During Hair Metal Week here on MetalSucks, the prize for Completely Unreadable Band Logo of the Week was a mix of glam songs compiled by yours truly. I know some of the entrants wanted me to post the track listing for that mix, and now that it’s finally completed (I’m kind of a perfectionist when it comes to mixes) and the winner, Ash Patterson, tells me he’s received his prize, it’s time to publish that track list, so you can all compile your own mix at home should you so choose.
I tried to pick songs that either a) were by bands I think most people have long since forgotten about, or b) were less famous entries in the oeuvre of more well-known bands. Hopefully those of you who actually like this kind of music will dig this.
There’s been a lot of talk this week about what kind of sound does or does not make a band “glam” or “hair metal” or whatever the hell else you want to call it, but it’s also important to mention that for many of us the stinky cheese factor plays a huge role as well. So many of the bands in question were SO over-the-top ridiculous in their lyrics/music/attitude/wardrobe/etc. that it’s often unpossible to think about hair metal without associating how cheesy it all is. Granted, this trend started in the 80s, so ample fromage is to be expected, but at the end of the day, doesn’t the corniness help define the genre itself? Unless if some of you actually think that hair metal is unironically “cool”, which is okay I guess — we’re all entitled to our opinions, even if they’re wrong.
Regardless of where your tastes lie, we should all be able to agree that nowhere does the cheese fly nearly as much as in the power ballads of yesteryear…
Usually when a fad fizzles, its casual fans disperse and its faithful just hang tough. But no trend, including the macarena and Jewel, has been subjected to the hostility and convenient disgust that follows Glam Metal and its fans. Perhaps the extra-harsh reaction is proportionate to its success as an inescapable, nearly decade-long craze that dominated radio and TV. Perhaps a lot of macho dickheads and party-haters are defensive about what they consider a shameful episode of rock transvestism. Perhaps the haters just seem louder because Glam Metal’s fanbase has failed, unlike those of hip hop and classic rock, to perpetuate itself via self-righteous documentaries, a half-assed hall of fame, and/or positions of power within critical music media. Perhaps it’s all three.
But there’s no changing the fact that Glam Metal’s great moments are great. And millions of people paid cash to enjoy those great moments. How could it not have been fun?
To help us relive those hair metal moments, we welcome Bring Back Glam! scribe Allyson B. Crawford, America’s foremost Glam Metal scholar. Today, Allyson and MS hair rock apologist Anso DF assemble the essential Glam Metal library for beginners and veterans. An oral history, a time capsule, a how-to kit, a party starter, a cheat sheet to win the heart of hair rockers, whatever you want to call it — it’s all about the loudest, dirtiest, beer-chuggingest, drugs-snortingest records in music history. And you don’t even have to be glam to read it. But it doesn’t hurt.
Forget the hype. Forget the history. Forget the backlash. This is the real shit.
Since its inception by the typings of some clever music journalist in the 80s, the categorization “hair metal” (or “glam metal”) has been as amorphous and, consequently, as misused as “metalcore” has been in the aughties. And since it’s hair metal week here on MetalSucks, we thought we’d try to address this issue by pointing the spotlight on ten bands that are often, and incorrectly, deemed “hair metal.” And to that end…
It must’ve been an uphill battle for L.A.’s BulletBoys, the group that in 1988 was packaged as a Van Halen for disenchanted Hagar-haters. Living up to that billing is basically impossible, especially with a bluesy, Les Paul-playing, Slash-meets-Jeff Tyson guy in one of the bands and a technicolor fretboard wizard in the other. Of course, one can understand why Van Halenism entered the discussion of how to market the BulletBoys in a crowded glam rock marketplace: In addition to sharing with Van Halen a producer, record label, and configuration, BulletBoys also resist lazy categorization. (Also, some endorse the uncomfortable comparison of BulletBoys singer Marq Torien to David Lee Roth, cuz Torien can do the steamwhistle-scream thing and also favors the flimsiest of double-entendres. But it ends there.) On the surface, each band puts on a carnival of crotch bulges and dirty imagery, but that’s just the flannel shirt or nappy beard or sleeve tattoo of the time. For the BulletBoys, a closer listen reveals high-level performance (if not consistently great songwriting) and a commercially icky element of sleaze. They may have looked the part, but their sound was too unfriendly, too minor key, and too darkly nasty to be glam.
Noisecreep tells us that Sebastian Bach is gonna get the animated treatment for the July 5th episode of childrens’ television mainstay SpongeBob SquarePants.
Naturally, this has nothing to do with Baz’s need to eat and everything to do with his burning desire to bestow upon today’s youth the legacy of Skid Row and hair metal as a whole. Thank you, Baz, for your continued devotion to educating the youth of our country and for being a real do-gooder amidst all the craziness we face daily.
We stand by our assessment that re-hiring Joey Belladonna is a desperate move by Anthrax, as well as major artistic step-backwards for Anthrax. Who would have been a better fit for the band? Almost anyone. Herewith, our list of possible candidates that should have superseded Belladonna…
What the hell, dude? First Marduk front dude Mortuus hit a kid who jumped on stage to try and hug him, then The Black Dahlia Murder’s Trevor Strnad followed suit; now some guy jumped on stage during a recent Kittie performance and tried to kiss front lady Morgan Lander… and she cracks him in the balls! So for once, a fan got a beat down and he actually deserved it.
Only problem is, it’s not a fan this time – it’s Tyler Whore, bassist for Sucked by a Sucking Suck. He’s apparently friends with the band. Guess Lander didn’t recognize him? Either that, or it was, uh, a Freudian slip, I guess.
Here’s video of the incident, courtest Hardtime.ca:
Thanks to the always-helpful Saul Hudson for the tip…
You see, Fashion Week just kicked off here in the Big Apple, and it seems Axl, eager to follow in the footsteps of Velvet Revolver, aligned with the man who turned a punk rock landmark into a high-end boutique. The good folks at BrooklynVegan report that attendees waited for hours for Guns N’ Roses to perform (shocker!). Yet we have to give credit to Axl for putting on a full 90-minute show instead of a truncated mini-set for an audience that included Sebastian Bach and Kevin Bacon. Though I have mixed feelings about the whole Varvatos/CBGB’s thing (as someone who spent quite a bit of time in that venue in his teens), I’m pretty fucking bummed that I wasn’t there for this.
Below you’ll find some (very) amateur video footage of the performance, as well as the full setlist.
Why would Trevor Strnad punch this kid in the face? That’s the only thing I can keep asking myself after viewing the below video, which The PRP posted last night:
I mean, it doesn’t seem like the kid did anything that warrants a punch, other than touch Strnad. But Strnad’s the lead singer of a metal band – he must be used to kids reaching out and touching him while he’s on stage all the time, right? So was Strnad just startled, and his karate action punch mechanism kicked in on instinct? When we interviewed him last year, he seemed like the most laid-back dude in the world. But that was a ten minute interview – it’s not like I know the guy. So maybe I’m just making excuses for him ’cause I wanna like him.
In any case, watch for The Black Dahlia Murder to tour with Marduk sometime soon.
We’ve known for some time that Mr. Jasta was helping Sebastian Bach write material for his next solo album, the follow-up to the borderline-unlistenable Angel Down. Which actually strikes me as kind of a good idea – Bach hasn’t really brought the heavy since Skid Row’s underrated Subhuman Race album way the fuck back in 1995. We even got an ever-so-brief taste of that music back in May.
But now Blabbermouth has posted video of Bach and his new solo band, all of whom are apparently willing to pay for their own gas and rehearse for free, performing a new song in its entirety. It’s called “Live the Life” and, well, it’s pretty bad. And not heavy in the slightest.
But it’s good to see that Baz can still headbang like it’s 1989.
If I were Baz I’d put out some of those songs he wrote with Jasta ASAP. This shit is fucking embarassing.
So you may have heard this story that Axl Rose allegedly got in a fight with some paparazzi at LAX the other day while on his way to board a flight to Taipei, Taiwan, where Guns N’ Roses are about to finally begin touring in support of Chinese Democracy more than a year after its release. I didn’t write anything about it when it was first reported because I thought it might just be a rumor; the police were apparently unable to confirm that this huge rock star had hit somebody in the middle of a crowded airport, and that struck me as, well, odd.
I have should known better. TMZ now has video of the fight – hoo-ray for the information age, when everyone has a camera!!! – and, yep, Axl hit the dude.
Now, I can’t see exactly what transpired just before the fight, but Axl does seem to yell “He hit my mother!” or something like that towards the end of the video. Since Axl’s mother has been dead for about thirteen years or so, I can only imagine he’s referring to his assistant, Beta Lebeis, who he has often said is the closest thing to a “real” mother he’s ever had.
Also noteworthy: when Axl yells for “Sebastian,” he doesn’t mean Bach – he means Lebeis’ son, who is also in his employ.
This guy is just such a fucking drama magnet I can’t believe it. I’m not saying he’s not to blame – I think he very much is to blame. No one is at the center of so much shit for no reason. I just can’t believe he hasn’t calmed down after all these years.
P.S.: Does it look to anyone else like he finally got rid of those corn-rows? Just wonderin’.
-AR
Thanks to all fifteen people who e-mailed me about this within seconds of it going up. Good to know someone besides me still gets off on Axl-related drama!
Not only is Behemoth’s Nergal a country singer with no sense of humor, but apparently he’s also a commercial star in his native Poland. I haven’t the foggiest idea what these clips are about or what’s being said in them, but they are automatically fucking hilarious by way of Nergal’s presence. Thanks to MS reader “Fersas” for sending them in.
All joshing aside, Behemoth’s Evangelion was undoubtedly one of the best metal releases of 2009 and it’s sure to make its way onto several MS staffers’ year-end lists.
Remember Disgorge, Mexico, that weird ass looking movie I was talking about that was directed by David Hall and inspired by the Fuck the Facts album of the same title? Well, our PLPs (platonic life partners) over at Metal Injection have debuted a clip from the film, and – not exactly shocking – it’s weirder than Nergal singing country music. Check it, yo:
The song is “Kelowna,” by the way. If you can’t figure the name of the band that recorded it or which album it appears on, well, then, congratulations – you are a ree-ree and you can now go collect some disabilities payments from the government.
A reader known only as “Fersas” sent us the below clip of a band called Wolverine. Despite their name, which would lead you to believe that they’re a metal band or at least a rock outfit, they in fact play country music.
And, oh yeah, Nergal is doing the vocals.
I really don’t like this music and I think the idea of a Polish country band is kind of ridiculous, but I’d be lying if I said Nergal’s vocals suck. He sounds like a poor man’s Nick Cave part of the time, but I can live with that.
Anyways, this was apparently recorded in 2000. Enjoy.
Sebastian Bach, who is perpetually the most entertaining former rock star in all of hair metaldom, is going to be on yet another fucking reality show – this time VH1′s Celebrity Fit Club, where former “stars” purportedly go to shed some weight, but actually go because their parents didn’t love them enough, causing them to have no sense of self-worth whatsoever if they’re not constantly in the spotlight. Although a VH1 reality show strikes me as a pretty dim spotlight. But whatever.
Bach will be joined by that dude who knocked up Britney Spears, that chick from Charles in Charge I always used to think about while jerking off, crackhead Bobby Brown, and a bunch of people I’ve never heard of.
I guess the last time I actually saw Bach up close was in 2006 when he was hanging from Axl Rose’s nuts all over the world, but in all honesty, the guy looked like he was in pretty good shape. I mean, I’m sure his liver is failing and his septum has been burned-through with coke, but he wasn’t fat or anything. If anyone has seen him more recently and can tell me I’m wrong, please do so. Nothing would make me happier than to learn that Baz had pulled a Brando.
Celebrity Fit Club will start airing in February 2010, by which time I will most certainly have forgotten about it.
In a post about country singer Carrie Underwood’s cover of Skid Row’s “I Remember You,” Noisecreep‘s Karen Bliss inadvertently (or perhaps advertently) stumbled upon a dead-on lookalike when she juxtaposed Taylor Swift’s photo (Swift has also covered classic metal songs as of late) with that of Sebastian Bach. Check out the above picture, taken directly from Noisecreep. WTF?
Here’s an interesting little piece that Noisecreep ran last week:
“For some reason, Skid Row fans or my fans are so hung up on these three or four tunes that I did a billion years ago,” says Bach, on the phone from the airport, while on his way to a gig tonight (Aug. 25) in front of 20,000 people at Telus Field in Edmonton, Alberta — where he will join country music duo Big and Rich onstage.
“I don’t get it. I completely don’t understand it because when I made it in rock, I said, ‘This is f—ing great. Now I can make music the rest of my life.’ Some people just wanna make the same record over and over again for the rest of their life, and that’s just not me. That’s totally not me.”
And here’s the performance Bach gave with Big and Rich that very night:
Eddie Van Halen is apparently going to appear on the shitcom Two and a Half Men this fall. I’m assuming the storyline will have something to do with him confusing the chubby kid from the show with his chubby son.
Not a Van Halen.
A Van Halen.
Eddie Van Halen joins a long line of hard rock musicians appearing on terrible television shows, including Anthrax, Slash, and Sebastian Bach.
I imagine that when the members of, say, Daath get together for rehearsal, no one expects to be paid for said rehearsal. They’re all dudes who are friends – some of them even grew up together, if I’m not mistaken – and it’s not like they’re making squillions of dollars playing metal. Rehearsal, then, has to be viewed as an investment – get better as a band, put on a good show for the crowd, and, knock on wood, your band will get bigger and the money will come.
I also imagine it’s different being in someone’s solo band. If your boss is Ozzy Osbourne or Axl Rose or Dave Mustaine or Trent Reznor, there’s going to be a lot of money involved, and your creative input is going to be somewhat limited (I imagine). I know for a fact that the members of nu-GN’R are paid an annual retainer, just in case they’re needed; I assume members of certain other solo bands are given a similar (if perhaps less lucrative) deal. And actors definitely get paid to rehearse; granted, the rehearsal rate is less than the performance rate, but the unions insist that if you want an actor there for rehearsals, he or she must be compensated.
Now. Sebastian Bach’s record sales obviously are not what they used to be. But the guy still opens for arena bands, routinely plays large festivals, and, by his own admission, gets paid very large sums of money to appear on crappy reality shows. Doing something like, say, paying for his band’s member’s gas so they can get to rehearsal seems reasonable, especially when you’re talking about dudes like Metal Mike Chlasciak, who, even if he’s not exactly Zakk Wylde, has played with dudes like Halford, and is definitely a “known entity.”
Well, Baz disagrees. He’s looking for a new guitarist and a new bassist, and, more specifically, he’s looking for someone to do it for bubcus. Check out this statement from the Old Dude Gone Wild:
meeting one of my favorite authors of all time today to discuss collaborating on my memoirs ! #fb12 minutes agofrom txt
So, like, who do we think Baz’s favorite authors of all time are? Dr. Seuss is dead, Shel Silverstein is dead, and unless The Dirt was done as a book on tape and I’m not aware of it, I doubt The Second Most Famous Person Ever to be Named “Sebastian Bach” knows who Neil Strauss is. So any guesses?
Whomever takes the (hopefully lucrative) gig of basically writing The Old Man Gone Wild’s book for him, it should be, in some capactiy at least, an entertaining read.
Sebastian Bach, who is perpetually the most entertaining former rock star in all of hair metaldom, is going to be on yet another fucking reality show – this time VH1′s Celebrity Fit Club, where former “stars” purportedly go to shed some weight, but actually go because their parents didn’t love them enough, causing them to have no sense of self-worth whatsoever if they’re not constantly in the spotlight. Although a VH1 reality show strikes me as a pretty dim spotlight. But whatever.
In a post about country singer Carrie Underwood’s cover of Skid Row’s “I Remember You,” 
I imagine that when the members of, say, Daath get together for rehearsal, no one expects to be paid for said rehearsal. They’re all dudes who are friends – some of them even grew up together, if I’m not mistaken – and it’s not like they’re making squillions of dollars playing metal. Rehearsal, then, has to be viewed as an investment – get better as a band, put on a good show for the crowd, and, knock on wood, your band will get bigger and the money will come.
