Jim Florentine - Cringe N' Purge

That Metal Show, aka The Best Show Currently On TV, has been a win-win all around. Bands that haven't seen wide-scale US TV time in decades can revel in new-school exposure and the hosts have been able to use the platform to expand their profiles accordingly. That has been a more slippery slope: Eddie Trunk's book was great and is highly recommended, but Don Jamieson's debut comedy cd is a disaster on the level of the Jimmy Fallon record of years past. Don't get me started on his stupid acoustic death metal project he's trying to hawk. Stick to TV producing, sideburns.

But I digress. Jim Florentine has deferred on the Trunk side of things with his recent work. His movie presence has expanded a ton recently and he's done ok for himself previously with the Crank Yankers and Terrorizing Telemarketers series. The have also been a couple of live stand-up releases previous that are pretty decent. Cringe N' Purge is his third, to my knowledge, and his first for Metal Blade. The usual Florentine topics of gay gays, religion and Slayer are addressed in typical Jersey style, so maybe don't play this at Thanksgiving for Grandma, but definitely pick up Cringe N' Purge if you like your comedy on the dark side of the politically correct.

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Eddie Trunk's Essential Hard Rock and Heavy Metal

Eddie Trunk is a god among men (and women), especially those of the metal persuasion. He could be deemed as such just for bringing That Metal Show to television airwaves, but TMS is but one of the more recent high points in his decades of dedication to metal. It's a love that has manifested itself in a myriad of forms. A random sampling of the Trunk CV reveals that this proud son of New Jersey was: instrumental in signing Metallica to Megaforce, squired Anthrax while they tenured there, got Billy Squier in the mid-card between Skid Row and Bon Jovi at Giants Stadium, got Twisted Sister to reunite and was generally on the front lines for everything tri-State and metal for the last couple of decades.

Eddie Trunk's Essential Hard Rock and Heavy Metal compiles 30 or so essays on his favorite bands, all posited against a backdrop of photographs from long-time cohort Ron Akiyama and supplemented with obscure facts and playlists of his favorite tracks from each. Trunk is an everyman metal fan with an encyclopedic knowledge garnered from first-hand interactions through radio, TV or print interviews. It's a shame that experts are so rarely afforded a forum as significant as That Metal Show, but you have to take the high spots when you can. This cannot come with any higher recommendations from the JS-NYC cognoscenti: if you are into metal and or hard rock in any, way, shape or form, there is no possible way you will not enjoy Eddie Trunk's Essential Hard Rock and Heavy Metal.

\m/

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Twisted Sister - Stay Hungry 25th Anniversary Edition

Twisted Sister and Stay Hungry were a big part of 1984 for me, but despite being MTV darlings, the band took it as hard as most metal bands did when grunge hit and the band broke up in 88. TS founder and guitarist Jay Jay French was the most successful in the wake of the bands untimely demise, starting a management company that handled Sevendust and a bunch of other acts, but things were pretty bleak for Dee. There were various attempts at new bands like Widowmaker that were ok, but nothing that set the world on fire. I believe at one point he was maybe doing accounting for a radio station he DJ'd at. After a long spell out in the cold, it all changed when Dee started doing voice-over work for Pizza Hut and CNBC and started raking in the cash. The other band members stayed active with various projects, including the first steps toward a reunion for a soundtrack song for Dee's Strangeland movie in 1998. The first live show was with Anthrax for a 9/11 benefit and they've done strong numbers ever since. Dee feels like he can't bring it on the level he wants to, so Team TS is going to tour behind the re-release of Stay Hungry (in full make-up and replica stage production) and then retire the make up for good. Word is that Dee wants to put the band on blocks soon afterward.

Listening to Stay Hungry 25 years on makes me feel pretty fucking old, but the music is far from dated. Far from it. In fact, the band and the record sound absolutely great. Ojeda and French are a team on par with Maiden's Smith and Murray or Def Leppard's Collen and Clark and continue to be. My inner metalhead is stoked to find that Ojeda and French both have replicas of their signature guitars available. Peep the links to bask in the nostalgia. Or perhaps recoil in horror. We're Not Gonna Take It is probably the best known track on the record and while it's great, it's maybe the fifth best track on the record. Stay Hungry is a bona-fide hard rock classic. The reissue throws a bunch of demos stuff that is fun to listen to, but your TS dork quotient has to be pretty high to enjoy them on the regular. That said, Stay Hungry is a record well worth revisiting. Buy it from the gents here and stay for all the other official TS history and merch. Trust me, you don't want French on your ass for buying the bootleg stuff. Also, check out this link with Dee and Jay Jay on the best metal program on TV, That Metal Show. It's on VH1 Classic and Eddie Trunk hosts it with Don Jamieson and Jim Florentine. I'm pretty obsessed with it. Trust me, it's well worth watching over and over again.

Stay Hungry!

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