When pairing with Allyson B. Crawford of Bring Back Glam! this summer, I knew I was bringing in a heavyweight expert on one of metal’s most deceptively awesome movements, Glam Metal. However, I couldn’t have predicted the chemistry and kinship that marked our four-part Most Essential Glam Metal Albums roundtable. (Okay, technically it was a rectangulartable. Revisit it here.) Allyson’s pet bands know well that she is a patient, positive ally to even the most commerce-blinded artist. Perhaps what is so admirable is her adherence to basic decency standards on the consequence-free internet. But back in July, it was these same values that muzzled my more vile observations, like those regarding the English language prowess of Sweden’s fantastically rad Crashdïet. Here’s what we did talk about:

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Probably a bit like this.

-GS

Remember earlier this year, when Bret Michaels and Miley Cyrus re-recorded “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” as a duet, and then recorded a new duet with some incredibly sexual lyrics? At the time, I assumed that the 46 year old Michaels was tappin’ the 17 year old Cyrus, but as it turns out, he was probably doin’ her mom instead — at least, the rumor is that their affair is the cause of the pending divorce between Billy Ray Cyrus and Tish Cyrus.

And I don’t know why Tish Cyrus would wanna fuck Bret Michaels. I guess she always had a fantasy in which she slept with a clone of herself, only the clone wore more make-up, and had the facial hair of a barely-pubescent boy.

Of course, now Bret’s publicist has denied the affair, lest it sully his good name:

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And you thought Steven Tyler becoming a judge on American Idol was bad.

As part of his ongoing quest to determine just how low a former rock god can sink, Vince Neil has now signed on to Skating with the Stars, a spinoff of — duh — Dancing with the Stars, in which “stars” will — double duh — skate. Joining him on the show will be one of the women from those Real Housewives shows everyone is so stoked about these days, Olympic gold medal skier Jonny Moseley, the only black actor on The Disney Channel, soap opera actress Rebecca Budig (with whom I actually used to work in a former life), and Sean Young, who was a respectable actress once upon a time (see: Blade Runner, Wall Street, the original Ace Ventura, etc.), but has since gone crazy (she once showed up at Tim Burton’s office in a homemade Catwoman outfit and demanded the role in Batman Returns) and now also makes her living on soaps. So it’s good company for Mr. Neil.

Seriously, this dude can’t drive a car, and some reports tell us that he can barely stand upright on stage. How the hell is he gonna skate? Can the ice even support his weight? Does he really need money this badly? I know that booze and sports cars and porn stars don’t come cheap, but maybe switch from champagne to rye and you should be saving a few hundred thousand dollars a year right there. For reals.

-AR

[via Deadline]

Am I the only one who sees the complete absurdity in the whole “on hiatus” thing bands do these days? In 2010 no band stays broken up… every band gets back together, at least to tour if not also to release new music, because they need to do so to make a living. But it seems like every time a band announces they’re taking a break / “on hiatus” the media freaks out; will they ever be back, or is this the end??? Of course they’ll be back, nincompoop!

I call Metal Insider’s Bram Teitelman a nincompoop only in jest, of course, because I know the guy’s a legit Ratt fan; dude once told me his first concert was Ratt with special guest openers Bon Jovi, some new young band at the time. That’s real deal! Metal Insider is reporting that Ratt singer Stephen Pearcy is the latest band member to confirm there won’t be any more Ratt shows or new music in the near future after bassist Robbie Crane said the same this past Monday. In an interview with Philadelphia’s WYSP:

I’ll be taking care of some solo stuff until Ratt takes care of its business, and then we’ll probably or hopefully start working on another record. We’ll go on hiatus for a while, and everybody will do their own thing, and then we’ll take it from there.

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Looks like the only Ratturday that’s gonna be celebrated any time soon is in my own living room; a monkey from the Axl Annex arrived at the Vince Division of the MS Mansion early this morning ooo-ooo-ing like a crazed chimpanzee, then proceeded to my computer and pointed my browser to Metal Sludge, where I read this:

A recent rumor has popped up about Robbie Crane no longer being in the band. We reached out to Robbie and asked point blank. His reply is below.
Sludge,

“As far as I’m concerned there is no Ratt to be “fired” from as Ratt is on an indefinite hiatus as we’ve finished the Infestation tour in Japan last week… Warren has dates with his and Dee Schnider’s Christmas band, Stephen has 4 to 6 months of solo dates, Carlos is working with Rudy and Vinny on an awesome new project and I’m touring with Lynch Mob over the next couple of months… Thanks for the concern…

Sludge out with your cock out! Robbie”

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Sebastian Bach and, to a somewhat lesser extent, Corey Glover and, to a definitely lesser extent, Paul Stanley have all had some success doing theatrical musicals, be it on Broadway or elsewhere; now Dee Snider wants in on that action, and has joined the cast of Rock of Ages, the hit Broadway jukebox musical that incorporates 80′s music that is still remembered fondly by the bridge and tunnel crowd — e.g., Poison, Journey, etc. He’ll be in the show for eleven weeks, from October 11 through December 24.

And why not? Snider’s vocal talents were never on the level of guys like Glover and Bach, but live videos that I just watched on YouTube (like the one above) tell me that his voice is still in surprisingly good shape. Plus, he already dresses like Liza Manelli, so he’ll fit right in on The Great White Way.

And it’s a genius stroke on the part of the producers; the people who wanna see this show are definitely gonna know who Snider is, and be all the happier to buy a ticket to see him. It makes you wonder why no one thought of this sooner, or if anyone besides Snider was ever approached to be in the show.

Also, if Snider’s eight-shows-a-week (!) commitment to Rock in any way slows the production of Strangeland 2, than it can only be a good thing.

Meanwhile, it was just about a year ago that a Rock of Ages movie adaptation was announced, to be directed by Adam Shankman, the man behind such Cannes Film Festival Palme D’Or winners as Cheaper by the Dozen 2. But there’s been no news of that project since, so it’s either dead or stuck in development hell. Either way, the human race wins… for now.

-AR

I saw Vince Neil’s solo band live once… I think this was around 2001/2002ish, but don’t quote me on that. Anyways, the show was at B.B. King’s, a venue that holds roughly 500 people (or so I’m told — it actually looks way smaller to me), and it was reasonably crowded — tickets were like twenty bucks or something reasonable like that. Vince’s voice sounded like shit, which is nothing new, but he took advantage of the small space by playing a requests-only show. I’m totally serious: The band opened with “Kickstart My Heart,” but after that, Vince literally let people in the crowd shout out song titles, and then the band played ‘em. I think they only turned one person down ’cause they didn’t know the song; for the most part, they were like a Motley Crue jukebox, with a real-live member of Motley Crue leading the charge. So even though we were all watching a fat, winded version of an old hero, it was still pretty fun, ’cause Neil wisely made the show as fan-friendly as he possibly could.

But I guess he’s not doing that anymore, ’cause Metal Insider’s Bram Teitelman caught his gig at the 1,800 person capacity Irving Plaza last week, and does not have nice things to say. For one thing, tickets were $35, without a name opening act, and while the setlist had ten songs on it, the band only played nine. Nine songs for a $35 headlining set. Sheesh.

But wait! It gets worse. Says Teitelman:

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I don’t believe in God, but I do believe in Darwin, and natural selection is clearly trying to send Bret Michaels a message: “You are not supposed to be here.” He’s diabetic, he’s the only person in the history of ever to almost eat it at the frickin’ Tony Awards, he’s spent half his life touring with C.C. DeVille (there’s a death sentence if ever there was one), and this year alone, he’s suffered  a massive subarachnoid brain hemorrhage AND discovered that he has a hole in his heart. Is this dude a character from a Final Destination movie or what?

Speaking of that gap in his ticker, and nature wanting him dead: In January, he’ll undergo surgery to try and fill in that sucker, ’cause unlike Extreme, the hole in his heart most certainly cannot be filled by only you. He’s gonna need, like, doctors and medicine and stuff.

I know it’s wrong to joke about a man having heart surgery, but, somehow, I feel like Bret is gonna pull through. Nature might want him dead, but just you watch — this dude is going to outlive us all. There could be a nuclear war, and all that would survive would be cockroaches and Bret Michaels.

And then he’d try to fuck the cockroaches.

-AR

I totally appreciate what Vains of Jenna do. Their brand of ’80s hair/cock metal revivalism comes off a whole lot more genuine than that of their many American counterparts; for one they aren’t being ironic, and for two they’re pretty darn good. Sure, these Swedes ain’t reinventing the wheel here but they make a damn fine one that gets you from point A to point B in a flurry of classic blues-based rock riffs. And they don’t look like a bunch of tool-bags suffering from NSS (Nikki Sixx Syndrome).

So Vains of Jenna have a new video for the track “Everyone Loves You When You’re Dead.” I really like the faux-performance part and love the way it’s shot; in particular, I like how the color red kind of highlights everything throughout. I have no idea what the fuck is going in with the naked-feathered-chicks-in-the-forest subplot, however, but I assume there’s something behind it I’m just missing. Either way, cool song and cool video.

-VN

Girl metal fans kind of have to work harder to gain credibility. We get scoffed at for trying to be “cool,” and (allegedly) not really liking the music, are accused of being posers who couldn’t name a non-“Ace of Spades” Motorhead song if our lives depended on it, and just plain using metal to get guys. (And I have to interrupt myself with an “Are you freakin’ kidding me?!” I’ve loved metal since I was seven, and my first boyfriend came about thirteen years later.) And the first couple of bands that popped into my head for this piece were all set to be platforms for my incredibly high horse, from whence I would preach about the wonder that is genuine female metal fans. And no, I do not mean Juggalettes.

But then I changed my mind. There’s one other thing us girls have to put up with, and that’s defending our right to like “girly metal.” Hair, glam, power, those bands with guys in full tattoo bodysuits and stupid hair, and some other genres are accused of being not “metal” enough. which is  (again, allegedly) “why girls like them.” Which is true to some extent, I guess; I mean, ask me to name all the members of Ratt and I’ll counter with, “Which incarnation?” and then give you all of them anyway. But I honestly can’t distinguish between Bring Me the Horizon or Bullet for My Valentine. I’ve only heard of the latter because I went to a Maiden show where they opened and got booed (and it was amazing), and the former from stuff on this site. But I have come to accept my taste in “girly metal,” and to put it simply: Fuck you, I can listen to whatever I want. My pick for album of a day is from a band I’ve had a love-hate relationship from the age of seven on.

Bon Jovi. I liked Bon Jovi just because my older cousin did, and she was awesome and I wanted to be just like her.  On the night of my seventh birthday, my parents took me to a Bon Jovi concert.  It was my first concert and I only knew “Living on a Prayer” (which I will argue is the best arena-metal song ever), so for most of the concert, I was pretty damn bored… until they played that very song. I was awed into a stupefied state of wonder. I mean, I had heard the song before, but it was completely different live, with an entire stadium of people screaming along to it. That song is an institution, and it sort of bugs me that it’s now a dumbass frat guy anthem at bars, but hey, at least people are enjoying it ,right? From that night on, I made it my business to own every Bon Jovi album I could find. My family totally supported me, as Bon Jovi has been one of two bands that we can all agree on (the other is Queen). We were pretty devoted for a while.

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Kevin Dubrow is dead, and I think that most of us assumed he would take Quiet Riot (the seventh most-often-miscategorized-as-a-hair-metal-band of all time) with him to the grave. Those of us who did make that assumption, however, forgot that desperate times call for desperate measures, and an empty belly holds no room for dignity.

So Quiet Riot are re-forming.

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Remember a couple of weeks ago, when we told you that Great White vocalist Jack Russell needs a colostomy bag now ’cause he has a perforated bowel, which basically means his intestines ripped open and shit starting spilling into places it ain’t s’posed ta spill? Well even though that colostomy bag is only supposed to be a temporary situation, it’s bad enough that Russell can’t participate in an upcoming Great White tour. That news might disappoint aging former cheerleaders who let the quarterback knock ‘er up at senior prom ’87 and have wished they’d had the pregnancy “taken care of” ever since, but Great White are true professionals, and those dicks ain’t gonna suck themselves, so the show must go on.

The solution? Our number one homegirl, Allyson B. Crawford at Bring Back Glam, reports that Great White have hired Jani Lane to fill in on ten upcoming tour dates — at least one of which will feature Warrant as a support act. Warrant. The band that Lane has either quit or been fired from at least ten thousand times now. Awk-ward.

If I’m not mistaken, this will be Lane’s first gig since being released from a brief prison term for DUI. I don’t know if the man who apparently forever regrets having written “Cherry Pie” is still drinking (I’d wager he is), and I don’t know if Great White are still using pyro (I wouldn’t be surprised if they are), but if both of those things are the case, let’s just hope that Jani’s breath doesn’t cause any unfortunate incidents.

Here’s a video Ms. Crawford posted of Jani performing while not three but apparently nine sheets to the wind. This dude makes Vince Neil look like a classy dude who always stays on key and is never winded.

And here are tour dates, in case you wanna witness this sure-to-be-hilarious spectacle:

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How does Great White still exist? If The Station Fire wasn’t a career-ending scandal, what is? Would Jack Russell have to go around throwing babies at brick walls or something? Or do you still think aging housewives would re-live their glory days by going to see him and whomever the fuck else is in Great White these days play “Once Bitten, Twice Shy,” and, uhhh… I don’t even know what this band’s other hits are. (I like hair metal, and I always thought that Great White were pretty weak.) But I’d think that, at this point, going to a Great White show would be akin to getting into a car being driven by Vince Neil, or having unprotected sex with Tommy Lee, or agreeing to be the new member of any version of L.A. Guns: a bad, bad, bad, terrible, horrible, atrocious, bad idea. I would only agree to doing so if I were promised I could stand right next to the exit, with one foot out the door, and that no pyro of any kind would be used.

But some people don’t let thoughts like this linger in the mind. And so Great White does still exist, in some form or another, although they may be on hiatus for awhile — according to Gunshy Assassin, Russell recently “suffered a perforated bowel… which meant crap starting leaking into his abdomen.” Yucky. Doctors have fixed the problem and Russell is now pooping normally again, thanks to the aid of a colostomy bag that his surgeons think “will just be temporary.”

That’s terrible, and under any normal circumstances, I’d feel bad for Russell. Then again, The Station Fire. So, y’know. Life’s a bitch.

-AR

After the jump is a photograph that was sent to me today by an anonymous reader. This photograph I guess would be considered NSFW, although I don’t know why — the nudity is completely tasteful. In fact, I’m not sure who took this portrait (Ross Halfin, perhaps?), but it’s striking: gritty, real, honest, and gorgeous. I think it’s so terrific, in fact, that I feel the need to dissect it.

If all glam bands took photos this good, the world might have taken them more seriously. Kudos to Bon Jovi for participating in such a radical work of art.

See the photograph in question after the jump; my thoughts follow.

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Discovered by fellow not-hair-metallers Bon Jovi, Skid Row have a special place in the genre’s history. They were, as Chuck Klosterman points out in his brilliant book, Fargo Rock City, the only band of the era to make good on their continual promises that their next album would be “heavier.” Skid Row definitely had some tracks that could pass for hair metal, but their sophomore effort, Slave to the Grind, was clearly drawing on heavier influences, like Judas Priest (when the band covered “Deliverin’ the Goods” on the B-Side Ourselves EP, Halford even guested on the vocals), and by the time they made Subhuman Race, well, they were almost unrecognizable as a band. But it never felt like they were trend-chasing, the way so many of their peers were; it always seemed like they legitimately wanted to get heavier and heavier, and consequently, they did.

Let’s just listen to the progression for a few minutes, okay? Here’s “Big Guns,” one of their glammier songs from Skid Row:

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One day mankind will go extinct and the remains of our civilization will later be picked over by aliens. Though they can speedily assemble collections of most homo erectus artifacts for their alien museums, their super-brains will struggle to grasp and group the arts of Earth, y’know, for their encyclopedias and stuff. So it’s in the interest of preserving and defining Glam Metal across the cosmos that we at MetalSucks have counted down the Ten Best Must-Have Glam Metal Albums. We even tapped in to the genius of Bring Back Glam‘s Allyson B. Crawford to give it that “definitive text” feel. (Read part one, part two, part three)

Thanks to Allyson and our Anso DF, Glam Metal will live on in other worlds long after our planet has become a barren hellscape. That’s comforting. Here’s the number one Best Must-Have Glam Metal Album! So, come now children of the beast, be strong and …

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Everyone always likes to pretend that one day Motley Crue were all over MTV, and then overnight Nirvana came along and suddenly Cinderella and Enuff Z’Nuff were standing on the unemployment line. Well, I call bullshit. Nirvana may have been the final nail in the coffin for hair metal, but Guns N’ Roses were the first. GN’R had the great fortune and misfortune to be from the same scene as bands like Poison (for whom Slash had once auditioned) — fortune because it only highlighted how different they were from those groups, and misfortune because it allowed all their naysayers to go, “Oh, fuck them, they’re just a glam band.”

Not helping matters was that the members of GN’R had gotten their starts in actual glam bands, like Hollywood Rose, and that some of their former ranks went on to form other glam bands, like L.A. Guns. (In fact, as far as I can tell, Tracii Guns has been making a career reminding everybody he’s the “Guns” in “Guns N’ Roses” for close to twenty-five years. He even hired Gilby Clarke to produce some of the latter-day LAG albums. He’s like Dave Mustaine, without all that genius baggage.)

Also not helping was that in their earliest promo photos, they looked like they were going cruising:

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After grunge got so popular that MTV’s 120 Minutes and Headbanger’s Ball somehow became practically the same show, a lot of hair metal bands tried to harden and “modern up” their sound — usually to disastrous results. Herein, a few of my favorite examples, presented in chronological order of their release.

First up we have Warrant’s “Machine Gun,” from the 1992 album Dog Eat Dog. This actually isn’t all that ridiculous, and came so early in the “let’s change our sound” cycle that I suspect it was intended more as a response to the success of bands like Guns N’ Roses and Skid Row than Nirvana. Still, it’s hardly “Cherry Pie” or “Heaven,” y’know?

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Weed: Responsible for this photo?

Do you think Bret Michaels is a nice guy in real life? He seems like he would be. But it’s been my experience that more often than not, people who achieved that level of fame and success are real douche bags. Which kinda makes sense, ’cause what kind of frail ego needs a spotlight that bright shined on it at all times?

But I know there are exceptions to this rule, and I’d like to think that Michaels is one of them. And the cops just found weed on his tour bus, so between the fact that he wrote “Unskinny Bop” and the fact that we both like to get tall, I think that Bret and I could be friends.

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