My Bad!!!! (Rock Therapy) UPDATED Gonna Ball + Rant N' Rave

I found a copy of Rock Therapy so I bought it. I have never heard this Album/CD before as I didn't know the Cats did it until reasonably recently and I could never find a copy. Well, all I can say is WOW!!!!! Have I been missing out!! If there's any one else who hasn't heard this (surely I couldn't be the only one), get of your tush and grab a copy, it's that good. It got notes written by Lee Rocker on it and offers an interesting insight into the CD, such as they didn't tour on it and the record company didn't do them any favours in promoting it.

Have a listen.

I got Rock Therapy a Pony.

UPDATED.

I haven't heard the complete Gonna Ball and Rant N' Rave CD's I found on Amazon a release that has both CD's plus the original release as a box set. Amazon sells it for $45 USD, BUT, Moviemars (from Amazon) sells it for $21.75 USD. I ordered a copy (of course). I have bought from them before and had no problems, so I thought I'd post it here just in case anyone's looking for a copy.

Below's the Link:

Gonna Ball and Rant N' Rave from Amazon

Ponyabilly

I hadn't heard this one before either!

Just had a listen to the preview tracks at CD Universe

'Race with the Devil' alone is worth the price of purchase!!

I'll be adding this one to my collection as well!


Cheers
John

Glad for you guys.
Rock Therapy is a special album (recorded while the first "split") with very good songs : Race With The Devil, Rock Therapy, Broken Man, One Hand Loose (Charlie Feathers !), I'm A Rocker...
I bought it at the end of 1986, few months after The Knife Feels Like Justice.

shaker wrote:

I hadn't heard this one before either!

Just had a listen to the preview tracks at CD Universe

'Race with the Devil' alone is worth the price of purchase!!

I'll be adding this one to my collection as well!


Cheers
John

Hey John.

I got my copy at JB-HI on the weekend, I'm sure you'll find it there. This version is also remastered. The preview tracks don't play the best parts of the songs either. The guitar work is sensational.

René

Now, that really brought back memories (and it made me feel kinda old ).

There were 2 (TWO!) rockabillies in my hometown back in '86, me being one of them. My buddy and me were big Stray Cats fans, and he read about that album in a Norwegian music paper. The problem was no local record store carried the album, and they couldn't (or didn't bother to) order it for us. So we took the train to Oslo (roughly a two hour ride) and walked from store to store untill we found a dealer who had the album. Then we bought a copy each, got on the first train back home, and virtually ran home from the train station to listen to it.

We thought they'd split up for good, because of the solo albums and all the rumours about the internal fights and stuff. Then all of a sudden there was a NEW Stray Cats album; even a GOOD one! In the wake of that album, my buddy and me started a rockabilly band and called it "Rock Therapy" (after our first - kinda dirty - name was censored by the local newspaper )

I still get a good feeling when I listen to that album. As a matter of fact, I'm gonna listen to it RIGHT NOW


Anders

People talk about this being a thowaway, contractual obligation album. Maybe that's because there was no real marketing support from EMI, no tour, no singles, and no chart success. But it seems like every album that isn't Stray 1 or Rant-n-Rave is someone's personal unsung "diamond in the rough." I think that only speaks to the quality of their catalog. Other than the slightly puzzling direction of Let's Go Faster (which still has some strong tunes), I don't think there's a bad one in the bunch.

This album seems to have a cleaner, more polished sound than the first two albums, and contains a few more contemporary-sounding songs than Rant-n-Rave. I love the warmth of the acoustic rhythm guitar on Rock Therapy and Race With the Devil. Restless is a song that seems like it would fit on Let's Go Faster or Live Nude Guitars. Change of Heart would also be at home on either of those albums. Change of Heart and I Wanna Cry may be the only songs I'm not wild about on this album. But the covers have so much energy. Beautiful Delilah is fantastic, and if One Hand Loose points even one person in the direction of Charlie Feathers, then the album will have performed an invaluable public service. And check out Brian's banjo chops on Broken Man. Who knew? (If you're buying the album now, you probably already know about Brian's banjo prowess, but this was a real eye-opener in 1986.) Brian's commanding "Give Me a Standing Audition" on the incendiary I'm a Rocker was the perfect, swaggering end to more than one mixtape of mine in the 80s. It should have been the final track on this album, much like How Long You Wanna Live Anyway, which closes Rant-n-Rave.

Lee's liner notes help make this 2008 re-release, along with the Blast Off reissue, extra special. I believe you can still order these directly from the store on www.leerocker.com and get yourself a copy signed by Lee Rocker.

Pick up on it!

Don't Need a Doctor-billy

well , i got a vinyl longplayer, made in finland 1989.

on the backside of the cover is written :

" warning ! dancing to this rockabilly album may burn your shoes "

and there is o photo of the original cover on the backside.

i bought that one 1993 in a second hand record store.

Grrreat album, I've got the Finland made vinyl too!

On the strength of all of these comments I just ordered the CD from Amazon. Many of you know that I came into the Setzer orbit when the band was in the BSO era, having missed the whole Stray Cats thingy. I'm getting caught up and really, really enjoying all of the "new" (to me, anyway...) music.

My work here seems to be done

... And it was a great work !! Thanks a lot Pony.

Now, kind Sir, if you could only just invent a time-machine so I could go back and witness all the greatness first-hand... and then I'd have all these albums in vinyl instead of CDs.

Well, I guess one good thing about being a young, know-it-all, inexperienced trouble-maker is that I get to be a young, know-it-all, inexperienced trouble-maker. That, and my mom didn't think rock was the devil's music while I was under her roof. No, instead, she introduced me to Aerosmith, Van Halen, and AC/DC. My mom rocks.

I love that album ROCK THERAPY
I owned it on cassette tape first and then a mate put it onto CD,but now I have one from the Lee Rocker store signed by the man himself.
BRILLIANT!!!!!
CC/UK

Rene!!! You disappoint me my young star guitar pupil!! You have so much access to the Cats/Brian/Rockabilly music at my house, but you don't ask!!!! Shame, shame, shame!~!

pony65k wrote:

My work here seems to be done

Maybe, but it seems that your homework is just beginning....

Buy all of the albums you don't already own. You can't go wrong with any of them.

As we have a topic about Rock Therapy and an other one about Tommy Maguire, I remember a little story.
4 or 5 years ago, Earl Slick said he was the guitarist on the song I Wanna Cry. I sent an email to Tommy, asking him if it was true and, very quickly, he answered me that it was right.
That was a special feeling, even if it was a track I don't really like... A Stray Cats song without Brian Setzer.
This day, Tommy learned us something that was not written on booklet...

Choochoohothub wrote:

As we have a topic about Rock Therapy and an other one about Tommy Maguire, I remember a little story.
4 or 5 years ago, Earl Slick said he was the guitarist on the song I Wanna Cry. I sent an email to Tommy, asking him if it was true and, very quickly, he answered me that it was right.
That was a special feeling, even if it was a track I don't really like... A Stray Cats song without Brian Setzer.
This day, Tommy learned us something that was not written on booklet...

Cool!!!!! A lost Phantom, Rocker and Slick song. Their LP's were awesome!!! Great story, thanks for sharing.

Hi
I bought some Phantom Rocker and Slick stuff on tapes some years ago,I will have to dig it out and put it onto CD.
It was real good stuff
CC/UK

I'm not really a fan of "Phantom, Rocker & Slick" - "long hair music cramps my style" - but I really like the song called Runnin' From The Hounds on their 1st album (+ the Men Without Shame intro)

I agree for the haircut(s)

Even there are a few pretty good things on the first Phantom Rocker & Slick album, I found it a little disappointing. Disappointing because "common". The magical from the Cats era was gone.

For me too, Runnin' from The Hounds is the best track they ever recorded.

That's what I felt too : a "common" record, just californian FM rock, nothing more.
For me, an album with guys like Jim & Lee could not be just common. So it was disapppointing (like their attitude versus Brian).