L.A. Guns - Tales From The Strip

Shrapnel Records


4 out of 5 stars

I usually fear the days when the bands that I loved as a child release new records. I put all of my faith in these guys and they spit up a load of trash. Like a satanic box of chocolates, the majority of these “comeback” discs are those disgusting maple and some other sticky substance concoctions. But nothing makes me happier than when the systems fails, the stars align, and a solid album is delivered.

Enter, LA Guns.

Everything about this disc spelled disaster. The first strike? Founding gunner and lead guitarist Tracii Guns bailed on the band back in ’03 to chase the rock n’ roll bigtime that had always eluded him with Crue-man Nikki Sixx’s Brides Of Destruction. Thud!!

Strike two: A concept album about the heady Sunset Strip movement of the late 80’s?

Strike three: the two remaining original members, singer Phil Lewis and drummer Steve Riley, are less Hollywood Vampires these days and more Hollywood Grand-pires. Rather than haunting the Whisky-a-Go-Go, they seem better suited to hang out of the doors of their Tinseltown apartments shouting, “Keep out of my front yard!” at the kids playing in the street.

And yet, it works and it works well. There are still a few bullets left in these chambers.

“Tracii? We don’t need no stinkin’ Tracii!” Opening the album with “It Don’t Mean Nothing” the doors are kicked in by new axeman Stacey Blade’s buzzsaw guitar tone and Lewis’ trademark set of pipes and suddenly, we’re partyin’ like it’s 1989. Tracks like “Electric Neon Sunset”, “Rox Baby Girl”, “6.9 Earthshaker”, and “Crazy Motorcycle” might be condemned on the merit of ‘worst song titles ever’, but they rock like a bastard. “Hollywood’s Burning” showcases Old Man Riley as a solid rock drummer, even though he is 603. Just sayin’.

Don’t dare miss “Vampire”, by a long shot, the best tune on this whole disc. Yeah, it’s a ballad…a trite one at that, but again they pull it off. The old trick of name checking past song titles and Hollywood locales is woven into a tale of a played-out vampire walking through his modern day Transylvania. They nailed it. Maybe I’m a little biased, and certainly I’m over dramatic, but I feel the way he feels about Hollywood. Sure it’s a toilet. If the town were a single building it would have been condemned and imploded years ago. But it’s our toilet, god dammit.

This is a celebration of a town, and a time, that was equal parts dream and nightmare and for any poor souls that missed it (I wanted to Rip and Tear too, guys… just not on a school night), this is the closest we’ll ever come. This album won’t ever win any Grammy awards. It’ll never be remembered as a classic, and it probably won’t even go cardboard (let alone gold), but LA Guns have hit the mark with a good, fun album.

Reviewed by: Corey Rotic | February 2006