#164 Tesla – The Great Radio Controversy (1989)

The Great Radio Controversy is the second studio album released by the California band Tesla. It was released 3 years after their smash debut Mechanical Resonance. Tesla had the misfortune of coming along during the mid eighty’s and were many times categorized as a heavy metal/ glam/hair band. In fact they were t-shirt and jeans, straight ahead hard rockers, whose depth of material far exceeded that of glammers like Poison and Warrant. Although it was not as strong as, sophomore albums rarely are, as their debut it was definitely a more commercially successful record. It is a typical 80’s hard rock album in the sense that it follows the classic formula of mixing hard rockers with power ballads. The heads above the rest, standout cut on this album is “Heavens Trail (no way out)” which starts out with a bluesy acoustic guitar intro with slick lyrical content, and soon smashes into an in your face rock stomp.”Love Song” though was by far the biggest hit on this record. It is Tesla’s great ode to the power ballad. There other stand out tracks on this album such as “Yesterdaze Gone”, “Paradise” & “The Way That Is” (which would reappear on the classic 5 man acoustical jam as one of the highlights of the record).

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