Rock Candy
1979
Narita
About This Album
New York's Riot is unfortunate representative of a "lost generation" of American hard rock bands. Formed in the late '70s, when widespread record industry recession conspired with disco's airwave domination and headline-grabbing (but little-album-selling) punk rock to drive even some of the decade's most successful heavyweight dinosaurs (Black Sabbath, Kiss, etc.) to the brink of extinction, Riot saw precious few of their contemporaries (most notably Van Halen) actually make it through to the big time. Not so lucky as the California quartet, Riot had to seek out a foreign label to take a chance on their stellar eponymous debut in 1977, and then financed a second, Narita, on their own dime before managing to lure a still rather hesitant Capitol Records to pick it up. Finally released in late 1979, Narita was named after the Japanese airport controversially built on sacred ground (hence its bizarre album cover) and contained slick but powerful hard rock -- nowhere near as combustible as VH's debut, but hardly squeaky-clean like Boston's, either. In fact, the record's more considered tracks, such as "Waiting for the Taking" and "Kick Down the Wall," were generally the ones that left something wanting, while most of its best songs -- "49er," "Hot for Love," "Road Racin'" -- stood upon a knife's edge between Guy Esperanza's chrome-plated, echo-enhanced vocals and Mark Reale's razor-sharp riffs and stinging leads.
Track List (try tracks 4,5,7 and 9)

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