Sunny Days and Scorpions

I gotta laugh while I sit here in shorts, the door open, and a fan going. South Florida is bracing for a drop in the temperature: weather people are predicting it may get as cold as 50 degrees tonight. Ha ha ha! Oh my...

The news Friday morning urged us to bring in our plants and pets. Then they flashed to the requisite clips of Miamians dashing about bundled up as if there were a foot of snow on the ground. I need to rush with this post so I can go wrap my pipes.

Moving on.

The Scorpions are as much a part of 80s metal as any band. Despite the glossiness of later power ballads such as “Wind of Change” and “Still Loving You,” at one time, the Scorps were arguably one of the most popular and hardest rocking German bands ever.

I’m going to briefly touch on the band’s roots because there are some interesting tidbits here. The original version of Scorpions came together in 1969, releasing their debut disk Lonesome Crow in 1972. During 1973, led by guitarist Michael Schenker, the band members began to defect to a band called Dawn Road. Eventually three of the five original Scorpions were in Dawn Road. Although original Dawn Road members still held the majority, they decided to change the band’s name to Scorpions because Scorpions had already released an album and had more name recognition. It was this combination that released Fly to the Rainbow in 1974.

I became a Scorpions fan sometime in the early 1980s, probably right around the time Blackout was released. I really liked their sound and dug back into the band’s catalog, unearthing gems such as Love Drive and, my favorite Scorps album, Animal Magnetism. I love that album so much, and it’s got such good memories for me, I may devote a future post just to it.

The songs I’ve got today come from the band’s third and fourth albums, In Trance and Virgin Killer. I pulled “Speedy’s Coming” from Best of Scorpions (released in 1978), although it was originally released on the Fly to the Rainbow album.

A note on the Virgin Killer album: The original pressing featured a naked prepubescent girl. Sleaze Roxx writes, “This cover is indeed in bad taste and the thought of someone enjoying it makes my skin crawl. The band has stated that the artwork was the brainchild of their record company, I guess they were using the ‘any publicity is good publicity’ theory in getting the Scorpions name out to the public - and it worked. This was the first of many Scorpions albums to get censored in America but thankfully the others weren't as crude.”

A site called Zonic Web voted Virgin Killer’s original cover as the worst album cover ever. An anonymous poster wrote that the cover ”goes beyond bad taste, poor judgment, and licentiousness. Two thumbs and ten toes down.”
(Google it - I ain’t gonna post it here! The FBI worries me more than the record industry.)

Speedy’s Coming.mp3 from Greatest Hits 1978
Robot Man.mp3 from In Trance 1975
In Trance.mp3 from In Trance 1975
Catch Your Train.mp3 from Virgin Killer 1976
Virgin Killer.mp3 from Virgin Killer 1976

posted by aikin @ 3:35 PM