Maybe this?
Or this?
Or, God forbid, even this?
*shudder*Well, blogolytes and blogolettes, when I think "HAIR," I think of THIS!
That's right: the real boys of summer are back in heavy rotation on my iPod, and it's time for me to show them some love. And since I blew all my spare money on Gaga tickets, this does not involve me flashing my boobs from the front row. (They'll have to wait till next summer for that!) For the next few weeks, my love will flow through my fingers (ooer!) and onto the internet. You read correctly--the next few blog posts (and they'll be appearing more regularly) are all for my darling boys in spandex.
Picture the scene: it's 1986, I'm 9 years old, and I'm watching MTV: *MUSIC* Television. Inappropriate? Shut up. If we could only watch the MTV of 25 years ago alongside the 2010 version...it's like comparing the work of Princess Diana with the work of Caligula (respectively). I'm digressing. I have to watch out, my ire with the inbred mutant cannibal that MTV has become has a tendency to lead me off on tangents. Let's start again.
Picture the scene: it's 1986, I'm 9 years old, and I'm watching MTV. "Dial MTV" to be precise--it's like TRL, except you don't want to brutally murder the host, the live audience, and the various other chuckleheads who make an appearance. Oh, and they actually SHOW the videos that people REQUEST TO SEE. Revolutionary. There I go again! One more time.
Picture the scene: 1986, 9 years old, MTV, "Dial MTV." Uh-oh. Dad's home from work. Time to vacate. From my own room right next door, I can hear that Dad has not turned off my show. He calls to me, "Hey, Tara, there's a group from Mechanicsburg on here!" He refers, of course, to Bret Michaels and the glamazons of Poison. Mechanicsburg, PA is a little hamlet that sits geographically right next door to my own hometown. It's important to know that, at 9, I thought that Camp Hill, PA was effectively the middle of nowhere. I hadn't driven through Kansas at that point. To have a band emerge from this area to achieve greatness was (and still is) a point of pride for me.
But I cringed in that moment, not proud at all. The video he was about to see was their visually tame but lyrically ribald ode to aural fixations, "Talk Dirty to Me." At 9, I hadn't worked out the mechanics of sex, but I knew that this was risky business. And MY DAD WAS ABOUT TO SEE WHAT I WAS WATCHING...yeeeeeshhhh. I held my breath as I heard C.C. hit it. It wasn't long before he switched the t.v. off. I braced for impact--surely, surely! Dad would come in here and ask what the heck was I doing watching that stuff? I hadn't yet discovered snark or sarcasm, and so had no answers prepared.
I waited. Nothing happened. NOTHING HAPPENED! I was free to play air guitar another day! Yet another reason why my parents are the coolest. Live and let watch.
Through the rest of that decade, my relationship with MTV and with the hair bands that graced its airwaves flourished. I thought I had reached an unprecedented level of coolness when my first album purchase arrived in the mail, courtesy of BMG Music Club (the idea of "obligated to buy in the future" was still utterly foreign--I sent in my penny scotch-taped to the order form, dammit--bring on my music!): KISS's 1986 masterwork, Crazy Nights. Okay, people are going to take issue with the qualifier "masterwork." Let them. This is still one of the only albums I can listen to front to back, and sing along with, and dance around my room to. There's a hook, a riff, a joinable chorus to every single song. Any of the tracks could've been a single--how many albums can boast that in 2010? Crazy Nights is an album with songs that you know, but you don't know you know--"Reason to Live," "Turn On the Night," the title track. Because I love you, they're all right here:
Look at all that hair.
I don't want you to think that my love affair with all things hair metal has been without its rough patches. If you love something, really love it, you know that, once or twice, you've taken heat for your tastes. My test came in 8th grade. This was the year that, reaching unknown heights of self-proclaimed coolness, I got into an R-rated movie with no questions asked at 13 years of age. It helped that my body was pretty smokin'. The movie in question was Wes Craven's Shocker, and its soundtrack was awesome. Megadeth, Iggy Pop, and a one-time-only supergroup collaboration between Paul Stanley of KISS, Desmond Child (he's written songs you know), Tommy Lee (the Crue), Vivian Campbell (Whitesnake/Def Leppard), Rudy Sarzo (Whitesnake), and Michael Anthony (Van Halen), among others.
How did this much awesome cause me trouble?
In my day, 8th graders at a certain central-Pennsylvanian Catholic school did not have dances. Well, we were having one! Of course, they called it a mixer, but who cared? It was a chance to see our whole class out of those silly uniforms (ooer!) and in regular street clothes (mostly likely stonewashed jeans cuffed at the ankle and an oversized neon-printed sweatshirt for yours truly--ever the fashion plate). There was no DJ--it was up to us to bring music. Since I loved the Shocker soundtrack so much, it made sense that everyone else would love it too!
They didn't.
They gave me that look that you give the self-deluded. The "What IS this?" look. The "Are you HIGH?" look. The look that makes you wish you had gotten sick and stayed home from the mixer.
Here's the song--written and performed by the supergroup with the painfully awesome moniker: The Dudes of Wrath (yes please!)--admittedly, it's not the magnum opus of the hair metal genre (that honor arguably goes to either Bon Jovi's "Living on a Prayer" or Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar on Me"). But it's got what I want. A riff, a hook, a chorus that soars and begs to be joined.
I got teased most of the rest of that year by a certain young man who liked to catch my eye and mime "Shocker! Shocker!" I had no comeback. My sharp tongue is a 21st century development. I just blushed and turned away. But I'd go home and play that song LOUD and damn the stupid young man for making me feel silly.
I'm not alone in my love for cock rock--but for a while back in the early- to mid-1990s, it sure felt like I was. Hairspray had taken a backseat to flannel, and melodies had been sacrificed on the throne of angst. But lo! and behold! In 1999, I attended the first of many concerts on the nostalgia ticket. People became sick of the seriousness, sick of being so angry, and the pop music charts reflected this: Backstreet Boys, NSync, Britney, Xtina, etc. etc. etc. The Mickey Mouse Club took over Billboard. And the first Glam Slam Metal Jam rolled through Hershey, PA, with Slaughter, Cinderella, and Poison.
I witnessed a world without grunge, and I saw that it was good.
Golly, but I've written a lot. I think I'm going to leave you now with some more pictures. Because hair metal needs to be seen to be believed.
(Kip Winger is still hot. There, I said it. I am not ashamed!)
(Ronnie James Dio said that he introduced the devil horns sign to metal music. I believe him, because I am slightly afraid of him.)
(This was never cool. Just for the record.)
(Bad News is a funnier metal parody than Spinal Tap. Seriously. L-R: Rik Mayall as Colin Grigson, Nigel Planer as Den Dennis, Adrian Edmonson as Vim Fuego, and Peter Richardson as Spyder Webb. Find them on YouTube. Watch. Laugh. Thank me.)
Watch this space. June's list is gonna rock you like a hurricane.
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