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1989 'Protect The Innocent'
Found the double-tape in the bargain bin during a boring Sunday family jaunt around Makro or somewhere. Sides B, C and D are virtually irrelevant, but Side A - 'The First Chapter' - was just the best 'early metal anthems' collection ever:
A1 Steppenwolf - Born to Be Wild
A2 Black Sabbath - Paranoid
A3 Deep Purple - Fireball
A4 Motörhead - Ace of Spades
A5 Judas Priest - Breaking the Law
A6 Ted Nugent - Scream Dream
A7 Ozzy Osbourne - Ultimate Sin
A8 Blue Öyster Cult - (Don't Fear) The Reaper
Every one a killer. Yeah, even A6 and A7 - both tunes taken from slightly too late in both artists' careers, but Ozzy and Ted were crucial inclusions and the songs are just about the best examples from their era. Besides, they're hammocked between 'Breaking The Law' and '(Don't Fear) The Reaper', for fuck's sake, both truly essential tunes for a boy of 13 to hear. And no, '(Don't Fear) The Reaper' is not a metal tune and never was, but it's such a beguilingly brilliant melody, so strange and haunting and dark, that its power should never be underestimated.
'Protect The Innocent' Side A is an instant rock 'reader' for beginners, a bite-size 'Home School Of Rock' project for all us 13-year-old boys who wanted to know what Metallica listened to when they were our age.
Sides B, C and D weren't without merit - Dio, Anthrax, Saxon, Exodus, er, Mammoth - but it was rubbed up against shite like Cinderella, Tigertailz, Lita Ford, Lisa Dominique (back to back!), Femme Fatale and House Of Lords. And this was tape, kids: none of your handheld shuffle functions there, if you wanted to hear 'Metal Thrashing Mad' you had to fast forward through Kingdom fucking Come and the boring old Dogs D'Amour and the horrible, horrible 'Rhythm Of Love', which put me off the Scorpions for years. Fast forwarding took ages. You don't know you're born.
Incidentally, the ludicrously plentiful liner notes were done by Malcolm Dome (fucking natch), Neil Jeffries of Kerrang!, and a young(ish) 'Rocking' Val Potter, who went on about "the rock megastars of tomorrow", reckoned that Lita Ford, Lorraine Lewis and Lisa Dominique were "ready and able to take on the men at their own game," and called Motorhead and Magnum "survivors of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal", bless her. I met Val years later in Philadelphia on the Judas Priest tour. Lovely lady. I reminded her of 'Protect The Innocent' and told her how fond I was of Side A, and she said the only thing she remembered about it was they never paid her. So we had a bit of a laugh about that.
PERCEPTIONS UPDATE: How things change when you hit 30. Playing the whole of 'Protect The Innocent' again now, I think 'Rhythm Of Love' is a prime Eighties ballad of savvy majesty, and the sheer audacity of Kingdom Come has got to be applauded - they rock the shit out of Wolfmother in the 'dumb diluted rip-off Zeppelin' stakes.
Cinderella can still fuck off, though.
