Tag: JohnnyCrash
1 Johnny Crash – Neighbourhood Threat (1990)
One of the harder to find CD’s in my collection is the debut effort by hard rockers Johnny Crash. This CD has been out of print forever and brings down big bucks on Ebay and Amazon.com. Finding a copy of it in 2010 will be a daunting task for any hard rocker. I finally tracked down a copy of this CD last year, after searching for this for months.
Was it worth the wait, and all of the searching? Absolutely!! Neighbourhood Threat kicks ass. Once upon a time I owned this cassette, but never replaced it on CD. It is every bit as good as I remembered it to be.
This band was fronted by former Tokyo Blade singer Vicki James Wright. If you haven’t ever heard him sing before, he has a cool 
raspy voice that fits this music to a tee. Fans of bands like Rhino Bucket, Dirty Looks and AC/DC are going to love this CD. This is sleazy good blues rock that does not disappoint. The band had a modest hit on MTV with “Hey Kid”, but like many of their peers in the ’90’s, Johnny Crash has little to no label support, and they broke up. They did release a follow up effort, Unfinished Business a couple of years ago, but it is not even in the same class as Neighborhoud Threat.
While the music on this disc is far from original, it is extremely good. There truly isn’t a bad song on this CD, as a result it is highly sought after release. Buy it, if you can find it! Happy Hunting!
Rating: 
Out of 10
Track Listing:
1. Hey Kid 
2. No Bones About It
3. All The Way In Love
4. Thrill Of The Kill
5. Axe To The Wax
6. Sink Or Swim
7. Crack Of Dawn
8. Freedom Road
9. Halfway To Heaven
10. Trigger Happy
11. Baby’s Like A Piano
Johnny Crash is:
Vicki James Wright -vocals
August Warchell – guitar
Christopher Stewart – guitar
Andy Rogers – bass
Stephen Adamo – drums
1 Johnny Crash – Unfinished Business (Release Year – 2008)
Sixteen years is a long time to wait for an album to be released, but that is how long I waited for Johnny Crash’s second album “Unfinished Business” to finally see the light of day. I guess the question is was it worth the wait, that is where the answer gets tricky. If any of you read or participate in HRH Forums you may know that Johnny Crash’s debut album “Neighbourhood Threat” is one of my top 5 all time albums. It has great songs from start to end but the biggest thing for me is after listening to it for the past 18 years it still does not sound dated to me. “Hey Kid”, “Crack of Dawn”, & “Ax To The Wax” all sound as great today as they did in 1990 when I first bought the cassette.
Unfortunately that is what is missing off “Unfinished Business” now don’t get me wrong there are some good songs and there are some o.k. songs but there are no great songs and as much as I hate to say it the album sounds very dated. “Damnnation Alley” and “Mama Don’t Care” try to capture the in your face balls to the wall feeling of the debut while they come close in the end just can’t pull it off. “Mama Don’t Care” could definitely be a better song but instead of letting it end the last minute and half is a senseless and useless outro that kills all the momentum of the song. “In The Groove” shows the guys stretching a little bit more with the acoustic intro and could have easily been a good stripper song back in the day but not in ’08. “Rock-n-Roll Suicide” is another attempt at trying to recreate the energy of the debut but it to falls a little short.
It’s not often that I say this but in this instant the best song off of “Unfinished Business” is a ballad “When It Gets Hard”. Vicki James Wright really gets to stretch his vocals on this song, it has a real bluesy feel and a backup choir that really helps fill the song out.
I don’t know if it was the fact that Dizzy Reed replaced August Worchell on lead guitar or because the band was still morning the loss of bassist Andy Rogers who died from a heroin overdose, but something is definitely missing off this album. To answer the question was it worth the wait? Yes and No I love the fact that I got to hear some new Johnny Crash songs, I just wished the songs were a little better than they are.
You can pick up Unfinished Business at SunCity Records. For more information on Johnny Crash, check out their myspace page.
Rating:
Out of 10
Track Listing:
- Damnation Alley
- Monkey See Monkey Do
- Mama Don’t Care
- Renegade
- In The Groove
- Rock’n’Roll Suicide
- Summer Daze
- Ditch The Bitch
- When It gets Hard
- Livin Above The Law
- No Parole
Johnny Crash is:
Vicki James Wright – lead vocals
J.J. Bolt – guitar
Christopher Stewart – guitar
Dizzy Reed – keyboards
Andy Rogers – bass
Matt Sorum – drums
