A Little Montrose For Ya!

Look, I admit it.  I was late into the game of Ronnie Montrose and his first album which came out in 1973 but didn't get around hearing it till the guys in the band I used to play in was jamming around Make It Last or Bad Motor Scooter to which our lead singer Mike wanted us to play but I didn't want to, since the drumming seemed to be out of my league.

Montrose is one of the best ever guitar players in the world, he could play fusion jazz and turn around and play rock and roll in a heartbeat.  He plays on Tupelo Honey by Van Morrison and then became part of the Edgar Winter Group with the 1972 classic album They Only Come Out At Night with fun stuff like Hanging Around, Round And Round, Frankenstein and Free Ride.  Then he formed his namesake band with a unknown Sam Hagar.  My best friend traded me a copy of Paper Money for a KISS record and while I liked some of the fiery rocking I Got The Fire and cover version of Underground (though some say it was a bit too poppy).  Hagar left to do a solo career, Bob Evans replaced him and Montrose soldered on the 1975's lacking Warner Brothers Present Montrose and Jump On It, which I never heard, nor Open Fire, the reunion album with Edgar Winter producing.  But I did pick up with him when he formed Gamma with Denny Caramisi on drums and Davy Patterson on vocals.  The first album was so so but the second album, which might be the best cover art album of 1980 was hard rock produced by Gary Lyons with Four Horsemen getting some FM airplay.  Voyager was the choice cut.  A third Gamma album showed Ronnie moving more toward new wave rock and critics didn't like it much but there was a couple tracks that got some airplay.  GNP Crescendo somehow complied the best moments of the Elektra Gamma albums into a bloated but fun comp CD which is now out of print and command big bucks on EBAY.

Ronnie then pretty went from solo albums to Montrose reunion albums on Enigma but something was missing. Mean was bland and the Diva Station was competent background music.

Our guitar player Dennis, had Montrose the 1973 album which rewrote the book on hard rock and roll.  Without it, there would be no Van Halen although it's bizarre how Sammy Hagar would join that band 12 years after the fact of the first Montrose album.  And it was chock full of straight ahead rock and roll in just over 32 minutes.  It went by fast.

Anyway, the band I was in, was looking for ideas and songs to do.  Most of my originals the guys vetoed and with good reason, the drinking public wanted to hear good cover versions to get drunk to.  So we learned two songs.  One, the aforementioned Bad Motor Scooter and Make It Last and they turned out to be the best songs that we covered.  Don't understand why, we worked our ass off Hold On Loosely, the overplayed 38 Special song which the lead singer kept coming in the offbeat and Make It Last which followed  was much better.  After all he played it in his other bands from time to time.

It is kind of a running joke when I talk about the songs that everytime we started them out, either he or our hired hand guitar player shouting "A LITTLE MONTROSE FOR YA!"  as if the buying public really cared or if he was trying to to be a annoying DJ on the annoying top forty radio station.  When I listen to our version of Make It Last, I'm surprised of how fast we actually played it.  Like we were all caffeinated to the point that we played everything faster and louder than anything else.  Being a youthful drummer, I experimented with changing the beat to fast to even faster on the coda fade out.  Sounds like overkill today but that's how I played it and amazingly it holds well today.

Bad Motor Scooter, the song that I refused to learn how to play to they forcefed it down my throat is another warhorse all together.  Dennis does a nice slide guitar throughout the beginning and of course Mr. Hired Hand Shawn yells into the mic A LITTLE MONTROSE FOR YA, BAD MOTOR SCOOTER to which some chick in the audience woos and screams to the point that she must have had a orgasm at the tail at the song, Good job rock and roll!  But when Big Mouth yells out A LITTLE MORE MONTROSE FOR YA, you wan to tell him to SHUT THE FUCK UP and LET THE MUSIC DO THE TALKING, but then again, the goofball took enough uppers to bounce off the walls and stage till our base player cold cocks him in the head at the tail end.  He actually did that on Taking Care Of Business.

I don't think Ronnie Montrose ever had the intention of playing B.M.S. that fast.  Listening to it today, even I can't believe how fast and loose I played the drums on that.  Maybe having 2 liters of Pepsi had something to do with that but I think we did pretty good version of it.  It's too bad, that our band didn't keep the momentum going for after that show we all broke the band up since we were losing our bass player back to The Marines.

In the end, Montrose, the 1973 album did more to show the world how to play rock and roll, but it inspired me to actually learn to play it and rock as hard as the band did.  I'm sure Ronnie Montrose wanted to be known more than just a rock n roll axeman and he was, but Montrose the album inspired everybody in some way or another how to play it hard and fast.  Many a band in Cedar Rapids in the 70s and 80s covered something off that album, even a band called themselves Rock Kandy after one of the songs.  Bad Motor Scooter?  Hell we Rock The Nation and Make It Last to the best of our abilities.  Even if we really wanted to smack the overzealous hired hand whammy bar specialist yelling A LITTLE MONTROSE FOR YA! before and after the songs we did learn how to play.  We still love ya Mr. Shawn, even though after the show he passed out from too many drinks and uppers and having his groupie hangeron trying to revive him from the bottom of the floor.  Ya have to be there to see it to believe it.  Even to this day, the hired hand became more of the creepy middle age dude playing acoustic stuff at Cocktails and Company and still trying to pick up the 20 somethings and making a bigger fool of himself than the skinny tied goof yelling the overblown title over and over as if nobody didn't know that by now.  Even if they did have the first Montrose album.

RIP Ronnie..