I listened to a lot of country music growing up in the late 70s and 80s as that is what my dad listened to and he controlled the radio dial in his truck. Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton, Crystal Gayle, George Jones and Strait, Hank Williams, Jr., etc. – I can still sing along to most of their hits today, although I don’t usually go out of my way to listen to that era’s music anymore, being more of a classic/hard rock/metal guy as my car radio presets would illustrate.
One of my favorite songs from those days, though, was Hank Williams, Jr’s “A Country Boy Can Survive”, a slow burn of a ballad that starts off apocalyptically “The preacher man says it’s the end of time / and the Mississippi River she’s a-goin dry” and then launches into a testament to his and his people’s abilities and endurance. I always liked the verse that told of his city friend (“raised to be a businessman”) and how they’d exchange gifts until the New Yorker was killed in a mugging; Hank sings of desiring to “spit some Beech-nut in that dude’s eyes / And shoot him with my old .45”. Pretty powerful stuff for a 10 year old boy. Hell, Hollywood made a Patrick Swayze vehicle on that very premise.
I was reminded of Hank’s song when I came across news of Jason Aldean’s new song, “Try That in a Small Town.” Not that it’s anywhere as memorable as Hank’s hit: it replaces the actual praising of country folk with empty “don’t mess with us” lyrics resulting in a forgettable country power ballad that won’t have any staying power. But it’ll be lionized by Trumpers as the song’s music video makes damn sure to throw in scenes of rioting and criminal surveillance video clips as he and the band play in front of the American flag. Aldean knows his audience, to be sure: it’s a promise of violence in return for crimes both real (carjacking) and imagined (the government trying to take a gun his grandad gave him). And in the end it’s an empty song written solely to take advantage of the current culture wars being fought across our social media battlegrounds.
That might be why the song leaves a bad taste in my mouth: it’s just so politically calculated with no real depth to it. There’s the “us vs them” theme that presents big cities as evil and small towns as bastions of righteousness. Hank Williams, Jr’s current politics aside, at least his song allowed for a friendship with a New Yorker and a singer that respected different ideas about what it means to live a fulfilled life. Aldean’s song is entirely black and white. There’s also no attempt by Aldean to praise anything about small town inhabitants except their capacity for violent retribution. Hank’s song at least gives reason for the singer’s desire for revenge – it’s personal. For Aldean’s speaker, it’s nebulous and plays on “what if” fears.
I stopped listening to country music toward the end of the 80s, when I got my own car and wasn’t subject to my dad’s radio dial. Recently, though, I discovered SiriusXM’s “Red, White and Booze” which plays a pretty solid mix of barroom songs: some old country, some classic rock hits and some newer country artists. I imagine I’ll hear Aldean’s song being played on that station at some point. I’ll switch the dial and find something more authentic.
A year or so ago I published a series of posts about the hair metal I listened to while in high school, looking back at some of the more obscure albums from bands who for the most part had their 15 minutes during the late 80s and are now relegated to SiriusXM’s Hair Nation, Rocklahoma, and some themed cruise ships.
I had planned on wrapping things up with a final entry, but grading and life and a laziness about actually committing to my writing all got in the way of doing so. But now that itch has struck again and I’m back here to close it out. So here we go.
I got inspired to write this series for two reasons: Cobra Kai‘s Johnny Lawrence (played by William Zabka) and James Gunn’s Peacemaker (played by John Cena) both being unrepentant 80s metalheads.
Tighty-whitey warning
Both of these shows’ soundtracks threw songs at me I hadn’t thought about in years, and the protagonists’ enthusiasm for the bands and the music echoed my own love for the music I had when I was 17 and making my way through my last years of high school. The shows, however, played it for laughs: the protagonists’ love for the music was mocked by other characters and the buffoonery of both Lawrence and The Peacemaker implied guilt by association: only 50 year old man-children still listen to this stuff. Hot Tub Time Machine’s Lou (Rob Corddry) is another example:
As my series of posts perhaps suggests, these bands certainly didn’t do much to encourage being taken seriously. When the extent of a band’s catalog is limited to songs about getting high, getting laid, and getting wild (and one or two songs saying, “No, really, I love you”), maybe that encourages such dismissiveness. Today you need some kind of subscription service (or a cassette player) to be able to deliberately listen to them. And even then, the stations that do play them play up the joke: they’re hair bands. They wore spandex. They wore makeup. They looked like women.
Hell, even this string of posts I’ve written about this stuff ends up mocking them a bit.
But I still love a lot of this music. Sure, a lot of it hasn’t aged well. A lot of it doesn’t hold up today and I have to be in a mood to switch over to Hair Nation from Liquid Metal or Ozzy’s Boneyard. And there I’ll hear “Still of the Night”, David Coverdale wailing so impressively, and then Skid Row’s “Youth Gone Wild” followed by Kix’s “Don’t Close Your Eyes” and I’m 17 again in my ’81 Buick Regal driving home after a soccer game, or in my bedroom singing along as I write an English essay, or hanging out with my buddies just pissing time away. And then “Unskinny Bop” will come on and it’s over to Classic Rewind because screw that song, it’s terrible.
Maybe that’s why I took on this series of posts: if not to come to its defense, then to at least praise it for getting me through my high school years, which were largely miserable for me, socially. Being able to lose myself in some loud guitars and lyrics largely about crap I had no experience with (sex, drugs, parties) – I now recognize I was living vicariously through these guys. But instead of suggesting what I was missing, their music more often spoke to my loneliness, telling me it was independence instead. Assuring me that being an outsider was cool, that you just need a close group of friends and screw everyone else, and that someone for me was out there, waiting for me to find her.
Maybe I just wanted to say “thanks”. Y’all fucking rock. \m/
I’m currently in the middle of grading my first batch of Blinn papers, so naturally I’m spending time on this blog post instead of making more progress. All the papers are attempting to do the same thing, so it gets repetitive reading them. That’s the nature of assigning papers and instructing students how to go about writing them, but the monotony is difficult to overcome. I wonder if there would be a way to assign a choice of prompts for the first essay to offer some variety (for my students, sure, but largely for me), while all accomplishing similar tasks?
Returning these first essays will change my relationship with these students – it usually does. The first paper grades are often a bit of a wake up to those who don’t invest in what I’m selling, and perhaps some of the silliness I’m seeing in my classes from some of the guys will cease. A sizable portion of my students need to understand that I’m serious about their writing, and serious about the course. When I’m teaching these same courses at Blinn, I don’t get the same level of distraction from the students – there’s something about being on an actual college campus vs. a building you’ve been roaming for four years that dissuades cutting up; that and being surrounded by strangers instead of friends.
Moving on…
My AP approached my about the freshmen book choices they’re given for one reading assingment. We’ve had a few parents rebel against their kids having to read works that aren’t written by dead white men this year. Certainly, there are works that many freshmen probably aren’t ready for, but the novels being assigned to PURPOSEFULLY ask students to read a different perspective than their own aren’t outrageous: The Hate U Give, Speak, Aristotle And Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, a couple others. All pretty tame stuff, and all YA lit. No one’s being asked to change their views about anything (INDOCTRINATION!) – but there’s value in students reading different perspectives, and deciding what they agree with and what they don’t, and being able to EXPLAIN that. Right?
AP asked me to consider getting some more “vanilla” options in there. That was the mom’s request/word, not my AP’s. A couple titles were thrown out: Catcher in the Rye, for one. You know, the one with this passage:
That’s the whole trouble. You can’t ever find a place that’s nice and peaceful, because there isn’t any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you’re not looking, somebody’ll sneak up and write “Fuck you” right under your nose. Try it sometime. I think, even, if I ever die, and they stick me in a cemetery, and I have a tombstone and all, it’ll say “Holden Caulfield” on it, and then what year I was born and what year I died, and then right under that it’ll say “Fuck you.” I’m positive, in fact.
I don’t quote the above passage to say kids shouldn’t read Catcher. ONLY 16 year olds should read Catcher. But there’s objectionable content there, as any work worth its salt has. My AP knows/understands this. But authors of color and LGBTQ authors more often bear the brunt of complaints for their content in this community, and that’s not right.
Grading essays is the most tiring part of any English teacher’s job. I don’t know that any other course’s grading load requires the time that an English class does (if the English teacher is doing the job correctly). This is not to slight other courses or to suggest they don’t work hard, or to say that their grading doesn’t take time, but I think any honest comparison will tell you that grading 75 three-page essays is more of a burden than taking on 75 of any other kind of assessment. I’ve never met a teacher from another department who has expressed any jealousy about the type of grading I do.
But that’s what I signed up for.
I just finished reading/grading my classes’ college application essays. I’ve got 108 seniors in my 4 classes, so it took me a while to even get motivated to start looking at them, even though they usually are one of my favorite assignments to read. And they were by and large enjoyable again this year. As I told them when I let them know I was finished grading, I appreciated the honesty and trust they showed in sharing what they did with me. I’m at times floored by what my students have experienced.
Their first college papers were due last night, so I’ve now got another 108 essays waiting for me in turnitin.com, which the district wants me to get back to them in two weeks. Doable, I suppose, but at about 15 minutes per paper that’s a little more than a full day of grading, non-stop (27 hours? Math, meh). So there go a lot of evenings and my weekends. Not counting any other work I assign to keep them honest with their reading/research paper progress.
It piles up.
Admittedly, I find I enjoy the process of giving feedback on essays. I’ve heard from too many past students that “You taught me how to write” to resign myself to the belief that no one actually looks at anything but the grade. What helped me out a couple years ago was my realization that there’s no need for me to be a copy editor, hitting every little grammatical miscue leaving their papers bleeding. Students get overwhelmed, maybe start to feel hopeless about their writing. I don’t want that, so I hit the bigger issues on their papers after marking mechanical problems on the first page. And then I encourage students to come talk to me about their papers, which reminds me that I’m going to offer points back on their essays for those who do. But I need to figure out a system that doesn’t just encourage grade-grubbing.
Today my seniors are beginning the research process on their topics, ideally recognizing what they don’t know and locating sources that will fill in some blanks.
The idea of what my students don’t know is an important one. I’ve recognized that I at times assume a bit too much about my students’ knowledge of the research/writing process. Today I had a kid tell me he wasn’t finding a lot on the databases about police reform. I logged in and did a quick search and got a list back of about 70 articles. I showed him what I had done to get those results (“police reform in the united states”) and he told me he had been separating all the search terms individually in the search boxes: “police” “reform”. Not coming back with anything too useful.
A lot is said about kids and tech, but I think too many overestimate their knowledge base. They know their phones. Outside of that, real lessons are needed when asking them to use actual tools.
Posted in Uncategorized on September 21, 2022 by Mike
As a personal goal for this school year, I wanted to reflect each week on what transpired, hoping that might lead to some insight into what I do well and what I need to work on. The thought that I’d actually be more deliberate in writing was a motivation as well. So of course it’s taken me a full six weeks to sit down and actually write my first one.
Today was a good day (yes, Ice Cube has immediately come to mind). I talked to my dual kids about how we don’t often like thinking about opposing arguments and discussed the text’s “collaborative rhetoric” chapter which their first paper is based on. I tell my students every year that I thrive on discussion – it’s what I truly enjoy in my classroom – and being able to talk about how we all hate having to think about why others believe the things they do is just human.
My activity I planned for them could have been stronger. I found an article critical of Biden and one critical of Trump and had them read through the one they thought they’d disagree with more, answering questions geared toward thinking about why they got defensive about the argument being put forth. But, as one of my students early on asked, “what if we dislike both Biden and Trump?”
Fair enough, kid.
Now I’m waiting to have a discussion with one of my newspaper staffers about him not doing a thing for the paper this six weeks. He was a bit of a worry when we took him on last year, but he tended to get most things done (though he’s not the strongest student). Now he just seems more distracted by everything else. Will have to tell him he’s not going to the journalism conference in two weeks, and will have to prove that he’s actually interested in being a part of the staff over the next three weeks or I’ll find another class he can be in. Our NP staff is so dependent on everyone getting their work done; he’s put a burden on everyone else by slacking off entirely.
Last point for today: our on level teachers have a real problem with student apathy. As one of my teachers pointed out during lunch, teachers not being able to seriously hold students accountable for late work is a real grind for them. When the constant question seems to be “what can teachers do to help their struggling students?” – a fair question, but one that ignores the reality that the VAST majority of students are putting themselves in this position by not doing anything in class – it wears on us as teachers.
Hair metal peaked with Appetite for Destruction. Here’s what came after…
In the fall of 1990, Alice in Chains released Facelift, preceding Nirvana’s Nevermind and Pearl Jam’s Ten by a year. Now, Nirvana had already released Bleach (1989), but that sold only about 40000 copies so, sure, you knew about Nirvana before “Smells Like Teen Spirit” hit MTV. Right. Of course, there was also Soundgarden, who had released Ultramega OK (1988) and Louder Than Love (1989) so it’s important to understand that Seattle bands were already there, they just weren’t nationally known (don’t come at me with Mother Love Bone and Mudhoney – I know about them, too).
Alice in Chains definitely began changing the music scene. I remember walking into Marooned Records as a freshman at Texas A&M and seeing Facelift alongside Warrant’s Cherry Pie and thinking, damn, that album cover is freaky-looking. Then I bought Cherry Pie and AC/DC’s The Razor’s Edge and spent the next couple months rocking out to them. So, yeah, it took some time for my musical preferences to shift to grunge. Here’s a couple more obscure albums that kept me in hair metal my freshman year of college.
I KNOW I owned this album, but I also know I haven’t thought about this band since 1991. Then, about two months ago, Chauncey and Freddie were taking an internet break from their work in the school library, went down a wormhole and found an article listing the top 50 hair metal acts of all time (or some such). Kik Tracee came in at the upper 40s, I forget where. Before coming back to the album for this post, I only clearly recalled the single “Don’t Need Rules“, a fairly standard hair metal number. Listening to the rest of the album, I admit there’s not a lot more I do remember – maybe “Velvet Crush” and “Rattlesnake Eyes (Strawberry Jam)“. Stephen Shareaux’s voice suggests Axl Rose from time to time, particularly on “Big Western Sky“. Their cover of “Mrs. Robinson” does exactly what a cover should – put a new spin on the original – though I’m not sure it makes the song something I’d ever listen to again. Thinking about it, No Rules may very well have been the last hair metal debut album I bought, as by mid ’91 I was moving on to heavy metal and grunge.
This one’s a bit of a cheat, as Follow for Now isn’t hair metal. This album IS obscure and fits the time frame, though, so I’m throwing it in just so you can be introduced to/be reminded of the kick-ass “Milkbone“. Credit my twin brother for my finding this one, as I think he was working at a Hastings in Seguin at this point and was able to acquire basically anything he thought was cool, and this album’s cool. Combining a lot of different influences (rap, metal, blues, funk), the album never found a wide audience and was the band’s only release. Beyond “Milkbone”, the album boasts a cover of Public Enemy’s “She Watch Channel Zero” (in the words of Flavor Flav, “Daamn, Boy!”) and then there’s “Time“, reminiscent of Faith No More’s “Zombie Eaters”. “Fire N’ Snakes“, “6’s and 7’s” and “Evil Wheel” bring the funk. Listen to “White Hood” and “Trust” and maybe you’ll understand Colin Kaepernick wasn’t saying anything that Black Americans haven’t been saying, oh, forever.
I think if this album was released a couple years later than it was, it blows up.
My last year of teaching I’m going to do a unit on figurative language and use hair metal song lyrics as my examples, starting with Salty Dog’s “Come Along” (“Sweet little baby, she’s my hot dog bun”). Silly lyrics aside, “Come Along” still ROCKS – I can listen to that one ten times in a row. “Cats Got Nine“, “Ring My Bell” “Heave Hard (She Comes Easy)” – Every Dog Has Its Day is unabashedly crotch rock and it’s fun. Lead singer Jimmi Bleacher’s vocals wail (reminding me a bit of Cinderella’s Tom Kieffer, though Bleacher’s practically smirking in every song), and really highlights how having a distinctive singer makes the band. While there are plenty of riffs throughout the album (“Slow Daze“), they emphasize the blues rock with a cover of “Spoonful” and “Just Like a Woman“, and “Lonesome Fool” just has a great hook and banjo line.
Why just one album then? It’s actually pretty damned funny (to me, probably not to the band): the members apparently weren’t told they had to pay back their studio recording costs. And being on the tail-end of the genre, I don’t know that they ever got even. Still a damn good album.
Hair metal peaked with Appetite for Destruction. Here’s what came after…
1989’s biggest hair metal release was inarguably Mötley Crüe’s Dr. Feelgood. It spent two weeks as Billboard’s number one album that year and includes at least five songs strip clubs still have on heavy rotation to this day. Er, so I’ve been told.
But odds are Feelgood isn’t the only hair metal album you remember from that year: Skid Row’s debut album was released in January (giving us “Youth Gone Wild“, “18 and Life” and “I Remember You“) and Warrant would follow with their Dirty Rotten Filthy Stinking Rich (“Down Boys“, the ballads “Sometimes She Cries” and “Heaven“). Other established acts like White Lion, Tesla, and Great White offered up notable albums as well (like me, I’m sure you still have GW’s “Once Bitten, Twice Shy” imprinted on your brain despite all your best efforts).
But, as you know by now, I’m not here to tell you about stuff you remember. Here are three more albums I was listening to back in the summer of ’89:
Tora Tora’s Surprise Attack begins with a rocker, “Love’s a Bitch“, and demonstrates everything this band had going for it: their vocalist, Anthony Corder, has a high-pitched wail that rivals Vince Neil’s at times and their lead guitarist, Keith Douglas, just spits out riff after riff. Corder’s vocals, for me, distanced Tora Tora from other bands, and their Tennessee roots are prominent in bluesy numbers like “Hard Times” and “Walking Shoes“. “Guilty” and “Walking Shoes” were the singles that led me to buy the album – listen for the guitar stutter after the first chorus in “Guilty” to get an idea what I found awesome as a 17 year old non-guitar player (I still do, actually). “Walking Shoes” is just fun – if you don’t like this one do you even like music? Sure, some songs are pretty standard stuff – “She’s Good, She’s Bad“, “One For the Road“, I’m looking at you – though I’m finding I can still sing along to most tracks 30 years later.
I mentioned Bang Tango in an earlier post when I explained funk metal. They still had one foot in the glam scene (see album cover) but their bass line-heavy tunes help differentiate them from, say, Poison. What I think will grab your attention is singer Joe Leste’s scream-like singing. The first track, “Attack of Life” will initially surprise with its vocals. Coming back to the album, many of these songs have incredibly catchy choruses – “Someone Like You” was the band’s single (and one I still listened to even before starting this series of posts), “Breaking Up a Heart of Stone“‘s makes up a bit for the Leste’s crooning lyrics, and just try NOT singing to “Wrap My Wings“. “Don’t Stop Now” (another fun one) and “Love Injection” (heh) are heavy on the funk and the album’s contributions to the crotch rock playlist. The band would release Dancin’ On Coals in 1991 but folded when their third album was shelved by their record company.
Hair metal wasn’t all about girls and partying. It was also about juvenile humor. Lord Tracy combined all three into Deaf Gods of Babylon, an admittedly ridiculous album that combines any number of different styles into something that kind of works – kind of. Named for a popular porn star (er, so I’m told) it was led by former Pantera singer Terry Glaze and there’s not a song on the album that should be taken seriously. There’s guitar heroics (the 30 second “Barney’s Wank”) and anthem rockers (“Whatchadoin'” and “In Your Eyes”). AC/DC has an influence (“Submission” and “She’s A Bitch”) and even some bluesy numbers (“King of the Nighttime Cowboys” and “East Coast Rose”). “Out With the Boys” was their one real single, though you may have missed the one time it got played on the radio. They also venture into Beastie Boys/RUN DMC territory with “3 H.C.” “Piranha” is their thrash metal song about the existential dangers faced when we realize just how alone we are…wait, no, it’s just about the fish.
Hey, you want thoughtful lyrics, you’re reading the wrong blog. Go listen to “Jeremy” or something…
Hair metal peaked with Appetite for Destruction. Here’s what came after…
“Sleaze Metal”, a reference to the genre’s devotion to excess, to decadence, doesn’t mean a whole lot when looking at hair metal bands and trying to tie any particular one to the term. Mötley Crüe, Warrant, Poison, Guns N’ Roses, Ratt, Skid Row, ad infinitum, all were “sleazy” in their own ways, whether you knew about their off-stage antics or were only familiar with the music. But if you’re over 40 you probably listened to Mötley Crüe, you remember singing along to Warrant’s “Cherry Pie,” and can probably name a handful of songs from each of the others. Here are some runners up you may not have thought about in a while, if at all.
In 1987, Faster Pussycat’s self-titled first album dropped two weeks before GNR’s Appetite. You don’t remember it. OK, that’s probably a bit unfair because the catchy “Bathroom Wall” had some airplay (why a song that contemplates fate and chance gets less attention than Tommy Tutone’s bathroom wall-inspired pop hit “867-5309/Jenny” is beyond me) and if you watched late night cable in 1989 you might have seen the band featured in “The Decline of Western Civilization, Part II“. For me though, the song I kept coming back to was “Babylon” a rap/rock hybrid (kinda) that preceded Anthrax’s ACTUAL hybrid “I’m the Man” by a year.
Their follow-up, 1989’s Wake Me When It’s Over went gold, so there’s a real chance readers will recall this one, if for nothing else than its single “House of Pain“, a ballad about growing up fatherless. This album also offered up the eminently listenable “Poison Ivy“, “Slip of the Tongue” and their ode to sadomasochism “Where There’s a Whip, There’s a Way“, all riff-heavy party rockers with choruses meant to sing along to (yeah, I can still sing all the lyrics). Moving away from their glam rock sound, there were a few more blues-inspired tunes, including “Tattoo” and “Cryin’ Shame“. They would put out one or two more albums in the 90s, one of which I remember including an uninspired cover of Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain.”
I saw Faster Pussycat open for KISS at the Starplex Ampitheatre in 1990 (along with Slaughter, who was getting a lot of attention for their power ballad “Fly to the Angels“). Pussycat closed with “Babylon”, as I recall, and the frontman, Taime Down (yeah, that’s his name) came out with what I want to say was a BMW steering wheel on a big gold chain around his neck. Felt a little racist. My brother bought one of their concert shirts emblazoned with “WAKE THE F@$K UP, DICKHEAD!” on the back. Our mom saw it a couple weeks later and read him the riot act about how when he left the house he was representing our family. I, being St. Michael, had not bought that particular shirt.
Dangerous Toys’ mascot, Bill Z. Plenty of 40+ year old guys walking around with tattoos of this clown on their back.
Another band that sold a lot of copies of its first album (1989), Texas’ Dangerous Toys had one real hit, “Teas’n, Pleas’n“, a hard rock song with a riff that made me wish I could play the guitar. This song JAMS. They would later release “Scared” as another single, but nothing else matched “Teas’n, Pleas’n” for me: at the age of 17 I was of the opinion that any metal song including a deliberate tempo change (“I don’t even make my own rules…”) was an automatic winner. “Outlaw” saw the band incorporate the western/cowboy/Texas mythos, and is probably the most standard straight up rock song on the album, though not particularly memorable (“Ten Boots (Stompin’)“, though, has a huge bass line and may rival it). Lyrically, Toys often exhibited a deliberate sense of humor: “Sportin’ A Woody” and “Take Me Drunk” were drunken partiers. And what is maybe an unfair complaint: because of this strain of humor, most of the songs couldn’t be taken all that seriously. “Bones in the Gutter“, for instance, told from the perspective of a hired killer who worked on the cheap, is somewhat forgettable beyond the ridiculous premise of the song. Toys would put out a couple more albums, but like most hair metal bands couldn’t sustain a career as their sound just got tired/uninspiring.
Interesting to note that another Texas metal band, Pantera, after putting out a number of standard glam metal albums through the late 80s, would release its seminal Cowboys from Hell just a year later (1990). Bands needed to grow or they died out quick.
I might’ve included the Netherlands’ Sleeze Beez in my Scandinavian (ok fine, Magnus, northern Europe) metal blog, but their name dictated my placing them here. I bought Screwed, Blued and Tattooed (1990) solely on the strength of “Stranger Than Paradise“, a song with an inspired chorus even if the lyrics don’t make much sense. Buying music in the late 80s was always a crap shoot – you’d hear a song on MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball and go to the mall looking for the album at Camelot Music. Outside of that one song that brought you to the mall, you weren’t sure what you were going to get, and that led to a lot of tapes that would get a listen or two and then put back in the case in favor of, well, Extreme. Listening to Screwed…, it’s definitely got some catchy hooks here and there (“Damned if We Do, Damned if We Don’t“, the Bon Jovi-ish “Rock in the Western World“) but outside of two or three songs, musically and lyrically it’s the same old same old. The guitar heroics on the album aren’t anything you couldn’t hear on fifteen other albums that past year.
I’m going to close out this post with Love/Hate’s Black Out in the Red Room (1990). They had their roots in the LA glam scene, and finally got this album released just as the genre was in its death throes. Let me say this first: the title song is heavy and holds up to this day. DAMN. True confession time: my first semester at A&M I took a handball course as my required phys. ed. I entered a few tournaments and would blast this song in my dorm room before I made my way across campus to the courts. I may have written “LOVE” on one hand and “HATE” on the other at one point (gloves were part of the gear). Yeah, I love this song.
The rest of the album is absolute sleaze. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll all the way. The singer, Jizzy Pearl (I’m beginning to think a lot of these L.A. guys might’ve adopted some stage names) has this slurry, high pitched screech that utterly fits the subject matter – he sells every song. “Rock Queen” and “Tumbleweed” follow up “Black Out” – the album doesn’t slow down (helps that most songs clock in at 2:30 – 3:30 minutes – totaling about 40 minutes of in your face debauchery). “Why Do You Think They Call it Dope?” has a chorus I can still belt out today. “Fuel to Run“, “One More Round“, “Slutsy Tipsy“, “Mary Jane” – yeah, Love/Hate had a theme. What I think pulls this one away from other hair metal bands is that they didn’t seem to be aiming for hits/radio play – “Dope” got some play, but not much else beyond that. There are certainly no acoustic ballads here.
That attitude would come back and bite the band, but not how you might think. As the band members wrote songs for their second album, they aimed for MORE radio friendly fare. Their label told them they needed to keep their rough edges, and rejected everything they had written at that point. Maybe as a result of these differences, their second album, Wasted in America, ended up being a commercial failure and they soon got dropped by the label.
Live fast, die young, rock and roll.
Next time: Hair metal gets the blues. Maybe. I’m making this up as I go.
Hair metal peaked with Appetite for Destruction. Here’s what came after…
During my senior year in high school I had the opportunity to write for the DeSoto High School newspaper, The Eagle Eye. I’m a bit foggy on how that came about, though I must have taken journalism as an elective mainly because the alternative, a public speaking class, scared me to death.
ANYWAY, one of my contributions to the paper was a review of an album by Gorky Park, a hair metal band out of Russia which, in the Era of Glasnost, had made a small splash here in the States largely due to Jon Bon Jovi taking an interest and getting them a record deal. My review ended by suggesting the band was set up for more success, a testament to my musical tastes and business acumen.
Flash forward 30+ years and Russia is back to its “Evil Empire” ways, invading Ukraine and threatening nuclear strikes. So I thought it appropriate we take a look back at Gorky Park’s album and try to figure out why it didn’t lead to real change in Russia’s -isms.
The band’s logo is still pretty damn cool.
As alluded to above, this album was produced by Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora, and their influence is easily heard through most of the songs. But since we already had Bon Jovi doing Bon Jovi songs a lot better, the album suffers from never breaking new ground or possessing its own identity – listening to it again it’s clear any number of bands at the time could’ve put out this album.
The song that introduced the band to the States is “Bang“, an anthemic rocker reminiscent of some of Europe and Def Leppard’s radio pop. Pretty standard stuff – and easily forgettable. Other guitar-driven songs include “Hit Me With the News“, “Danger” and “Peace in Our Time” a song in which Bon Jovi, Sambora AND Bon Jovi’s drummer Tico Torres play; it’s got a catchy chorus and Sambora’s trademark guitar squeal, but the members of Gorky Park take a back seat entirely. Gorky Park’s cover of The Who’s “My Generation” is solid, though, and something off the album I probably listened to more than anything else when I was 17. Some bands are too beholden to the original to make cover songs their own – *cough*Weezer*cough* – but this one I still like.
Perhaps due to Bon Jovi and Sambora’s production, this album is overladen with ballads. “Try to Find Me” made it to the Billboard Top 100 in 1990, and it’s easy to understand why – it’s sentimental and easy to sway to on a dimly lit dance floor. Some readers of this blog may even remember it. “Within Your Eyes” and “Fortress” take a few cues from Whitesnake and Motley Crue’s power ballads, but again, nothing sticks.
And there it is: listening to the album, I’m recognizing how little of an impact this album had on me. Maybe it was just that there was a glut of hair metal at the time, and in three weeks I’d be on to the next band’s release. But there’s nothing outside of “Bang” that I clearly remember, and nothing I’d sing along to. There aren’t many 80s hair albums that I can actually say that about.
Anyway, here’s that 17 year old senior’s thoughts on the album. Shout out to Pam for sharing it on Facebook so many years ago…
Hair metal peaked with Appetite for Destruction. Here’s what came after…
In 1986 the Swedish band Europe released The Final Countdown, an album chock-full of pop metal hits and ballads including the eponymous single still heard in every stadium where professional sports are played. Right now you can hear the keyboard intro you attempted to plink out with one finger at least once on your best friend’s piano/keyboard until they told you to knock it off.
da-da-dah duh.. da-da-dah dah duh…
That album went triple platinum: five singles were released, including “Carrie“, which was probably single-handedly responsible for the rise in the teen pregnancy rate among the denim-wearing, hair teased-to-the-sky demographic of 1987:
Holy shit, I just made that up! You mean I was right?
The Final Countdown would be Europe’s biggest album, and even their guitarist thought it was too much and quit the band afterward. But they weren’t the only Scandinavian band to make it across the pond, just the biggest. And because, as I warned you, this blog series is about the more obscure albums I was listening to, here are three more.
D.A.D. is a Danish band whose album No Fuel Left For the Pilgrims saw some success here in the States, selling 100,000 copies (re: Wikipedia). Released in March of ’89, it was actually the band’s third album but first international one. D.A.D. stood for “Disneyland After Dark”, but the House of Mouse had problems with them using that name so the band simply abbreviated it. Of the three albums I’m going with today, this is the most straight forward rocker – “Rim of Hell” has a huge sing-along chorus and should’ve been a bigger hit. The other single, “Sleeping My Day Away“, caught more radio play and its sound is what you’ll get on most of the album’s tracks. “Jihad” and “Ill Will” (this one is a favorite) though, are thisclose to thrash metal – I’m willing to bet they felt like it live. Lead singer Jesper Binzer’s growly vocals were also a bit of a departure from most hair metal bands at the time, and as such there’s not a proper ballad on this album. This is not a complaint. Yeah, this BAND should’ve been bigger than they were.
“Scr-screamin’ gui-gui-guitar!” – if you were 17 in 1989 and heard the beginning of Shotgun Messiah’s “Shout it Out” and didn’t immediately crank the volume, well, you probably listened to country or Madonna. Listening to it again, it sounds like it took cues from the Beastie Boys’ “Fight for Your Right (to Party)” and KISS. Another band out of Sweden, Messiah were very much a glam band a la Poison and Crue. Their guitarist, Harry Cody was another gunslinger, as evidenced by the licks/riffs on every damn song and the instrumental on this album, “The Explorer” – epic. I remember reading in Rolling Stone that Cody refused to play it in concert – something about not wanting to be like other lead guitarists playing solos during shows, as I recall. The rest of the songs on the album didn’t offer much in the way of originality, but as alluded to before, originality wasn’t the genre’s selling point (hell, it sold about 500,000 copies in the US).
By 1989, some bands probably began realizing being labeled “hair metal” was limiting their appeal and started giving themselves other monikers. “Funk metal” was one such label used by bands like Extreme, Bang Tango (more on them in a later post, I think), and Electric Boys, yet another band out of Sweden. Funk metal tended to emphasize the bass guitar a bit more prominently and were often riff heavy, and Funk-O-Metal Carpet Ride is a perfect example. This is a fun album, and one I listened well into freshmen year of college. Electric Boys’ singer, Conny Bloom, had a distinctive bluesy sound, getting away from the wailers more prominent on rock radio. Take a listen to “If I Had a Car” – definitely groove-driven. Their most popular song, “All Lips and Hips“, should’ve been bigger – it has an awesome riff and if you had some subwoofers in your car you’d get noticed playing this one. “Captain of my Soul” has a powerful chorus (I definitely hear some “Mississippi Queen” in that one) and then there’s “Rags to Riches,” the album’s best example of funk metal. The harmonies this band had – well, nothing compares to Van Halen’s Michael Anthony, but these are pretty damn good, too. “Into the Woods” closes out the album; I still bang my head to its riff, and the outro still gives me shivers (jump ahead to 2:50 as it moves just to full-on metal guitar). Electric Boys is still putting out albums, which makes me happy…
So, I’m not even trying to be exhaustive here, so if you’ve happened upon this blog and want to rail on me for forgetting some other European hair metal band, don’t be that person. Feel free, though, to remind me. Meanwhile, I’m going to go listen to “Ill Will” again.
The Lower Frequencies 