A handful of these tracks - all plundered from buried treasure in long forgotten vaults (aren't they all) - appeared on the Double Dealer album (1999) on Escape Music.
Why? Because they were written by vocalist David Steele and guitarist Kenny Geatros, who were members of both bands.
These are the original recordings of those songs.
Geatros's and Steele's pedigree stretches to several column inches and makes impressive reading. The abbreviated version cites collaborations - from a writing and from a performing perspective - with Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, Motley Crue,
The Cult,
Loverboy and David Foster. Names that make you sit up and take notice.
Kudos then to Renegade Sounds' Chief Exec (and mean bass guitarist) Jim Buckshon for exhuming and mastering the tapes, and exposing
'Stiletto' to a wider public audience.
It's clear that Geatros and Steele had an innate and utterly intinctive way with a song. They're not all world class, but even those that don't hit the highest mark are still strong, still striking.
'Take This Love' is a typically eighties' keyboard & guitar driven melodic rock song, with a thumping beat and a harder, sharper, more stylised edge, of the type you might associate with
The Cult at the time.
Arguably,
'Freedom', one of the genuinely outstanding"FM radio nites" tracks here, could have done with a little more studio spit and polish, but in common with most of the other tracks here, the bright, fresh faced, live-in-the-studio sonics give it charm and immediacy.
The powerhouse
'Out of Harms Way' borrows a guitar motif from the UK's Cream and ploughs a soulful, melodic rock groove, with Steele emoting for all his chest beating worth, while
'Fire In My Heart' is something that Canadian legends, Glass Tiger might have recorded.
You might have expected the occasional three or four minutes of ballast, but there are no fillers here. Renegade Sounds have sifted through the tapes with a quality control rep sitting on their shoulder, and have chosen carefully and well.
More importantly perhaps, the album has that pounding emotional pulse that is common to all good quality eighties' melodic rock, raising temperatures and providing frequent visceral thrills.
Any more tapes down there, guys?
Written by
Brian Wednesday, February 17, 2010
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