MOG

Crank it up, the louder the better…

The Rainmakers

I had liked this band since their debut came out in '86.  I fell in Love with this band after seeing them live back in ’89.  We saw them in a small club, a group of about eight good friends sitting at table stage front center.  The stage was only about a foot higher than the floor and these guys played their fxxxing hearts out.  Lead singer, Bob Walkenhorst, was a wild man, animal drenched in sweat, which we were close enough to be being showered by.  James Brown had nothing on this guy as the hardest working man in show business.  What a show.   And to be that close – it was one of those other worldly experiences.  Still rates as one of the very best shows I have ever seen!  In addition, after the show Bob even came out and shot the breeze with us during last call.

Not only did these guys have a hard rocking roots rock sound but Walkenhorst wrote great lyrics too.  Cutting social commentary mixed with humor produced many classic lines like, "The generation that would change the world is still looking for its car keys." From the song "Drinking on the Job" (I will post this one in comments). Sometime the vocal work could seem a bit cheesy, like on their one almost hit (it was one in the UK), "Let My people Go-Go" (still a great song and will get a post of it own someday), a song that confused some people into labeling them Christian Rock.  While religion is a topic in several songs the messages, if you bother to listen for them, aren’t what they’re playing at my church.  These guys were about as Christian rock as Jim Morrison and the Doors were.

So, anyway, in my on going quest to re-acquire some of my favorite albums as part of my on-going musical re-awakening, yesterdays mail brought me a brand new re-mastered with bonus cuts (and these are worthwhile bonus cuts too) copy of their eponymous debut album.

The first song I’m post from it (hopefully what your listening to at the moment) is the opening cut – "Rockin’ at the T-Dance". The T-Dance is a reference to the tragic collapse in 1981 of two sky bridges into an ongoing dance at the newly constructed Hyatt Regency in Kansas City, MO, the bands hometown. Catch the line "why they let the monkeys go, and blame the monkey wrench", pretty lyrically deep.   1967 - Grissom, White and Chaffey refers to the death of the crew of Apollo 1 when a ground test went horribly wrong.

For more history/background on the band, click here for a nice write up on allmusic.

And, Wow, my respect for Scandinavian tastes in music keeps growing.  The one place this band really did as well as they deserved was there, they actually re-forming in the mid 90’s based on demand there to release an album that went gold in Norway within a month.

Oh, and from I see, I’m claiming a gap-filler star on this one.