The Rods - “Crank It Up”
1981
The Rods - whose name kinda sounds punk - were obviously nodding to The Ramones on the album cover with the jeans/tees/leather jackets look (except one of the Rods needs to mix in a salad), which makes you think this might be some sort of brilliant early-eighties metal/punk crossover. Instead, The Rods at times simply serve up at-times-punkish metal with absolutely no cleverness. Consider some of the song titles from their self-titled major label debut: "Power Lover", "Hungry For Some Love", "Getting Ready To Rock And Roll", "Rock Hard", "Roll With The Night". And that they would go on to release albums titled Let Them Eat Metal and Heavier Than Thou. Throw in that their frontman was David “Rock” Feinstein, which just might be the greatest nickname in all of, uh, rock, and that all of this was served up with no irony whatsoever, well you just wonder if they were any sort of influence on This Is Spinal Tap.
Like Shooting Star's "Hang On For Your Life", released the same year, The Rods' "Crank It Up" is stripped-down, speeded-up hard rock. It's evidence of how the AOR game had (oh-so-ever-slightly) changed in the early eighties. The rest of the album is weighed down by a lack of energy and lacks the sheer go-for-brokeness of this tune, but don't tell that to The Rods cult. (Wha? Hey I just became aware it also.) This album is going for $26 for a new CD and $24 for a new vinyl LP on Amazon. As one of the true believer Amazon commenters writes: "The Rods have surly (sic) delivered the goods."