Jeffery Martin | The Range Planet

Jeffery Martin Jul 5, 2021 0:46:38 GMT Zedd Squared, kaji, and 2 more like this

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Post by Hennessy Macklemore III on Jul 5, 2021 0:46:38 GMT

Jeffery Louis Martin (November 9, 1957 - )
Years active: 1982-present
Country of origin: United States of America
Recorded vocal range: B♭1-D♭6 (A♯1-C♯6)

Featured bands:

1982-1984 - Surgical Steel (lead vocals)
1985-1988 - Racer X (lead vocals)
1990-1992 - Electric Fence (lead vocals, drums)
1990-1993 - Badlands (drums, backing vocals)
1998 - Black Symphony (drums, backing vocals)
1998-2009 - Racer X (lead vocals, occasional percussion)
2004-2006 - Leatherwolf (lead vocals, rhythm guitar)
2006 - Jeff Martin (lead vocals, drums)
2014-present - Priest/DC - (lead vocals)
2015-present - Blasted to Static (lead vocals)

SPOILER: Click to show

{Full band history}

1982-1984 - Surgical Steel (lead vocals)
1984 - St. Michael (lead vocals, drums)
1985-1989 - Racer X (lead vocals)
1989-1990 - Bad Dog (lead vocals)
1990-1992 - Electric Fence (lead vocals, drums)
1990-1993 - Badlands (drums, backing vocals)
1993-1995 - Blindside Blues Band (drums, backing vocals)
1994 - Red Sea (drums)
1997-2000 - Paul Gilbert (drums, backing vocals)
1998 - Black Symphony (drums, backing vocals)
1998-2009 - Racer X (lead vocals, occasional percussion)
2001 - Michael Schenker Group (drums, backing vocals)
2003 - The Plot (drums, backing vocals)
2004-2006 - Leatherwolf (lead vocals, rhythm guitar)
2006 - Jeff Martin (lead vocals, drums)
2006 - Michael Schenker Group (drums, backing vocals)
2014-present - Priest/DC - (lead vocals)
2015-present - Blasted to Static (lead vocals)

Recorded high notes:

C♯2/D♭2: "God of the Sun"

A♯1/B♭1: low range demonstration

SPOILER: Click to show

{Questionable notes}D♯6/E♭6: "I Think I Love You" - brief falsetto squeak, not the most controlled note

.......................................................
*Blue marks soft falsetto notes.
*Green marks harsh distorted notes.
*Italics mark non-melodic notes.
*Underlines mark notes in backing vocals or otherwise muffled/obscured in the mix.

SPOILER: Click to show

{Album ranges}Racer X:

Street Lethal - D3-E3-B5
Second Heat - E♭3-F3-D♭6
Extreme Volume Live - B♭3-A♭5-B♭5
Extreme Volume II Live - C3-E3-F♯5-A5
Technical Difficulties (1999) - C♯2-D♯2-B5
Superheroes (2000) - B2-F♯3-A5
Live at the Whisky: Snowball of Doom (2001) - B2-B♭5
Getting Heavier (2002) - G♯2-B2-B♭5
Snowball of Doom 2 (2002) - D3-B♭5

Jeff Martin:

The Fool (2006) - A2-G♯5-A5

Blasted to Static:

Blasted to Static (2016) - E♭2-B♭2-B♭5

SPOILER: Click to show

{Detailed bio}Jeff Martin is an accomplished musician as both a vocalist and drummer, and has had his fair share of bands demonstrating his skills as each. As a vocalist, he is best known for fronting '80s speed/shred metal metal band Racer X, and as a drummer he has played with several big names such as Badlands, the Michael Schenker Group, and briefly with UFO. His vocals are often recognized for his piercing high range, which he can carry up strikingly high in a resonant head voice that many have compared to Rob Halford both tonally and stylistically. This resemblance is no coincidence, as it is easy to tell that Halford was a major influence on Jeff from the sheer number of Judas Priest covers he has sung...and the fact that he has even gone as far as joining a Judas Priest tribute group later in his career! Apart from his Halford-tinged high range, however, Jeff has his own distinct style of attitude-driven gritty singing that he often carries through his fourth octave and upper third octave. Low singing is fairly uncommon for him (especially notes below B2), but the limited extent of it that he has displayed can range from a slightly dramatic sounding deeper tone to an occasional somewhat snarly style reminiscent of Dave Mustaine. Though he has yet to ever sing below A2 in a lead vocal that I know of, he has demonstrated spoken passages and backing vocals in a small handful of songs that get down into the lower second octave with surprising resonance, which I would be quite curious to hear him sing with more audibly.

Jeff's first band of note was Surgical Steel, a glam metal group that he joined in 1982, and went on to record two demos with - one simply titled Demo '82, and a self-titled in 1984. Though these demos did not have the recording quality of a proper studio album, they already demonstrated some impressive high singing by Jeff from the early on, with strong melody singing up to G5 in several songs, and some impressively sustained G♯5 and A5 screams in others. After leaving this band in 1984, Jeff briefly joined a band called St. Michael as both their vocalist and drummer, which as far as I am aware only ever released one song called "The Beauty, The Power". From there, however, he was discovered by at the time up-and-coming guitarist Paul Gilbert for his work with Surgical Steel, and was recruited to be the vocalist for a new band that Gilbert was forming called Racer X. With the addition of bassist Juan Alderete and drummer Harry Gschoesser, the band's lineup was completed, and they began writing and recording music in 1985. Their first album, Street Lethal, was released in 1986, and heavily capitalized on the neo-classical shred guitar trends that had recently been popularized by players such as Randy Rhoads and Yngwie Malmsteen, whom Gilbert was seen as the next successor of at the time. Between Jeff's high, wailing vocals, Gilbert's lightning fast guitar shredding, and the neoclassically-tinged speed metal composition style that the band wrote in, the album gained some recognition and praise, particularly for songs like "Into the Night" and "Getaway".

In 1986, Racer X replaced Harry Gschoesser with drummer Scott Travis (later of Judas Priest fame), and added second guitarist Bruce Bouillet to its lineup, creating what many fans have come to view as its "classic" era. This lineup went on to record the acclaimed sophomore album Second Heat, which featured some of the band's best known songs such as "Motor Man", "Hammer Away", and "Gone Too Far". The positive reception from album led to a spike in popularity for the band, and they began regularly playing sold out shows along the Sunset Strip in California. However, despite this rising success, members of the band began to grow disheartened by the growing realization that they were unlikely to ever land on a major label. The first member to act on this was Paul Gilbert, who left the band in 1988 to join a new band called Mr. Big. His last two shows with the band were released as live albums, entitled Extreme Volume Live and Extreme Volume II Live, which featured performances of several unreleased songs that Racer X had begun to write for a third album, but had yet to release. Following Gilbert's decision to leave Racer X, Jeff followed suit, and was temporarily replaced by Oni Logan before the band dissolved entirely in 1989.

Jeff's first band after his departure from Racer X was a short-lived project called Bad Dog, whom he formed with guitarist Russ Parrish (later known as Satchel from the band Steel Panther) in 1989. The band recorded a singular demo of original material together, but I have not been able to find this available anywhere on the internet. They also began performing live in 1990, playing a combination of original material, Racer X songs, and other covers, which can be heard in a 1990 concert at The Tradoubadour uploaded on YouTube. This band saw little success overall though, and Jeff soon left when he received an offer to play drums in the band Badlands, whom he went on to play with for the next several years and recorded the albums Voodoo Highway and Dusk with before their dissolution in 1993. On the side, however, Jeff continued playing with both Russ Parrish and Paul Gilbert in the cover band Electric Fence, which intermittently played shows at Musicians Institute in Los Angeles during the early 1990s. This band played songs by the likes of Deep Purple, Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, and The Jimi Hendrix Experience, and featured all three members on vocals, with Jeff on drums and the other two members trading off between guitar and bass.

Following his work in Badlands and Electric Fence, Jeff more or less became a drummer for hire for the rest of the '90s, playing drums in other bands such as Red Sea, the Blindside Blues Band, and Black Symphony. He additionally continued his working relationship with Paul Gilbert, who began pursuing a solo career in 1998 and hired Jeff to play drums on his first few albums. This continued collaboration eventually led to a reunion of Racer X later that year, with Juan Alderete and Scott Travis also rejoining to reprise their previous roles. The band began writing music together again, and in 1999 released the highly-acclaimed comeback album Technical Difficulties, which featured a combination of newly-written material as well as previously unreleased songs that had been written prior to the band's breakup in 1989, such as "Poison Eyes", "Give It to Me", and "Fire of Rock". At this point, the band began to tune their songs down to D instead of E♭, which was allegedly done to accodomate changes to Jeff's vocal range since their last time playing together. However, in spite of this, he proved himself capable of hitting notes well up to the top of the fifth octave on this album, and continued to do so on the next Racer X album, 2000's Superheroes, on which his high note abilities can particularly be heard on the title track and their cover of Blue Öyster Cult's "Godzilla". On the promotional tour for Superheroes, Racer X recorded two live albums, the first of which was released in 2001 under the title Live at the Whisky: Snowball of Doom, and the second as an "official bootleg" recorded in Japan, titled Snowball of Doom 2. The band's final album, Getting Heavier, was released in 2002, at which point activity began to wane for them again due to members' other projects getting busy again. The band continued to perform intermittently for the next seven years, but played their final show at NAMM 2009 before breaking up for a second time.

Outside of Racer X, Jeff also continued to play drums in various projects from the early 2000s onward. He served as a touring drummer for UFO in 2000, during which he developed a working relationship with Michael Schenker and was invited to join the Michael Schenker Group, and recorded the album Be Aware of Scorpions with them in 2001. He also joined a new side side project formed by Schenker and UFO bassist Pete Way called The Plot, though this ended up being a short-lived band. In 2004, Jeff became the new vocalist for the band Leatherwolf (with whom he also did some guitar work), but only made it as far as recording one three-track demo with them before leaving in 2006. From there, he went on to record his first and only solo album, The Fool, in 2006, for which he handled all vocal and drum duties himself, and featured several of his bandmates from other bands on guest guitar work, such as Paul Gilbert, Russ Parrish, and Michael Schenker. Though this album featured some strong vocal performances by Jeff and solid songwriting, it unfortunately sold very poorly, to the point that he actually went into debt over the recording costs of it. Following this and Racer X's second breakup, Jeff's musical activity began to wane for a few years. However, in the mid 2010s he began to put his Rob Halford impression to use by joining a California-based Judas Priest and AC/DC tribute band called Priest/DC, featuring Judas Priest's own (and Jeff's former Racer X bandmate) Scott Travis on drums. In this band, Jeff alternates vocal duties with two other vocalists, who play the roles of AC/DC's Bon Scott and Brian Johnson, while he plays the role of Rob Halford on Judas Priest covers. More recently, he has also made a return to writing and recording original music in a new band called Blasted to Static, with whom he put out a self-titled album in 2016. Though he is now in his 60s, Jeff's vocals on this album (and recent live performances) make it clear that he is still as competent of a vocalist as ever, and still has LOTS of high range left to show off, so I'll be interested to keep an eye on what he does from here on!

Note that this singer is normally known as Jeff Martin, but I had to list him under his full name on this website to distinguish him from another singer we already have a thread for with the same name.

Original version of this thread by Itsagchord on TRP1.

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