Rocktober 8: Slaughter

"Spend My Life"

There was a time in my life when I wouldn't go anywhere without my collection of tapes, and by "tapes," I mean cassettes. I had a vinyl carrying case that looked like a doublewide briefcase. Pop it open and there were 30 tapes; flip it over and open the other side and there were 30 more. I took that thing with me everywhere, and while I had a solid stereo in my room (complete with AM/FM radio, 8-track player, and turntable in addition to the tape deck), you better believe I had a Sony Walkman for when I was on the go.

Then, early in 1990, my life changed. That was when my brother Jim passed down to me his Sony Discman. It didn't make my sizable collection of tapes obsolete immediately, but once I heard the sweet sounds of the compact disc, the writing was on the wall. And the first disc I purchased and popped into my prized new possession was none other than Slaughter's Stick It to Ya. I can't remember how long it was before I added a second disc to my collection, nor what disc it may have been (although Trixter is a good possibility—and don't worry, we'll get to them at some point this month), but the meantime was spent with the wails of Mark Slaughter filling up my ears.

Of course, "Up All Night" was their first hit, and that and "Fly to the Angels" were the monsters from this album. For me, "Fly to the Angels" was in approximately the same boat as White Lion's "When the Children Cry"—just a little too over the top. But this one, plus album cuts like "Gave Me Your Heart" and "Desperately" were right in the sweet spot, solid rockers that had some emotional weight but didn't fall into the power ballad category.