681. Night Ranger / Midnight Madness. 1983. 3.5/5

Following up the hard rocking debut of Dawn Patrol was always going to be a difficult task, and maintaining the balance on this album was also going to be a task in itself.

Opening with the American anthem "(You Can Still) Rock in America", as an International listener and buyer of the album this song still makes me annoyed even to this day. Yeah, sure, you are Americans who live in America, and can apparently still Rock in America. And the song itself sounds great, a fast rock track with plenty of scope for the guitars to turn their trade. But for those of us who aren't American, it makes it REALLY hard to sing along, because in the long run we aren't rocking in America! In the same way that John Mellencamp's "R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A" annoyed the crap out of me when it was plastered over Australian radio for twelve months, this does for the same reason. Yes, it's a petty gripe, but one that non-Americans I'm sure can relate to. I mean, do Americans sing "I come from a land Down Under" with passion? Anyway, enough of this. A good song to open the album with.
"Rumours in the Air" is a softer, slower song than I would have expected in following up this opener. I never really understand what leads some bands to think that jumping between fast and slow songs on a album won't affect the 'listening pleasure' of those that buy the album. Having jumped into the album with a great hard rock number, this holds everything back again.
"Why Does Love Have to Change" follows similar themes, but back at a faster pace, with Jack's dominating vocals searing through over the top of the keyboards and guitars. While the solos again here are terrific, showing off the best that Brad and Jeff had to offer, the song would have been harder had the guitars not been turned down so much in the mix throughout the whole song, Apart from the solos it is the keyboards that  dominate most of the melody through the song, which to me is a shame.
The radio-friendly, rock power ballad hit "Sister Christian" is next. This is arguably Night Ranger's biggest single success, but is so far out of my sphere of love of music that it, for me, just stops the album in its tracks. Plenty of people were probably drawn to Night Ranger by this song, and I'd bet many of them would leave disappointed having heard the majority of their other songs, just because they all aren't like "Sister Christian". If you love the rock ballad you will probably love this. When I used to record this from vinyl to cassette, it was one song I would always omit.

After this slow and sullied end to Side One, Side Two kicks into gear straight away with the brilliant "Touch of Madness", easily the best song on the album. A punchy drum beat and guitar riff led by terrific vocals makes this the star of the album. This is the kind of song that, for me, would have made Night Ranger an even more formidable band if they had concentrated on this style. Singles success somewhat disproves this theory, but I know I would like to have heard more songs in this kind of genre. "Passion Play", while still a good song and more than listenable, bring the album back to that almost pop rock kind of style, one that works for Night Ranger through the sheer talent of the band's members. Moving on from this comes "When You Close Your Eyes", which I sort of like despite myself. It's a love song, no doubt, and its success as a single shows that it was certainly written as radio-friendly, but it is catchy, and you can't help yourself but sing through the chorus loudly. "Chippin' Away" continues along in this vein, not really jumping out of second gear, when it could really have been a guitar-driven hard rock song. Instead it is a serviceable song in the mood of this album. It is all concluded with the quiet, silent, acoustically harmony of "Let Him Run", which almost destroys and semblance of the hardness of the band and lets you drift off into a coma. While I would not be a fan of this song wherever it was placed on the Album, making it the last thing you hear before the needle comes off the vinyl seems a really strange decision.

I still like this album quite a bit, though I think it is a step down from their previous release. In a lot of ways this went just a little bit too much in the soft rock direction without actually falling into that category. It's hard to attribute that, with two such brilliant guitarists such as Brad Gillis and Jeff Watson in the band, that it is the keyboards that dominate most of the songs, apart from the small lead breaks both of them get. It's what probably made the band more accessible through the radio market, and held them back from moving into a more fully fledged metal market than hard rock. It also severely ties this album to the 1980's, and while that's not necessarily a bad thing, it does limit its full potential.

212. Night Ranger / Dawn Patrol. 1982. 4/5.

Night Ranger had formed in 1979, with three of the members having been in the funk rock band Rubicon, those being lead vocalist and bass guitarist Jack Blades, co-lead vocalist and drummer Kelly Keagy and lead guitarist Brad Gillis. In 1980 former Montrose member Alan Fitzgerald joined on keyboard and synth, and he suggested adding a second guitarist to the group to fill out the sound, which prompted Jeff Watson being drafted in for the position. At this stage the band had been called Stereo, which they then changed to Ranger. However, another band called The Rangers fought them for copyright over this name as they became more popular and signed a record contract. At this time Blades had written a song called “Night Ranger”, and so they decided that this would become the name of the group.
Night Ranger had secured opening act positions with both ZZ Top and Ozzy Osbourne (with Brad Gillis filling in on lead guitar for Ozzy for the recently deceased Randy Rhoads) and were in the process of promoting this soon-to-be-released album. As a band they were in a position that gave them a strength when it came to writing and performing. The band contained two main songwriters in Blades and Keagy, both of whom also swapped and shared lead vocals for the tracks. The resulting mix gave the songs on the album a different focus depending on who the main writer of the song was and who was the main vocalist on the track. And this mix was also complemented by the ability of the band to not only write a great hard rock track, but also a popular rock ballad as well. Their sound was more commercial than contemporaries Y&T which enabled them to corner both ends of the market when it came to their target audience.

For a debut album, this crosses a line between several distinct genre possibilities, depending on just what your music preferences are. Looking back at it from such a long distance in the past, there’s little doubt that while it isn’t AOR or easy listening in the way that many 1970’s rock bands generated, it has its roots there from the band’s formative years. That base then incorporates a harder rock sound that bands like Kiss had utilised at the time, while also integrating the kind of rock ballad basis that was utilised in order to get airplay on radio stations worldwide in that era.
And Night Ranger had a terrific formation to accomplish all of those things. With twin guitars, and two players who both wanted to showcase their skills on their instrument, meant that duelling solos and harmonising gave their hard rock songs exactly what they needed to appeal to that market – the market I was a part of. Then they also had the great crooning vocals of both Blades and Keagy, with more injection of the synth and the rock ballad guitar that emphasised those tracks in the direction they wanted them to go in order to appeal to that market.
And the ballad tracks certainly work in that favour. “Sing Me Away” and “Young Girl in Love” are written by both Blades and Keagy, in the tradition of rock ballads, with both sung by Keagy who appears to be the main vocalist on these types of tracks. And they do the job the band is looking for well, and given they are spaced between the rockier songs the album holds itself together well, whether they are your kind of songs or not. In between these tracks come songs such as “At Night She Sleeps” and “Call My Name” and “Eddie’s Coming Out Tonight” which find the nice middle ground, good solid rock songs that play their part in making the foundation of the album.
All of these combine with what, for me at least, are the starring songs here. “Play Rough” is a tough talking track, “Penny” is perhaps the second best guitar track on the album with both Gillis and Watson freeforming across the song and Kelly Keagy belting out the lyrics. And “Can’t Find Me A Thrill” has both vocalists singing and trading vocals which is terrific. They are bookended by two great songs in the title track “Night Ranger” that closes out the album, and the opening track “Don’t Tell Me You Love Me”, with the great opening riff and drum beat, Blades great vocals and the scorching guitars. It’s the song that pulled me headlong into this band.

At times during my life with music there have come along albums that I have gained an obsession with, healthy or unhealthy. Just every so often one would crop up, and I wouldn’t stop listening to it for, not just weeks or months, but even into years. “Dawn Patrol” was one of these. In 1986 we had an American exchange student turn up in our year for a few short weeks. With him he brought his current listening material. One of the bands that he had albums of was Night Ranger, and this album was the one I heard first. And was the one that grabbed me. And it was from that opening track, from Brad Gillis’s opening guitar twiddle, the combining of Kelly Keagy’s drum beat, and into the song. It was the lure that grabbed me and dragged me in. And then everything that followed felt perfect. A great combination of the hard rock and the rock ballad, awesome guitars – just awesome throughout really – from Brad Gillis and Jeff Watson, the great atmospheric keys from Alan Fitzgerald which don’t overpower but add in each song, Kelly Keagy’s brilliant drumming along with his vocals, and the dominating bass lines and also vocals from Jack Blades.
I had this album on a C90 cassette with the band’s second album “7 Wishes” on the other side, and it stayed in my car cassette player (once I got my licence, which probably wasn’t until about nine months after I got this album) and at home for longer than I can remember. It did eventually die a violent, chewed up, irretrievably lost death from overplaying, which should give you an idea of how much I played it. And it has always been a favourite as a result. Indeed, all of Night Ranger’s first four albums are favourites, but this one has always had a special place. And in many ways I still surprise people when I sing songs off it, because they don’t even know who Night Ranger are. But my kids know that opening track of this album, because I played the video clip to them over and over as they grew up, bouncing them off to sleep on my knee as I serenaded them with one of my favourite songs of all time.

163. Night Ranger / 7 Wishes. 1985. 3/5.

As a band Night Ranger had come together in 1980, starting as a trio out of the band Rubicon through bass guitarist Jack Blades, drummer Kelly Keagy and guitarist Brad Gillis, and adding keyboardist Alan Fitzgerald and second guitarist Jeff Watson along the way. They had done their time on the club circuit, and in 1982 released their debut album “Dawn Patrol”, which gained them support slots on tours band bands such as ZZ Top and Ozzy Osbourne. The band’s popularity rose sharply with the release of their sophomore album “Midnight Madness” in 1983, with the two power ballad singles “When You Close Your Eyes” and “Sister Christian” getting huge exposure on MTV, and charted at #14 and #5 respectively in the US. On the back of this, Night Ranger went from a support band to a headline act within a matter of months.
The success was however a balancing act. Despite describing themselves as a hard rock act, the success and popularity of their power ballad tracks left them in a position of trying to keep all of their fans, old and new, happy with their material. Gillis had actually made comment in an interview that “Sister Christian” was completed in 1982, but the band had chosen to leave it off their debut album because they were afraid of losing their fans who were there for their hard rock songs. With the success of “Midnight Madness”, they now found themselves in that position just an album further down the track.
Moving into their follow up album, the band decided to utilise a loose concept for the album, of the band flying across the ocean in a WWII B-25 Mitchell bomber, something that Blades explained later was because both he and Gillis had a fascination for WWII era planes. Despite this being said to be the case, and with the front cover of the album mimicking the cover of the Motorhead album “Bomber” with the band sitting proudly in said plane, you will have to search very hard for this tenuous link throughout the songs on the album. What becomes their biggest test is to follow up what had been two well performed albums with a third, and thus became the challenge of the album titled “7 Wishes”.

This album can be divided up into two sections – and perhaps that is true of all Night Ranger albums, so maybe it is unfair to single out this particular one for this explanation. Those two sections are the hard rock tracks, and the power ballad tracks, and the best way to review the album is to look at both sides individually.
“I Need a Woman” fits almost directly into the style that Def Leppard made their own over the back half of the 1980’s decade, the chorused vocals, the moaning guitar solo and the lyrics focused directly on requiring a woman, in this case even more directly “I Need a Woman”. While not a true power ballad it has tendencies that draw it to that level. On the other hand, and far more directly like a power ballad, “Sentimental Street” heads down the exact same path as “Sister Christian” had on the previous album, though it is Blades writing the song on this occasion even though Keagy is singing the lead vocal on the track. The video for the song placed them in an Amelia Earhart scenario, with the entire band lost at sea, one of the tenuous ties to the album scenario. And though, as is pointed out here, the band had always dabbled in the art of the power ballad, this has always felt like a direct power puff reaction to the success of the single from the last album, and the need to follow up that success with another single of a similar quality. And it certainly worked, because it went to #8 on the US singles chart on its release. So mission accomplished on that score. But does it make this a better album as a result? “I Will Follow You” on side 2 of the album sits somewhere between the two genres of the album, with an upbeat tempo but light hearted music, trending to the soft rock track that was also popular in the mid-1980's. And the closing track, the acoustically based power ballad “Goodbye”, is a definite acceptance into this category and once again featuring Keagy on lead vocal. Ina 2001 interview Blades confirmed that he wrote "Goodbye" in memory of his older brother, James, who had died from a heroin overdose several years before. This reached #17 on the US singles chart, showing that these particular songs were working a treat for the band during these years. But part of the problem was that it pigeon-holed them as a power ballad band which was a double-edged sword.
In the harder side of the band, the album opens with the title track which showcases the great vocals from the band alongside the excellent guitaring of both Gillis and Watson. “7 Wishes” draws an anthemic quality about the lyrics which gives it a crowd singing boost to the feeling of the song. “Faces” follows within the typical Night Ranger hard rock formula, mixing great vocals alongside the brightness of Fitzgerald’s keys mixed alongside the guitars of Gillis and Watson. “Four in the Morning”, named after the time of day that Blades woke up and wrote the track, has a similar tracking to it. It isn’t a true hard rock song, it is more of a hard rock ballad, where the guitars are not as prominent as they are in hard rock songs but the structure of the track doesn’t fall into the power ballad or soft rock sphere either. It lacks a true burst of energy to lift it to being a better song.
Side 2 opens with the “This Boy Needs to Rock”, and contains the energy burst that the album needed after the closing of ide one with the ballad track. Co-written by Blades and Gillis, you almost get the feeling that Brad took charge at this point and said ‘hey, there’s nothing for me to do on this album, so here’s my track and this is how we are going to play it!’ His contribution to the track alongside Watson is excellent, and it showcases the best of the band in this genre style with the twin guitars firing. “Interstate Love Affair” is lifted above the other tracks here firstly by Jack’s harder and more forceful vocal in the verse, which is then dragged back a little by the choral vocals in the chorus and bridge, but the guitar solo spots success in raising the energy of the track gives it the boost it needs. And “Night Machine”, which probably should have been the concluding song on the album also has all the natural features that showcase the harder side of this band.

In the first half of 1986, while I was in Year 11 at Kiama High School, we had an exchange student from the United States called Steve turn up in our year for a few weeks. To be honest, that moment could have very easily passed with me even noticing, or certainly even remembering 39 years later. But it was what Steve brought with him that made him a memorable figure all of these years later. Because Steve brought his favourite cassettes with him with his favourite bands, and as it turns out they were all from a genre that my friend group had begun to explore quite heavily over the preceding six months, that of heavy metal and its sub genres. And so we were exposed to several bands that we were both unaware of and had no albums of, all of which was swiftly rectified by a LOT of recording. And one of those bands was Night Ranger. All three of the band’s albums released to that point were in America Steve’s collection and so were also soon a part of ours.
Thus, I discovered all of Night Ranger’s albums in one fell swoop, which in retrospect may have harmed the way I listened to them, because suddenly I had about 20 albums from various artists all fighting for my time. And yet, it is fair to say that I became a fan of Night Ranger immediately. And one of the things I discovered over the next 18 months was how much I enjoyed their music but had difficulty in choosing which was my favourite. And it literally changed every time I listened to one of the albums. Once I’d finished it I would proclaim “yep! That’s my favourite!”, until I went a listened to another, and then said the same thing. So in those heady days of high school, I found as much enjoyment from “7 Wishes” as I did the other two albums.
One thing that is obvious looking backwards from this distance is that I didn’t have so much of a problem with power ballads then as I do in the years since. I really don’t ever remember not enjoying every part of this album when I listened to it in high school, so my tastes have obviously adapted over the years. I only mention this because having had the album back on over the past week (sadly only streaming, as my cassette versions have died some time ago and I haven’t gotten around to replacing them yet) it has been noticeable to me where I now feel there are weak points in the album, and yes they fall directly on those power ballad moments. And it isn't so much that I don’t like them, it is just that it is where the album seems to lose its lustre. And I reiterate, I do not remember ever thinking this about this album in the past, it is only now that I am older that it seems less exciting to me that it did then. And I will also be honest when I say that perhaps that comes from not being able to listen to it on my stereo on CD or vinyl that also makes me feel this way. I don’t know. But for anyone who has listened to me talk about albums for the past four years knows, the power ballad does tend to stick a dagger through my heart, so maybe here on “7 Wishes” that is all it is again.
But hey! This is still a good album! And it brings back a lot of memories from those school days, and you can’t question the musicians in the band, they are all terrific. It’s obvious I need to buy this album again, not only to have in my collection again, but so I can blast it through the Metal Cavern in a much better format than I have this week.