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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Anso can have Steel Panther, Vince can have Ratt, and you, Reader, can have Quiet Riot (even though Frankie Banali played in W.A.S.P. for quite a while, Quiet Right still sucks in this guy’s book). Pretty much everyone in Mötley Crüe has proven to be a scuzzbag in one form or another aside from Mick Mars — the poor guy — but if we’re doling out Sunset Strip bands to worship (that don’t feature Axl Rose — no fair), let me get first dibs on W.A.S.P. Sure, my family looks at me a little weird and even my best friend doesn’t “get it” when I crank the iPod or put Inside The Electric Circus on the turntable, but what do they all know anyway?

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Call it PBS, or Power Ballad Syndrome; Queensryche are yet another band whose biggest hit was a soft acoustic number — the haunting “Silent Lucidity” — and who were subsequently written off by many MTV viewers (and any young metal fans today who happen to stumble upon the song) who didn’t care to dig into the band’s deep history. But Queensryche were anything but hair metal; instead they were arguably one of the most crucial bands in progressive metal history, most certainly of the ’80s (and ’90s). If you had to put together a simple flow chart denoting key progressive metal influence over a period of time, it’d look something like this:

Rush -> Iron Maiden -> Queensryche -> Dream Theater -> BTBAM -> ?

An extremely important cog indeed. In a time when most metal focused on sex, drugs and rock n’ roll, Queenryche made it ok to be smart and be a metalhead by writing complex musical compositions with socially conscious lyrics.

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You’ve been reading the MetalSucks/Bring Back Glam! countdown of the 10 Best Must-Have Glam Metal Albums this week (part one here, part two here), so you’ve noticed that our Anso DF and BBG! chief Allyson B. Crawford’s Glam-crazy chemistry is like one of those Tarantino scenes where rogues trade passionate dissertations on Madonna or armed robbery. Or maybe it’s more like those Kevin Smith monologues about farting. One of those. Ahem. Oh, hey look it’s the number four album!

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4. REST IN SLEAZE - Crashdiet

May 20, 2005 // Universal Records // p: Anders Ringman, Chris Laney, Grizzly/Tysper

The hits: “Riot In Everyone” “Knokk ‘Em Down” “Breakin’ the Chainz” “It’s A Miracle”

The heart: “Queen Obscene/69 Shots” “Tikket” “Out of Line”

Anso: I’ve been dying to talk to you about this record! Its appearance on our list blows me away for the following reasons:

Reason #1 – It was not released in the ’80s. Not even the ’90s. And yet you imply that it’s more vital to a respectable glam metal library than a hundred great records from the genre’s days of glory? Even here you rank it higher than freaking Appetite! Explain yourself!

Allyson: Total mind freak, right? I’m sure the haters will be out on this one! Singer Dave Lepard was simply way ahead of his time. Then again, Sweden is the fertile crescent of Glam Metal these days. The kids over there know how to write a catchy riff. Crashdiet was the first Glam Metal band to be signed to a major label (Universal) in over a decade.

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Yeah, sure, I could fall back on the whole Van Halen “they really pre-dated hair metal” argument and put this article to bed right now, but that would be too easy. And, besides, there are plenty of other reasons why you should cringe every time someone referes to Def Lep as “hair metal” or “glam.”

Sure, Def Lep covered some of the same thematic bases as a most hair metal bands — namely, sex (with and without love) and the awesome power of rock n’ roll. But those lyrical tropes date back as far as rock music itself, so they don’t really count. And, sure, Def Leppard had some of the slickest production out there — but they were sharing a producer with AC/DC and Foreigner (MUTT FUCKING LANGE — show some respect), not Warrant and Winger (hello, Beau Hill). And, yeah, it’s easy to find pictures of Def Lep dressed like idiots, but guess what? It was the 80s. Everyone dressed like an idiot. I literally cannot remember seeing a single person with decent fashion sense in the 1980s. It was just, like, a ten year period when everyone temporarily went retarded, attire-wise. (And, for the record, I can’t find a single photo of the band where anyone is dressed like a lady; even the amount of hair product they used seems to be fairly reasonable by the standards of the day.)

So what does that make Def Leppard? Oh yeah. Just one of the most awesome arena rock bands of all time.

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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…

If Van Halen set the standard for the flashy guitar techniques and outrageous frontman theatrics that would later come to define hair metal, then it’s only fair to call Extreme their proverbial nephews and similarly disrobe them of the “hair metal” tag. At their peak more than a full decade after EVH and DLR changed the face of heavy music forever, the Boston duo of Gary Cherone on vocals and wunkerkind Nuno Bettencourt on guitar channeled the vintage feel-good VH vibes into three killer albums that still stand up today. Nuno’s unabashed EVH worship was on display at all times both in his supersonic leads and intricately voiced, highly rhythmic rhythms — I suppose one could argue that he stylistically one-upped EVH and took everything he’d done to the next level, but I don’t think I’m gonna go there — and Cherone, though not as outrageous as David Lee Roth, certainly summoned his whacky / feel good on-stage personality, and not for nothin’ was definitely a better vocalist. And of course there’s that little thing where Cherone sang for Van Halen for a minute… but we don’t talk about that.

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We now rejoin Allyson B. Crawford (Bring Back Glam!) and Anso DF (MetalSucks) and their riveting analysis of Glam Metal’s Ten Best Must-Have Records.

Get caught up on yesterday’s action here.

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7. TRASH - Alice Cooper

July 25, 1989 // Epic Records // p: Desmond Child

The hits: “Poison” “Bed of Nails” “House of Fire” “Only My Heart Talkin’”

The heart: “Hell Is Living Without You” “Spark In The Dark” “I’m Your Gun”

Anso: So by 1989′s Trash, Coop had been in a booze stupor for like seven straight albums. The good news was that his successful comeback tour inspired some check-writing at Epic Records. But that support came with strict control, or at least that’s what the presence of Bon Jovi/Kiss/Aerosmith/Ratt hit-maker Desmond Child implies. So Allyson, what’s your stance on Desmond Child?

Allyson: I got to interview Alice Cooper once. One of the highlights of my life, I swear. The man rules. He was all about sobriety when we spoke and I think that’s awesome. Now, Desmond Child. Oh my. I’ve written about him before on Bring Back Glam!. I suppose he is — no, he is a genius, but damn. Aerosmith is my favorite band of all time and Child sort of took away their grit. So that hurt. But for some people he really, really helped and that’s Alice Cooper. Alice needed a hit for a new generation and Trash came along at the right time, didn’t it? Oh and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to meet and interview Desmond Child, so there you go.

Anso: Hey, same here! His stuff is mega-cheesy, but so are delicious Cheetos. Plus, Detonator rules, so it’s easy to forgive misfires like “I Was Made For Lovin’ You.” Oh and of course I warmed to him after VH1 aired that hilarious footage of his collaboration with (and antagonism of) Vince Neil. You saw that right? “Hello-o! Successs!”

Allyson: Yeah, I’ve seen that. Oh, I’ve seen it.

Anso: Okay, Trash was buffed up by a full whack of celebrity guests: Richie Sambora and Jon Bon Jovi, Kip Winger, Guy Mann-Dude, Steve Lukather, and 80% of Aerosmith. I suppose they helped pull chicks and young people to this old man record. Did these guys make Trash more attractive to you in any way?

Allyson: Because I’m a chick? Well, here’s the thing about me. I’ll agree there are some hot guys in rock, but that doesn’t mean much to me when it comes to music I like. If the song rocks, awesome. If not, okay. I like tons of music that is mocked — often right here on MetalSucks, ha! — and I always “go my own way if you will.” Trash is awesome to me because I love the songs. “Only My Heart Talkin’” is a great love song, a completely different type of power ballad. But, back to guests. I usually don’t care about guest stars on albums. I buy records because I want to hear the real band — not a slew of guests, you know?

Anso: Yeah. I’m not an Alice Cooper scholar, but I’ll wager that Trash is his sexiest record. It’s a bit uncomfortable to hear a 41-year old Coop describe passionate banging.

Allyson: As you know, my dear Anso, sexy is in the eyes of the beholder.

Anso: Hey, let’s talk about Trash‘s super-hit, “Poison.” Can you think of any single in history with such a memorably quirky riff? It’s awesome on its own and I love how they set it against different chords in the intro.

Allyson: So I’ve talked to Alice guitarist Keri Kelli a few times. Once I said I was frustrated trying to learn bass and guitar parts for some Alice songs. And Keri said something like, “Look, if you want to learn ‘Poison’ it’s just going to take awhile.” This frustrated me because I have little patience. I think I got off the phone with Keri, looked at the guitar and then sat down with a bag of chips or something. Anyway, yes, “Poison” is freaking epic. One of the best songs of the ’80s. Then again, Alice is a master. I love when the band performs “Poison” live. The crowd always goes batshit crazy.

Anso: What else makes you love this record?

Allyson: Hmm. It’s the sum of its parts I guess. I think all the songs fit well together, there’s not really a dud and the album helped push Alice to the top again. The cover photo is iconic. It was in magazines first and then Alice chose it as his cover — so I remember seeing the image of Alice everywhere as a kid. I had this instant connection to the record I suppose.

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Read Leyla’s list of The Top Ten Worst Hair Metal Band Names here.

All right, this was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be and for a while I considered just doing a part two of bad names. But, like hair metal itself, there are always some gems floating amidst the crap, and with a little borrowing from other overlapping genres, ten candidates were found for the best of hair band names. So you’re safe for now, Trixter, Tora, Tora, Kix, and Stryper…

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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…

I know what you’re thinking: “How the hell is Vince going to argue that Bon Jovi weren’t a hair metal band? Look at those guys! They’re the biggest poofty poofters of all time.” And you’d be right about all of things excepts for one: in order to be classified as hair metal, Bon Jovi would have to have been — or even aspired to be — a heavy metal band, when in fact they were just ordinary New Jersey dudebros playing pop. Pop in rock form with distorted guitars. Let’s call it hair pop.

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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…

Like Van Halen, entry #9 on this most dubious of lists, it’s easy to see why so many people call Quiet Riot hair metal. The Los Angeles quartet displayed so many of the trapping of the hair metal era — namely lotsa hair (though Dubrow’s wig could call this into question in the later years), a bulge-in-the-pants sense of machismo and giant-sized rock anthems about sex, booze and bangin’ your head — but how can any band be part of a trend they pre-dated by so many years? Quiet Riot got together in 1973 — 1973!! — and released their first album in 1975, long before the Poisons and Cinderellas and even the Motley Crues and Ratts started patrolling the Sunset Strip.

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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.

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You didn’t seriously think I’d let Hair Metal Week pass by without once again plugging Ratt’s tremendous comeback album Infestation, did you?

It’s really that good. Promise! Where so many hair bands — or, shit, bands of any era whose time in the sun has come and gone — try to recreate the past and end up instead with a dull approximation, Ratt have completely and 100% captured the sound that made them so great in the first place. The combination of Warren DeMartini’s endless supply of tasty riffs mixed with ex-Quiet Riot axe slinger Carlos Cavazo’s own songwriting abilities and delicious solos — channeled through the so-good-it-hurts production of Michael “Elvis” Baskette — makes for a winning formula that still has Infestation in constant rotation these many months after its release.

It’s a fantastic album you need to hear if you are or ever were a fan of even just one Ratt song. Stream the entire album here (in the widget farther down the page). Trust me on this one.

-VN

PS: Check out the interview Carlos Ramirez did for us with Ratt drummer Bobby Blotzer (he talks lots of smack!) and another interview Zena Metal did for us with Stephen Pearcy in which he seems tickled with the idea of Ratturday.

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…

As with many rock and metal bands that the major labels brought to prominence towards the end of the hair era (non-definitely, let’s just say approximately ’89-’91), Saigon Kick were mis-marketed — and hence misconstrued in the public eye — as hair metal. It didn’t help that, like so many hair metal bands, the big hit that catapulted them into public view was a power ballad. So despite incorporating myriad influences from funk to punk to, of course, metal, Saigon Kick were written off by a mostly apathetic public who, in the post-Nirvana era, thought that if it had long hair and heavy guitars it must also have a ridiculous level of machismo and poofy hair. SO not the case with Saigon Kick, a terrific band who ironically may have experienced more success had the kind of music people thought they pedaled still been in style.

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Read part one, regarding Mr. Richie Kotzen, here.

The story of Blues Saraceno’s tenure with Poison is a sad, sad story indeed.

Saraceno was a solo instrumentalist, kind of in the vain of guys like Joe Satriani and Steve Vai, but really more like Kenny G. Saraceno released three albums on Guitar Recordings between 1989 and 1994: Never Look Back, Plaid, and Hairpick. Although his guitar tone was certainly unique and his magazine ads brandished a hyperbolic endorsement from Dweezil Zappa (I don’t remember it exactly, but it was something along the lines of, “This guy is so good I wanna punch him.”), I’m not entirely convinced that anyone really cared about who he was for any reason other than he kinda looked like Slash. (To your left is the largest photo of Saraceno in his Slash phase that I was able to find. Seriously.)

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