Here it is! Since I couldn't resist writing about Fastway's "Trick or Treat" earlier this month, here's my next choice for the perfect rock song for Halloween. Dokken's "Dream Warriors" was part of the soundtrack for Nightmare on Elm Street 3, which is obvious if you watch the video.
I thought this song and video were the absolute coolest. I loved all the Freddy movies, and while I didn't know Dokken at the time (this song was my introduction), the combination of horror and rock was irresistible. I thought the song was awesome, and I loved how the video didn't just use footage from the movie but actually had the band interact with it. Plus Don Dokken just had the perfect theatrical, sinister aspect that really kind of sold it. It's cheesy to look at it now, sure, but man, at the time? So good.
I originally had a different plan for which band I wanted to write about today, but after some further thought, I decided to bump them. Which left a spot open for a band I don't have a whole lot to say about, but who put out an iconic song what will forever be used for the closing moments (or days, in this case) of...well, sporting events in particular, I guess, but really for any event or project. And so I use it here, to mark the coming end of a month that has been filled with some great rock n' roll and brought back some really fun memories. There's one more post to come, but in the meantime....
If you asked me to name just one band from the hair metal era, without a doubt, ten times out of ten I'm going to say Poison. Not because they're the best or my favorite, but because they are the perfect example of what hair metal looked and sounded like. With rockers like this, "Nothin' But a Good Time," and "Unskinny Bop," plus ballads like "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" and "Something to Believe In," these were the poster boys for '80s excess. And with all those (and way more) to pick from for this entry, I really wanted to go with "So Tell Me Why," a lesser-known hit from Swallow This Live, their two-disc live set that had a handful of new studio tracks as well. I didn't pick that one mostly because, on the brink of leaving the band, C.C. barely appeared in the video, and this one (still a great tune) is more representative.
When I was a kid, I had a blue button-down shirt that my Aunt Lou (Rachel's mom) painted on the back with some Poison artwork...not an album cover, but some other logo of theirs. I wonder if that's still floating around my parents' house somewhere. Probably not...I loved that thing, probably wore it ragged. Sometime when I'm there I'll have to see if I can find a photo, at least.
I'm not exactly sure what Poison's status as a band is right now. I feel like they get together for a tour every once in a while, but that's about it. I'd like to see them live. Bret Michaels played a solo show at Hobart Arena in Troy (my hometown) in September (with Firehouse as the opener), and I thought about going but didn't. I should have. I've heard it was a good show, and it would have been cool to see Firehouse again all these years later.
I always thought the bowed guitar part of this song was, like, the coolest thing. Of course, now I'm finding conflicting reports whether that part was actually played that way, or if it's a synthesizer, or maybe a traditional bowed instrument. Who knows? Not me! But it still sounds cool. Whitesnake is a band that was kind of an afterthought for me back in the day, but my appreciation has grown as time has gone on.
I mentioned Heart in my Vixen post as a band that had a hair metal phase but didn't really qualify as a hair band. Def Leppard falls into that category as well; the difference is that Def Leppard put out perhaps the quintessential album of the era. Hysteria was conceived as rock's answer to Michael Jackson's Thriller album, and it delivered, charting seven singles over the course of three years. Strippers will be dancing to "Pour Some Sugar on Me" until the end of time, and "Love Bites" is one of the biggest power ballads. So while Def Leppard is more than just a hair band, any discussion of hair metal is woefully incomplete without including them.
At the time, Def Leppard was my favorite band. When guitarist Steve Clark died in 1991, I was devastated. Looking back it actually seems a little silly how affected I was, but it was probably the first passing of a celebrity that I cared about, and probably my first real understanding that being involved in pop culture doesn't make someone eternal—these are still actual people with real lives and problems, and sometimes those problems include addiction and other health issues, and sometimes they don't recover from them.
I got to see them in concert once, in August of 1999. They played the Ohio State Fair, and my friend Jessica had recently gotten a job and moved to Columbus, so I came for a visit and the two of us went to the show. Seeing them at that point was almost kind of surreal, and the concert had a weird mix of age ranges. But they put on a good performance, and they played a nice mix of newer stuff (Euphoria had just come out) and their classic hits. I'd go see them again in a heartbeat.
I want to drop a quick note on Slang. I get the feeling their 1996 album is a little polarizing among fans because they moved away from hair metal and even the harder rock sound of their earlier albums and put together a rawer, sort of grunge-influenced album. Personally, I love it. I'm glad not all their albums sound like that, but it is definitely interesting. It's thoughtful and more introspective, and I think it kind of shook them up a little bit. They've gotten back to their classic sound, but everything they've done since has been a little bit different from what came before.
Obviously this isn't an official video—pretty sure this song never had one. Someone has just overlaid the audio with footage from Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, which, since this song was on the movie soundtrack, works perfectly well.
There was nothing wrong with Winger (well, okay, "Seventeen" was a little bit on the skeevy side, even back then, and time has not been kind). They were a perfectly fine, enjoyable, middle-of-the-road rock band. And then Beavis and Butt-Head came along and absolutely ended them. Putting lame-ass Stewart in a Winger t-shirt meant that no one could admit to liking them ever again.
Admittedly I fell prey to that at the time, and it's funny how that sentiment lingers—I'm having a hard time refraining from using all sorts of negative adjectives in this post, even as I talk about how they're not that bad—but now all these years later I feel safe in admitting that I like Winger just fine. Were they my favorite? No. Do I have their CDs? Um...actually, I'm not sure. I know I definitely used to own at least one, but I don't know offhand if it got purged from my collection at some point. But I have plenty of their songs in my iTunes library, so I suppose whether or not I still own the physical CDs is irrelevant.
This is my favorite song of theirs, not necessarily because it's the best (that honor may go to "Easy Come Easy Go," in my opinion), but because one of my friends chose it (and its "give me rock or give me death" message) as my anthem. Obviously it's impossible to argue, since I'm out here still fighting the good fight, 28 years later.
UPDATE: Unfortunately, this song is not available on Spotify. So if you check out my Rocktober 2019 playlist, Winger is represented instead by "Easy Come Easy Go."
There's no way to sugarcoat it. Danger Danger was 100% a party band that did big dumb songs about chicks and sex and teenage rebellion and sex and rock and sex. They were aggressively fun, and what's wrong with that? Nothing, at least in my book...I'm all in favor.
I remember being at the mall and picking up their album Screw It!, and the look on my mom's face when I showed her the album cover. "Don't let your dad see it."
These guys were kind of under the radar. They came in right at the tail end of the hair metal movement, only put out a couple of decently received songs, and then disappeared without ever releasing a second album. I really liked them, though. They seemed to have a little more depth than the average party band, and a cool sound.
Two quick Kik Tracee stories. The first is that one day my dad popped into my room while I had this album on, and their cover of "Mrs. Robinson" was playing. Dad's face curled up and he was like, "What the hell is this? This is terrible." And then he wandered away, whatever he came in to say being forgotten completely. Second: I mentioned in the Slaughter post that my brother gave me a Discman, and that's how I transitioned from cassette tapes to CDs. The Discman had a rechargeable battery, and it was terrible. I would take it with me when I went to school in the morning, but it usually had just enough charge to last through waiting for the bus—maybe a few minutes of the ride, but definitely no more than that. Anyway, at one point, this album was my morning disc for several days running, and for whatever reason that particular week a couple of girls at my bus stop decided they really wanted to listen to whatever I was listening to. They'd ask for my headphones, and I'm, like, terminally accommodating, so I'd hand them over, usually just in time for them to listen for maybe a minute or two before the battery ran out. So they'd just hand them back with these confused and disappointed looks on their faces, and I thought it was hilarious.
I know that's a terrible story. I just can't hear one of these songs without remembering it.
Like Steelheart, Firehouse was one of those bands that clicked with me right away. From the first time I heard C.J. Snare's vocal on this song, I was like, "yep, sign me up." Apparently I had a thing for singers with ridiculous range.
Yesterday I told a concert sob story, so today there's a happier one. In the summer of 1991 (July 27, to be exact), Dayton radio station Z-93 (which was, oddly, the Top 40 station, rather than the rock stations WAZU or WTUE) put together a listener appreciation concert at Rotary Park in Beavercreek. This time I was allowed to go with no argument; of course, I was now 14, and the concert was on a Saturday afternoon in the summer rather than a Sunday night before a school day, and it was also free. All were probably factors. Rachel's mom took the two of us (looking back, part of me wonders why Rachel, 17 at the time, didn't just drive us, and leave Aunt Lou out of it, but Rachel wasn't the most confident driver, and that may have been out of her comfort zone, or, more likely, the adults' comfort zone, for the two of us to do that on our own). The band did a meet-and-greet beforehand, and I got autographs from all four of them. That photo—framed—is still somewhere at my parents' house (at least, I hope it is...I'll have to look for it next time I visit). Then a couple members of the band Alias played a short acoustic set before Firehouse took the stage. I remember the heat, and I must have been absolutely slathered up in sunscreen or else I would have spontaneously combusted, but mostly I remember singing along to all their songs and being absolutely joyous to be there.
I was twelve years old and in seventh grade. My cousin Rachel was going with our older cousin Paula and one of her friends to see Motley Crue and Warrant, and I. Wanted. To. Go. So. Bad. My parents (specifically my mom) rarely said no to something I really wanted, but for some reason I just could not talk them into this. I have no idea what the objection was, and if I asked my mom about it now, I seriously doubt she would remember. I thought the concert was at Hara Arena in Dayton, but Wikipedia tells me the Dr. Feelgood tour didn't stop there, so it must have been at Riverbend in Cincinnati. That may have been a factor given that it was a school night (we lived an hour-plus north of Cincy), but I wasn't a kid who fussed about going to school even after a late night (I've always been a night owl), so...I don't know. At any rate, Rachel (15 at the time) got to go to the show and I didn't, and I was big mad.
Motley Crue was one of those bands that I always just really liked. It was the Girls, Girls, Girls era when I first started listening to them; I really connected with Dr. Feelgood when it came out (this is my favorite song off the album); and I worked my way back through their catalog and absolutely loved Shout at the Devil (fun fact: "Looks That Kill" was the song for the garter toss when Brandi and I got married). That said, this is more or less where my connection with them stopped. When Vince Neil left the band, I didn't pay any attention to the album with John Corabi, and I haven't listened to much they've put out since he returned. The exception is the four new songs they put out on the soundtrack to The Dirt.
Speaking of The Dirt, Brandi and I watched it shortly after it came out on Netflix. Brandi really liked it, and it gave her a deeper appreciation for the band's music.* I thought it was hilarious seeing Ramsay Bolton (actor Iwan Rheon) as Mick Mars. Beyond that, I thought it was really fun, but I know it glossed over a lot of stuff, and it really just made me want to read the book.
*On Brandi and hair metal: I was obviously on the young side for a fan of this type of rock when it was popular, and Brandi is four years younger than I am. So she wasn't there for it in the same way that I was. She likes the genre in kind of an absent way and is familiar with the big hits and big bands. She indulges me with stuff like watching The Dirt, and one of my favorite parts about doing this all month is when she reads each entry and I get to kind of see myself through her eyes. What a weird little kid I was.
I have little to say about Vixen, but after the discussion of hair metal's gender dynamics in my Lita Ford post, I wanted to make sure to mention the other major player of the era (with apologies to Heart, who definitely had a hair metal phase ("Alone," hello?) but in general was not a hair metal band). All I know of Vixen's music is this song (fun fact: co-written and produced by Richard Marx) and "Cryin'," their two big hits. I think it's cool that all four band members were women, and it would have been cool if they had gotten more attention. Given that I didn't have their album despite liking their songs, I concede that I was part of the problem, or at least emblematic of it.
Here's something fun: while poking around trying to find and decide upon a song from Extreme to post for today, I discovered that, in 2015, they released a Deluxe Edition of their 1990 album Pornograffiti—in addition to different versions of several album tracks, it also contains two songs that I had never heard before. More songs from one of my favorite bands? Yes, please! Thanks Rocktober!
I love Extreme. Like everyone else, my awareness of them largely began with "More Than Words," but when I bought the CD and popped it in my player, I was greeted with this. Nuno Bettencourt could shred, man (I assume he still can—among other things, he now tours with Rihanna). I offer them as sort of a counterpoint to Queensryche, as they managed to be more lyrically playful and topically deeper than other bands but without it bringing down their tone. This album just sounds like a goddamned party, and I love it so much. It came out just after I turned thirteen, and although I've never been a good singer, one of my favorite things was to sing along with "When I First Kissed You" (a pastiche of Sinatra-type piano/crooner songs from the past) with my ever-deepening voice.
They were also a great example of a band who wasn't afraid to evolve. Their next album, III Sides to Every Story...I don't even know how to explain it. It's rock, it's introspective, it's orchestral. It's totally different from anything else from the era, and it's great. They've been all over the place since then, with Nuno having an interesting career and Gary Cherone briefly taking over as the singer for Van Halen (which I never really checked out, but now, having reminded myself that it happened, I will be sure to do so). Wikipedia says a new album may be forthcoming. I have no idea how true that may be, so I'm not getting my hopes up, but if it crosses my path I will listen with great interest.
I had a bit of an internal debate over whether or not to include Queensryche. For one, they were closer to actual heavy metal than most other bands of the day. Their sound was heavier, and their lyrics explored more serious topics. They were kind of a buzzkill, honestly. But they definitely used the trappings of hair metal, at least—the big hair, the wailing guitar solos, etc. And for me, it comes down to two questions: were their videos played on MTV's Headbanger's Ball? Were their songs played on 102.9, the Big WAZU? The answer to both questions is yes. So they count.
The other reason is because getting into them was a really slow burn for me. At the time, I didn't care at all for Operation: Mindcrime, their 1988 concept album, other than "Eyes of a Stranger." What started to draw me in was the song "Last Time in Paris," which was for a movie soundtrack. When singles for Empire started coming out, I was willing to listen with a more sympathetic ear. I liked them. Then along came "Silent Lucidity," one of the quintessential power ballads...and I hated it. But when "Jet City Woman" came along, I liked it enough to override those feelings, and I think that's when I finally picked up the CD.
I'm generally a songs over albums type of guy, but there are certain albums that benefit from a complete front-to-back listen, and Empire definitely qualifies. I would imagine most of Queensryche's albums do. I skipped over both "Della Brown" and "Silent Lucidity" for a long time, but I eventually warmed to them as well (I've made my peace with "Silent Lucidity"—it'll never be my favorite song, but I can definitely appreciate it). I even came around on Operation: Mindcrime and eventually added it to my collection, but that's as far as I've gone. They have a bunch of albums, and I know they're still around, and singer Geoff Tate has broken off to do his own thing (or maybe form his own version of the band? I'm not totally sure), but my interest in them is good where it is.
This is one of those songs that, as a pre-teen/teen (it was just before my 13th birthday when the album came out), I related to hard. And I'll note that the version in the video above is not the album version—I suppose it's possible that it was actually recorded live. And I'll further note that I'm pretty sure this was the second CD I owned.
Trixter, to me, is a contrast with Great White, who I noted yesterday had a more mature sound. Which isn't to say that Trixter has an immature sound, but I seem to recall that the band members (at least some of them, or hell, maybe even only one of them; it was a long time ago) were just out of their teens (or maybe not even) when they started to break big. And that showed in their music. Their debut album is straightforward, fun, fresh rock. Their second album, Hear!, came out in 1992 as the music scene was changing, and while I did buy a copy, it took me a long time to pay any attention to it. Their third, an EP of cover songs released in 1994, I haven't managed to track down. I know Steve Brown has worked with Def Leppard through some of Vivian Campbell's health issues, and Trixter has put out a couple of albums (maybe live ones? I'm not sure) in the 2010s, so these guys are still around, doing their thing.
Great White is a band that I wish I had more to say about. I wasn't a huge fan back in the day. "Once Bitten Twice Shy" was ubiquitous, and it was fine, although I liked "Mista Bone" (that bass!) much better. But like Cinderella, my appreciation for them has grown over time. I can't remember exactly when it was, but at some point when I started exploring hair metal again after my fandom had grown—not dormant, exactly, but stagnant, I guess—it was this song that drew me in. I really dig the guitar work. I listen to this song and think, "that is what a professional guitar riff sounds like." Overall they just have a more mature sound than a lot of the bands of the era, and that appeals to my adult self in a way it didn't as much back then.
Yesterday I mentioned Cinderella, so here's Cinderella! This is a band that I always liked a lot, but my appreciation for them has grown has time has gone on because of the way their sound evolved. Their first album, Night Songs (on which this song appears), is pretty straightforward hair metal with a little bit of a darker vibe. They kept a lot of that on Long Cold Winter but went more in a bluesy direction, and then kept going that way with Heartbreak Station while throwing in almost a little bit of a folk sound as well. I didn't even know their 1994 album Still Climbing existed until fairly recently, so while I have a copy, I'm not terribly familiar with it.
The theme for this week may well turn out to be "Bands and Songs I Like But About Which I Haven't Much to Say." Such is the case for Britny Fox. Man, these guys looked like Cinderella, which makes sense if you know the band originally contained two former members of Cinderella.
Wikipedia tells me that "Long Way to Love" was the band's first single, while I remember hearing "Girlschool" (their biggest hit) first. However, while I liked "Girlschool" just fine, it was this song that put me over the top, probably because it showed that "Dizzy" Dean Davidson actually had a pretty decent singing voice beyond his trademark high-pitched yowl. Dean left the band after two albums, and Wikipedia tells me he expressed at least a mild distaste for Britny Fox's sound afterward. That's disappointing to me, but I get it. This kind of music was making money hand over fist in those days, and any band with rock inclinations was going to be pushed in this direction whether it was the kind of music they really wanted to make or not.
I don't have much to say about this one. Shotgun Messiah came along with this song toward the tail end of the hair metal craze, so they never made it too far onto the radar. My cousin Rachel really liked them; they didn't do much for me. I appreciate this song more now with the distance of years—it has a heavier edge to it that characterizes the turn the rock world was taking. This is a band that, as I try to build out my collection, has become hard to find. This album (1991's Second Coming) is available on Spotify, but that's it for them on there, and trying to find physical copies is hit or miss.
Let's face it. The rock scene of the 1980s was, by and large, a boys' club (and a white boys' club, at that). So much of the culture—the lyrics, the videos, etc.—revolved around sex, and the idea of women expressing their sexuality isn't something that American society is particularly comfortable with even here in 2019, to say nothing of the aggressively conservative Reagan era.
A handful of women did manage to find a measure of success, however, and Lita Ford was at the forefront. Her 1988 album Lita produced two monster hits: this one, plus "Close My Eyes Forever," her duet with Ozzy Osbourne, both of which still get airplay on classic rock radio. The funny thing about the time is that I don't remember ever hearing anything else from her. I know she had other singles and videos, but I can't say I ever heard them on the radio or saw them on MTV. That could easily be just my memory playing tricks, or it could be an example of how much harder it was for a woman to be a star.
So other than those two hits, I mostly missed out on Lita during the glam metal heyday. I'm working on correcting that now, checking out her music and adding her tracks and albums to my library. I'm also looking forward to checking out her book at some point, Living Like a Runaway.
Early in 1992, shortly after New Year's, I remember being sick and out of school for a couple of days as a high school freshman. During those days, anytime I was awake, all I was doing was playing the video game Actraiser on Super Nintendo and listening to Skid Row's Slave to the Grind album; I had received both for Christmas. I offer this story for today because I've come down with a cold, which just makes me think of long days in bed with Sprite and television.
It's really too bad that Skid Row got saddled with the hair metal label. Although they used many of the same trappings and performed alongside many of the more prototypical bands of the time, this is honestly just a damned fine rock album. They had the hair, but they didn't skimp on the metal. It seems like personality conflicts within the band probably drove them apart moreso than the decline of the genre, but still. I feel like this album deserves better than to be dismissed as just another '80s cheeesefest. I mean, I feel like criticism of that type is unwarranted for the genre as a whole, but this just feels like a separate thing altogether.
