Montrose Minnesota

Montrose

Montrose

Warner Brothers Records, 1973

http://www.ronniemontrose.com

REVIEW BY: Jason Warburg

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: 11/11/2002

In 1996 I described the debut album from hard-rock pioneersMontrose as a "personal classic," as distinguished from a consensusclassic. The implication was clear: I love this album, but yourmileage may vary. I was new to CD reviewing then; now I take thewhole "YMMV" business for granted. (Hey, I realize Yes isn'teveryone's cup of tea. Sometimes they aren't MY cup of tea. But ifyou disagree, "The Daily Vault" is always looking for newcontributors…)

So, no qualifiers this time around. Montrose is a hard rock classic, period.

The massively thundering herds of overdubbed guitar from maestroRonnie Montrose are one reason (though I also enjoy the subtlerpurposes to which he put his superb musicianship on later soloalbums like Open Fire). The clumsy but sincere explications ofadolescent fervor and angst from singer "Sam" Hagar (soon to beSammy, as in the shaggy fellow with a raft of moderately successfulsolo albums and a platinum-selling stint with Van Halen) areanother. Pounding rockers like "Rock The Nation," "Bad MotorScooter" and especially Hagar's chord-crunching anthem "Make ItLast" provide a raw, clear vision of life easily embraced byhormonal, melodramatic seventeen-year-olds (and still fondlyrecalled by some of us now approaching middle age).

I admit, today some of the lyrics on this album sound slightlygoofy to me ("One Thing On My Mind"? Gee, what do you think that could be?). But its simple message of enjoying life andreaching for your dreams while ripping out a few choice air guitarriffs remains even now a powerful antidote against adult-styleangst. I mean, just listen to theirChuck-Berry-with-the-volume-on-ten take on the Elvis nugget "GoodRockin' Tonight." This band - Montrose, Hagar, Bill Church on bassand Denny Carmassi in a career-making performance on the drums --is having so much fun it'd be criminal not to join in.