Released November 6, 2007 on the album Four-Way Diablo
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_dhF0IQrAA really a video, just the song)
Lyrics: none
Monster Magnet got its name from a popular children's toy from the 1960's (see the graphic up in the upper left, still in his packaging!). That fact is interesting in a couple of ways. First, Monster Magnet is considered to be one of the best (and longer lasting) bands in the "stoner rock" genre. Very 1960's-ish but hardly a childish innocence especially considering...and here comes the second thing...that the band frequently gets themselves into trouble with various local laws during their concerts because they often employ stage dancers. This in itself isn't unusual since I've seen acts such as Kid Rock, Motley Crue and Sammy Hagar trot out women wearing nothing but skimpy bikinis, and that doesn't bring the local law hammer down at all. But what sets the Monster Magnet girls apart - and what gets the band into hot water - is that their dancers will perform in the same manner that Stacia Blake famously used to dance on stage during Hawkwind concerts during the mid-1970's...naked save for body paint!
Monster Magnet is truly something of an oddity, and not because of the naked stage dancers. They are a hard rock band, in the mold of the popular "arena rock" bands of the 80's, that formed in the early 1990's - just in time for the plunge into the abyss for the hard rock genre in favor of the grunge sound which took place almost overnight shortly after the band came together. They could almost be compared to being a hotshot stock speculator who had just started out with some success only to nearly lose everything in the Stock Market Crash of 1929. They could have folded up the tents and gone home, and looked for some other career avenue. Instead, the band perservered and survived the grunge 90's and has reimerged in recent years now that the 80's rock style has become popular once again.
As you've already noticed, this particular song is an instrumental. I haven't included an instrumental on one of the mixes since Tramontane by Foreigner was included on one of the "summer fun" mixes from around 2004. But, I've always liked rock instrumentals, many of which people don't recognize as songs done by acts that were immensely popular. Tramontane, for example, was one of the tracks on the hugely successful Double Vision album and was the B-side song of the single Hot Blooded, and was a song that - in some posts anyway - was liked more than the hit on the A-side! Some of my favorite instrumentals are:
- Eagles - Journey of the Sorcerer - From the One of these Nights album, the song became the theme for BBC-TV's 70's version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (a version of it was also used for the movie version that came out a few years ago) and one of the most interesting and vastly different songs the Eagles ever made. (listen here)
- Aerosmith - The Movie from the album Permanent Vacation. (listen here). It became the Coaches Corner show theme!
- Van Halen - Eruption - The Eddie Van Halen masterpiece that inspired a whole generation of axe-grinders...including a friend of mine who came pretty close to replicating it (Listen here).
- Flock of Seagulls - Grammy award winning D.N.A from the 1982 album Flock of Seagulls which producer extrodinare Phil Spector called "phenomenal" (listen here). It's been used as football and basketball theme music.
- Def Leppard - Disintegrate. Def Leppard didn't make many instrumentals, this one was on 1999's Euphoria album, and was the first since their debut album High 'n Dry had another favorite called Switch 625 that followed their first big hit, Bringin' On The Heartbreak, on that album in such a way that many think the instrumental is a part of that song! (Listen to Switch 625 , Listen to Disintegrate)
This - of course - is just a sampling of all the rock instrumentals out there and goes without mentioning the likes of Steve Vai, Joe Satriani or perhaps one of the most popular rock instrumental of all-time, Frankensein by Edgar Winter. For a big list of great rock instrumentals, check out the Digital-Dreamer's list. It says, "Greatest 100", but there's a list of 250 instrumentals, along with a list of top-30 instrumental albums and a list of some of the artists that primarily record instrumentals in the rock genre.
Monster Magnet is still going strong, by the way. They just recently (end of October 2010) released Mastermind, the band's eighth studio album
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