S&D: Glam Metal/Hair Metal

WASP/Electric Circus : title track on now - and yeah, this hits the spot.
i clearly prefer the dirtier sound as opposed to the clean side of this era.

well then you'll love W.A.S.P., who basically bathe in bacon grease and KY Jelly

glad you like that first LA Guns, sleaze masterpiece

just remembered I did buy that first LA Guns during my hair metal revisitation period and I did indeed like that one.

Going back to my initial misgivings, the issue as I see it is that just about all of these bands were equally inspired by Kiss and Van Halen, but none of them were even close to as good as Van Halen and at best some of them were about as good as Kiss, which is about as meaningless a victory as you can get. The smartest or the best of the bunch were the ones the hewed closest to '70s hard rock and punk.

I do feel a little bad for a lot of these folks. They were making so much money but ultimately losing so much more, and in the end if the only reason you're making music at all is for the adulation and the booze/drugs/girls that goes with it, and those things go away, then you're not left with much. It's not like Rikki Rockett was going to start writing bestsellers, you know? That said, I'm sure all of these bands are doing fine on the nostalgia circuit, along with their equivalents from the same or other decades. And at the end of the book the aforementioned Mr. Rockett is now espousing the virtues of girls in their '30s.

Oh, and back to this dude:

I went to a college with a guy who, well into the latter half of the '90s, would argue strenuously that Kip Winger was a criminally underrated musical genius.

A few years back Winger got a Grammy nom for Best Classical Contemporary Composition.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L81u2K2d3To

Hanoi Rocks were fully in the middle of it imo- influenced a lot of ppl in the scene & then there’s Razzle’s death in 84 w Vince Neil
inextricably linked you could say

I feel like Hanoi Rocks were your favorite band's favorite band

I don't remember anyone actually listening to them back then

Yeah I feel like they were always kinda whispered about as being "legends" among hair metal kids back in junior high, but no one had really ever heard them because you didn't see their records around.

They never really toured America, right? Until '84 or whatever? But yeah, they're definitely in the sub-genre's sleazy DNA.

Hanoi Rocks were the only glam/hair band that had a saxophone

Obv. Johnny Thunders was the patron saint to a lot of these folks, too.

Haha, I didn't realize (or forgot) that that was the same Kip Winger!

Litterer Band was from northern Iowa and played the MN circuit some, always liked this song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMia4oEwbi4

Johnny Thunders was basically the pivot point between Faster Pussycat and The Replacements, not that the latter would have liked to admit it.

Angel of course were another massive 70s-era influence on all this stuff, and also spawned both Giuffria and House of Lords. More satin and silk than scarves and bangles though, image-wise.

Starz too

Girl was the early 80s NWOBHM attempt at emulating the NY Dolls, featuring later members of LA Guns and Def Leppard. Hair metal was never likely to be done successfully by Brits though, later bands like Dogs D'Amour and the Quireboys were more sleazy rock'n'roll than shred-glam.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4pWGrvt8yM

Although let's not forget Wrathchild

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwT2X93BrKc

what about.... Disney After Dark (D.A.D.) from Denmark?

xpost Points for bringing out a bazooka, minus points for having it fire confetti. I think they can be safely forgotten.

Wrathchild was fantastic, imaging a universe where even the LA Strip bands loved Motorhead.

I guess there were some serious Motorhead vibes.

what about.... Disney After Dark (D.A.D.) from Denmark?

Great band!

were there two Wrathchilds? because I swear I remember Wrathchild America

https://www.discogs.com/artist/1359235-Wrathchild-America

Shannon Larkin left the band in 1994 to fill the drum seat in Ugly Kid Joe; and some time later in Godsmack as well.

Red carded for that alone

DAD are great, def on the tail-end

way @ ugly kid joe connection

VG - I always detected a hint of surfy/gothy guitar in DAD, like they might have been into some new wave stuff

Yeah, 1987 was (in my estimation) hair metal's peak year, and starting in 1988 onward everything began drying up or getting lame except for a few upstarts like D.A.D. and Bang Tango, etc.

yeah Sleeping My Day Away has that awesome low-tuned guitar that kinda pushes into a different vibe than just straight hair metal

their hair def qualifies them though, lol

were there two Wrathchilds? because I swear I remember Wrathchild America

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, May 13, 2021 5:32 PM bookmarkflaglink

Yea they were a progressive thrash band who got sued by another country's Wrathchild, which derailed their career until they rebranded as Wrathchild America.

Then some of them split off to form the groove metal band Souls at Zero.

oh shit one of the weirdo dudes who I used to skate with and got me into janes addiction somehow ended up with a SLAVE RAIDER t-shirt and nobody had any idea who or what they were


also huge lols at LITTERER as a threatening sounding metal band name

haha I love it, a Slave Raider t-shirt in the wild

https://kcrr.com/iowa-rock-n-roll-hall-of-fame-to-induct-the-litterer-band/

xxxxxpost -

I should defend the Litterer name a bit (though it's ridiculous to expect that anyone would know this) - it was a family band three of the four are the Litterer siblings. They were known as the Litterer Band before.

Litterer siblings

So for a time they were ... kiddie Litterers.

lol

historic night:

In 1986, Slave Raider won all four Heavy Metal honors at the Minnesota Music Awards; that year Prince performed at the ceremony and Soul Asylum won for Best New Band.[1]

Re: Hanoi Rocks--IIRC in Get in the Van Henry Rollins talks about seeing them and liking the show. He compliments the lead singer, saying something like "he hit some Bowie, some Iggy, and some Jagger".

Good point about Hanoi Rocks upthread, i.e. "your favorite band's favorite band." If you read interviews in Hit Parader and Circus and RIP with just about anybody, Hanoi Rocks would come up more than half the time.

But when I went to the store? Zilch. Granted, I lived in smalltown north Alabama with a mall that had only two record stores, but it seems like it might have been hard for everybody to find those albums. When I finally got to hear Hanoi Rocks sometime well into my twenties, I feel like I missed out on what might have been so great about them that I might have recognized better at age 15.

Hanoi Rocks were definitely a band I looked for but didn't find at my mall when I was a kid.

is there a rhino-type various artists box set for this stuff?

probably lots of ghastly budget gas station ones out there lol

Don't think Light In The Attic have got quite there yet

I've been eyeing a Cinderella box set for a while.

Fenriz having a Hanoi Rocks tattoo probably increased their cult status.

hair metal needs it's Nuggets.

Hanoi Rocks were def keeping the New York Dolls dream alive by doing throwback music in a messy fun kinda way.

It was. kind of funny to hear them for the first time; i always heard *about* them as a teen but never got my hands on any music until the early 90’s and i was like wait THIS is what they were all talking about? it was a way different vibe than i expected

Yeah all of that sounds OTM about Hanoi Rocks. I do enjoy the songs I finally heard in my 20s, though. Sort of trashy glam rock/power pop, hit some of the same buttons for me that Cheap Trick and Redd Kross do, not that I was inspired to dig very deep.xps

It was actually the exact vibe I was hoping for.

Yeah, VG and Johnny Fever's experiences matched mine. We definitely all heard of and read namechecks of Hanoi Rocks well before any of us actually heard a note. In fact, I don't think I heard them until I found a cheap vinyl copy of Back to Mystery City in 2005 or 2006. It was not what I expected at all.

Rhino have 4 compilations in the Youth Gone Wild series.