10 Obscure And Rare Hard Rock & Metal Albums
1. Silver Ginger 5 - Black Leather Mojo (2000)
Apparently intended as Wildhearts frontman and songwriter Ginger’s first solo album following the demise of his main band (and a brief diversion into oddball pop with the Clam Abuse project), the only Silver Ginger 5 album in existence is an odd but brilliant beast.
Initially released in 2000 in Japan only, Black Leather Mojo was assembled in the studio by Ginger and producer Tim Smith, legendary frontman of the Cardiacs, with the help of guitarist Conny Bloom of the Electric Boys, drummer Andy Selway (later of KMFDM) and Jon Poole, the Cardiacs’ bassist.
The piecemeal construction of the album meant that an actual band called Silver Ginger 5 didn’t even exist until Ginger decided to tour the album the following year, since the label’s inability to put together a coherent release meant that Black Leather Mojo wasn’t released in the UK until a year after his Japanese fans saw it.
Fortunately, that kind of unhappy chaos didn’t stop the record being an absolute blinder. A freewheeling joyride of an album, stuffed with giant riffs and scintillating pop melodies, careening from hook to hook (and genre to genre) like a pirate on ecstasy, Black Leather Mojo is the glam metal album to end all glam metal albums.
Highlights include delirious pop punk masterpiece Sonic Shake, the frankly demented Too Many Hippies (In The Garden Of Love) - which sounds like Ministry put a song on the Rocky Horror soundtrack - and the oddly uplifting power ballad Church Of The Brokenhearted (John Lennon by way of Jim Steinman, all gospel vocals and giant guitars).
It’s just a shame so few people have heard it - or even heard of it.