Nite Songs

  "I feel a fool in conversation/I'm so surprised by what you say/I can't control this situation/I've fallen all the way..."  - Rene Berg  - Secrets Had this album come out five years earlier than it did then I'm pretty sure it'd still be being talked about by connoisseurs of good old fashioned knockabout Soho glam rock in the same breath as the Dogs D'Amour 's In The Dynamite Jet Saloon  and the Quireboys ' A Bit Of What You Fancy . As it is, The Leather, The Loneliness And Your Dark Eyes  is yet another of those great albums in this genre that came out a year or so after grunge came in and glam was essentially exiled back to the margins. But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself here. Rene Berg then. I have to be honest, my knowledge here is a little bit sketchy so I apologise in advance if there's a few details missing from this here article. But the guy's probably best known for his spell as bass player in Hanoi Rocks ' final li...

  Oh-ho, what have we here then? It's been a while since I heard any new material from Finland's very own rock 'n' roll sheriff but with new offerings from Nasty Suicide/Stenfors, Sami Yaffa and of course Michael Monroe landing on our review desk in the last 12 months, the prospect of some new material from Andy McCoy, even if it's just a covers album, is always something that's gonna put a smile back on my face. The key to a good covers album on the evidence of some of the ones we've reviewed in the last few years here at Nite Songs is either a) pick a suitably eclectic selection of songs that not everyone listening is likely to be familiar with (see the Hellacopters' Head Off  or the Wildhearts' Stop Us If You've Heard This One Before  for examples) or just simply kick loose and sound like you're having an absolute blast doing it (see the Skids' Songs From A Haunted Ballroom  last year). And I'm happy to report that Jukebox Junkie ...

  "Welcome to Silicon City, it's all tits 'n' ass to me/Where Tropicana mud wrestlers marry rockstars, must be some social disease...L.A. sleaze (ugh!)"  - Shooting Gallery  - Restless It's been a bit of a busy summer for the former members of Hanoi Rocks with new albums surfacing from both Michael Monroe (who lest we forget has Sami Yaffa in his band nowadays) and Nasty Suicide (or Stenfors as he's now known). So it seemed like a good opportunity to fill in a few of the gaps in the story which we briefly touched on many moons ago here on Garbage Days Revisited. I'm going to do a quick look back at  Michael Monroe 's output in the '90s next week here with a revisit of one of his most overlooked moments but this week, we're taking a look at the Keef to his Mick, Andy McCoy. I s'pose Andy McCoy has always been the loose cannon in Hanoi, clearly influenced by Keef Richards and Johnny Thunders (and with a lot of their bad habits as we...

  "They couldn't mess with my band - my band's a rock 'n' roll band!"  - Hanoi Rocks  - Obscured So here's where we pick up the story following the Mike Monroe GDR column yesterday - if you've not read that yet then I'd humbly suggest you click on the link above and give it a quick read first as it'll make this thing flow a bit better. Don't worry, I'll still be here when you get back. All caught up? Good. Let's begin. So literally a few days after I'd bought Mike's excellent Whatcha Want  album, the news came out that Hanoi Rocks were reforming and I think it was this that finally prompted me to give that cheapo greatest hits compilation of theirs that I'd got a few years previously (see part 1 of this article) another listen. This time, I got it. I think my main problem first time out is I'd expected Hanoi to be a straightforward glam/sleaze band like G'n'R or Poison or Skid Row and they very much weren...