Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Dust

Those investigating the birth of American heavy metal could do worse than to start with this New York-based power trio. Dust—guitarist/vocalist Richie Wise, bassist Kenny Aaronson and drummer Marc Bell—was a short-lived hard rock ensemble that released two albums for the Kama Sutra label, the first of which appeared in 1971. Long admired for both its obscure, collectable status and its psychedelic heaviness, Dust certainly looks metal (the gruesome front cover image appears courtesy of the Archives of the Catacombs… whatever that is). The music itself is a refreshing combination of standard rock instrumentation and more eclectic musical influences. “Chasin’ Ladies” and “Love Me Hard” are effective hard rock numbers, for example, while “Stone Woman” features a nasty slide guitar and “Goin’ Easy” is a blues-inspired acoustic piece. In addition, the record’s centerpiece, the lyrically bizarre “From a Dry Camel,” is a nearly ten-minute-long block of colossal prog-rock (“And then if a body runs dry/got no reason to fear/there is a camel near by/just let it lie down on its side/get yourself in place/and then go for a ride”). I’m not sure Dust deserves the lost classic tag it’s often prescribed, but its varied approach is an impressive take on the hard rock movement as it existed at the turn of the decade.

Notes: Dust split in 1972, but that didn’t prevent its members from pursuing careers in music. Richie Wise teamed up with Kenny Kerner to form a production team (they worked on the first two Kiss albums), while Kenny Aaronson became a member of Stories (he played on the sessions that produced “Brother Louie”). Marc Bell? He’s probably best known as Marky Ramone, an identity he assumed when he joined the Ramones in 1978.

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