Lonesome Crow

While most of the world knows the Scorpions as caged metal midgets rocking hairsprayed 80's women like a hurricane, there was a time when the Scorpions were truly on the musical vanguard. Like most bands, the Scorpions golden age started and ended with their debut album, 1972's Lonesome Crow. This brilliant slab of proto-jazz metal sounds like nothing so much as a German Santana with progressive aspirations. What could have been an unlistenable failure of epic proportions is instead a singular listening experience that has yet to be bettered in it's admittedly limited context.

Formed in Hanover in 1969, the initial Scorps lineup featured Klaus "Mini-Miene" Meine who's vocal chops that would remained utterly unchanged throughout his 30-plus year history with the band. Brothers Rudolph and Michael Schenker play guitars with the kind of sibling telekinesis that rivals the brothers Davies, Van Halen and Gallagher combined. Wolfgang Dziony and Lothar Heimberg, on drums and bass respectively, were lost to the sands of time after this album and one suspects that they were responsible for the jazzy flights of fancy as by the Scorps second LP, 1974's Fly To The Rainbow, Heimberg, Dziony and the space jazz has all been abandoned.

If not the greatest, certainly the most ironic aspect of Lonesome Crow is that it was originally commissioned as a soundtrack to an anti-drug film. The irony being that one would be hard pressed to find a better argument for the use of drugs than Lonesome Crow. Aggressive distorted guitars, jazzy yet driving rhythms, howled lyrics about women gone wrong and/or being stranded in the desert, all that's missing is a Nehru jacketed lothario dispensing psychedelics to naive, flaxen-haired waifs. But it is this campy diversity which is the album's strongest suit: lunar soundscapes, driving metal riffs and groaning incantations only add to the singular charm, best displayed on the track "Leave Me" which channels Black Sabbath's "Electric Funeral" through a Teutonic kaleidoscope. The centerpiece however, is the title track, a 13 minute epic which recalls either Spinal Tap's ill-fated jazz odyssey at the amusement park or Dave Brubeck on alot of acid. Either way, the listener is the winner in the end, having weathered a ride from progressive rock outer space through earthy, grunting jazz, to aquatic noisescapes before finally landing in heavy metal hell. The Scorpions themselves would stay here at the lower rungs of celestial music throughout an absurdly long and equally lucrative career but they would rarely reach such heavy, funky, bewildering plateaus again. Future guitar replacement Uli Jon Roth sat high atop a crystal throne intoning the words, "Fuck it."