Friday, February 16, 2018

Whitesnake, White Vinyl

After laying the foundation, and preparing myself for a New Wave Of British Heavy Metal mindset with early chapters from Martin Popoff's books on the subject and healthy doses of a 1977 playlist, the next logical step was to move into 1978.

Digging into 1978 didn't uncover many lost treasures or surprises, however, there was one thing that caught my attention...and the more that I thought about it, I desperately wanted to make a move on it for the record collection.

I hated Whitesnake so much as a kid, that it still feels like a dirty secret for me to talk about how much I've grown to appreciate their early albums. I mean, the early Whitesnake days are basically just an extension of Coverdale's time in Deep Purple, and I've got no issue talking about my love for Purple...and the reality is that Whitesnake's albums like Snakebite, Trouble and Lovehunter, absolutely demolish Coverdale's last album with Purple, Come Taste The Band, so it might be time for me to finally stop hiding in shame, and proudly admit "Yeah, I fucking like Whitesnake. What are you going to do about it?"

Back to the topic at hand...when I was reading through Popoff's chapter on 1978 in his Wheels Of Steel book on the NWOBHM, I came across this entry:

June 2, 1978. "David Coverdale's Whitesnake" issue their first material, the Snakebite EP... The four tracks from this EP would be combined with four tracks from (Coverdale's solo album) Northwinds to become the debut album, also called Snakebite.

This came as a total surprise to me. I mean, I'm no scholar on Whitesnake history, but I had no idea that Snakebite was initially a 7 inch EP. Making this discovery, ignited a need to track one down, and finding out that they sell for relatively cheap on Discogs, made it an easy decision to grab one now.

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