15 months after the release of that album came this EP. Was it to keep more material out there in front of the fans? Was it to help fill a gap in a recording schedule or a touring schedule? Or was it a cash grab from the record company to strike while the iron was hot. I can’t say that I know the answer to that. Four of the five songs had been released as B-sides to the singles releases by the band, with only “Little Wing” being an unreleased song at that period.
My memory of the time was that I read an article somewhere that said that the five songs – all cover versions of other bands songs – were chosen for a reason. My memory of this article was that each member of the band chose a song for the band to cover, and that they were then recorded during the sessions for “Slave to the Grind” to be used for the B-sides, and that they were then pulled together for this release. Memory tells me that Rachel Bolan’s choice was the Ramones track, and Seb Bach’s was the Judas Priest track. But in trying to confirm that information for this podcast episode, I haven’t been able to find that out anywhere. Now, it may well have been an article in the now defunct Australia metal magazine Hot Metal, or it could have been somewhere else. So it may well be complete rubbish – but I offer it here on the off chance that my memory is indeed correct, and this is actually a solid piece of information.
Wildly different opinions are thrown around about the worth or otherwise of this EP. There are many people out there who hold it with great disdain. I’ve never really understood that. Perhaps those teenagers who came in to Skid Row through the hair metal radio friendly anthems couldn’t get the band playing covers of songs from bands they just had no idea of. Possibly. Others probably felt that the versions of the songs they played didn’t hold up against the originals. Possibly.
Personally, I think they did great versions of these songs that were faithful to the original, but also added their own style to it, and that to me is the best way of doing a cover song.
Trying to do justice to a Ramones song is going to be tough not matter what genre of music you play. Taking on “Psycho Therapy” was a good choice, and it is a rollicking version that stays true to the Ramones version while sounding like a Skid Row song. Rachel Bolan actually sings the lead vocal on this track, and sounds like he’s having a great time doing it.
On the other hand, the band’s version here of “C’mon and Love Me” is simply the best version of this song I’ve ever heard. Yes, it strips the original Kiss version by some distance. And that might sound like sacrilege, but this is brilliant. Sebastian Bach’s vocals here are perfect for the song. He doesn’t try to be Paul Stanley, he moulds it to his own vocal chords, and it is perfect. The band is also on point in this song. It’s a pearler.
We then have a live version of Judas Priest’s “Delivering the Goods”, which not only is a great idea to retain the vibrancy and energy of the track, it also has Rob Halford on duelling vocals. This was recorded at a time when Halford had either left Judas Priest or was on what he wanted to call a hiatus from the band, so it was an interesting situation for that reason. It’s another great version here.
For me, it was somewhat surprising how good the version the band does of Rush’s “What You’re Doing”. There’s nothing easy about covering Rush songs, and this is very much a Skid Row-ified version, putting a bit of the Slave to the Grind attitude in it to create the version that suits the band rather than duplicate the original. Personally I think it is a great version, even if the original still remains the bees knees.
Jimi Hendrix’s “Little Wing” is the final song of the five track EP, and again shows the Skid Row sounding version of the song while retaining the feel of the original. Can you ever hope to cover a Hendrix song and be better than the original? No, but this does sound like Slave to the Grind era as well (think “In a Darkened Room” and you’ll know what I’m talking about).
Having come off the brilliance of the “Slave to the Grind” album, I bought this in the first days of its release, and played it to death for weeks and weeks. It was “C’mon and Love Me” that had me hooked, but when you have an EP that runs about 18 minutes you just let it keep going around and around, until you hear the songs in your sleep. In many ways it reminded me of when I first got Metallica’s "Garage Days Re-revisited" - reviewed just a few episodes ago here on this podcast – and I often wondered whether or not Skid Row was looking to produce the same sort of excitement that that EP had produced. There is no comparison of course, but it did provide a look at another side of the band, as to where their influences had come from. And as influences go, the Ramones, Kiss, Judas Priest, Rush and Jimi Hendrix are a pretty handy quintet to draw from.
I still love this EP. Playing it again over the past couple of weeks has been great, a short and sharp burst between other albums I am reviewing for this podcast that never failed to lift the atmosphere wherever I had it on. And because it doesn’t overstay its welcome, much like the aforementioned “Garage Days”, I still pull it off the shelves regularly and happily listen to it. And it fits because it is only 5 songs long, not like other bands who release full length albums of cover songs that sometimes just overdo it.
Sadly it was the last truly great thing the band released. Tensions rose when recording the next album “Subhuman Race”, and Seb Bach and the band separated after that tour. Sometimes you wish they had just been a little more love left to give.
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