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Amy Honey - Guitar
Benjamin Frith - Drums
Bill Wade - Drums
Damien Storm - Director, Guitar
Frank Soda - Guitar
Joe James - Guitar
John Shand - Guitar
Keith Zazzi - Bass
Mike Favata - Drums
Steve Price - Guitar
Terry McKeown - Bass
The AN-THOR-LOGY takes you inside the many guises of Jon Mikl Thor--the bodybuilding champion, Vegas strongman, and heavy-metal rock god. With his blond locks, his statuesque pecs, his hammer of doom, and his mighty voice, Thor always puts on a triumphant show. Filled with rare clips, videos of Thor battling demons, live concert footage, television appearances, and of course Thor bending steel bars with his teeth, this release contains nearly a decade (1976-1985) of Thor's glorious reign.
* Bruce Duff - Engineer
* D. Stevens - Photography
* Frank Meyer - Commentary, Director, Producer
* Michael D. Hektoen - Executive Producer, Producer
* Paul Harb - Director, Editing, Producer
This DVD makes a good case for underground metal sideshow Thor as the ultimate missing link between the mid-'70s rock & spandex theatrics of Alice Cooper and Kiss, and the next decade's humorless metal macho men in Manowar -- not to mention a few dozen bad ideas besides. It hardly matters that the man can hardly sing, this unprecedented collection of Thor sightings amounts to one thing: entertainment. For that is what Thor is, not a musician, not an actor, or a heavy metal muscle-head, but an entertainer. Watch as he stalks the stage with muscles flaring and sweat a-dripping; behold as he dons a dog-collar, purses his lips, and shimmies his hips to some cruel subversion of glam rock camp; thrill as he bends a steel bar with naught but his teeth and a towel; marvel as two motorcycle thugs assault him mid-set and proceed to break a cinder block across his skull; and, finally, simply, gawk in amazement as he blows up a hot water bottle with his bare lungs -- amid a Muzak-like performance of the Sweet's "Action" on the Merv Griffin Show, no less! These are but some of the nameless pleasures of this historical DVD release -- as definitive a career retrospective (even with date cut-offs between '76 and '85) as one is likely to see about what has to be one of rock's most bizarre, indefensible, but surprisingly enduring novelty acts. Here amid the numerous tuneless and semi-professional live band performances and TV appearances (ranging from the not-so-bad proto-metal of "Keep the Dogs Away" to the horribly plodding Alice Cooper knock-off "Phantom of My Nightmare"), the inevitably goofy MTV promo clips (including the hysterical "Knock 'em Down," featuring Thor's Sheena-like female foil Pantera), and scattered oddities including everything from TV news reports, local cable access-show appearances (anyone remember Uncle Floyd? -- it's doubtful), and even commercials (Chevy tucks!). It's arguably the Thor-narrated "Thor-u-mentary" segment that's the most priceless, if for no other reason than his admission of working as a stripper at some point. From a technical point of view, all packaging, digital authoring, and most of the clips' audio and video are of barely professional grade (during "Only the Strong" they don't even sync!), but that's really not the point here. Rather, this DVD's 132 minutes of total playing time and assorted bonus contents -- between rudimentary attempts at homemade music videos (simply jaw-dropping) -- new millennium glimpses of our balding but still relatively buff hero at work, a career-spanning slide show, and full commentaries, constitute a truly priceless visual treasure on par with Spinal Tap. Which is to say that, as a proper heavy metal experience, An-THOR-Logy is, like most every Thor release in existence, a resounding letdown; but as pure rock & roll entertainment, it's an unqualified success. Most telling of all: you can't take your eyes off of it.
---Eduardo Rivadavia, All Music Guide
Thor
Active Decades: '70s, '80s, '90s and '00s
Genre: Rock
Styles: Hard Rock, Heavy Metal
Even by heavy metal's innately freaky standards, the artist known as Thor was an absolute superfreak! Straight-faced Norse god impersonator, semi-professional bodybuilder, on-stage wrestler, all-around performance artist (known to bend a steel bar between his teeth!), sometime actor, and, oh yeah, even occasional rock & roll singer, Thor (full fake name Jon Mikl Thor) was a Vancouver, Canada, native with a flair for both theater and music. Although most heavy metal fans would only become aware of his antics in the mid-'80s, the roots of Thor's act hail all the way back to the early '70s, when the still teenaged winner of the Mr. Junior Canada bodybuilding title decided to parlay his sudden celebrity into a full-on character based on the ubiquitous Viking god of thunder.
Amazingly, it worked, and after short stints doing everything from playing in bands to starring in a Las Vegas revue dressed in gladiator gear to working as a nude waiter in Hawaii, in 1976 Thor landed a booking on The Merv Griffin Show This exposure proved enough to help him secure a recording contract, and, along with then-bandmembers John Shand (guitar), Terry McKeown (bass), and Bill Wade (drums), record a debut album the following year. Curiously entitled Keep the Dogs Away, its poor man's imitation of Kiss and Alice Cooper's hard glam style (self-labeled as "muscle rock") didn't exactly set the world on fire, and relegated Thor and his ever-changing cast of bandmembers to a club-playing existence for years to come, with only the occasional independent EP (1979's Gladiator, 1980's Striking Viking) to document their music.
In fact, Thor's career wouldn't heat back up again until 1984, during an era in popular music's trajectory that was far more propitious to his over the top shenanigans and lingering songwriting mediocrity. That year, a series of singles released by the tiny Albion label generated enough press and consumer interest to draw the attention of on-the-rise metal label Roadrunner, which in turn quickly issued 1985's not-totally-embarrassing "warrior metal" album Only the Strong. Unfortunately, this too sold far too poorly to keep the band -- then completed by guitarist Steve Price, bassist Keith Zazzi, drummer Mike Favata, and, most memorably, backup singer Pantera -- from being dropped, and follow-up albums like the same year's hastily packaged Live in Detroit, 1986's Recruits -- Wild in the Streets, and 1987's Tritonz were all released by ever smaller indie labels, and to ever greater public indifference. (It didn't help that the last two were also issued under different names: the first using the Jon Mikl Thor moniker, the second a meaningless alias of Tritonz.)
Thor's career was effectively over at this stage, but he surprisingly returned to sporadic recording about a decade later, having since released 1997's Thunderstruck: Tales from the Equinox, 2001's Dogz II, 2002's Triumphant, and 2005's Thor Against the World. In addition, two collections cleverly (ahem!) named An-THOR-logy have emerged: the first, from 1997, being a CD, and the second, from 2005, a DVD collecting the sights, the sounds, and the smells of Thor's first decade of existence. A year later, Thor released Devastation of Musculation.
---Eduardo Rivadavia, All Music Guide |
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