Here at APCB, we don't just entertain, we want to perform a public service. Blogs aren't merely arenas in which misanthropic cranks spew their bilge about politics and pop culture, they can also educate and - dare I say? - save some lives.
Last Friday marked the 1st anniversary of the Rhode Island nightclub fire that killed 100 patrons attending a concert by former '80s hair metal stalwarts Great White. The band's tour manager and club managers at the Station were indicted for involuntary manslaughter late last year. That's well and good, but in order to help prevent future rock-related tragedies (and due to little free time at the moment) I've resurrected an e-mail from a list I'm on to help music fans avoid future calamities. For those of you on that e-mail list who've already seen this, my apologies. Original entertainment will return shortly.
When I first heard of the fire in Rhode Island, I think I was less surprised it had taken place than I was that there were actually 300 people there to see Great White. a group of Ian Hunter-wannabes I'd consigned to the bargain bin of my musical consciousness long ago.
The lesson coming from the Station fire, therefore, is to balk at attending a show where the hair metal musical combo in question might have to resort to fireworks to cover up a lack of talent/stage presence/recognizable hits from this decade. To that end, I urge each of you to be especially wary of upcoming concerts featuring the following "vintage" rock acts:
Warrant - The Backstreet Boys of metal. Not just dumb music - Jethro Bodine dumb music.
Cinderella - Not to take away from the musicianship of Tom Kiefer, but they'd give Aerosmith a run for the "Ugliest Metal Band of All Time" title.
Dangerous Toys - The tagline of their 1988 tour was, I believe, "Sport'N a Woody." There isn't much I can add to that.
Enuff Z'Nuff - Metal/psychedelia fusion, with just a dash of suck.
Vixen - Third lamest band depicted in The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years (behind obvious winners Odin and London).
Whitesnake - At the show I saw in 1987, both Heather Locklear and Tawny Kitaen were in attendance. This was a great source of joy of us dateless wonders. At one time, the group was a virtual hair band Hall of Fame, featuring Vivian Campbell (Dio, Def Leppard), Adrian Vandenberg (Vandenberg), Rudy Sarzo (Quiet Riot), and Steve Vai. Today I wait for the inevitable 80's Rock Reunion with Motley Crue and Poison. Sponsored by Cialis.
Tesla - Not really a hair band, but an ex-girlfriend of mine was in one of their videos. I wasn't aware of this before we started dating.
White Lion - 1987's "When the Children Cry" set the 'heavy ballad' bar so high it would be years before Creed would happen along to take a shot at it.
BulletBoys - I could never decide if "Smooth Up In Ya" was a more penetrating analytical dissection of gender dynamics than Whitesnake's "Slide It In" or not.
Krokus - The videos for "Eat the Rich" and "Headhunter" finally gave America's youth the heavy metal-Dungeons & Dragons connection they so sorely needed.
Lizzy Borden - Never achieved the notoriety of the similarly named Marilyn Manson, for some reason.
Slaughter - You poor bastard, they roped you into buying their album by giving themselves a name evocative of rapacious barbarians, then used their inoffensive wimp rock and dreamy lead vocalist to convince your girlfriend to keep you from throwing the album away. Dirty pool.
Skid Row - I actually saw these yabbos twice: opening for Aerosmith in 1990 and for Guns N' Roses in 1991. Given the moderate success of Sebastian Bach's recent acting and entertainment ventures, I think we can thankfully rule out a reunion tour.
Trixter - Approximately as "metal" as the Spice Girls. Better hair, though.
Faster Pussycat - Fourth lamest band depicted in The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years, in spite of their exploitation cinema name.
Dokken - I had a homemade "Dokken Sucks" shirt that cemented my adolescent status as an aloof outsider. Of course, I only made it because a girl in high school broke up with me to the strains of "Alone Again."
Europe - Neck and neck with White Lion as NATO's worst musical export. "The Final Countdown" was 1986's "Who Let the Dogs Out?"
Saigon Kick - The lesser known half (along with Hanoi Rocks) of the fabled Vietnam metal dyad.
Britny Fox - Sissiest name in rock and roll, although their song "Girlschool" predated America's obsession with Catholic schoolgirls by 10 years.
Fastway - It's generally ill-advised to combine two names to come up with a moniker for your group (D.N.A., The Captain and Tennille), but would "Fast" Eddie Clarke and Pete Way listen? Nooooo. I think "Autobahn" is much cooler, but association with Kraftwerk is doubtless something these guys were trying to avoid.
Leatherwolf - That this band released three albums (the first two both named Leatherwolf) before the forces of good taste consigned them to oblivion is testament to the fact that any band with big hair and a lead vocalist with his scrotum in a vice could get signed in the 1980s.
Kingdom Come - Latecomers to the party, but the song "Get It On" gave us all a welcome respite from the Milli Vanilli scandal for a while.
Ratt - Uh, I actually used to like Ratt.
I'm leaving out some obvious ones like Def Leppard (still a big draw, at the Rodeo anyway), Bon Jovi (never technically metal), and Poison (not sure any of them still have henough hair to qualify as a "hair band"). Aerosmith continues to offend on a regular basis, but most arenas capable of holding their legions of aging, faux hesher fans have pretty adequate fire protection.
Certainly some of you are wondering what qualifies me to speak so eloquently about '80s hair bands. Unsurprisingly, my research started in an attempt to pick up girls. While at a party in or around 1988, a Whitesnake song came on the stereo. I turned to my friend and said something along the lines of, "Whitesnake is the biggest derivative, Led Zeppelin cock rock, bullshit rip-off band I've ever heard. Feh, Whitesnake."
A fetching young lady in teased blonde hair, ripped jeans, and a leather jacket - who had apparently only heard one word of my previous diatribe - tapped my shoulder and said, "Wow, do you like Whitesnake?" Sizing her up, I replied in the only way I could: "I love Whitesnake."
My friend had to excuse himself.
Meanwhile, she and I embarked on a heady summer-long affair. I ground my teeth to the nerve endings listening to her Slaughter albums and she let me touch her breasts. It worked out pretty well.
I guess you could say I sold my soul to rock and roll.
Well, I hadn't heard of Kingdom Come at the time, so I assert plausible deniability.
What, no Scorpion comments?
I was reminded, when you brought up 'The Final Countdown', of GTR and their 'hit' 'When The Heart Rules the Mind.' But, really, as far as the schoolgirl thing, how could you leave off 'Sister Christian' by Night Ranger?
Of course, now I'm not going to be able to get 'Nobody's Fool' by Cinderella out of my head. I guess I'll have to dig out that Jack Wagner cassette and scour my brain with it.
I much appreciate this stroll down memory lane. FWIW, did we attend the Whitesnake/Motley Crue concert at the Summit with a group of folks (including Rik Perez)? I believe this was the show where Locklear pulled her top off..verify if u can.
I was a bit surprised you looked past Van Halen and more importantly, Motley Crue. Vince and the boys were truly the standard-bearer of 'rock' that centered on easy women and booze.
Y&T was ultimately fogettable, but that 'Summertime Girls' video was full of hot chicks. Keel was another rotten hair band, though their remake of 'Because the night' was not *that* bad.
I knew the reference to the Whitesnake/Crue show would get you to crawl out of the woodwork, Tim. Yeah, we went together. If I'm not mistaken, didn't we also check out Slayer the next year?
Locklear did take her top off, but somebody else had the binoculars at the time.
Van Halen and the Crue didn't make the list because they are still (or would be, if either band was touring) capable of playing large venues. I was trying to focus on bands you might be more likely to see at holes in the wall like the Station.
And up until now, I'd conveniently forgotten about Y&T and Keel. Thanks a lot.
Slayer....never saw them, unfortunately. I do have bad memories of seeing Twisted Sister, TNT and Great White in 1988 however. Yuck
btw, in your listing of the Hair Band Hall of Fame in Whitesnake you forgot drummer Tommy Aldridge (who'd worked with Ozzy for most of the early 80s)
Also, Rudy Sarzo was Ozzy's bassist for a while; always amused the hell out of me to see a bleach-blond Cuban in Whitesnake.
I never got so far into teh suck as Pete did, but then, I didn't have the opportunity to sell out he did, and I can say with confidence that I would have sold out, too.
Also, I am a few years older than Pete, so while the LA hair bands were at their peak, I was in college listening to U2, REM, Alison Moyet, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and the rest of the late-80s college rock scene. (Where I admit to listening to a girl with a guitar sing folk songs in her dorm in order to go make out with her down at the lake 8)
You could probably write a good long thesis about the difference between the lame posing of LA hair bands and the lame posing of college rock.
I struggled for several days trying to come up with a theme for this edition of the Carnival. I finally......
| --Posted to Da Goddess on Feb 25, 2004 5:01 AM:. |
Some obvious omissions:
Lastly, in defense of Cinderella, I would make the case willingly that they were the most underappreciated band of the era, possessing the best songwriting and performance combo of any band on any list herein. Points about ugliness are duly noted and agreed with, however. Tom Keifer will not make it into the Hall of Fame, and that will be to the Hall's shame. And yes, Ratt did rule the day and yes, you were wrong to leave out Night Ranger. VERY wrong.
Greg W. makes some interesting arguments, which I will now eviscerate:
Quiet Riot, I maintain, could still pull in pretty big crowds were they to embark on a reunion tour. They were a joke metal band, but at least they knew it.
Hurricane/Keel/Bitch/Rough Cutt all needed to actually have achieved some sort of success in the first place. I'll allow Keel (if only to keep you and Tim from crying).
I must be the only person who grew up in the '80s who didn't appreciate the genius of Yngwie J. Malmsteen (to distinguish him from the other Yngwie Malmsteens out there). That's okay, since he appreciated himself far better than any of us ever could.
If you called the guys in Deep Purple or Ronnie James Dio a "hair band" they'd probably chuck their colostomy bags at you. Keep the parameters of the discussion in mind.
Jesus metal bands are disqualified, so Stryper and King's X are out.
Extreme and (as you've noted) Jethro Tull aren't hair metal. Or any kind of metal, for that matter.
And you're just scraping with those others.
I saw Cinderella open for AC/DC in college, and always thought it wa a shame they got lumped in with the Poisons of the world. They could really play.
Not sure what they were thinking with that stupid name, though.
Revisiting a few topics here ...
Quiet Riot - they cannot and will never once more pack an arena. They regrouped courtesy of Marilyn Manson's request and after the infamous album with Rough Cutt's Paul Shortino on vocals (great album, just shouldn't have been called Quiet Riot) went nowhere. I caught them in small clubs around Houston several times over. Simply stated, the magic could never be duplicated. Likewise, I'll disagree that they thought of themselves as a joke band. Quite untrue. You've perfectly described Poison, however. A band that didn't take itself too seriously and still packs in arenas on the reunion circuit. Alas, Quiet Riot has disbanded again. Rudy Sarzo, however, is the bass player for Yngwie on this tour, however. No word if Kevin DuBrow will resume his lackluster career as a deejay.
YJM - Yngwie was definitely a love it or hate it proposition even among the axe-slinging class. Personally, I love him as a musician and hate him as a songwriter. His performances, even today, are a sight to behold, though.
Jesus Metal being disqualified ... bah. It was a major subsection of the genre that both fit with the times perfectly and set off a worthwhile debate on the fit between the two. Also, King's X seemd to transcend that genre among most. Musically, they were a spinoff from metal, but the fact that there was a strong correlation between listeners of this band and metal bands was indicative that they warrant some consideration, at least. Stryper just f'n ruled.
DIO - I don't know that that bunch would do any kicking ... Deep Purple would probably be happy to be remembered at this point (except for Richie Blackmore, but he's weirder than the others). Dio was definitely a hair band. I'll take my chances in a battle with the midget on this one.
Besides ... who the hell are you to lecture about "must have success" when you list the BulletBoys & Leatherwolf? What ... no Tyketto?
Leatherwolf is a hilarious name. The BulletBoys had a presence on radio and on MTV outside of Headbanger's Ball.
I can't believe the guy who just wrote "Stryper f'n ruled' is giving me shit about my list.
(1) Slaughter had more than one album? Color me surprised.
(2) I'm convinced that Enuff Z'Nuff was, in actuality, Cheap Trick, playing the same trick on us that The Alarm is attempting now (putting out a song with a younger band synching the music on a video).
(3) Not to challenge the diatribe that kicked off your Summer of Magic, but Kingdom Come is the biggest (note for note) Led Zep ripoff ever.