OFF: Motorhead (was: Rush and stuff plus a little Hawk)

[Jon Jarrett]

On Wed, 11 Aug 2004, Mark Lee wrote:

        <snip>

> As for Motorhead, well I must
> admit
> to not having kept up with the Lemsters output for several years,
> never
> stopped playing the old stuff tho - No Sleep, Iron Fist yadda yadda.
> Seeing the comments in some of the posts makes me suspect I've been
> missing out, must check the discography and see what I'm missing,
> anyone care to make recommendations ? (That's opened a can of worms)

        I'm always happy to make Motörhead recommendations :-) Obviously
you need _Orgasmatron_, but that's hardly `new'. _Bastards_ is very good
if you can find it, and I think _We Are Motörhead_ is almost the same
consistently good quality as those two, albeit with slightly more retread
material (the cover of `God Save the Queen' and the title track, which is
basically `Ace of Spades' with new words). Thereafter you have to delve
into stuff which has some brilliant moments, but where some of the
material is filler and I think _Sacrifice_ and _Overnight Sensation_ fit
in there, both good though. I don't have _Rock'n'Roll_, _No Sleep At All_,
_March ör Die_, _Snakebite Love_ or _Inferno_ and so I can't say anything
about those (well, that's never stopped me before but you know what I
mean).

        I do have _Hammered_, and that's a rather different kettle of
fish; a couple of the tracks are much more complex than your run-of-the-
mill Motörhead, but the overall force and punch of the album suffers a
bit. Also, Lemmy sounds a lot as if he's whining about stuff for much of
it, he's clearly still got the righteous anger going there but it comes
across as if when he was recording _Hammered_ he was feeling rather as if
he was on his own with it, and it has a slight thinness about the
production that makes all these things come together to feel like weakness
despite some quite clever songs. I can see how if _Inferno_ is just
straight ahead full-power Motörmadness it might well appeal more to the
average fan.

        In summary, from recent Motörhead (the last twelve years, style of
thing) I;d say _Bastards_ (if you can find it) and _We Are Motorhead_ are
the most definitely worth having. Thereafter _Sacrifice_ and either
_Overnight Sensation_ or _Hammered_ or even both, and after that, you may
as well admit you're going to get them all anyway. Yours,
                                                          Jon

ObCD: The Atomic Bitchwax - _The Atomic Bitchwax_ (why weren't any of the
follow-up discs anything like this good, eh, could it be that all their
material takes five years of ageing to get `right'?)
--
                Jonathan Jarrett, Birkbeck College, London
    jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk/ejarr01 at students.bbk.ac.uk
  "As much as the vision of the blind man improves with the rising sun,
       So too does the intelligence of the fool after good advice."
       (Bishop Theodulf of Orleans, late-eight/early-ninth century)