RARE SEALED BABYLON A.D. Self Titled LP Vintage 1989 Arista Records Radio Promo

$

50

 BABYLON A.D. Babylon A.D.  Original Vintage LP SEALED In ORIGINAL CELLOPHANE
MINT  Radio Promotional Copy 1989 Original Vintage Vinyl Arista Records  AL 8580
Description: I received this promotional copy of Babylon A.D, - self titled debut album Babylon A.D. when I worked in radio. Never played it and as with many of my extra albums it has been stored away for over 30 years in a closet standing upright with hundreds of other unplayed LPs, so the record itself is mint, unplayed and still sealed.
Personnel: Derek Davis           vocals Danny DeLaRosa  guitars, banjo Ron Freschi           guitars, backing vocals Robb Reid              bass, backing vocals Jamey Pacheco     drums
Track listing Side A 1.  Bang go the Bells          4:15 2.  Hammer Swings Down  3:27 3.  Caught in the Crossfire  3:33 4.  Desparate                  5:23 5.  The Kid Goes Wild  4:52
Side B 6.  Shot O' Love          5:47 7.  Maryanne          3:41 8.  Back in Babylon  4:10 9.  Sweet Temptation  3:40 10.  Sally Danced          5:53
About Babylon A.D. (from Spinditty, Keith Apt):
I discovered Babylon A.D. quite by accident on a chilly night in Brooklyn, New York, in the Fall of 1989. My friends and I had gone to the borough's legendary rock club "L'amour" that evening to check out the debut NYC gig by the Sea Hags, a sleaze-rock band from San Francisco who were being hyped as "the next Guns N' Roses." We doubted that any band would be able to live up to that, especially when an unknown quintet called Babylon A.D.—who weren't even listed on the bill—came onstage to start off the evening and quickly stole the show. After a blistering, all too short set by these newcomers, the Sea Hags were a disappointment—we actually walked out on them after only two or three songs.
During their time onstage, Babylon A.D.'s lead vocalist advised the crowd that their debut album would be available "in just a couple of weeks," so my pals and I all kept an eye out for it at our local record stores and snapped up copies when it appeared. Several months later, Babylon A.D. returned to L'amour as a headlining act and we all went back to see them a second time. Once again, the band packed a serious wallop on stage and we went home expecting a big future for them. Unfortunately, that never quite worked out for Babylon A.D., who garnered a small cult following over the next several years but never broke through to rock's big league.
Babylon A.D.'s story began in 1986, when the band was formed in the San Francisco Bay Area as The Persuaders. After kicking around the local club scene for a couple of years and changing their name to "Babylon" (the "A.D." was added at the last minute due to another band laying claim to the "Babylon" moniker), they caught the ear of legendary music mogul Clive Davis, who signed them to his Arista Records label in 1988. Hard rock or Hair Metal was all the rage at the time and Babylon A.D. certainly had the goods to compete in that extremely crowded field. The guitar team of Dan De La Rosa and Ron Freschi knew their way around a catchy riff, while vocalist Derek Davis had male-model good looks and a powerful, soulful voice with a touch of grit that set him apart from many of his Aqua-Netted contemporaries. Babylon A.D.'s first disc (produced by Simon Hanhart, a veteran engineer who'd also worked on albums by Saxon, Asia, Bryan Adams and David Bowie's Tin Machine) was a catchy, potent mix of AC/DC and Aerosmith style bar room boogie. It may have been hampered slightly by the overly glossy, slick production sound that was characteristic of most hard rock albums of the time but the album had its share of catchy anthems (see: Hammer Swings Down, Shot O' Love, or "Sweet Temptation") tempered by a few tracks with enough "heavy metal" bite to appeal to the headbanger crowd. The best examples of this would be the pounding, sinister Back in Babylon (a great mood-setter which was their set-opener at both live shows I saw) and their best-known song, The Kid Goes Wild, a tale of a teenager on a crime spree that appeared in the 1990 film RoboCop 2. The Kid Goes Wild featured a vocal cameo by foul-mouthed comedian Sam Kinison in the role of Billy, who shouts his defiance at the police before he's cut down in a hail of bullets. Babylon A.D. was also adept at the type of get-out-your-lighters balladry that made the girls swoon, as evidenced by the sensitive, acoustic Desperate and the bluesy Sally Danced. As a whole, the ten tracks on Babylon A.D. still sound pretty damn good today, which is not something you can say about a lot of the albums that were released during the Great Hair Metal Glut of 1989-1990.
Hammer Swings Down
So What Went Wrong? How come Babylon A.D. never hit the big time? It's hard to say for sure, but perhaps it all came down to simple bad timing. By the time Babylon A.D. was released in late 1989, the hard rock scene was already oversaturated by hundreds of second-and-third-string hair/glam/sleaze metal bands, all trying to cop some of the audience share enjoyed by platinum-selling giants like Poison, Ratt, Cinderella, and Guns N' Roses. I imagine that it would've been an impossible task for any new band to get traction amongst all the competition. It probably didn't help that their label (Arista) had little experience in the hard-rock arena, as they'd spent most of the '80s concentrating on easy-to-sell pop acts like Air Supply and Whitney Houston. By the time Arista tried to get in on the hair metal party by signing Babylon A.D., Every Mother's Nightmare and Enuff Z'nuff, the train had left the station and the scene had already chosen its winning acts.
It also took Babylon A.D. three years to produce a follow up album. By the time the sophomore effort Nothing Sacred was released in 1992, the Grunge music takeover had begun and fans had moved on to other things. Nothing Sacred also happens to be a fine listen, though it was a bit less heavy than the first album. The band pushed the blues-based early Aerosmith-isms of their sound to the forefront on tracks like Dream Train and Bad Blood, but their clueless label chose to highlight the sappy So Savage the Heart as the album's single. Apparently they hadn't gotten the memo yet that power ballads were dead!

After Nothing Sacred, the band members took a break from the music business for several years. Babylon A.D. resurfaced in 1998 with a live album (Live In Your Face) on their own label, Apocalypse Records, followed by a new studio album, American Blitzkrieg, in 2000. In 2006 Perris Records released In The Beginning...Persuaders Recordings 8688, an archive disc of early demo material recorded while the band was still using its original name.
In early 2014 the band announced via Facebook that they were back together and working on new material. A 4 song from-the-vaults EP entitled Lost Sessions: Fresno, CA. '93 was released in mid-2014 and a new live disc, Live @XXV, followed in 2015. A brand new studio album, Revelation Highway, was released via Frontiers Records in late 2017. Let's hope that this signals a permanent return to action for this underrated band!!
Babylon and on and on....
An Amazon Review -  5*s Formed in 1986, Babylon A.D. hail from the Bay Area in California. Original members, Derek Davis vocalist-songwriter, guitarists and music writers Dan De La Rosa and Ron Freschi, percussionist James Pacheco and bassist Eric Pacheco were in childhood and rival bands until Babylon A.D.. Later as a band, they caught the attention of Arista Records president and industry music mogul Clive Davis who signed them at a showcase in Los Angeles thanks to their impressive three song demo and home made video. Their self-titled album was released in 1990 and their sophomore effort Nothing Sacred following two years later. After spending several years with Arista and a five-year hiatus, the band signed with Apocalypse Records and released American Blitzkrieg in 1999. The band also released Live In Your Face, a compilation of live tracks that same year. They cite Led Zeppelin, UFO, Aerosmith, AC/DC, and Kiss as influences.
Condition:
Vinyl: Sealed / Mint    Album cover: Excellent + with a tiny promotional hole cut in corner. (See final photo)  
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