Artist: White Lion
Title: “The Definitive Rock Collection”
Label: Rhino Records
Release Date: 1/23/2007
Genre: Hard Rock
Rating: 4/5
Formed in 1983 by singer Mike Tramp and guitarist Vito Bratta; White Lion was a band that would rule the Melodic Hard Rock scene of the eighties. Together with drummer Greg D’Angelo and bassist James Lomenzo they would become darlings of the MTV sector with a number of their videos and while often associated with the “Hair Metal” focus that was prevalent at the time, would offer fans deeper musical content than many of their contemporaries. Theirs was the perfect formula for success with the pinup looking front man in Tramp and the guitar god in Bratta and this often found the pair being compared to the likes of Van Halen members Dave Lee Roth and Eddie Van Halen. The offering of more socially relevant songs as opposed to what many of their contemporaries would be doing allowed the band to stand out a little more from the general pack. Yes they had some rousing anthems for love like “Tell Me” or “Love Don’t Come Easy”, but there was also “Little Fighter” which referenced a Greenpeace ship and “When The Children Cry”, their ballad that tugged at the heartstrings. With White Lion you got deeper stuff than that which focused on drinking and partying hard. Growing up in Brooklyn at a certain time allowed me to remember quite clearly how exciting this band was on stage and how well they were received by the audience. You felt as though you were a part of something special with White Lion and while I grew into much heavier stuff I always held them in special regard in my musical heart.
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Artist: White Lion
Title: “Anthology ’83-‘89”
Label: Deadline Records
Release Date: 6/27/2006
Genre: Hard Rock
Rating: 2/5
As someone who grew up in Brooklyn and was a frequent patron of L’Amour the Rock Capitol, I felt that the idea of a White Lion Anthology would be something to look forward to and also something that would be really enjoyable. The reason behind this was because to many people like me White Lion were the hometown heroes and when they played the club you could not get in anywhere. It was over the top Hard Rock power with one of the best guitarists you could hope to hear; Vito Bratta was our own Eddie Van Halen and actually Mike Tramp was our David Lee Roth in most cases. Drumming was Greg D’Angelo and bass was handled by James Lomenzo with the result being some truly memorable Hard Rock with a commercial edge that gained them tremendous success. The band released three studio albums and a best of compilation on Atlantic Records and thus far we have not seen these albums remastered. This fact is a shame since the band also had a strong presence on MTV and made the label quite a bit of money. The Anthology would have been perfect if it actually included music from these 3 albums but instead we get unreleased versions and outtakes. While I am not sure of the reasoning behind this, it seems clearly obvious that perhaps no access was granted to the original music in order to release it in this fashion. This would only leave the outtakes and demos for the tracks available. The oddest part of the release was its total exclusion of real versions of the bands debut, “Fight To Survive”. While “Pride” was the groups major label debut, the smaller independent label Grand Slamm released the bands true first album and it was killer. We do have acoustic versions of songs from this release but they are terrible, and the re-do of “Broken Heart” was beyond dismal. It especially took the fire out of the original song, so you can imagine how bad an outtake of this disaster could be. I cannot honestly recommend this CD for anyone more than the staunchest of band supporters and even they should be warned about it. The inside foldout (there’s not even a book with a good amount of photos to enjoy on this) finds Tramp lining out where blocks of songs came from.
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