TOWER CITY – A Little Bit Of Fire (own CD)
With the recent new Colorvine / Tower City new album featured here one of you asked for TOWER CITY two official albums, both out of print now. Their debut CD “A Little Bit Of Fire” is a must have pearl into every Melodic Rock collection. There’s some dubious rips floating the web, so here’s our own discs, full with art.
Sure, the featured compilation ‘The Ones That Matter’ includes many of the songs from “A Little Bit Of Fire”, but not ’em all. And all are good, really good, and this album deserve to be listened from start to finish.
We all know what happened with new Melodic Rock / AOR bands after 1993 until the beginning of the new Millennium: a ton of bands in this musical style were reduced to small indie labels, self production, practically no promotion / distribution, or directly not recording.
American, Ohio based TOWER CITY wasn’t the exception, but the band managed to release one of the best albums of the genre in that period.
Fronted by guitarist & vocalist Larry Saltis (ex New Monkees) and his brother, they were previously known as Colorvine and even released an album (not bad at all) under this moniker through an indie label. In fact, they would return to this name later and still operate as Colorvine today.
There few bands, especially in North America, carrying the ’80s-styled Melodic Rock music during the second half of the ’90s. Alongside TOWER CITY, Steelhouse Lane was one of these. And both were connected were connected somehow.
Steelhouse Lane’s mastermind, Mike Slammer, helped TOWER CITY in the artistic production department, songwriting (co-writing the title track and “Stop Running”) and playing some guitars (uncredited).
First track “Talking To Sarah” remains as one of my favorite songs of all time. Sounding like early Winger, this tune is simply fantastic. “Little Bit Of Fire” is another winner. A Def Leppard-esque melody with on-the-go guitars and a never ending catchy chorus.
“Ain’t Nobody To Love” has a strong synth base, this midtempo mixes the best of the classy sound of both aforementioned classic bands. “I’ll Sleep Tonight” is a modern melodic rock ballad with acoustic guitars and keyboards developing an intense, gorgeous melody.
On “Moonlight” the band brings to mind the first Giant, “Surrender” has some Shadow King on it, “Closer To The Heart” in the Hardline vein. Is TOWER CITY a rip-off / clone band? Not at all. I am mentioning the sound and song structure influences to give you the picture of how good this disc is.
“Stop Runnin” is another monster song in the vein of Steelhouse Lane (Slammer penned), specially on the guitar work. “Hooked On Hope” sounds like a Gregg Fulkerson (Blue Tears) tune, with great ambiance, a dense chorus and a very catchy rhythm guitar work.
“A Little Bit Of Fire” is a late ’80s MR/AOR arena rock-style gem from start to finish, plenty of hooks, lush melodies and monster choruses. One of the remarkable aspects of this disc is its ‘elegance’. The band has meticulously supervised every detail. This album never was published in America, and it’s pretty hard to find a copy nowadays.
HIGHLY Recommended
01 – Talking To Sarah
02 – Little Bit Of Fire
03 – Aint Nobody To Love
04 – I’ll Sleep Tonight
05 – Moonlight
06 – Surrender
07 – Closer To The Heart
08 – Stop Runnin’
09 – When It All Falls Down
10 – Something About You
11 – Hooked On Hope
12 – Down All Night
13 – Love And Money
Larry Saltis – lead vocals, guitar
Heath Saltis – drums, keyboards, background vocals
T.P. Weiner – bass, background vocals
BUY IT !
www.amazon.de/Little-Bit-Fire-Tower-City/dp/B00000B20B
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