A funny thing happened in my planning of this Lesser of two evils. I originally thought this would be the sophomore releases from Sweet F.A. and Every Mother's Nightmare. I had not heard either in a while and pulled them out for a first listen. Right away I knew that I was correct for including Sweet F.A., but EMN were way better than I remembered. So I felt like I needed to find another band to complete this match-up. I immediately turned to Jag Wire because they have been on my maybe list for this segment for some time. So let's get this one started. It is...



Jag Wire-Made in heaven (1985)

vs.

Sweet F.A.-Temptation (1991)

Vocalist

Art Deresh for Jag Wire takes on Steven David De Long. Both vocalists suffer from attempting to to do parts that they are not up to. However some of Deresh's shortcomings are due to problems with the writing more than just lack of vocal ability. De Long has a few moments, but there are too many songs where he tried to sound beyond his all too limited ability and ends up sounding silly and out of tune. Deresh has an okay voice and handles mid-ranged songs adequately, but he doesn't elevate any of the songs. However he doesn't kill them either.

Point to Jag Wire



Guitarist

Howard Drossi of Jag Wire is up against Jon Huffman and James Lee Thorpe of Sweet F.A. The Sweet F.A. duo sound like they tried very to cram in little bits of G-n-R, Extreme, Bang Tango and Poison into their sound. Unfortunately they didn't have the skill to use or manipulate these parts. Instead they sound messy and incomplete. Jag Wire are as much an AOR band as they are hard rock. Which in this case meant the guitar parts are all to often hidden behind the keyboards So the guitar parts are often minimal, but Drossi keeps it going okay. More importantly he hits a couple of solos that are not only solid, but actually wind up saving the songs .

Point to Jag Wire



Rhythm section

For Jag Wire it is Joey Cristofanilli on bass and Carl Elizondo on drums and they are going against Frank Coglitore on bass (actually listed as an additional musician) and drummer Tricky Lane. I had to listen to both albums a second time to figure out this category. The Jag Wire guys are okay, but hidden in the mix and all too content just churn out the the most basic parts they can. The Sweet F.A. guys follow the same approach. The only difference is that the production helps Tricky Lane's drums sound to stand out a little.

Point to Sweet F.A.





Originality/production

Considering the rotten band names that these guys picked I knew right away that neither group could help themselves much in the originality department. Jag Wire sound like they enjoyed late 70's hard rock and early 80's AOR. Unfortunately this was the mid-80's and they had very few ideas of their own. Which means they sounded like copycats and they were slightly behind the times. Sweet F.A. fared even worse because they sound like a jumble of other band's ideas. This made them sound poor and difficult to take. Sweet F.A. definitely had stronger production although Jag Wire's production was average. I can deal with run of the mill production more than I can a haphazard musical approach.

Point to Jag Wire



Who rocks more?

Jag Wire tend to be not so bad rather than doing anything positive on a consistent basis. That doesn't make for a good album though. However their biggest shortcoming was that they just didn't push hard enough to really capture any one's attention. They try to slide by, but they do manage a degree of tightness and their guitarist had a few good bursts up his sleeves. Sweet F.A. sounded like they thought they could win people over by being a second rate version of bands that had succeeded in hard rock at the time. Unfortunately it sounds more like it came from a third rate band and no one bothered to listen to the final product before releasing it. If they had bothered to hear it then they would have sent it back and told these guys to tighten it up a lot and put some of their own ideas in.

Point to Jag Wire



Jag Wire take it fairly easily to a tune of 4-1. They may had one of the absolute worst band names all time, but they didn't have the worst album. Jag Wire came out sounding a little better than I thought and Sweet F.A. were even worse. Jag Wire may have actually helped their case by only doing eight songs while Sweet F.A. tested my patience by doing 13 tracks.



***I'll have another one of these out next month.

Here is another post that is about Jag Wire.
http://metalmark.blogspot.com/2008/05/jaguar-jag-wire.html