S&D: Glam Metal/Hair Metal

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.

https://rateyourmusic.com/release/comp/various-artists/youth-gone-wild-heavy-metal-hits-of-the-80s-volume-2.p/

being talked about in the metal thread but Tracii Guns and Michael Sweet from Stryper have a new band together called Sunbomb and their new album is great. not glam though, like heavy traditional euro metal/doom/power metal stuff

How many Hanoi Rocks albums were even issued in the US back in the '80s? I think only the last one from before their breakup; the others were only available on import iirc. That partially explains their low profile (ofc I realize we're not all Americans here). The Sunset Strip crowd could just go to Tower or Amoeba and find them, but it'd be a different situation in suburbia.

They were always more of a cult band in the UK as far as I recall it, Kerrang! were into them but the sleaze rock thing hadn't really kicked off yet. Probably helped that drummer Razzle had been in a band with Kerrang! cartoonist Ray Zell, hence the similarity in names!

Malibu Beach and their Up Around the Bend cover got a bit of UK airplay but didn't make the top 40. Wikipedia says the Two Steps From the Move album squeezed into the top 30 here though.

xxpost damn Michael Sweet sounds fucking great still. thx for the rec, ums, will def check this out

Michael Sweet gets around! I just noticed by clicking on "fans also like" that he and George Lynch released a couple albums together as Sweet & Lynch. It's definitely in the more American vein of 80s metal than Sunbomb, but damn do I love hearing George Lynch do George Lynchy things (instead of whatever that dumb band was he had with Dug Pinnick).

lmao

I want to do at least one SUNBOMB show just so I can hear @michaelhsweet say . How y’all doing tonight? We are GUNS N MOSES!!!

— Tracii ⨁ 🇺🇸🇩🇰 (@TraciiGuns) May 8, 2021

ha!

So are any of these yelpers and shriekers secretly good or clever lyricists?

Axl probably the best lyricist by far?

For sure the most distinctive, in the pure Id sense, I guess.

Axl is a great lyricist, great turns of phrase that are so distinctive

Strapped in the chair of the city's gas chamber
Why I'm here I can't quite remember
The Surgeon General says it's hazardous to breathe
I'd have another cigarette but I can't see
Tell me who you're gonna believe

is a cut above

Ricky was a young boy
He had a heart of stone
Lived 9 to 5 and he worked
His fingers to the bone

imo

You got your bitches with the silicone injections
Crystal meth and yeast infections
Bleached blond hair, collagen lip projections
Who are you to criticize my intentions?
Got your subtle manipulative devices
Just like you I got my vices
I got a thought that would be nice
I'd like to crush your head tight in my vice...pain!!

That's actually pretty impressive in terms of rhyme and wordplay!

I really like the lyrics to "Right Next Door to Hell"

Blackie Lawless!

Blind in Texas

An El Paso hellhole, I couldn't get much higher
White lightning moonshine, tastes like fire
I drank for free till I couldn't see
I fell on the floor, what I said is
I'm blind in Texas, the lone star is hot tonight
I'm blind in Texas, the cowboys have taken my eyes
I drank Dallas whiskey and lost my mind
Had high-balls in Houston, three for a dime
Everything starts to spin, loaded on gin
I fell out the door, what I said is
I'm blind in Texas, the lone star is hot tonight
I'm blind in Texas, the cowboys have taken my eyes
San Antonio and the West Texas town El Paso
Corups Christi and Waco, the Yellow Rose is wild
Hey dude, let's party
Raisin hell in Austin just after sundown
When the hoosegow police decided to come round- they said
"Boy what's the matter with you, what you trying to do?"
I looked at the man and I said
'I think I'll have another one'
-We ain't got no more-
'What do ya mean you ain't got no more liqour'
-We ain't got no more, go home-
'What do ya mean go home, what am I supposed to
do... get on a horse and ride back to LA?'
They've got no horse
What do you mean-they got no horse?
There's no HORSE--'the hell you say... suffer!"
I'm blind in Texas, the lone star is hot tonight
I'm blind in Texas, I'm blind

yeah Blackie was definitely from the old school, more Alice Cooper

he was def committed to the idea of the “show”

i rate Tom Keifer/Cinderella for lyrics

and Janey Lane/Warrant as well

Blackie was even in NY Dolls for five minutes

He was! Also weren’t him & Nikki Sixx in London together for like a minute too

Blackie's lyrics to Rebel in the F.D.G. are a nice hedonistic fantasy, exactly the type of song I'd love to play while driving 80 miles an hour on an empty highway and dream of the unattainable "glamorous" form of debauchery where there are no hangovers, any jail sentences are cushy, you don't wind up accidentally killing anybody, and then when your body is partied out, it just dies peacefully. also killer guitar riff.

https://genius.com/Wasp-rebel-in-the-fdg-lyrics

xpost - I think everyone was in London for a minute, that band was like the glam metal farm team

right!? “if you wanna be in this scene you need your girlfriend’s makeup, a teasing comb & to be a former member of London”

I’m still amused that there was both a UK band, London SS, in the original punk scene and the US glam metal London where both bands were starting points for a whole bunch of players. (As separate from the other UK punk band simply called London.)

Didn't London put in a brief appearance in The Decline of Western Civilization Pt. II, or am I thinking of Odin?

they featured quite a bit in Decline 2, on-camera interview clips & some stage stuff i think

they even said themselves in the doc that they were like a gateway band or something