GORILLA'S FAVES! "How can you seperate the first 8 Sabs LP's, or the first four Budgie-albums?? Or AC/DC? They're all killer and if you don't like any of them, we don't like YOU!!!" Gorilla are about to play the 11th Roadburn Festival's heavy 70's after party. In support of their first European date of 2006, singer / guitarist Johnny Gorilla rambles on to Roadburn about the albums that inspired the band. Words | Johnny Gorilla Pick ten LP's that have influenced you / your band!!! How do you pick just ten from the thousands of cool discs you hear??? A thankless and practically impossible task!! Just to clarify and help us [Gorilla] pick a mere ten, we've stuck to LP's that have influenced either Gorilla or had something to do with the Gorilla sound, rather than just personal favourites, although most qualify as that too. Confused?? Dazed and Confused? Me too. There's obviously bands like The Who, Black Sabbath, MC5, The Stooges, Blue Cheer, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Grand Funk Railroad, Budgie etc and a few others that are so dear to us [and I cant stress that enough kids] it would be impossible to choose one LP from their entire catalogue. How can you seperate the first 8 Sabs LP's, or the first 4 Budgie-albums?? Or AC/DC ? They're all killer and if you don't like any of them, we dont like YOU!! So as a result I've left [most of] those bands out of this top-ten, as their influence is obvious. So what we got is ten slightly 'off the beaten track' LP's that have helped influence the Gorilla sound. Most of them were pretty unheard of and ignored when we was diggin' them 10 years back, but are probably pretty well known in this computer-age, so dont get too excited!! Plus OGRE picked most of my current fave raves anyhow!!! All the following are original vinyl releases, not CD re-issues. Here goes nuthin: MOTORHEAD | "Overkill" When we was kids of 7 & 10 me and my bro got into rock music and started buying up anything cool we could save for, free records were few and far between. Our father worked for a local paper who occaisionally got records sent to them, he'd sometimes bring random discs home for us if no-one else at the paper wanted them. The first Motorhead LP appeared one day and after playin' it my bro wanted to smash it against the wall, flying frisbee style [he prefered Queen and Deep Purple]. I was instantly hooked, this shit on weedy so-called punk, but had more energy and a rougher sound than any rock I'd heard before. For my next birthday I asked for the new 'Overkill' LP much to my bro's disgust. It blew my head clean fuckin off -and still does. The pure speed metal rush of the title track, the dirty scuzz rock of 'I'll Be Your Sister', the loner fuck-you-ness of 'Stay Clean' with the nastiest / coolest bass solo since 'm,m,m,My Generation', the humour of 'I Wont Pay Your Price' to name but a few. It's even got Lemmy playing a guitar solo on 'Limb from Limb'. Pure fuckin filth!!! BLACK SABBATH | "S/T" As stated in the intro, some bands dont really need to be included in top-tens. They just are there all the time anyhow, and which LP could you choose any, particularly in the case of Sabbath, as all the Ozzy LP's are fuckin classics- even Never Say Die - which often gets a shitty press ,but sounds like a return to form, and a big fave of Nirvana too. But we picked the 1st LP coz' its just got such a fantastic sound and atmosphere, genuinely scarey, amazingly heavy -not a metal Marshall sound, but in the dynamics and riffs. Ozzy's vocals are unique and second to none. Fuck you, I could write a book on this lP alone. LORD SUTCH | "And Heavy Friends" Absolute classic from the Union Jack Roller [as immortalised in 'Union Jack Car'] on the cover, the dodgy pre-photo-shop snaps of the Lord with his Heavy Friends -Jimmy Page, John Bonham, Jeff Beck, Noel Redding etc to the pure revved up heavy rocked out ridiculously titled songs such as 'Flashing Light', Wailing Sounds', 'Thumping Beat' -a must for people who like Led Zep and can't stand Robert Plant! Sounds more Zep than Zep. Name checking Nicky Hopkins and Jeff Beck on 'Gutty Guitar', the weird thing is the songs without the famous session men sound just as good. Lord Sutch is a fuckin genius and all round Gorilla good-guy!! Effin Belter. 'With Jimmy Page you cant go wrong!!!!' SIR LORD BALTIMORE | "S/T" [2nd album] The follow up to the much revered 'Kingdom Come' LP, and often dismissed by the likes of Mr Cope as being sub-standard Heavy Metal trash!! Exactly ya stoopid hippy!! Side one is a hilairious 'concept' cum 'rock-opera' all about the 'Man From Manhatten' who I guess is some kinda Woody Allen Jesus type o guy!! To quote Sir Lord -'Dressed in White Satin - He could speak Latin.' Lyrics don't get no funnier. Side two ends with a live song featuring sax, more crazy lyrics sung 'opera style' and crazy feed back geetar. Side two sounds as though these guys have just bulked up on Sabbath LP's 'n mandrax. Amazing solo on 'Chicago Lives', pure Geezer bass throughout and 'Hail Caesar' is just the most Tapped out song about a Roman Emperor ever written!! Nice touch, the LP intro and outro are the same phased out drum 'n geetar frenzy. Double-neat!!! If you can't dig this then get back to yer stone circles brutha. FU MANCHU | "In Search Of..." Lets all be honest here -without Fu-Manchu there wouldn't be no Stoner Rock scene. I know nowadays it aint so fashionable to dig the Fu's, most of their fans have jumped onto the Nebula ship and everyone blabs on about how Kyuss invented stoner-rock -but Kyuss'll always be metal to me. Its around '96 or '97 and I'd never heard of Fu Manchu until my friend Tim told me about an LP he'd got by a band that sounded a bit like the band me and Sarah Gorilla were in at the time, The Morticians. He played me 'In Search Of...' on vinyl with the free t-shirt transfer and as the bass heavy riff to 'Regal Begel' blasted from the speakers, I thought two things -1. Jeez this is fuckin great and 2. Shit -some bastard's beaten us to it!!! THE PINK FAIRIES | "What A Bunch of Sweeties" Pure punk filth before punk or even 'Lo-fi' was invented and if you sounded like this people just thought you were ill mannered druggy louts who had no finess or subtlety!! The guitar sound has burned itself onto my brain and is the perfect reference point if your a hater of tasteful guitar tones. Mental version of the Ventures 'Walk Dont Run' and very English mentions of 'fish and chip shops', great street-punk-hippy-cover -the even more drugged up bastard father of Motorhead. RANDY HOLDEN | "Population II" Old Randy may have had a hard ride through hippyville [having your record company take back all your guitars and amps on the release day of your LP is kinda a bummer man!!] But maybe the ex-Blue Cheer surfer dude guitar god might not have come up with such an amazing LP if he'd or had it easier. Shit -who cares. Some of the heaviest, slowest riffs and widdles to be commited to tape, at a time when twiddley guitar virtuosity was smiled upon, Mr Holden delivers up slab after slab of guitar riffs heavier than an elephant in a concrete overcoat O.D.-ing on Vallium. Essential stuff dude. Wipe-out. BUDGIE | "S/T" Gotta mention Budgie coz' us Gorilla folk still don't reckon they get enough credit for inventing the stoner / doom sound. Bit more obviously bluesy / Zeppy than Sabbath but a bit more down home and do it yourself too. Amazing titles like 'All Nite Petrol' and 'Nude Disintergrating Parachutist Woman' shown they don't take themselves too serious, which is a major strength to any band. Maybe its because of Burkes helium-tone vocal that they get the cold shoulder. But if your LP is produced by the same guy who did the first two Sabbath LP's you'd have to really suck to sound bad. Another classic example of the heavy because of the riffs 'n dynamics rather than the sound, which most folks seem to overlook or be unaware of these days. Again could have been any of the first four. TEN YEARS AFTER | "Criklewood Green" Often written off as blues-jammers, the mighty TYA can't do much wrong by us. Love the fucked up bit on the second track where somebody lent on the tape in the studio and slowed it down!! Who cares if the guitar solo's last for ten or even twenty minutes, if you want 3-minute pop songs go buy a fucking 1910 Fruitgum Co. LP. They left it on the disc which is pretty fuckin cool. Again this LP is one of many we could have chosen. ZZ TOP | "First Album" A real beauty of heavy but tight and slightly under-powered rock. If you think Billy Gibbons is nothing but a blues man, try playing along with this and using your blues scales, and you will discover there ain't nothing conventional or boring about the Reverend Willy G. His lead lines on 'Neighbor Neighbor' are mind blowin. Frank Beards drumming is tight as a dog ticks blood sack, but never predictable, just pure groove from start to finish -sounds a bit like Fu-Manchu playin thru Pignose amps with out the Fuzzy bass. Essential. Note -on the CD re-issue: they've re-mixed it to sound like shit, vinyl only on this one folks!! As I say theres about another 50 at least LP's to be included -Mountain, May Blitz, Armageddon, Masters Apprentices, Frijid Pink, Josefus -the list goes on and on and on. But that'll give you a little insight into the mind of three Gorilla folk. Rock 'n riot.