Every once in a while, I listen to, and enjoy, non-metal music. Currently, I’m being treated to the dulcet tones of The Best of Earth, Wind, and Fire, as my gentleman friend is attending their show soon and rubbing it in my face that I won’t be able to go. Bah, they got nothing on The Ohio Players. Hands up: who also thought “Love Rollercoaster” was an original RHCP song? Yeesh, I know. In my defense, the original came out a decade before I was even conceived.

Anyways, I also enjoy a lot of dance-y, electronic pop. Yes, I am a Lady Gaga fan. And I’m not the only metalhead with thinks so, either. She falls in that category of “Things metal folk like that you never would’ve guessed.” Like cute pictures of kitties, and Disney movies.

I was awake when Gaga’s new album came out at midnight (har har, my sister sent me a message when it was two minutes ‘til), so I bought it. I knew there was a song on it called “Heavy Metal Lover,” and I know that Gaga’s boyfriend is actually a metal fan. But reading the lyrics sealed the deal: not only did Lady Gaga write an ode to us metalheads, but she is one of us metalheads (one of us, one of us).

Check out some of the song’s lyrics if you don’t believe me:

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I like music videos. I don’t mean just lame concert footage videos either. (I get it, Band, you can play your instruments like, really well. In front of people!) No, I mean the amazing, overblown, explosions and nonsensical storylines, holy shit is that a cameo by jailbait Keri Russell in bra?!, looks like it was directed by Michael Bay, epic mini-movies. In fact, Meat Loaf’s, “I Would Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That),” has pretty much all of the aforementioned, except one. I won’t say which one, just look it up*. It is the most amazing seven minutes ever.  Except for the part where he prays to the god of, “Sex, and drums, and rock’n’roll.” Come on, now, you’re not fooling anyone.

The other night I couldn’t sleep. So I ended up watching music videos until the sun came up. I did not have a good day that day. Of course, I watched metal videos. (Okay fine, like half were Meat Loaf videos. He kind of hovers on the periphery of metal, right? He was in Rocky Horror Picture Show, he played a totally awesome biker named Eddie! Isn’t his daughter married to Scott Ian? Fringes, he’s on the fringes. Shut up, Meat Loaf is awesome. Even more so when I can’t type and write “Meat Load.” Good job proof-reading at 5:40 a.m.)

Videos were my first introduction to many bands. They were like trailers for records, and the more confusing and “deep” they were, the more interested I got. I’m not saying there are no good videos anymore, but I just can’t believe we live in a time where it’s no longer cool to shred shirtless on a cliff while your bandmate gets married but then it starts raining and the bride is dead and Axl Rose is swimming with dolphins while Stephanie Seymour beats up a girl in a bar. I mean, maybe it’s a good thing bands don’t go bankrupt after videos anymore. and the Guns N’ Roses trilogy more than borders on the ridiculous (Hi Shannon Hoon! I see you, there on the roof!) but let’s take a look at some that kind of stuck with me.

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Why this song, why now? WSOU‘s Steve Stracq, a fellow Ratturday celebrator and surprisingly seasoned hair metal aficionado for his years, always seems to be playing this song whenever I tune in. Doesn’t matter when; I feel like every time I turn on SOU and hear Steve on the air there’s Dokken, and there’s “Breakin’ the Chains.”

But I don’t think I’ve ever seen the video until now. And… oh God, this video is horrible! Except for George Lynch’s chain-breaking guitar solo, which is full of pure, unadulterated win.

But I still got nothin’ but love for the song. This one’s for you, Steve… and if you’re DJing today or this weekend, spin this track for me! I know you’re reading this.

-VN

At the Accept show I went to last week, I had a pretty funny moment with the boy when I said that it sounded like they were singing “We are nice” instead of “Neon nights.” Which got me thinking: I mishear lyrics a lot. It could be because I’m deaf, or people just don’t enunciate, or that most of the bands I listen to don’t really know English that well so they probably are singing stupid shit. Or it could be that I’d rather hear something than what I actually do — I mean, Bob Ezrin wanted a new, edgy song to appeal to those hip youngsters and thought Alice Cooper was singing “I’m edgy,” instead of “I’m eighteen.” Personally, I’m way more entertained with what my brain, or other people’s brains (as I got some volunteers for this task), comes up with. So here are a few songs that made it to my Misheard Lyrics Hall of Fame.

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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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MS commenter “Sat,” also of HeavyStreet.com, has been requesting an MS interview with former Winger/Dokken/Whitesnake/Night Ranger shredder Reb Beach forever. Though today is not that day — and Hair Metal Week at MS is likely not that week — perhaps we’ll get to a Reb Beach interview some day. I honestly wouldn’t even know who to contact about that, but I’ll bet he’d be game; how many interview requests do you think Reb Beach gets?

I see why Sat wants a candid look into Beach’s mind, though; dude is a bonafide virtuoso that isn’t just about shredding for the sake of shredding. It’s obvious that the guy’s got a great sense of song structure and melody and has a great idea of what makes shred interesting instead of just a series of notes played in rapid succession. To classify him simply as a “shredder” would also be a gross mis-categorization… dude’s just a fantastic player through and through; he uses nifty chord voicings, has a great sense of melody (as previously mentioned) and has a bluesy tint to his playing.

Shred on, Reb, shred on. There is no question that your are an infinitely more talented player than Kirk Hammett.

-VN

Bobby Blotzer’s life reads like something out of the mind of a Hollywood screenwriter. Raised in a blue collar neighborhood in Pittsburgh, PA, he achieved fame and fortune playing drums for Ratt in the mid-‘80s, only to find himself, and the kind of hard rock his band played, out of fashion throughout the ‘90s. During the time when boy bands and pop punk acts like Blink 182 and The Offspring ruled the Billboard charts, Blotzer figured out new ways to keep busy and make money. One of the things he did was start a small steam cleaning carpet business. Here was a guy who had headlined Madison Square Garden driving a van around Los Angeles and hustling Scotch Guard to housewives who might have had Out of the Cellar in their music collection. The music business can be cruel.

Despite the career turn of events, Blotzer pushed forward, and the musical climate finally was ready for Ratt’s brand of Sunset Strip kissed rock-n-roll. The band signed to Roadrunner Records in 2009 and recently released Infestation, one of the finest hard rock albums of the last few years – period. Even though Blotzer was busy writing and recording the record, he still found time to finish Tales of a Ratt, his newly released autobiography.

Anyone familiar with the drummer already knows that he’s never been one to hold back his feelings. If you’re looking for inside stories about Ratt and the golden age of the Sunset Strip, the book will not disappoint you. There is plenty of shit talking too. Don Dokken, Nikki Sixx, and Kevin DuBrow (the late lead singer of Quiet Riot) are among some of Blotzer’s targets. There are some grammar issues and spelling mistakes throughout the book, but that’s beside the point. The way I like to explain Tales of a Ratt to people is this: imagine sitting next to Bobby at the bar at The Rainbow, and he’s telling you stories without any kind of filter.

Metal Sucks spoke with Bobby a few days after he was arrested for DUI, though he didn’t mention it during the interview. As you’ll read below Blotzer seems a bit uneasy about the current state of Ratt. He complains about vocalist Stephen Pearcy and lead guitarist Warren DeMartini and their stubbornness. A few days after our interview, Ratt cancelled their European tour, saying that Pearcy needed to undergo hernia surgery. Hopefully Ratt can get everything worked out and get back out on the road, because Infestation is worth the hassle. Check out the interview below and make sure you also pick up Tales of a Ratt directly from Blotzer’s official website today.

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Tonight, some friends and I are getting really, really, really, really, really, insanely, stupidly, inappropriately high and going to see the re-make of A Nightmare on Elm Street at a theater that pretty much guarantees no one in the audience will give a shit about things like, say, being quiet during the movie. Of course, these days, it seems like very few people care about being quiet during the movie (or turning off their cell phone, or not texting, or leaving their baby at home, or whatever) – but slasher flicks are that rarest of genre, precisely because you want a noisy audience. The stories are always ridiculous and the kids are so annoying you’re pretty much rooting for the villain, so they work best as concert experiences – you want people shouting at the screen, screaming at moments appropriate or otherwise, and generally causing mayhem and chaos throughout the audience. I still can’t figure out what the fuck is going on in Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, but I’ll never forget seeing it in theaters and the dude behind yelling out, in response to a couple’s decision not to use a condom, “MIGHT AS WELL, YOU’RE GONNA DIE ANYWAY!!!” And he was right, of course – the couple gets killed like ten seconds later.

Even with a raucous crowd, the movie might suck – and the soundtrack most certainly won’t feature anything as awesome as Dokken’s “Dream Warriors,” which was the theme song for 1987′s A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. That’s still the best movie in the franchise, besides the 1984 original. And when I was a kid I always really liked this video, because instead of just intercutting random footage of the band with clips from the movie which had no relation to one another, they tried to cut the band into the movie to make one continuous story. Of course, the results are still cheesy as fuck, but c’mon… this song ROCKS.

And just for shits n’ giggles, after the jump is the video for Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” which was directed by Samuel Bayer, the man who helmed the Nightmare remake.

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So Rocklahoma, the once cock-rockalicious festival, may be a wash this year, but it seems that there’s already a new fest to grab ahold of the Aquanet and let us relive our youth gone wile: Rock N America, which take place from July 23 to July 25 in – get this – Oklahoma. Huh.

The line-up basically plays like a who’s who of who shoulda been playing Rocklahoma this year: Scorpions, Twisted Sister, Ratt, Warrant, Dokken, Great White, Enuff Z’Nuff, Bullet Boys, Faster Pussycat, and the Tracii Guns/Jizzy Pearl version of L.A. Guns are all the bill. More bands will be announced soon; in my imagination that will include whatever is passing for Skid Row these days, Vince Neil, Adler’s Appetite, Beautiful Creatures and/or Bang Tango, and the other version of L.A. Guns. But who knows.

It is worth noting that the fest will take place at the Zoo Amphitheatre, which a) has a smaller capacity than the giant open fields of Rocklahoma and b) isn’t just a cool name from some venue, but, rather, is called the “Zoo Amphitheatre” because it’s actually at the fucking zoo. So unless it’s always been Chip Z’Nuff’s dream to play for a crowd of zebras, this isn’t going to be quite the event that Rocklahoma was for these bands.

Still, you should visit the Rock N America website, even if you’re not really interested in attending the show, because, well, it’s like the shittiest website of 1994 and is consequently pretty hilarious.

-AR

[via Bring Back Glam]

I was never really a Dokken fan, but I know my man Anso is; so I think he’d be pretty stoked to see the below video of George Lynch joining Dokken on-stage for the song “In My Dreams.” Which, sadly, is not “Dream Warriors” from A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors, which just might be my personal favorite Nightmare flick, and had a really, really awesome video.

And here’s that bitchin’ “Dream Warriors” video I was talking about:

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I’m not sure how Dokken ended up in this Norton Internet Security commercial; I mean, how fucking random can you get? Is there some inside joke that I’m not getting here – like does Don Dokken have some infamous chicken story akin to Led Zep’s shark incident? Or do the manatees that write Family Guy also do ad copy now?

Regardless of whatever the actual story behind this spot is, it tickles me so.

Boy oh boy do I bet that George Lynch wishes he was still in the band now!!!

If you’d like to see two other versions of this same commercial, head over to Blabbermouth.

-AR

[Welcome to our new column Hair Metal Happy Hour, which will be manned by the fine writer Michael S. Robinson. Things have been admittedly less hairy around here lately, but we hope to rectify that situation with this semi-regular column. Huh huh, he said "rectum-fry." - Ed.]

It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost twenty years since glorious hair metal ruled the charts and MTV. Once the crispy, crunchity sounds of the Pacific northwest took over, many of our cock-rocking heroes from the 80s faded into oblivion, while others continued to record sporadically, enjoying varying degrees of success, or lack thereof.

Now it’s 2008, almost 20 years to the day since Stryper released In God We Trust, and we find ourselves in the midst of unarguably the greatest year for hair metal releases since the 1980s. I’m not sure what any of us have done to bring about this incredible turn of good fortune, but it’s worth pausing to analyze, and give thanks for the bounty of hair metal we have been given, and are about to receive, in 2008.

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Over the weekend Blabbermouth reported that Poison will be doing another edition of their summer package tour, which isn’t surprising – for glam fans $30 to see three old hair metal acts complete with big light shows, pyro, and all the fixings is a pretty good deal.

What is kind of surprising is that Sebastian Bach has been announced as one of the openers; he’ll rotate with the other one, a George Lynch-less Dokken.

You read that correctly, folks. Dokken.

Now, Baz hasn’t exactly been the most dignified of sorts, but there’s a pretty huge difference between opening for Axl Rose at Madison Square Garden and opening for Poison at pretty much fuckin’ anywhere.

Funnier still is this quote from a 1999 interview with Baz: “We [Skid Row] were definitely separate from Poison and Warrant… Skid Row fans are not Poison fans.”

Oh, well. It’s easy to talk big when you don’t have bills to pay, I guess.

-AR

Because who doesn’t want to hear Dokken rocking “Santa Claus is coming to town?”

-VN

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[Thanks to MetalSucks commeter TedTedPoleyPoley for the link]