• AllMyVinyl #51
• Band: David Lee Roth
• Album Title: Crazy from the Heat
• Release Date: 28 Jan 1985
• Date purchased: Unknown
• Location purchased: Unknown
• Color of vinyl: black
• Number of discs: 1
• Links: [ Wikipedia | Discogs | Band Website | Complete album on Youtube ]

This isn’t a full album as such, but visually it looks like all my other albums, so I’m doing this.  Plus it’s a super fun memory for me, so yeah we’re doing David Lee Roth’s first solo product, the 1985 EP “Crazy From the Heat”.

I recall vividly when this came out.  Van Halen was on a major high from the 1984 album, and it produced a couple of fun music videos (Panama & Hot for Teacher), and that era of VH was the most fun.  So… When Dave set out for his first solo work, that same vibe from the 1984 album and its music videos carried over here to the Crazy EP.  It produced two videos, both full of the same kind of humor that permeated the 1984 Van Halen videos.

This vinyl is one I bought when it was new, because of course I did.  1984 was monster when it was new.  I don’t remember where I got it, but I do remember this one, because I had to have California Girls & Gigolo – those songs were killer, and well, they needed to be in the collection.  This is as I’ve said before one of the vinyls that was rescued from my mom’s basement, and I’m glad it was.  Thing is hideously expensive to buy on vinyl now, as it’s been out of print for decades.

All four of the songs (five sorta) are covers.  None of the tunes covered were things that you would have expected from David Lee Roth at the time – I mean at this point, we only knew him from Van Halen albums, he had no solo work before this.  So a few of the choices, while they definitely work weren’t ones I would have expected him to record.   The thing about that is for the version of me that existed in 1985 (still a teenager barely when this came out), I only knew one of the songs, so the fact that they were all covers was lost on me (mostly).

Easy Street – The first out of the gate was originally an Edgar Winter Group song.  I listened to the Edgar Winter track for this too, and the Roth version carries over the underlying beat of the original, but gives it a more hard rock feel to it.  It still sounds like the same song, just with a bit more power than the Winter original.  Of the four songs on this album, it’s the one I remembered the least.  Part of that is my memories of this EP were dominated by Gigolo & California, so I tend to not remember this one as well.  But I like the mix of saxophone and guitar together in the middle of the track.

Just a Gigolo / I Ain’t Got Nobody – This is actually two songs merged together.  Gigolo was by Louis Prima. Wikipedia said this about the track..  “The medley of “Just a Gigolo” and “I Ain’t Got Nobody” is based on Louis Prima’s 1956 medley combining two pre-World War II songs.”.   However, when I saw Roth do it, I didn’t know that, I just thought it was Dave being goofy and merging the music in a silly way like his videos were.  The two halves are distinctly different.  It’s a great super fun track, but what really makes this work is the music video.  This came out in 1985 at the peak of MTV and music videos, so Dave took full advantage of that.  The video was set up like Dave had his own music video channel – “Dave TV”.   He’s the TV talent, and talks about the music videos on the channel, which are basically his videos.  It’s a funny bit, and parodies what watching MTV was like at the time if you were around (I was).  In fact that drawing on what actually watching MTV was like is a major draw here, because when we get into the second part of the song, Dave is walking/singing through the studio.  He comes across several parodies of popular videos on MTV at the time.  This is Michael Jackson’s moonwalk, Cyndi Lauper’s Girls Just Wanna have Fun, Billy Idol, Richard Simmons, Willie Nelson, Boy George, general metal video stereotypes, even people like censorship boards, and   It’s a fun as shit video.  I just wish Dave would remaster it in HD and release it properly.  Love the song, love the video – a highlight of my mid 80’s musical landscape.

California Girls – The other song with a video from the EP.  Now this is the one I know beforehand – I mean if you know anything about music, you know this was a Beach Boys song.  However, I have to say…  this song came out when I was 19, and well, it’s David Lee Roth, so for a song called California Girls – it’s gonna have a lot of women in it, and man did it.  It was a fantastic cover track, it’s got the DLR video sense of humor I talked about and a ton of really hot looking women in bikinis (hello “midwest farmer’s daughter”).  It’s a perfect marriage for me.  So much so the DLR track has become for me the definitive version of the song, I far FAR prefer this to the Beach Boys original.  I also can’t hear the song (even the BB version) and *NOT* see the video in my head – those women are seared in my brain in a place that will never leave until the day I am six feet under.  It’s beyond memorable.  I’ve included it below.  I may or may not have watched the video a couple of times doing this – on top of listening to the song on the actual vinyl.

Coconut Grove – The final track was a song originally by The Lovin’ Spoonful.  This must have been a track that Dave liked himself.  It has a way different feel than the other three songs.   It’s a very slow song, not bad, but of the four, probably my least favorite of the batch.

The entire thing – all four songs are about 14 mins long total, with Gigolo being the longest (at 4:38).  I always wondered what other tracks would have worked on this if Dave expanded the EP out to a full length album and recorded another six covers along these lines.  As I sit here, I’m finding it hard to come up with what I would have liked, but it’s a simple concept, I’m surprised he didn’t try this exact concept again.  Actually I thought of one that I think would have worked well here.  Have Dave do “Dream Weaver” by Gary Wright.  Putting a DLR spin on this with a rock edge would work well I think.  Maybe something like Reminiscing by The Little River Band?  But I digress…

This era – starting in Van Halen with 1984, and going through this EP and his first full solo album is peak Roth. He was never any better, and never recaptured it again.  Oh sure, there were good tunes along the way (the album he did with John 5 in 1998 is stellar).  But the fun, party atmosphere of this area was gone after the Eat ’em & Smile album.