Saxon - Strong Arm of the Law

Once upon a time, a long time ago, I used to be in my early twenties and I had a job that paid very little, and a wife and a kid.  It was the early 80's and I had always enjoyed the Punk Rock that I've mentioned here in previous posts, but I always had a fondness for hard, fast heavy rock that had nothing to do with Punks. Maybe it's growing up in the Midwest.  I dunno.  It's just that I've always liked the hard and heavy, but I kind of have my limits.  It's so easy to just laugh off heavy metal, especially the metal of the 80's, but there was some pretty kick ass stuff back then, and when my record spending allowance was incredibly meager, I managed to buy a few metal albums that I'll stand behind to this very day.  I have some that are less great than others, but then again, there's no accounting for taste, and I think if you've seen much of this blog you'd agree that hyperlinking the term there's no accounting for taste and using this blog as the link would get your point across quite effectively.

Anyway, back when I had to work all three shits in a week and often stood next to the same one or two people for twelve hours a day, we'd sit and talk about music and movies mostly, and we'd get pretty in depth and go on and on all day.  Metal wasn't a joke then.  I don't think the genre has aged well (have you seen That Metal Show?), and I think it's a young man's game (again, have you seen That Metal Show?  I think there are usually three females in the audience), and I think older men just look funny with their thinning, super long hair and weird, apocalyptic, demon-y and generally laughable lyrical subjects just come across more as kind of sad than kind of fun.  Maybe it's just me, but c'mon, when you're fifty I just don't believe you'd rather stir up some demonic trouble more than you'd rather just go home and have a beer and hang out with your wife.

Man, metal is tough for me to stay on track with!  So I was saying, way back in the 80's in Cleveland, we were one of the cities to get Z-Rock. It only lasted maybe a year, in like the mid 80's, but it was enough that in that period of time, Cleveland was pretty into metal, and so was I.  I was a lousy metalhead, though.  Just like I was a lousy Punk.  I never dressed right, and I never cared.  Some of the true powerhouse metal bands I essentially ignored, like Slayer or Venom.  I really liked this album by Saxon, though.

I still think there's a lot of good on this record.  It's not so much like a metal statement or anything, it's kind of like the direction I'd have expected a band like UFO to go.  It's harder and faster usually, but it's also just a really catchy album.  I still have no idea how old a sixth form student is in school, but I'm assuming like a high school senior, and Sixth Form Girls is a song about young girls in the proud tradition of The Standells' Dirty Water.  Sure it's ten times faster, but the girls still want to go out and party.  I like it.  It kind of reminds me of a less salacious Motorhead song.  I mean, there's not just a mindless, chunky riff with some screaming on these songs, like a lot of 80's metal wound up being.  Heavy Metal Thunder is another fast and furious one.  It's about getting ROCKED.  It's essentially an updated version of any song about Rock N' Roll and that's always cool by me.

Dumb as metal bands can often be, I thought Saxon did a decent job with a song about JFK's assassination on Dallas 1 PM.  It could have been really stupid and totally missed the point, but I think the music playing behind the broadcast we've all heard (at least if you're my age or older) is cool, and helps make a decent artistic statement.  Saxon may have looked like a dumb metal band, but they weren't.  They were a solid hard rock band, at least for a little while.  I had wished I knew the title track when I was in high school, because it was just the kind of song that everyone partying in a car would have been able to get behind, ya know?

My record is in great shape.  I think it only saw play on my old B&O turntable and my current Rega.  It's not an amazing audiophile recording, but it sounds good loud and the record is quiet and flat.  The cover is black and shiny, but when I look it up online it's usually white.  That's probably the import or the CD version. I'd bet you can get this really cheap, and even if you don't like heavy metal, I bet you'd end up liking this record.