With the volume up and the speakers really pushing the air, I'm blown backward in time. Time travel is a favorite topic of mine, whether it's through reading Verne or Wells, listening to old radio shows from the 1940s, or listening to the music of my youth, music that reminds me of this concert or that, of wild times when I didn't have to be responsible yet. The music sounded better to me then. Fuller. I felt it with my entire body.

I'm feeling that way right now. I don't even have the speakers turned up very high. Well... not very. Just high enough that the bass is bouncing off my chest, punctuated by the kick drum. The guitar's power chords spread out across the stereo field before me to make a huge sound, just the way I used to crave it in the mid-70s. And then the singer takes flight. Something about that voice. I've heard it before and it does something to me. Spine chills, like a shot of electricity. The music is powerful, the hook viscously sharp, the kind that makes good Christians mumble "fuck yeah" and sends guitarists scurrying for their instruments. The chorus comes along and ties it all into a perfect package of power, engineering and songcraft, and the time travel is successful. I'm back there rockin' in the arena with Mother's Army.

Mother's who?

Don't feel bad if you haven't heard of Mother's Army. It just means you're normal. Not very many people have, really. I'll try to bring you up to speed with one of the shortest FAQs on the Internet.

* Mother's Army were not a 70s band. They recorded their three CDs in 1993, 1997 and 1998.

* Like many bands of the period (which is still in progress), Mother's Army marketed themselves, using their self-run website to sell their CD, having more success than the average independent band but still not making enough noise to get listed in most of the online music encyclopedia-type services, such as All Music Guide, where you find the band name but no information.

* UNlike most independent bands using their self-run websites to sell their CDs, this band consists of four heavyweights in the world of hard rock music.

[Pictured L-R: Jeff Watson, Joe Lynn Turner, Bob Daisley & Carmine Appice.]

Everybody in Mother's Army had a pedigree and trophy case of heavy rock gold and/or platinum records. On bass was Bob Daisley, a veteran of Mungo Jerry, Chicken Shack, Widowmaker, Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow, Uriah Heep, The Gary Moore Band and, most importantly, Blizzard Of Ozz, where he not only wrote every word Ozzy Osbourne sang but also co-wrote the music behind it with Randy Rhoads and Lee Kerslake. Jeff Watson was the guitarist in Night Ranger who did those amazing 8-finger solos. If you're having a "that's not very powerful" thought that ties to "Sister Christian," try to think past that, to the moments when Night Ranger was a rock band, and remember him for things like "You Can Still Rock In America." If you can remember that Jeff Watson, you know of 1/10th of his talent. It seems Jeff continued growing as a musician in the years following his successes with Night Ranger.

Daisley and Watson would be the songwriting team for Mother's Army. When it came time to find the voice of their music, they looked to one of Daisley's old bands, but not one of his bandmates. Joe Lynn Turner had been Rainbow's vocalist after Daisley's departure (Ronnie James Dio was the vocalist during Daisley's tenure with the band), but they knew that was the voice they wanted. Who could blame them? With all respect to Dio, Turner's stint with Rainbow was their most commercially successful, and his voice was quite versatile. Since the music Daisley and Watson had in mind ranged from knockout-punch rock to ethereal ballads, Turner was a natural choice. Then there was the issue of finding the perfect drummer for all styles, all occasions.

Two words: Carmine Appice.

It's really hard to find anyone to top Carmine Appice when you're putting a hard rock band together. He jelled with Daisley perfectly, and in fact the entire band jelled from the start. Watson and Daisley wrote the songs, recorded demos with Appice and sent them to Turner, who excitedly commented that he was a huge fan of his new band before he sang a note with them. Mother's Army got together to test their wings, and it was thumbs up all around. Appice would later depart, and there would be no dropoff in skill or name recognition (or pedigree) with his replacement, Aynsley Dunbar, who had played with a long list of big name bands but all we need mention is the most demanding job in music: he played drums with Frank Zappa & The Mothers Of Invention.

[Pictured: The Fire On The Moon CD.]

Three CDs and a handful of years later, the band no longer exists and has been given little attention. Certainly hard rock stations would want to program songs like "Way Of The World," "For The Moment," "N.D.E.," "Circle Of Hands," "Fire On The Moon," and "Misery Me," and you'd think environmentally-conscious groups would have been all over a brilliant tune like "Planet Earth." I can't tell you if the marketing strategy is a result of plan or lack of interest from record labels. When I feel the power rush that I'd be willing to bet most hard rock fans would get from "Fire On The Moon," I can't imagine some record label somewhere wouldn't have been willing to back this, especially considering the fact that there aren't any weak songs on the Fire On The Moon CD. Perhaps this was a case of four successful musicians getting together and doing what they wanted to do without any label pressure. Nobody saying "That's great, guys, but can you get it closer to a Nirvana kind of vibe? The kids, you know..."

Whatever the reasons, the fact is that Mother's Army is underrated. They're almost unrated, and this is a terrible mistake. When you listen as the rocker "Do What I Like" morphs into the eastern-influenced "Common Ground," and the hooks grab you and make you an instant fan, you may experience the same confusion I continue to experience. I'll be swaying to the sounds, totally infused with the excitement and energy of it, and I'll think horrible things about radio because I feel this should be well known music. Then I'll have to remind myself that I can only find it at www.jeffwatson.com, and then I'll just wonder for a while. I wonder if, with solid backing from a label with strong distribution and publicity, Fire On The Moon might be considered one of the best hard rock albums of the 90s. There's no answer. All I know is I consider it one of the best hard rock albums of the 90s, and I'll show as many people as I can from now on.

There hadn't been an Underrated feature in Cosmik Debris in a long time. It's one of those things that slips our minds. We get wrapped up in new ideas, and we forget to do occasional articles in a series like this. Then something comes along that really makes one us need to write one. After my interview with Bob Daisley concerning the Ozzy Osbourne lawsuit (See the August 2002 issue), I got a few e-mails from people saying "Have you heard Fire On The Moon? It's amazing!" One college radio disc jockey sent me e-mail saying he'd seen my interview with Bob, and that he was going to interview him the next day with the sole topic being Mother's Army. Good deal. Spread the word, people.

(C) 2003 - DJ Johnson