Author: chip midnight

Happy 30th birthday Pyromania!

We were 6th grade kids, playing tetherball on the school playground. Somebody had an older brother or sister that bought cassettes at Caldor or listened to WPLJ and was into this band from England and spelled their name in a way that confused 6th graders because it didn’t look right. I have to imagine that a lot of us wrote “Deaf Leopard” on our school notebooks until we learned better.

Rush, Van Halen, and Ozzy were established rock bands by 1983, but even though Def Leppard had already released two albums (‘On Through the Night’ and ‘High & Dry’), my friends and I thought ‘Pyromania’ was the band’s debut. And we loved it. We all bought the cassette. We all tried to decipher the opening of “Rock of Ages”, we all wanted sleeveless Union Jack t-shirts and we all started our lip-syncing careers in front of the mirror to songs from this album.

Happy 30th birthday ‘Pyromania!

Listen: Tom Morgan – “One True Love”, “Taste for Blood”

Tom Morgan’s name doesn’t warrant a mention in the overview of The Lemonheads on the band’s AllMusic profile yet the Australian songwriter who led Smudge played an integral part in Evan Dando’s alt-rock heyday. Morgan and Dando collaborated on a number of songs on It’s A Shame About Ray (including the title track) and Come On Feel the Lemonheads.

In early February, Fire Records will release Morgan’s debut solo album, Orange Syringe. Even in it’s stripped down, low key format, you can hear the pop genius that Morgan infused into The Lemonheads music some 20 years ago.

Here are a couple of tracks from Orange Syringe.