Izzy Stradlin & the Ju Ju Hounds

While nursing that post drinking session queasiness that doesn’t quite count as a hangover I thought I’d review something a little more gentle. Of the quartet of drinking buddies that took part last night one is a dedicated anti Guns’n’Roses indie fan, but as the inevitable “is appetite a great album” conversation went on we got onto Izzy Stradlin and his solo stuff.
Izzy Stradlin & the Ju Ju Hounds is the only album currently in my possession (another on the way from Amazon) and in my opinion a brilliant one at that. If you want something to fill that silent place in the background then this is it, fantastic to cook and relax to, even my wife doesn’t complain about Izzy when I’m taking control in the kitchen. It feels like grown up rock music if you get my meaning, the sort of music you can play when you reach sixty and not have your grandchildren laugh at you (like my mother-in-law playing the Stones), it has a timeless quality to it. Plus the opening track has that one line that always makes me smile when I hear it “shut that door”, its probably lost on any one not British and over 30.

Not to do away with the scoring I will give this an 8/10 for culinary inspiration good for any meal at any time of day. Internet browsing gets a 7/10 because it’s not intrusive but not dismissible, like I said it fills up a space and admirably at that. I have not tried cycling to this and given the weather and my delicate constitution at the moment I wasn’t willing to try so we’ll leave the third category this time.
7.5/10
enjoy

faith no more - the real thing

This album needs no introduction. Being such a classic (in my opinion), it was hard to put through my grading system without colouring the result.
My first taste of Faith No More was watching the video for Epic on ITV’s Saturday chart show, this show would only perform the rock chart once every three weeks and this only lasted about six or seven minutes (that’s almost all the rock music we got on TV back then), and this video seemed to be there forever.
So to the crunch, cooking to The Real Thing was easy, getting funky in the kitchen to Faith No More seemed almost natural. In fact, you can do any number of household chores to this, washing, feeding the dog, loading the dishwasher (ah modern appliances, heaven on earth). For culinary soundtrack, this gets a grandiose 9/10.
Next, I came up with a new test, playing Delta Force Black Hawk Down (the only computer game I played so much I wore the disc out). Playing the game and listening to the music at the same time was a little distracting but amusing at the same time especially when the fantastic cover of war pigs came on, so for gaming it gets a 7/10.
Finally cycling, a bit mixed here, parts of the album were fantastic to ride to but others not so here The Real Thing gets 5/10.
An overall result of 7/10 and for some reason it sounds better in the sunshine but this s something I cannot explain.

Enjoy