Legendary Washington, DC glam metal band Angel—who dressed in white satin outfits and were touted as rock’s “Anti-Kiss” (which is ironic given they were “discovered” by Gene Simmons)—could have been huge. They were androgynous divine, excellent players, and certainly got a push from their label (Neil Bogart’s Casablanca Records) that included huge billboards on the Sunset Strip and the services of some of Hollywood’s finest illusionists (including Doug Henning) to create special effects for the band’s over-the-top live show.
And what a show. Angel guitarist Punky “The Man with the Amazing Pout” Meadows, who Frank Zappa immortalized in the song “Punky’s Whips,” told me a long while back that the band was always interested in the show biz elements of rock. “We were setting off these arena-size explosions in these small clubs” early in their career, Meadows told me, and “Beer glasses flew off the bar every time we’d set one off. The owners hated us.” And once they reached the arena circuit things escalated. A giant Angel logo would suddenly open its eyes before introducing the band members, who would appear onstage in pillars of smoke. It was great, said Meadows, except for one notable Spinal Tap moment.
“We’d appear every night in these tubes of smoke during our introductions,” Meadows told me, “and all these outrageously stoned kids in the audience would go [he makes the universal fingers-to-mouth gesture for smoking a joint], ‘That was weird, man…’ Of course, all we were doing was coming up through trapdoors from beneath the stage. One night, the big talking head introduces Mickey Jones [the band’s original bass player] and Mickey isn’t there. We’re looking at each like, ‘Where the fuck’s Mickey?’ Turns out his trapdoor got stuck. And all those stoned kids are going [Meadows takes toke on imaginary joint again], ‘That’s really weird, man…’”
The six-piece made an appearance in the 1980 film Foxes and released five studio albums between 1975 and 1979, but despite the flash and Casablanca’s efforts they never became the superstars they’d hoped to be. Their most popular album (1978’s White Heat) peaked at No. 55 on the pop charts, and only one of their singles broke into the Top 50. Desperate to go huge, they attempted to pull a Kiss Alive! with 1980’s Live Without A Net, but it peaked at No. 149 on the pop charts and that was all she wrote. Angel were no more.
Live Without a Net is not Alive!, and it’s not surprising it didn’t catapult Angel to the toppermost of the poppermost. But neither is it an abject failure—Angel had charisma and stage presence in spades, and the latter somehow makes it on to the record. It was their great misfortune that they lacked the songs to back it up. The album has its moments—which include a cover of Mott the Hoople’s “All the Young Dudes”—but there’s a reason the band never went platinum.
The show opens, as did all of their shows, with “Tower,” an organ and synthesizer-heavy representative of the band’s unfortunate prog-lite tendencies. Lead vocalist Frank DiMino mouths your usual pomp rock dreck, Gregg Giuffria does awful things with the organ and synthesizer, and you’re excused if you think you’ve wandered into a Styx concert.
And the impression lingers, which could have been part of the band’s problem. They couldn’t decide whether they wanted to be a glam rock band or Styx, and foolishly split things down the middle. That said, the songs—all of which show off DiMino’s lungs and Meadows’ truly exciting guitar work—that follow leave the crowd screaming. You get both vocals and Meadows’ guitar chops, and more synthesizer, on “Can You Feel It,” just as you do on “Don’t Leave Me Lonely” and “Telephone Exchange.”
It’s not until they reach the excellent “Ain’t Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore” that you hear what might have been. It’s a top-notch rocker with touches of both anger and tenderness that deserves to be heard by all sentient glam rock-leaning beings, and the straight to your lizard brain “Over and Over” is great too—until the bass solo, that is, which makes me reach for the old puke bucket.
The blessedly direct “Anyway You Want It” has (as its title indicates) an AOR rock touch, but any hopes of AOR success are flushed down the prog toilet on the following tune, the insufferable “On the Rocks,” on which Giuffria takes synthesizer in hand and damn near delivers a death blow to glam metal all by his lonesome. “Wild and Live” has an untamed feel, due in part to the fact that DiMino doesn’t sound like his show-off glam metal self—his vocals are less polished, and almost have a bit of punk snot in them.
As for the band’s cover of “All the Young Dudes,” you’ve got to hand it to Angel for their good taste. DiMino’s vocals lack that magic Ian Hunter touch, natch, but he’s got attitude, and I like the way he personalizes the number by singing, “You don’t need TV/When you’ve got us/I said you’ve got us!” And both the backing vocals and Meadows’ solo at the end do the Honaloochie Boogie.
I’m not sure what DiMino, who comes on like Steve Marriott doing vocal exercises at the opening of “Rock’n’Rollers,” is up to with all the “Sam-uuuu-rai! I said Sam-uuu-rai!” business, but the audience chant of “rock ’n’ roll!” makes sense, as does the song’s Kiss-like simplicity. And Meadows’ big riff and blistering solo are rock ’n’ roll indeed. Unfortunately the solo goes on too long, and Meadows goes baroque towards the end which is downright tragic. My grandmother always used to tell me, “Go for broke, not baroque,” and she was in the best glam metal band in my home town.
But the audience eats it up, and they sound as frenzied as the crowd at the Nuremberg rallies when DiMino introduces the next song with the question, “Are you ready for some white lightning?” “White Lightning” is hard rock boogie, and Meadows’ guitar solo is pure moonshine. Unfortunately the synthesizer horns in on the act in a big way, and is immediately followed by a Barry Brandt drum solo, a practice I thought had become a crime by 1980.
In short Angel shoot themselves in the dick, which can’t be said for the pop metal number that follows, “Hold Me, Squeeze Me,” on which Meadows shines. Angel ups the tempo on “Got Love If You Want It,” which might (but probably wouldn’t have been) a hit single had Angel seen fit to release it. Once again Meadows distinguishes himself as a Class A guitarist, and a sadly underrated one at that.
Giuffria goes Deep Purple on the organ on the equally fast “Feelin Right,” and the back and forth between his synthesizer and Meadows’ guitar works despite itself, that is until Giuffria takes the reins all by his lonesome and strangles the song with them. Closer “20th Century Foxes” makes it on title alone, and how this 1980 single failed to even chart is beyond me. It’s so dumb it’s brilliant, and I can only assume that it was—once again—Giuffria’s synthesizer that put the kibosh on the song’s chart aspirations. It certainly isn’t the song’s subject matter, which every straight teenage head in the First World could relate to.
Casablanca, ironically the band that broke Kiss, pulled the plug on Angel in 1980. The band weren’t getting airplay, and they certainly weren’t selling records, which left them with the dubious honor of being big in Japan. Nor were they at least making some cash; according to Meadows, the band wound up approximately $1.6 million in the hole. Sadly, had they held on until the advent of the MTV era things might have turned out differently—their image, and dreamboat good looks—were perfect for the new medium.
In short it’s an average album by an average band with an anything but average image and an amusing shtick—and I love amusing shticks—that might have taken them places. The band went its separate ways, and Meadows, a hot commodity despite the band’s demise, actually turned down offers to join Kiss, Aerosmith, and the New York Dolls out of loyalty to a new band he was putting together but never materialized. In short, he missed out on superstardom—potentially that is—on several more occasions.
As for Live Without a Net, it’s undone by its lack of great songs, as well as by the band’s low-rent prog inclinations. But the album has its moments, and more than a few of them. Which is why I’ve given them a C, and upped it a half-grade for the immortal Spinal Tap incident. I can only wonder if it was the inspiration for the scene in the mockumentary. I certainly hope so. And should I ever run into Spinal Tap, I’ll ask.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
C+
