Zebra-Zebra (1983)


Artist:  Zebra

Title: Zebra

Label: Atlantic

Format: LP

Cat: 7 80054-1

Year of Release: 1983

Country and Year of Edition: US 1983 Specialty Pressing

Date of Sale: 8/18/23

Sell Price: $9.49

Condition: VG+/VG+

Discogs Last Sold: 8/15/23 VG+/VG+ $6.52

Low: $1.75 VG/VG 3/2/20

Median: $7.00

Average: $7.77

High: $24.95 NM/VG+

Current low price: $2.00 G/G+ $12.00 VG+/VG+

Current Number on Sale at Discogs: 47

Have/Want: 2119/127

Where Sold: Colorado Springs, CO

Time It Took To Sell:  2 years

Where and When Bought: online hard rock $45 9 record lot

Gwiz-gau Letter Grade:  B+

Sad To See It Go: No

Zebra started in New Orleans and migrated to Long Island later in the 70's. Starting as primarily a Led Zeppelin cover band evolving to success out of the gate with their first release around a decade in with a 1983 Gold US record.  They never reached these commercial heights again.  Their current tour setlists feature this album start to finish.  I guess that makes this album the bands calling card.  They certainly worked long enough on it.

I thought I totally ignored Zebra and thought they were a hair metal band.  I was a bit wrong.  I'm pretty sure I had a late night drunken conversation where I was told that Zebra weren't all that bad, and although I thought from the first few songs the record was in average-land, the rest won me over and made me like the whole thing the next time around.

First off, I knew the massive radio hit "Who's Behind The Door?"  Somehow I didn't know the other hit "Tell Me What You Want" from memory, but I'm sure I heard it on WAAF in 1983.   The video is an amazing time capsule with a surprise guest star: a dummy whose head falls off!   Surprises also lurk on the album and not just the Zep kind.  From Larry Williams (and, duh, Beatles) "Slow Down" through the Yes-influenced "The La La Song" you can't say there isn't stylistic variety on the album for a major label record likely to be covered primarily in Hit Parader and Circus Magazine next to Kix and Quiet Riot.  It is little surprise they were paired on syndicated FM radio on The Source and King Biscuit Flower Hour around this release.

Zeppelin rears it's head in the acoustic work such as "Take Your Fingers Through My Hair."  The vocals and music cover a bit of a different area.  Until it doesn't.  Randy Jackson can do a Plant-style, when he wants and fortunately doesn't overdo it like, ahem, Kingdom Come or...

Then comes the prog.


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