Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Coloured Balls - Ball Power (1973)

My friend Steve recently posted a link to the NME top 100 records of the decade list, and Fenriz recently uh "dropped" the second installment of his "Trapped Under Ice" mixtape series. These internet events have caused me to post this Coloured Balls record. See, the NME list was chock-full of rock bands like The Libertines or whatever that don't particularly rock. Now, the popularity of these bands would make sense to me if they were really catchy or something, but they're not melodic or anything either. So they're in this weird no-man's land where they have the worst of both worlds (not rocking, not having catchy melodies). Get the fuck out of here with that.

Anyway, I was listening to Fenriz's mixtape while I was pondering this, and he included Human Being of off this record, and dang does that track rock. But yeah, these are some Australian guys really playing some progged out weirdo proto-metal boogie. Now, I've expressed frustration at pentatonic scale-knowers in the past, but that is no stab at the pentatonic scale itself. When something rox or is heavy, the pentatonic scale is just as good as any other. These songs exist in a nice sweet spot between upbeat boogie and meandering prog. Actually, in the extended solo section of Something New, they make use of one of my favorite pentatonic sounds: playing pentatonic but harmonizing with thirds. See also: Supernaut intro riff & Down all the time. And also the intro to Human Being uses another one of my favorite tricks. The emphasis is on the "and," but the guitar riff starts on its own so the time signature flips in your brain when the drums come in. See also: Fight Fire With Fire. Great I love rock music woo!

5 comments:

VoYD said...

Thanks heaps for posting this Aussie rarity... these guys are real legends back home and Lobby Loyde was one of the best guitarists to ever grace rock in OZ. Check out some of his other work... especiallyu with Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs, and Rise Tattoo.

If you can get any more Lobby Loyde related stuff (esp. Coloured Balls), I would be most appreciative...

Rock On...

MiK

Todd said...

Hey Mick, I'm sure that almost all of the Lobby Loyde stuff that I have I got from doing something like this:

http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=%22coloured+balls%22+%22lobby+loyde%22&btnG=Search+Blogs

Anonymous said...

Well the NME is written by dickpipes, for dickpipes. And the Coloured Balls rip. Nice one.

struck said...

Did Phil Rudd actually play on any of the coloured balls albums? I know he played on buster brown thanks.

Todd said...

You know, my google skills aren't good enough to find the answer to this question.