatrazz is that the band pretty much said it all with No Parole, then misfired twice, once by including Vai who was too good for the band, twice by including Johnson who was too bad for it. (An alternate con­sensus, of course, is that Alcatrazz only misfired once, by forming). I believe, however, that such a consensus is most likely to emerge from people who either have not listened to the records in the first place, or those who scooped them up in «genre-expecting» mode — bracing themselves for crunchy metal when what they got was Eighties' pop.

As far as Eighties' pop goes, we have all heard worse. Yes, Dangerous Games blandly exploits all of the decade's clichés, adding lifeless keyboards and familiar simplistic dance beats to audi­ence-friendly, harmless metal guitars and Bonnet's macho yelling. In that respect, it is horrible. But the songs are better: Johnson, as opposed to both of the wizards whose shoes he was filling, writes the music in an attempt to produce decent tunes rather than serve as launchpads for his sonic rocketships. Not that he cannot play — he has got plenty of technique — but there is only a very small bunch of ecstatic solos here, meaning that, in all likelihood, he was consciously trying to shift the band's image from «Mad Guitarist Sanitarium» to something more modest.

It is all best illustrated by their choice of a cover tune: the Animals' 'It's My Life' is given a pre­dictably bleary arrangement, with the main riff sounding thrice as loud and monstruous as it used to be in 1965, but thrice as less threatening — yet the song itself has never lost any of its great­ness, and to hear it even in this arrangement (which is at least true to the original melody) is pre­ferable to wasting time on four minutes of Malmsteen's rucus.

To cut a long story short, rockers like 'That Ain't Nothin', 'Blue Boar', and the title track, pop songs like 'Under­cover', and even soul ballads like 'Only One Woman' all have modest hooks that deserve being tried out with better arrangements (and perhaps a different singer). Not that it really matters: saying that Dangerous Games displays a higher level of songwriting than Disturbing The Peace is, above all, just pedantic, and, like all other Alcatrazz records, it cannot hope for anything other than a thumbs down rating. But if mainstream pop-rock in big frizzy Eighties fa­shion does get your juices flowing, go for this — you will get all the muscles and all the big hair without all the guitar masturbation. It is a different sort of lack of taste.

Alcatrazz: Disturbing The Peace

ALCATRAZZ: DISTURBING THE PEACE (1985)

1) God Blessed Video; 2) Mercy; 3) Will You Be Home Tonight; 4) Wire And Wood; 5) Desert Diamond; 6) Strip­per; 7) Painted Lover; 8) Lighter Shade Of Green; 9) Sons And Lovers; 10) Skyfire; 11) Breaking The Heart Of The City.

As the 1984 tour drew to a close, Yngwie left Alcatrazz for his solo career — a reasonable deci­sion, because, whatever one thinks of Malmsteen's solo albums, it is, almost by default, better to experience his musical masturbation on its own than as a background for the puffed-up pathos of Graham Bonnet. In his place the latter recruited a different guitar wiz — Steve Vai.

Weird pairings, like B. J. Wilson of Procol Harum fame drumming on AC/DC's Flick Of The Switch (even if only on non-final track versions), do not happen every day in the world of rock'n'roll, and, for the sake of pure knowledge, it may be interesting to hear the results of one such pairing between the thoroughly mainstream, anthemic R'n'B belter Graham Bonnet and the deeply experimental, near-avantgarde guitarist Steve Vai. One might even think that, although the results would almost certainly be dreadful, they'd at least be intriguing.

Unfortunately, they are not. It is hard to guess Vai's logic for enlisting in Alcatrazz; perhaps, after several years of playing with Zappa and an obscure (if perversely brilliant) solo tryout with Flex-Able, he finally succumbed to the temptation of finance and fame. Why Bonnet? Why Alcatrazz? Well, the band did have some sort of reputation, and, besides, he'd be writing all the music any­way; as long as it was good, who'd care about the singer?

But it was not good. As interesting as Vai can be in the studio when he creates experimental ma­terial, influenced by his long-term Zappa association, he is completely bland when it comes to applying his talents to macho arena rock. Disturbing The Peace, like any good old Alcatrazz al­bum, has plenty of loud, rip-roaring anthems, but not a single meaningful riff. Apparently, Steve just cannot work right in this kind of setting (not that I blame him — it'd be a tough break for any­one to inject life into Alcatrazz). Sometimes, he really tries, like for the first few bars of 'Sons And Lovers', where he plays a funny little melody quite in the vein of Flex-Able; but then Bonnet kicks in with the vocals, and we are back to rote corporate faux-rocking.

Nothing helps. Not even provocative titles ('God Blessed Video', which, thank God, is ironic — but you will really have to listen to the lyrics to understand that), nor occasional attempts to emu­late the sarcastic style of Van Halen (on 'Painted Lover', Bonnet goes for a bit of snickering cha­racter assassination à la David Lee Roth), nor brief folk-art-rock passages ('Lighter Shade Of Gre­en', fourty seconds of a decent instrumental that begins like an Arcadian idilly, continues as a barrage of psychedelic shredding, and belongs nowhere on this record).

It is possible that, had Zappa himself volunteered to fill in the boots of Alcatrazz' guitar player, he, likewise, would have been unable to write any good songs for the band. The catch is, in order to write dumb songs for a dumb band, one has to be a dumb songwriter; this is, more or less, the on­ly way to make the final result into something exciting. Few things are more irritating, or more easily forgettable, than a clever songwriter, much less an experimental songwriter, writing an in­tentionally dumb song (and I do not mean «parody» — Zappa has written plenty of clever paro­dies on dumb songs); Disturbing The Peace is a perfect example, a record where everything went wrong because the laws of nature predicted that it would go wrong — and, in order to defy the laws of nature, you'd at least have to be Michael Jackson (not that I'd wish that to anyone). Thumbs down once again.

Alcatrazz: Live Sentence

ALCATRAZZ: LIVE SENTENCE (1984)

1) Too Young To Die, Too Drunk To Live; 2) Hiroshima Mon Amour; 3) Night Games; 4) Island In The Sun; 5) Kree Nakoorie; 6) Coming Bach; 7) Since You've Been Gone; 8) Evil Eye; 9) All Night Long.

Of the two Alcatrazz albums with Malmsteen on board, this live performance, recorded on their 1984 tour of Japan, is unquestionably the better proposition, for at least two reasons. First, if you are going to sacrifice good taste, do it all the way — a «ridiculous» album is bad enough, but a «boring ridiculous» album will not even find its way to the currently in-print EBT (Ency­clo­paedia of Bad Taste). And Live Sentence certainly goes all the way, by putting Yngwie directly into the spotlight, as he plays even more notes than on the studio records, extends his solos, and gets a couple numbers all to himself, including an obligatory Bach guitar arrangement with an ob­ligatory awful pun for a title ('Coming Bach').

I do not want to mindlessly succumb to the idea of Yngwie Malmsteen as the prototypical heart­less finger-flasher who, with no understanding at all of the essence of music, had somehow put it in his head that speed is all that matters. His solo career has its ups and downs — mostly downs, but let us not entirely discard the ups — and he can play with feeling when he gets his hormones under control. Unfortunately, during his stint with Alcatrazz, it was all about the hormones. Bon­net sings with feeling; his singing does not mesh well with the music, and the songs are mostly rotten, but at least the record makes clear that he really came to Japan so as to share his emotions with some of the mystifying people from that mystifying land. (It is a little awkward, though, for a guy from Lincolnshire to sing about Hiroshima to the Japanese — not to mention finishing the song with a sloganish "don't forget Hiroshima! No more war!" as if it were only his, Graham Bonnet's presence, that could save the poor people of Japan from forgetting about one of their greatest national tragedies).

Malmsteen, however, came to Japan with one major goal in mind: to show how he can play faster than Eddie Van Halen. If some of the riffs manage to make sense, none of the solos do. Take your musical space, chop it up in an astronomical number of even spaces, fill each one up with a ran­dom note, and you basically get the scale equivalent of white noise; most of these performances could have been filled with static and the effect would be comparable. Granted, seeing and hear­ing this in a proper live setting may pass for a special psychotropic treatment, but one that has only superficial resemblance to «music as art». On the other hand, young Yngwie's aim is not to make art; it is to make PR, and he achieved that aim splendidly.

There is a second reason, though, why Live Sentence is mildly superior: although the majority of the songs are predictably pulled from their only studio album up to date, they also do a couple of Rainbow numbers from 1979's Down To Earth, and much as I dislike that record in comparison to classic Dio-era material from 1975-78, at least the songs there were all written by Blackmore and Glover: in this setting, 'Since You've Been Gone' and particularly the big radio hit 'All Night Long' tower over the rest of this material like a couple of jötunn giants over a pack of dwarves. Even Yngwie calms down a bit, sticking mainly to melody. Decent stuff. There is no escaping the obligatory thumbs down, of course, but if you are interested in a bad vibe with elements of en­tertainment rather than a bad vibe with no redeeming qualities at all, Live Sentence is the place where you start with Alcatrazz.

Alcatrazz: No Parole From Rock'n'Roll

ALCATRAZZ: NO PAROLE FROM ROCK'N'ROLL (1983)

1) Island In The Sun; 2) General Hospital; 3) Jet To Jet; 4) Hiroshima Mon Amour; 5) Kree Nakoorie; 6) Incubus; 7) Too Young To Die, Too Drunk To Live; 8) Big Foot; 9) Starcarr Lane; 10) Suffer Me.

No account of 1980's rock would be complete without a proper lambasting of the impressive Tower Of Cheese that was Alcatrazz, the launching pad for Yngwie J. «Release The Fuckin' Fu­ry» Malmsteen's career. Suffice it to say, it is hardly possible to truly appreciate the greatness of bands like Accept or Judas Priest if they are not seen in comparison with the likes of this band, a few songs of which still occasionally pollute the airwaves of cheap hard rock stations.

Alcatrazz was put together by Graham Bonnet, ex-lead singer of Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow; this alone should have raised suspicions, since Bonnet was pretty much a so-so singer in compa­rison with his predecessor, the illustrious Ronnie James Dio, not to mention coming from a pri­marily R'n'B background — not exactly the best pedigree to serve as the basis for a new hard rock group. On the other hand, his sole album with Rainbow, Down To Earth, was a best-seller, and it could be hoped that Alcatrazz would be at least a commercially, if not artistically, successful pro­position. (Un)fortunately, it wasn't.

Most of the songs are credited to Bonnet and his young guitarist, Swedish prodigy Yngwie Mal­m­steen; supposedly, Bonnet takes care of the lyrics, while Yngwie is responsible for most of the musical side. There are only two problems to this arrangement: (a) although Bonnet has a fine singing voice, he is a thoroughly pathe­tic lyricist, and (b) although Malmsteen is as technically ac­complished as his legend goes, he is about as good at songwriting as Ed Wood at directing. Other than that, No Parole From Rock'n'Roll is a damn fine record.

At this point, I have to confess an allergy: I belong to the category of people that finds it almost impossible to find any sort of personal pleasure or overall artistic merit in combining «hard rock» or «heavy metal» with «soul». To me, the combination is rotten a priori. Hard rock should put you in an aggressive mood; soul music should mellow you out. How is it possible to be mellow and aggressive at the same time? Imagine saying, "I'll assfuck any bastard that even dares to suggest I'm gay" — think on this for a while — then come back to this album.

Occasionally, the combination might still work somehow — but only if accompanied by meanin­gful melodies. The ones that Malmsteen writes, however, do not have any meaning that I can dis­cern, other than the general idea of «look at me, here I am soaring towards the sky, but God help me if I know why I'm actually doing it». And whenever he does succeed at finding a groove preg­nant with a sincere impression (usually stolen, e. g. 'Hiroshima Mon Amour', which pockets the riff of 'You Really Got Me'), up comes Bonnet with his silly, pompous vocal tone to run it into the ground — and then Yngwie plays a hollow set of flashy solo licks to bury it once and for all. And have I mentioned the corny early-Eighties keyboard sound yet?

There is not one single track on this record, be it a fast thrasher, a mid-tempo rocker, or a slow bal­lad, that would tug at one single string inside me — a rare occasion indeed. All the more sur­prising, since the closest thing this Alcatrazz sound can remind one of are similarly structured Gary Moore records of the early Eighties, and those definitely had their share of excellent songs next to absolute stinkers, even though Gary followed the exact same formula: leaden, moderately complex riffs, finger-flashing solos, soulful vocals. (It is hardly a coincidence, by the way, that, concerning the above mentioned 'Hiroshima Mon Amour', Gary had recorded his own 'Hiroshima' a couple years earlier; apparently, the metal-pathos vibe they were getting seemed equal­ly ap­prop­riate to both to be interpreted as a sort of «musical Hiroshima». Well... it was a mu­sical Hiroshima all right, if not exactly in the sense they envisaged it. At least Gary Moore had the good taste of not drawing poor innocent Alain Resnais into the picture).

Well, only thing left to suppose is that Mr. Moore just had a bit of God's gift in him, or, to be precise, invested some of that gift into the art of song­writing; Mr. Malmsteen, unfortunately, put all of it on the Zero of technical accomplish­ment — and won, to the world's utmost sorrow. No Parole From Rock'n'Roll? Come on, guys, this isn't even a good internal rhyme. And this isn't rock­'n'roll, either. Thumbs down.