Back in 1984, I was discovering heavy metal music thanks to MTV
and groups like Twisted Sister and AC/DC. It was a wonderful time
to be discovering new groups like Magellan sailing the open seas;
my buddy and I were soon banging our heads to new groups almost
every day.
One of the bands I got into around this time was Ratt, thanks to
the video for their song “Round And Round”. Within short time, I
had dropped eight bucks and bought their album
Out Of The Cellar, and was perfectly happy with it… until
I discovered it wasn’t their first album! Horrors!
It would be some time before I got around to buying
Ratt, their six-song EP that helped them land a contract
with Atlantic Records. This mini-album (which apparently is hard to
find these days) shows off a group that has not yet developed the
confidence and sound that would propel them to stardom, but they’re
close.
For starters, a poor mix doesn’t help matters much. Often, the
guitars of Robbin Crosby and Warren DiMartini are buried in the
mix, and Juan Croucier’s bass takes the forefront. This ends up
hurting tracks like “Sweet Cheater” and “You Think You’re Tough,”
tracks that could have used the extra muscle to convince me right
out of the box that these guys had muscle. If there is a God in
heaven, he’ll make sure that Liam Sternberg never tries to produce
a metal band again.
But even with a better mix, vocalist Stephen Pearcy hadn’t quite
developed the powerful sneering vocals that would become his
trademark. He’s not lightweight on tracks like “U Got It,” but he
just doesn’t have the oomph behind them that would be better
developed on
Out Of The Cellar. That sneer
is there, by the way, on the original version of “Back For
More”.
Of the six tracks here, only “Back For More” is worth serious
attention, and that’s mainly out of curiosity to hear how the track
originally sounded before becoming a hit off of
Out Of The Cellar. (So far, I believe this is the only track
that Ratt ever re-recorded for one of their major label releases.
Corrections to this would be appreciated from the audience.) Other
tracks like “Tell The World” don’t paint a convincing enough
portrait for Ratt, and as for the cover of “Walkin’ The Dog”…
well, frankly, I can’t stand that song ever since hearing a
terribly butchered version when I was a kid on
The Mickey Mouse Club album. If I never hear that friggin’
song again, I will die a happy man.
Ratt is the kind of album that the diehard fan either owns
or is searching out to finish their collection. For the casual fan,
this really isn’t required owning or listening, since it’s kind of
an incomplete picture of who the band would become in one short
year.
