The Ripple Effect: The Music Commentary Radio Show  

The first half of the 1970’s is a bottomless pit of kick ass hard rock. Every month or so someone will turn me on to some band I’ve never heard of and it’s always from before 1975. Not too long ago Racer wrote up a band called Toad. Never heard of them but checked it out and loved it. Bulletproof by Hard Stuff is my latest obsession.

Last year I gave my friend Vinny a copy of Death Walks Behind You by Atomic Rooster. He loves Deep Purple and Emerson, Lake & Palmer but had never heard this gem. He freaked! It caused him to track down a bunch of their other records. On the search he stumbled across Hard Stuff, featuring guitarist John Cann and drummer Paul Hammond both from Atomic Rooster’s peak era. The bassist is John Gustafson from a band called Quatermass, who had a song called “Black Sheep of the Family” that was covered on the first Rainbow album. It’s probably not a coincidence since Hard Stuff was on Purple Records, the label started by Deep Purple’s managers once they got rich. Originally the band was called Bullet but had to change the name due to litigation from another band with the same name.

more . . . http://ripplemusic.blogspot.com/2009/08/protometal-report-hard-stuff.html