Description
Damn these Memphis, TN guys kick ass.
Label: A&M Records – AMY 557
Format: Vinyl, 12″, 45 RPM, Single
Country: UK
Released: 1989
Genre: Rock, Hard Rock
Tracklist
A Walkin’ Shoes 3:59
B1 Love’s A Bitch 3:51
B2 One For The Road 3:03
Another gem from the great lost year of 1989! By ’89 there were several different factions that comprised the expanding pop-metal genre. There was of course the glam bands and the sleaze bands (to name just two). There was also a small set of bands that I like to call the dusty boots bands. These were the bands that didn’t have the L.A. makeup or pink clothes of the glam bands, and they didn’t have the street urchin heroin vibe of the Guns N’ Roses type bands. Nay, the dusty boots bands let their regional influences bleed into their music and preferred denim to spandex to go along with their dusty ol boots. I’m talking about bands like Dangerous Toys (Texas), Junkyard (Texas), and of course Tora Tora (Memphis).
With thick and chunky guitars, Tora Tora tears through a set of infectious (pretty heavy) rockers that show a reverence to the blues, and a certain unique edge (that one can only assume comes from their relative isolation from the country’s heavy metal hot spots).
What I liked most about Tora was that right when you thought you were getting any hair-band USA, you got something much deeper, though it wasn’t obvious at first glimpse. They were yet another clash of cultures that yielded a unique art-form. This time, it was LA big-hair-big-sound pretentiousness in a real, delta based soul package, complete with mud and mosquitoes. “Phantom Rider” had always sounded like a Skynyrd hit, and “Walking Shoes” was a riff-rock powerhouse from the same tree. A story of a man who had been jilted for the last time, so he broke out the walkin’ shoes. If THAT wasn’t a common blues phrase, I nominate it. Along side “I hear my back door slam”, “left home for a brown-eyed man”, “down on the killin’ floor”.
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