Not for nothing. I am going to guess, does this record start with a cover of The Cars’ “Let The Good Times Roll”.
See, this is a lockdown album but not – thankfully – about the lockdown itself. It is an interesting debate, after all. How far should creative types document the current times we all live in? And how much do we need to be reminded of the hell that is 2020 for Planet Earth?
That was a dilemma faced by Kory Clarke. I mean, its not like he’s not politically motivated. Indeed, I bought Warrior Soul’s 1991 record “Drugs, God And The New Republic” as a 16 year old precisely because it had a vicious put down of consumerism on it. “The Wasteland” contained the line “Donald Trump is just a money whore”, strangely prescient now.
But this is 2020 and as Clarke it puts himself. “We wanted to make a record that was not about all the crap we are all living in, as it seems like a well-worn path for Warrior Soul. So, I had to think out of the box“.
The result is “Cocaine And Other Good Stuff.” 11 covers, that are pretty much all given the Warrior Soul treatment. That is to say, they all sound as pure as the driven slush.
The aforementioned opener delivers the line “let them brush your rock n roll hair” as if its daring them to try it, while “Cocaine” manages to turn JJ Cale’s original into something that you might have found scrawled on the bathroom wall in The Cathouse, Hollywood.
Credit to them too, for picking ones you wouldn’t have expected. “Cross Town Traffic” has some proper Gilby Clarke-esque licks, and if the choices of “Cold Gin” and “Firehouse” are more what you might have imagined, then they still breathe some of the old life into them that Kiss haven’t really found since those early albums.
Even when they go for the “big names” as it were, the choices aren’t the most obvious. “D.O.A” by Van Halen is sort of like Diamond Dave has been sniffing glue for days while listening to Motley Crue, and the version of Motorhead’s “Outlaw” sort of imagines a parallel universe where Lemmy wrote thrash.
The single they chose from this was “Elected” and if ever someone was really a yankee doodle dandy in a gold Rolls Royce, then surely its Kory Clarke. He is one of the last true rock stars and that’s what rock stars do, right?
One of the better covers albums, by virtue of the fact it only sees the originals as a starting point. “Get Down Tonight” gets horny. That is to say its drenched in horns, and no one should be under any illusions, when he sings “do a little dance, take a lot of drugs,” its kind of an order.
There’s a version of Grand Funk’s “We’re An American Band” (which bands have to cover by law it seems). This turns it into a near punk take on it. Lord help the ladies who want to get with the boys in the band, that’s for sure.
The last one, “Livin’ After Midnight” is an open goal. A song so good, you can’t get it wrong, lets be fair. Except here, you imagine that everyone here lives by the words in the chorus. There’s a bit in The Simpson’s where Otto The Bus Driver is listening to the song on his headphones and says “man, all these new bands sound like Judas Priest.” You can paraphrase that here and say “all these covers sound like Warrior Soul.”
Totally inessential on one hand, and great fun on the other, which is pretty much why you need this to be the soundtrack when you want to escape to a better place.
Rating 8/10
