Friday, March 4, 2022

The Plasmatics Jacknifed Jean Beauvoir Marty Balin on Boston Esplanade Directed by Joe Viglione

 


Jacknifed Jean Beauvoir

Joe Viglione's Reviews have appeared on Billboard.com, MSN.com, RollingStone.com, LiveXOne.com,  MP3.com, YahooShopping.com, eBay.com and dozens and dozens of other stores and news media, Walmart.com etc.





This six-song EP is even shorter when any Plasmatics fan realizes that the four new songs recorded by Svengali manager Rod Swenson and producer/engineer Dan Hartman are augmented by live versions of two songs from the previous 1981 release, Beyond the Valley of 1984. Guitarists Richie Stotts and Wes Beech set a solid, crunchy tone behind Wendy O with two new drummers: Tony Petri on the two live tracks, "Masterplan" and "Sex Junkie," and Joey Reese on the studio material. Keep in mind that's four drummers in the two-year span between Stu Deutsch on New Hope for the Wretched and Alice Cooper drummer Neal Smith on the studio material on Beyond the Valley of 1984 (that 1981 album's two tracks recorded live in Milan don't identify if the drummer is one of the four -- and if you add the drummer from the Capitol Records debut in 1982, the Coup D'Etat album, it brings that total to five). Chris "Junior" Romanelli replaces Jean Beauvoir, whose image and musicianship was pretty irreplaceable. Still, Dan Hartman does a great job of capturing a solid hard rock sound and Wendy O is truly significant as a more-than-competent metal vocalist. It's a transition from the previous attempts at punk and smart reinvention. Beauvoir would come back five years later with his excellent solo project, Drums Along the Mohawk, followed two years later by Jacknifed. His presence and musicianship could have added to these four studio sides, though they hold up well on their own. There's not much difference between Wendy O's snarling on the doomsday song "12 Noon" or "Doom Song," which is yet another doomsday song, this one with Richie Stotts' brilliant, slashing guitar lines. The metal arena gives Stotts a chance to shine, and he is an underrated talent, as was Wendy O. The combined energies of these individuals always took a back seat to Swenson's imagery and public relations. The material by Stotts and Beech is fun and fits the bill, though a separate live album would have been preferable to the cutting and pasting. Still, Metal Priestess holds up and is a worthwhile addition to the small but influential Plasmatics output. It was later combined on CD with its sister release from 1981, Beyond the Valley of 1984.

- Joe Viglione, All Music Guide



beyond the valley of 1984


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This time Rod Swenson, Svengali behind the Plasmatics, takes over the production, allowing at least more of a focus. Jimmy Miller he's not, but rather than get in the major producer's way, which is what Swenson did on 1980's New Hope for the Wretched, he at least has the opportunity to expand the sounds on this 1981 disc by letting his ideas flow unobstructed by professional help. Opening with a dark prayer called "Incantation," which slams into "Masterplan, this, indeed, was a band tailor-made for DVD. The album cover looks like Mad Max meets Terminator 2 in the desert, Wendy Orleans Williams needing the chance to be the Marilyn Manson of her day rather than Swenson's puppet. "Masterplan still has the thin drum sound from the first record, only this time Stu Deutsch has been replaced with original Alice Cooper drummer Neal Smith. It is pure punk, a live version showing up this same year on the Metal Priestess EP, but not as cohesive as this version. On "Headbanger," Wendy O communicates more comfortably, and the band's keyboard and guitar phasing makes it one of the most produced, and best, tracks on the record; Richie Stotts' guitar solos are amazing here. The band really had merit, the upside was that Rod Swenson knew how to promote, the downside was that his involvement comes off like the record version of an Ed Wood flick. Recruiting the Angels of "My Boyfriend's Back" fame for backing vocals on "Summer Nite," and giving Wendy O'Williams a tender moment was a great idea; too bad Jimmy Miller didn't have this material to work with. Neal Smith's drums get the sound they deserve, and the tune comes off like a new wave answer to "Leader of the Pack." Good chorus, and it should have been a huge MTV hit; Fee Waybill would've been a perfect foil for the tune. "Sex Junkie" has Wendy O sounding like a female Alice Cooper, that personality missing from New Hope for the Wretched gets a chance to at least emulate the man who pioneered this genre. As with New Hope for the Wretched, the abilities of Richie Stotts and Jean Beauvoir were totally underutilized, and maybe Bob Ezrin and the entire original Alice Cooper group is what this act needed. Why did they just go for a little name recognition with Cooper's drummer when they could have simply hired his former band? "Sex Junkie" also found itself re-released later in the year from a concert tape to augment the four Dan Hartman studio songs on Metal Priestess, but the version here has the more sinister Alice Cooper-style vocal which gets sort of lost on the live take. Williams even slyly references the artist's Killer in the song "Hit Man," which, like "Plasma Jam," was recorded live in Milan. Rather than be the mess that "Hit Man" and "Living Dead" are, the instrumental "Plasma Jam" gets the band to show it actually has chops, Stotts guitar a blazing on this one, it is pop metal that didn't give the Jeff Beck Group any sleepless nights, but is a decent groove with appropriate Black Sabbath riffs as the tune melts into a slower tempo. "Pig Is a Pig," like "Nothing" on the previous side, is good headbanger rock, and probably what endeared her to Lemmy of Motorhead. These B movie recordings would have been hugely successful had they the video to go along with the stunning visuals of the album covers. The moral of the story: a porno filmmaker should've stuck to his craft.

- Joe Viglione, All Music Guide




Jacknifed Jean Beauvoir



Jean Beauvoir has the image and the sound down on Jacknifed, and the one time Plasmatics bass player/Ramones producer abandons his hard rock day gigs for very Prince-sounding dance music here. This album has a lot in common musically with bassist Fernando Saunders' Cashmere Dreams, although... [+] Expand

Jean Beauvoir has the image and the sound down on Jacknifed, and the one time Plasmatics bass player/Ramones producer abandons his hard rock day gigs for very Prince-sounding dance music here. This album has a lot in common musically with bassist Fernando Saunders' Cashmere Dreams, although Saunders is able to create separate identities for his songs, while Beauvoir has a sameness which is a slight drawback. The excellent hooks in "Jimmy" and "Spend Your Life With Me" get lost in the double frosting that is the keyboard/drum overabundance. Emulating Prince's vocal riffs and mini-howls doesn't help either. Where Jonzun Crew guitarist Tony "Rocks" Cowan will experiment with sound and vocal technique making his material so different it oftentimes sounds like someone else from track to track, Beauvoir finds his groove and sticks with it. The title track has a nice Tommy Lafferty solo, and that identifies another problem with the disc. Jean Beauvoir pulls an Emmit Rhodes/Paul McCartney/Todd Rundgren by playing most of the instruments himself. The aforementioned knew the inherent dangers of limiting your flavors, and did their best to compensate. There's no compensation here. Also, they played to their audience -- adding a Ramones-style rocker or something along the lines of a metal/dance version of "Dream Lover" from New Hope for the Wretched or "Sex Junkie" from Beyond the Valley of 1984 would have been hooks for his fan base to latch onto, and would have added a much needed other dimension here. The lyrics are hip and show another side of the multi-talented Jean Beauvor -- "I cop a score of 90/talking, talking about intelligence/I think I'm high and mighty" -- the emphasis seems to be on the word "high" in "Gamblin' Man" which sounds like a song of regret in the midst of narcotic-induced dilemma. Former Plasmastics lead guitarist Richie Stotts had a demo floating around including a song "The Man With the X Ray Eyes" -- had the two collaborated on this album, and included the best of both worlds, it could have gone from good to great. ~ Joe Viglione, All Music Guide [-] Collapse

 

 

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