Style: hard rock
Label: Perris
Year: 1999
Home: Los Angeles
Members: Jizzy Pearl ~ vocals
Joey Gold ~ drums
Jon Jones ~ guitar
Jeff Simon ~ bass
If it wasn't for grunge L.A. hard rock vocalist Jizzy Pearl might be a name better remembered, rather than that singer whose played in L.A. Guns, Ratt, Adler's Appetite & guested with many other bands. Where he may lack an immediate recognizable voice he's far more exploratory with his voice than a lot of singers going from a clean tenor to gruff Bon Scott-esque moments. He's not for everyone, but he's far more interesting than a lot of his peers who just want to scream in as high a pitch as they can. L/H was Jizzy's entry onto the L.A. hair metal scene, though ironically the quartet of Jizzy, Jon E. Love, Skid Rose & Joey Gold started out under the influence of The Cult with a gothic look before becoming more L.A. hard rock. Before their day was up they would tour with Dio, AC/DC, Skid Row & Ozzy Osbourne, but success was always just out of grasp. Their second album was turned down by the label so writing started again with growing conflict between the band & label on the musical direction to be taken. L/H were dropped by the label after the second album didn't have the intended financial return, the band didn't approve of some label decisions & the label in turn didn't support the band, including sponsoring a tour with Black Sabbath. The third album was funded by the sale of songwriter/bassist Skid Rose's car. Then grunge came & L/H would never have a chance. During the fourth album Skid & drummer Joey Gold started a band called Skoe, while Joey also hooked up with Jizzy for Sineaters. After a few ups but mostly downs Jizzy joined L.A. Guns, which brought him his most fame, & later spent six years with Ratt. L/H would reform, but it would be with Jizzy fronting a revolving door of members, only occasionally would one of them be an original member. By the time of their final album Let's Eat L/H was gone, or existing only as a Jizzy outing. As much as L/H with Jizzy only is not really L/H, considering all the songwriting had previously been done by Skid Rose, this final L/H album is not a L/H album outside of name. It probably horribly shocked any unknowledgeable listeners when it came out it's so much not a L/H album. This is the Sineater recordings & the similarities with L/H are few if none between the two musical groups. None of the interesting musical variety of L/H is here, nor are the polished wannabe hits as this is a fairly lo-fi almost demo affair, & probably are demos. If there's any connection between the Sineaters & L/H it does have the lyrical anger that had come out on L/H's last two albums, climaxing with the aptly titled album, I'm Not Happy, but again this is now Jizzy's pen not Skid's. This might be better considered a Jizzy solo album. He's done a couple, though reviews are mixed. I find the problem with his two solo albums, particularly Vegas Must Die, is too much AC/DC does L.A. & Jizzy doesn't have the vocal experimenting going on as I've enjoyed hearing from him elsewhere. Plus, he just cannot compose great music to compliment his vocals. The music here essentially fails, either becoming unmemorable or imitative, & the poor production doesn't help. Jizzy is experimenting with his vocals but there's no music to back him up like on the other L/H albums, as guitars just chug in a non-melodic haze. The potential is here as Jizzy is feeling around at some new ground, even going so far as to not imitate AC/DC, like on Vegas Must Die, but actually the talk-rap of something that might be found with the Red Hot Chili Peppers (for example, "Don't Play Your Guitar When You're Talkin' To Me", "Walk On The Moon", "Heartbreaker"), though at the same time I could draw parallels to Faith No More. But, again, he needs either a songwriting partner or at least some clean guitar lines. Vegas Must Die also suffers from muddy sounding guitars. Let's Eat feels like a club band with not enough melody, too much distortion, not enough time working on the songs, but a desire to just play & who cares, which might be more closer to the Sineaters truth than not. Here Jizzy is letting it all hang out rough & if I had to choose a solo album to hang on to or let go this is it as in repeated listens it keeps my interest much more than the proper solo albums. Ironically, the feeling of this reminds me of Hole's debut & Nirvana's Bleach. Jizzy might have been pushed out by grunge but he's trying his best to join the crowd here as I hear many Sub Pop bands in his writing & I'm tempted to want to give him some credit for trying ... just don't listen then switch over to the first two L/H albums or even L.A. Guns. Just don't compare this to any of the Sub Pop bands & you'll find it interesting.
