I got up early this morning (for a
Sunday). Yesterday I had four more hours of work done on my “sleeve” tattoo and
I needed to wash it off. Tattoo care at the front end makes for a much nicer
product down the road.
For the second straight week the
Odyssey features a band with an umlaut in its name – I just don’t trust
blogspot to translate it correctly, so I leave it out.
Disc 752 is….Ace of Spades
Artist: Motorhead
Year of Release: 1980
What’s up with the Cover? Outlaws! They’re mean, dirty and
not afraid to put you in the ground if you cross ‘em! Regrettably, these
outlaws forgot to phone each other before going rampaging, and all showed up
wearing the same outfit. Awkward!
How I Came To Know It: My brother had this album but I
didn’t listen to it a lot back in the day. I’ve had a greatest hits package
from Motorhead for a while, and recently I was searching for some studio albums
to try out. “Ace of Spaces” is considered by many the classic Motorhead album,
so it was the natural starting point.
How It Stacks Up: This is the only Motorhead studio
album I own (for now), so it can’t really stack up.
Ratings: 4 stars
Listening to “Ace of Spades” it is hard to imagine band
leader and bassist Lemmy ever playing in seventies prog act “Hawkwind.” There
are no time or tempo changes here, and no nerdy talk of space adventures or
fantastical journeys.
Instead “Ace of Spades” is 100% pure visceral power.
The music is an assault on your senses and coming straight from the variations
of Blue Oyster Cult’s “Fire of Unknown Origin” it was a shock to my system at
first. It felt kind of like those first few pokes of the needle when you are
getting a tattoo.
Just like a tattoo, you quickly settle into the
experience. You have to let Motorhead flow into you. Remember to breathe and
just let it hammer away.
“Ace of Spades” begins with the title track, which
thirty-five years later is still a classic. The boys jump all over the front of
the beat, making the song feel like a reckless race to the end. As it is
throughout the album, Lemmy’s vocals rasp their ugly way through the song. He’s
not a pretty man, and he doesn’t have a pretty voice, but he is what Motorhead
needs. I always picture him singing up into his microphone (he used to always
set the mike stand way too high), his giant mole blistering off his face from
around whatever unkempt facial hair he was rocking at the time. Lemmy is living
proof that no matter how ugly you are, if you can play rock and roll you’ll
still get the girls.
Many of the songs on “Ace of Spades” pursue this
journey. “Love Me Like a Reptile” has
a nice rolling guitar riff, as Lemmy invites the object of his affection to
love him like a reptile, as if you could love him any other way. Reptiles noted
in the song include the Black Mamba, the Thunder Lizard and the…er…Electric
Eel. Ah, guys…?
Elsewhere Lemmy sings about the dangers of under-aged
girls interested in his electric eel, in “Jailbait”
and the slightly more philosophical “The
Chase is Better than the Catch.”
The guitar solos on “Ace of Spades” don’t blow me
away, but “Fast” Eddie Clarke definitely knows his stuff and the production
keeps a nice balance between instruments in a genre of music that too often
over-amps the guitars. I love the guitar best when it is just laying down a
furious metal groove, like on “Shoot You
in the Back” or “(We Are) The Road
Crew.”
There is a punk element to Motorhead in their absolute
adherence to simple melodies that hammer away. Motorhead isn’t a band to put on
airs, literally or figuratively, and there is a strange humility amid the
fist-raising power of their music.
For example, “(We
Are) The Road Crew” is a song about the rigors of touring, but instead of
telling the story as rock stars, they give the roadies the spotlight:
“Another hotel we can burn,
another screw, another turn
Another Europe map to learn,
another truckstop on the way,
Another game I learned to play,
another word I learned to say
Another bloody custom’s post,
another fucking foreign coast,
Another set of scars to boast.
We are the Road Crew.”
The album loses me a little on the first half of side
two, with “Fire Fire,” “Jailbait,” “Dance,” and “Bite the Bullet”
the weaker parts of the album.
Fortunately the boys bring it back home with “The Chase is Better than the Catch.” This
is probably my favourite Motorhead song of all time, with its chugging beat, loose
and dirty three chord guitar riff and Lemmy at his most lascivious.
The album ends with “The Hammer,” a punk-infused barrage on the ears that brings you
full circle to the opening song of the album. While “Ace of Spades” is the better song, “The Hammer” is the perfect book end to it.
My copy of the CD has three bonus tracks. As an
album purist, I usually don’t like this but the additions are all good, and
even with their inclusion the whole record is over in 45 furious minutes.
Two of the three songs are covers. One is a collaboration
with all-girl metal band Girlschool on “Please
Don’t Touch” a cover of the 1959 song by Johnny Kidd and the Pirates. It isn’t
better than the original, but it is close. The other cover is of a Girlschool
song, “Emergency” and is also a great
addition.
If you are a metal fan, “Ace of Spades” is a
must-own record. If you like punk music, this could be your gateway album into
the world of metal and if you don’t like punk or metal then you may want to
consider broadening your horizons.
Best
tracks: Ace of
Spades, Love Me Like a Reptile, Shoot You in the Back, (We Are) The Road Crew, The
Chase is Better than the Catch, Please Don’t Touch
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