ASPHALT BALLET – Asphalt Ballet [Japanese Edition] HQ / out of print

Here’s a request from an album that many never heard: ASPHALT BALLET, and their self-titled debut album in its Japanese CD press. Emerging from the late-’80s L.A. hard rock club scene, the San Diego quintet Asphalt Ballet caught the attention of Virgin Records and released this self-titled, major-label debut in 1991.
Led by ex-Broken Rule vocalist Gary Jefferies, the band concocted 13 bluesy, commercial rocking tracks that fans of Guns N’ Roses and Poison should find satisfying. The album’s second track “Soul Survive” enjoyed minor radio and MTV attention, but, for the most part, the disc and the band were largely ignored.
Part of this because Virgin Records, not exactly specialists in hard rock – when the group was touring presenting “Asphalt Ballet”, there wasn’t physical copies of the album at local record stores. And then, the musical climate started to change.

Asphalt Ballet was a different beast among the Californian rock bands at the moment. Imagine a southern-fried frontman with a spectacularly gritty, bluesy snarl backed by leather-vested LA glam-slammers bashing out high-impact muscle rock with pitch-black themes about poverty, suicide, and street crime.
That was Asphalt Ballet.

Jeffries was originally from Louisiana. Like a lot of off-the-radar screamers, he split his hometown for the west coast to find fame and fortune and stumbled into Asphalt Ballet on his way to an audition for Italian shredder Alex Masi’s band.
Everything clicked, and the band joined the flash LA metal fray. Their self-titled debut and scored some buzz on lead single ‘Soul Survives’, a high-flying jammer full of flashy guitars and authentic back-alley grit. And then they hit the road on a Spinal Tap-esque doomed mission, touring with at the time industrial-sleazers Shotgun Messiah for confused crowds and diminishing returns.

“Asphalt Ballet” is well worth to discover, a solid talented band which on this album sounds like a cross between Guns N’ Roses and Poison, but this is just a reference to give you an idea. They got a unique style and were different from all American hard rock-related acts in 1991.
Highly Recommended

 

01. Hell’s Kitchen
02. Soul Survive
03. Tuesday’s Rain
04. Unlucky Mr. Lucky
05. End Of My Rope
06. Heaven Winds Blow
07. Blood On The Highway
08. Goodbye Yesterday
09. Wasted Time
10. Taking A Walk
11. Hangman Swing
12. Blue Movie
13. Do It All Over Again

Gary Jefferies – Vocals, Harmonica
Terry Phillips – Bass
Julius Ulrich – Guitar
Danny Clarke – Guitar
Mikki Kiner – Drums
with:
Charles Judge, Jeff Daniel – Keyboards
Greg Edward – Percussion, Keyboards, Vocals
Debby Holiday, Daniel O’Brien, Rick Palombi – Vocals

 

out of print