'Rock Candy' Magazine: Old School Time Machine
Saturday, March 3, 2018 at 12:01AM Today's post is from our friend HIM.
Many readers of Bring Back Glam! are surely aware of Rock Candy Records. It is one of a select few holdouts that keep the flame alive, releasing rare and well-remembered music from the golden age of metal, glam, and hard/classic rock. Based in the UK and helmed by Derek Oliver (formerly of Kerrang! and Atco Records), the label churns out a wide array of reissues often packed with tons of goodies: Dokken’s Beast from the East, Jetboy’s Feel the Shake, and Lillian Axe’s Love + War being amongst the most recent.
The same-named magazine is a similar feast of déjà vu. Also led by Oliver, the list of contributors reads like a fever dream of the grand past: Howard Johnson (Metal Hammer), Malcolm Dome (Metal Forces), and a host of others associated with the (often) British side of the sleazy side of music. Did you like Hit Parader, Creem, Circus, Metal Edge, or the other dog-eared magazines of yore? If the answer is yes, then you will like Rock Candy Magazine. Oh, and there is a digital version, which I have never looked at over my year-long subscription.
The magazine is a heady mix of new and old. The new includes interviews on topics ranging from bands from the past to the production of classic album covers (question: did you know that the eponymous Boston album cover originally featured a scene of Boston being attacked by aliens before hastily being changed to the cosmic scenescape we know and love?). The old includes snippets from classic reports (often from Kerrang!) on bands and follow-ups on how well the reporting matched the subsequent history of the bands, albums, live shows, and so on. It also features reappraisals of bands and their output. Why did White Lion not break bigger? Was Black Sabbath’s Born Again misunderstood?
The magazine also includes longer-form sections that approach topics from varying angles, ranging from Canadian Metal to Randy Rhoads, always featuring a wonderful array of photos, short essays, and interviews. The back of the magazine highlights the latest releases from Rock Candy Records, but also other metal and classic rock releases—from books to box sets—that caught the eye(s) of Oliver and Co. Even when the magazine induces cringes (some pixelated copies of backstage passes found in the center of each issue are as amusing as they are memory-jogging), it remains a feast for the eyes: full color, packed with information, a reminder of things we forgot, and sometimes a lesson in things we never knew.
This is clearly a product that is chasing dreams, not dollars. I am not even sure how they can pay the costs for producing it. A somewhat troubling wrinkle is that they are now offering only six month, not full year, subscriptions. Still, it is a nicely produced, bi-monthly, 100-page magazine that will soon be in its second year of life. It is large form, "perfect bound" (meaning: glued, not stapled), and awash in photos. The cost here in the States is £6.99 per issue, or £17.97 for three issues, plus shipping of £5 per issue, though they are promoting new distribution channels here that would remove the shipping costs by placing it in brick and mortar stores.
Rock Candy Magazine is an outlier. Proudly so. Defiantly so. Readers of this site are likely the target audience. Vote with your money, read with your eyes, and delight in the chance you have to catch glimpses of the world that used to be. How long will this last? Who knows? But I always feel better after flipping through this magazine. I suspect many of you will feel the same.
Reader Comments (11)
And, in editing news: the line should read ". . . to catch a glimpse . . . ." My proofreader was off when I submitted the darn post!
Good call, Name-checking Lester Bangs! He was a superb journalist, right up there with Jaan Uhelszki. All the early Creem writers were top-notch.
Pricey to order from the UK, but I'm hoping it pops up in a Barnes and Noble soon. Only wish it were monthly - not bi-monthly.
Worth the investment if you love the genre!
I just splurged on all the back issues, having no idea this awesome label launched a magazine since the last Rock Candy CD I bought through Ebay which is the excellent “Vices” by Kick Axe. “Vices” is one of the few RC releases to include a rare bonus track, their KILLER cover of Humble Pie’s “30 Days In The Hole”.
Before this CD was released on Rock Candy, the only way you could get it was on the Canadian version of the cassette and the original motion picture soundtrack to “Up The Creek” (only available on LP), a goofball “B” picture with one of THE best soundtracks including the title track by Cheap Trick (previously unavailable until the release of their box set.
If your having deja vu, this is a discussion we had in BBG! Comments years ago upon Rock Candy's release of one of the great LP only holy grails of 70’s U.S. Hard Rock, “TRIGGER”.
Below is a list of some other Rock Candy releases I picked up over the years primarily for the 24-bit remastering since most of them were already in my collection as LPs or sh*tty sounding original major label CD releases (i.e Faster Pussycat).
FYI, I skipped over most of Rock Candy’s AOR catalog I mistakenly purchased such as 707, whose RC releases should also come with complimentary Boeing 707 barf bags, their stuff is so awful! ...
1) Angel - all releases
2) Angel City - Face to Face (Thanks, Christian!)
3) Autograph - all releases
4) The Babys- all releases (Thanks, Ace!)
5) Barry Goodreau - S/T (Thanks, Bob! Or was it Gary? Aw, what the h*ll, thanks to you both!)
6) Blue Murder - S/T
7) Candy (Gilby Clarke!)
8) Cats In Boots - Kicked & Clawed (Thanks for the Bon Jovi plagiarism story, Sce!)
9) Circus of Power - all releases
10) Cobra - First Strike
11) D’Molls - S/T
12) Danger Danger - S/T
13) Derringer - Sweet Evil
14) Detective - S/T (Great story about this on the Rock Candy website!)
15) Dirty Looks - Cool to The Wire (one of my faves of all time!)
16) Dokken - all releases
17) Electric Angels
18) Faster Pussycat - S/T
19) Fastway
20) Fiona - S/T (cheesy AOR but each have their moments)
21) Frank Marino & Mahogany Rush - all releases
22) Frehley s Comet - all releases
23) Girl - all releases ... KILLER (Phil Lewis & Phil Collen)
24) Hanoi Rocks - Two Steps from the Move
25) Head East - LIVE
26) Heaven’s Edge - S/T (Killer!)
29) Helix - all releases
30) Honeymoon Suite - all releases (cheesy but tasty!)
31) Hughes/Thrall
32) ICON - all releases (about the only thing Eddie Chump and I agree on!)
33) Jet Boy - Feel The Shake
34) Kick Axe - all releases (Thanks, HIM)
35) Melidian - Lost In The Wild (Killer!)
36) Michael Bolton - Everybody’s Crazy (call me crazy but this is actually pretty good as he only half sold out at this point with a nice slab of Hair Metal-ish AOR)!
37) Montrose - all releases
38) MOTT - all releases
39) New England - Explorer Suite
40) Nymphs - S/T
41) Plasmatics - Coup d’ Etat (Killer!)
42) Quiet Riot - all releases
43) King Cobra - all releases
44) KIX - all releases
45) Krokus - all releases
46) L.A. Guns - all releases
47) Lightning Raiders - Sweet Rebenge
48) Lillian Axe - all releases
49) Lionheart - “Hot Tonight”
50) Lira Ford - LITA
51) Little Caesar - Redemption
52) Lou Gramm - Long Hard Look
53) Love/Hate - Black Out In The Red Room (Killer! One of my all time faves!)
54) Lynch Mob - Wicked Sensation
55) RATT - all releases
56) Reckless S/T
57) RIOT - all releases (Killer!)
58) Rough Cutt - all releases
57) Salty Dog - S/T
58) Sea Hags - S/T
59) Shakin’ Street
60) Smashed Gladys (Killer!)
61) St. Paradise (Derek St. Holmes & Co. from Ted Nugent w/out Terrible Ted!)
62) Stepson - all releases
63) Steve Stevens & The Atomic Playboys - “Atomic Playboys” (Killer!)
64) Stone Fury - Burns Like A Star (Pre - Kingdom Come Lenny Wolf!)
64) Tangier - Four Winds
65) Target - all releases
66) Teaze - One Night Stands
67) TEMPT - Runaway (RC’s 1st original signing! KILLER! Thanks for the tip, Badland, about their newly released cover of Def Leppard’s “Women” ... This dude’s voice kills it!)
68) The Godz - S/T (Killer!)
69) The Throbs
70) TKO - all releases
71) Touch - S/T
72) TRIGGER - S/T (KILLER!!!)
73) Valentine - S/T
74) Warrant - all releases
75) White Lion - all releases
76) Wild Horses - all releases
77) Wrathchild - all releases
78) Zebra - all releases
Enjoy!
And I agree . . . DAMN, Metalboy! You certainly walk the walk. That is a mighty list. Always glad to see the Sea Hags mentioned. What could have been if those boys didn't self-destruct in a haze of drugs and booze.
Yes, Rock Candy (the record company and the magazine) do occasionally release/cover AOR and/or non-metal bands. Without them, I wonder how Gary Wright makes a living! And, while I won't defend 707, I will suggest they were popular as a supporting act in the 70s. Heck, "I Could Be Good For You" chugs along nicely with its sorta-Triumph sounding chorus.
Indeed, HIM, I concede, “I Could Be Good For You” is the one 707 moment where I pause using the barf bag about halfway through the song, where I realize it’s just as crappy as anything Triumph or the eternally overrated RUSH has ever committed to vinyl!
p.s. And don’t forget to check out TRIGGER! Also, if you haven’t already, read “Mainlines, Bloodfeasts and Bad Taste”, a collection of Lester Bangs reviews, which reveal his ultra intelligent cutting humor and why he is regarded as the king of the “Noise Boys”, that selective group of Rock Critics which includes Charles M. Young, among others. I TOTALLY idolize the guy ... Hard to fathom he only lived to be 33!