Hair Metal Legends WARRANT playing on 6th Street Tonight!

I knew I forgot someone: Tesla (they'd go in my A list).

I considered putting Iron Maiden in the top but I just never really got into them. They just bored me.

As for WASP, well, I'll leave that alone. I just couldn't stand them, although Wild Child was pretty catchy.

Lita Ford? Looks mean nothing. She was very attractive, but that didn't make her music NOT suck.

I also forgot to put Black n' Blue in my final bottom of the barrel category. Oh, well.

I didn't add Loudness just because they were pretty bad too. I guess they might make an individual mention in the C list. I had one of their albums and it wasn't bad - even saw them live once.

Tex: Man, I listened to NOTHING but blues and folk music when I lived in Austin. Clifford Antoine (of Antoine's) used to sit me at the bar and feed me sodas all night so he could "keep an eye on me" - I was only 18 and wasn't really supposed to be in there but he liked my interest in the blues.

He introduced me to all kinds of great blues artists during my year there. It was a great experience. This was coming off my interest in heavy metal also.

By the same token, I love Latin music, classical, straight pop, jazz (traditional or otherwise), rockabilly, bluegrass, funk, r&b, industrial, you name it. Some of these bands made bad music, no doubt.

I once spoke to a legendary percussionist from Brazil (don't ask me his name - it is too hard to spell) after he did a show with Al Di Meola's acoustic band at Rockefellar's. I asked him who was playing drums on their new album and he said "synclavier" menaing they had a drum machine on the album.

He then said when I looked kinda funny at him, "Hey, man. Art don't pay the rent." While I didn't quit playing or listening to music for the creativity and art, that made a big impression on me. Why did all those blues artists sell their songs for whiskey and Cadillacs to rock musicians who made millions? Art don't pay the rent.

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Me fail English? That's unpossible.

 

Never a truer line was spoken!




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Everything you do, effects everything that is.

 

I heard Tesla, who I hated when they were big but now somewhat enjoy, is into a total Black Crowes trip at this point-- at least that's what the review of their last Austin show said. They did a mostly bluesy acoustic set at (I think) the Back Room a couple years back.

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If I ain't dead already, girl you know the reason why...

 

Jeff...I hear ya. I like all sorts of music, but I just keep coming back to the blues. It's my first and one-true love musically, and I just can't shake it. It first started when I began playing 3rd & 5th ward blues clubs when I was a teenager in the mid-70s. It continued after I moved to Austin and started hanging out and playing at Antone's & the Soap Creek Saloon. It continued through my time in Los Angeles up to today. And I hope it never ends because I am always discovering new things about the genre that I never knew. My big dream is to fly to Memphis, hang on Beale Street for a few days, thne rent a car and drive down through the Mississippi Delta and Louisiana back to Houston, hitting every single juke joint and blues dive along the way. One day I will have enough personal time to make this trip. Just not now.

And you're damn straight. Art don't pay the rent. If it did, I would be keying this post from my home computer instead of my office!

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"Blues is a Healer"
--John Lee Hooker

 

Tex: Ah, the office. Don't I know it!

That sounds like a cool trip. I played some of those 3rd Ward places in the late 80's. I used to go there after hours - around 3am - when I was the only white guy in the place except for one or two kids from the Mob at Rice U on horns.

Everyone was dressed up like Sanford and Son and the place was rockin'. The great thing was we would go from Stormy Monday done as a straight up slow blues shuffle to Foggy Day done as a samba to Nice Work If You Can It swingin' like crazy.

That was my first real introduction into the world of blues and jazz. What an education. During Ken Burns' Jazz series, they did a segment on Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers and talked about how it was like school for up and coming jazz musicians. Winton Marsalis, who played for Blakey, said that Blakey was great because he was nice but honest. "He would say, 'You're sad, but that's ok.'"

I relate because I remember hearing that!

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Me fail English? That's unpossible.

 

Warrant played a club up here a couple of years ago. Janie was flirting with some chick. Her boyfreind beat the crap out of him after the show. Does he still have the scars on his face?

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When we tire of well-worn ways, we seek for new. This restless craving in the souls of men spurs them to climb, and to seek the mountain view.
-- Ella Wheeler Wilcox

 

Some Bands you forgot (most of them belong in the A category):

White Snake
White Lion
Thin Lizzy
Scorpions
Night Ranger
Quiet Riot
Honeymoon Suite

DLR & Jovi Do not belong in A, in my opinion. Iron Maiden belong up there for sure.

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When we tire of well-worn ways, we seek for new. This restless craving in the souls of men spurs them to climb, and to seek the mountain view.
-- Ella Wheeler Wilcox

 

I did forget some:

Whitesnake probably deserves the A category.
White Lion is definitely B at best.
Thin Lizzy falls into the category with UFO though I'm not sure I really consider them heavy metal. Probably not. Great band though.
Scorpions IS on my A list.
Night Ranger was a really good band but I still don't consider them a hard rock band. If they are, I'd put them in the A.
Quiet Riot - B at best
Honeymoon Suite was a pop band.

Oh, I did forget Ted Nugent - don't like him but he's A.

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Me fail English? That's unpossible.

 

My bad, didn't see Scorpions.

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When we tire of well-worn ways, we seek for new. This restless craving in the souls of men spurs them to climb, and to seek the mountain view.
-- Ella Wheeler Wilcox

 

Man!! I cant believe I forgot Quiet Riot!
Randy's original band..I saw 'em at the Summit(or Coliseum,I don't remember getting there..to f'ed up)but I do remember how kickass the show was...they had Queensyche(their first tour) and Axe with them............
<font size="1">BTW Jeff...you forgot Axe.</font>

Saw Night Ranger at least 5 times..what a great band!! They came thru at Southern Star 3 times and I saw em opening for Black Sabbath (if you can believe that)on the Born Again tour in Houston and Beaumont. Most unusual lineup for a show...

Why would you put White Lion in the B catagory?? Musically they were pretty good..especially Vito whats-his-name (the guitarist) The singer was a poseur-boy kinda like JBJ..but I didn't hold it against them...

Ahh man...Whitesnake..
especially the last lineup they had..Adrian Vandenburg and Steve Vai??? DAMN!! How do ya beat that for a twin guitar attack!? Rudy Sarzo on bass and Coverdale (poor man's Robert Plant) was even pretty decent..Hey, he got Tawny Katain(sp?) didn't he..gotta hand it to him!

<font size="1"> btw Jeff..ya forgot Vandenburg(the band)</font>

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You would have to pry the ball outta his hands with a crowbar.

Bill Worrell referring to Cuttino.

 

Man!! I cant believe I forgot Quiet Riot!
Randy's original band..I saw 'em at the Summit(or Coliseum,I don't remember getting there..to f'ed up)but I do remember how kickass the show was...they had Queensyche(their first tour) and Axe with them............
<font size="1">BTW Jeff...you forgot Axe.</font>[/B}

Never heard of Axe.

Saw Night Ranger at least 5 times..what a great band!! They came thru at Southern Star 3 times and I saw em opening for Black Sabbath (if you can believe that)on the Born Again tour in Houston and Beaumont. Most unusual lineup for a show...

I saw them at Southern Star on the 7 Wishes tour. I really did like them as a band. They were very talented individually and wrote cool songs.

Why would you put White Lion in the B catagory?? Musically they were pretty good..especially Vito whats-his-name (the guitarist) The singer was a poseur-boy kinda like JBJ..but I didn't hold it against them...

They wrote maybe one or two decent songs and had an average guitar player. They are lucky they made my B list.

Ahh man...Whitesnake..
especially the last lineup they had..Adrian Vandenburg AND Steve Vai??? DAMN!! How do ya beat that for a twin guitar attack!? Rudy Sarzo on bass and Coverdale (poor man's Robert Plant) was even pretty decent..Hey, he got Tawny Katain(sp?) didn't he..gotta hand it to him!

The biggest Zepplin ripoff ever except for Kingdom Come - God, I thought I'd forgot about them!!!

Actually, Vai was great as a guitar sideman, but the album that John Sykes played all the parts for with all the Kitaen videos (Still of the Night, Here I Go Again, etc) was the best. Sykes was an amazing guitarist. I saw him with Blue Murder at Numbers and he kicked ass.

Sykes was one of the guitarists with Thin Lizzy in the early 80's. He replaced Gary Moore (another on my personal A list) as the 1st guitarist with Snowy White as 2nd.

Vandenburg did not play on either album because of reoccurring tendonitis in his left hand. In fact, the album after the one with Still of the Night was recorded with only scratch guitar tracks done by Coverdale. They then sent the tapes to Vai's studio where he and producer Andy Johns "decorated it like a Christmas tree" as Vai put it.

The songs on that album sucked but the guitar playing was amazing. You mentioned Rudy Sarzo, but left out the drummer, Tommy Aldrige, veteran of Ozzy, Black Oak Arkansas and others.

The funny thing is that the original drummer from Quiet Riot went on to be a killer fusion drummer.

btw Jeff..ya forgot Vandenburg(the band)

Vandenburg had such a minimal impact on that music, they are hardly worth mentioning. I think of them like Aldo Nova or even Alcatrazz. They each had a cool guitarist (or guitarists in the case of Alcatrazz) but that was about it. Another in this category would be Keel. Ron Keel, the singer, is now doing country.

[/QUOTE]



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Me fail English? That's unpossible.

 

Frankie Banalli is now playing with a few different projects last I heard. He played with some of the shredder guitarists like Blues Saraceno and Ritchie Kotzen, but I'm not sure what he is doing now.

Kotzen, by the way, is doing a 70's fusion project with Stanley Clarke on bass, Lenny White on drums (hello Return to Forever) and Rachel Z on piano plus a violinist as well. It is like straight up fusion and is really amazing. Kotzen smokes on it.

Tommy Aldrige did play a bit with Randy Rhodes but I don't believe he was with them when Rhodes died. I think that may have been Ian Paice, the original Whitesnake drummer who also played with Deep Purple and Journey prior to Steve Smith, but I could be wrong.

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Me fail English? That's unpossible.

 

http://www.honeymoonsuite.com

"New Girl Now" was their big hit, but they had some good songs other than that one. Check them out on Napster

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When we tire of well-worn ways, we seek for new. This restless craving in the souls of men spurs them to climb, and to seek the mountain view.
-- Ella Wheeler Wilcox

 

"My Dog" and "Body Bags" by Saigon Kick are my favs from The Lizard.

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When we tire of well-worn ways, we seek for new. This restless craving in the souls of men spurs them to climb, and to seek the mountain view.
-- Ella Wheeler Wilcox

 

Living colour....didn't they do the song "Cult of Personality"

I view them more as a one-hit wonder.

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Behad
Sergeant at Arms of the Clutch BBS

 

Jeff, you're going to have to explain #2 to me. If you've already got the hook, wouldn't that make the performance good by default??? As for #3, that really means nothing to me. Why should the era matter to a good song? Like I said earlier, a good song is a good song. It's all been done before, so how is #3 even relevant anymore? Does that mean any song in the late 70s had to be disco, or any song in the early 90s had to be grunge, for it to be a good song? A good song is a good song! The era shouldn't matter!

Hook and performance are completely different. The hook is really the basis for the song. This doesn't change whether you are playing the song with a piano or an electric guitar.

The performance is how well the band actually performed the song. Sometimes the two are interchangeable but, IMO, the better songs stand up with OR without the treatment that comes from performance. The idea being that a live performance of a song might be better than the studio version but the song is the same. The live version of I Want You to Want Me by Cheap Trick is the one always played on the radio because the performance is more memorable. The song really didn't change but the way they performed it did and that made it classic.

As for #3, well it is relavent because you simply can't judge the overall song based simply on the chords, melody and groove. Songs today are married to production and they have been for some time. The Beatles were amazing and the quality of the songs was amazing for the 1960's even if the production is dated today. What they did with scissors and tape in several hours of work, I can do in 30 seconds on a computer.

What that makes them is true innovators. The 80's hair bands would never survive matched up against the great songwriters of the past 4 decades and I've read articles where even they admit that. There are some high points, to be sure, but putting Talk Dirty To Me or Cherry Pie in the same category as Like a Rolling Stone or Hey Jude isn't really fair.

What I try to do is think of how the songs stack up against other comperable artists. How were they within the genre? I would never compare Def Leppard to Miles Davis but I like them both. It is apples and oranges. So, for me, I'd rather see them compared against other artists who refelect the same time and discipline.

Cmon Jeff! Van Halen is great, but if you're going to put importance on innovation, wouldn't AC/DC, KISS, and Alice Cooper best Van Halen here? Van Halen wasn't exactly breaking new ground, outside of Eddie's guitar playing, were they? AC/DC are the kings of hard rock, in my opinion. And Aerosmith 'one notch down' from Van Halen! Aerosmith was going strong in the early 70s. In my opinion, Van Halen may have started "party rock", which is where much of the spirit of 80s rock came from. KISS was all about the stage show, Alice Cooper before KISS with the stage show and threatrics, AC/DC and Angus Young incorporated a lot of blues into their songs, and Aerosmith pretty much started 'roots' hard rock. I would call Van Halen the kings of 'party rock'.

I think you have to look at this in a historical context. Yes, KISS and Alice Cooper were theatrical. Yes, ACDC rocked. Aerosmith was kickin' it too. But, Van Halen put it all together.

Not only was Eddie Van Halen the guitarist that changed the way rock music was played, but Van Halen was the band that completely altered the way albums were produced.

They stood on the shoulders of great rock bands like Cream, Deep Purple, Led Zepplin and brought in tremendous production and great charisma. They were the first real "performers" that had valid musical appeal. Cooper, Sabbath, KISS, etc all had great performances but their songs weren't as legendary as their acts and their musicianship didn't change the world. Van Halen, on the other hand, did.

Put on Van Halen's first record today and it holds up in the way it sounds, the performance of the songs and the songwriting with anything today done with digital precision. None of the other artists of that time have the combination of great songs, great artistry, great performance AND great sounding records. VH stands alone in that category starting in 1978.

The only one I really disagree with on your "a" list is DLR. Eat em and Smile was pretty good (Steve Vai helped), but outside of that, David Lee pretty much made a bunch of cheese ball albums. He just wasn't the same without Eddie coming up with the music.

I agree. The only reason he made it on my A list was that he really became the new performance vehicle for tremendous talent before unseen. Vai had played with Zappa and then Alcatrazz, but Roth was the gig that got him seen. Sheehan had toured with Talas incessantly but Roth put him in the mainstream. Greg Bissonette was a great funk and jazz drummer with Maynard Ferguson but Roth brought him into the rock world.

But, I would agree that he was cheesy and probably could come down to B.

And lastly, Enuff Z Nuff. Have you heard anything outside of their mainstream albums? They've been putting out albums pretty consistently each year since their last mainstream record (Animals w/Human Intelligence). I think of them as a 90s Cheap Trick. Just basically excellent power pop. Check out the albums Seven ('97) and Paraphernalia ('99, Billy Corgan and Rick Nielsen play lead guitar on a few tracks here). Just great stuff for anyone who enjoys melodic rock or power pop. Most of their fans are Jellyfish and Cheap Trick fans.

I just don't hear the songwriting that they had on Strength. Don't get me wrong. I really like them. I just think that, like many artists, they had one album where they really exceeded their own abilities.

The difference between them and Cheap Trick is that Trick wrote great songs for 15 years. There wasn't a single album of theirs that didn't have great stuff on it and they rarely relied on gimmicks or looks. Most of what they did was just great songs.

I hear the Cheap Trick and Beatles influence, but to me, the singer most resembles Elvis Costello. He sounds so much like him, it is really uncanny.

I'd just like to thank everyone for participating in this thread. I've really learned a lot. It also sounds like I'd really love to shoot the sh*t with guys like Jeff, BobFinn, puter, R2K, and just talk about music! That would be cool. I'd also like to talk with some of you others as well...you needn't have to be an expert in 80s hair metal!

Agreed. Music is one thing I could talk about all day. I've worked really hard to learn as much as I can about all kinds of music but I've learned that there is ALWAYS something I didn't know and I love that. That's why I just never get tired of listening to some artists - I always hear something I've never heard before.

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Me fail English? That's unpossible.

 

definitely agree..VH are and always will be the undisputed kings of rock. Even if you didn't like the Van Hagar-era..the music and production was still there..I'm absolutely drooling at the thought of the rumored DLR-VH reunion.

Vai and Sheehan are what made Eat Em and Smile what it was...DLR's other solo stuff was **** after he lost Vai and Billy.
btw...i forgot to put Talas-Live Speed on Ice in my list of favrite songs a while back..regretable.

Man...I could talk music till I'm blue n the face Freak..so bring it on ANYTIME!!

This thread has been the most fun I've had here period!! There have been bands that I haven't thought about it years, and talkin about them with yall has brought back tons of great memories!!

Its been great!!


btw Freak,, myputersux and Rockets2K are both the same.
myputersux was my original nym from back when I first got here. Since Rockets2K was getting lost in a sea of similar Rockets 2000 style nyms, I decided to pull this one out of retirement.

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Lar

 

Originally posted by Jeff:

Never heard of Axe.

Had a couple of songs that got popular, Rock-n-Roll Party (in the streets) and another on that I can't recall right now.


I saw them at Southern Star on the 7 Wishes tour. I really did like them as a band. They were very talented individually and wrote cool songs.

Absolutely no argument there!!


They wrote maybe one or two decent songs and had an average guitar player. They are lucky they made my B list.

I guess that would explain why the only cd of thiers I have is the "Greatest Hits" one.

The biggest Zepplin ripoff ever except for Kingdom Come - God, I thought I'd forgot about them!!!

Actually, Vai was great as a guitar sideman, but the album that John Sykes played all the parts for with all the Kitaen videos (Still of the Night, Here I Go Again, etc) was the best. Sykes was an amazing guitarist. I saw him with Blue Murder at Numbers and he kicked ass.

I saw that show!! Your right of course, Sykes was indeed a great guitarist!

Sykes was one of the guitarists with Thin Lizzy in the early 80's. He replaced Gary Moore (another on my personal A list) as the 1st guitarist with Snowy White as 2nd.

I love Gary Moore's work...one of my all-time fav songs was the one called "Out in the Fields" w/ Phil Lynott.

<<educational info snipped>>

The songs on that album sucked but the guitar playing was amazing. You mentioned Rudy Sarzo, but left out the drummer, Tommy Aldrige, veteran of Ozzy, Black Oak Arkansas and others.

Yeah, Can't imagine how I forgot about Tommy
Aldrige. Wasn't he the drummer while RR was Ozzy's guitarist?? I'm pretty sure that Rudy was also with Ozzy at that time.

The funny thing is that the original drummer from Quiet Riot went on to be a killer fusion drummer.

What was that guy's name? Frankie Banali right?? Who was he playing for?..I always wondered what happened to him..


Vandenburg had such a minimal impact on that music, they are hardly worth mentioning. I think of them like Aldo Nova or even Alcatrazz. They each had a cool guitarist (or guitarists in the case of Alcatrazz) but that was about it. Another in this category would be Keel. Ron Keel, the singer, is now doing country.

Ron Keel?? doing country?? damn!! who woulda guessed?
Hell, I forgot Alcatrazz,Aldo Nova and Keel.
As for Vandenburg..they might have done more if he hadn't got mixed up with Whitesnake...imo

It's amazing how all these guys we've been talking about got mixed in with each other's bands and played together in other bands...

we could almost play 6 degrees of seperation with all these late 70's and 80's bands.




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Lar