Now Hair This!

As if Boss Johnny hasn’t got enough to do, I’ve put together a Kindle playlist of my favorite 80s hair metal hits. I’m sure I’ve left a few off, but these are just my faves. What are your favorites and why?
Now Hair This:
Ballad of Jayne – LA Guns
Down Boys – Warrant
Fallen Angel – Poison
Fire Woman – The Cult
I Can’t Explain – Scorpions
Kickstart My Heart – Motley Crue
Love Removal Machine – The Cult
Round and Round – Ratt
Same Ol’ Situation (SOS) – Motley Crue
Talk Dirty to Me – Poison
[granted, Scorpions gets in by cover-song exception. Otherwise they probably fall under Serious Troll Metal with the likes of Ozzie and Dio. Plus I put on 2 Cult songs to balance out the Poison when I undoubtedly face the Man Card Tribunal.]

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Too Safe = No Fun

Dawg on a  Hawg

Dawg on a Hawg

Is anyone else perturbed by the harmless, cutesy and guaranteed-to-offend-nobody tone of the current pop charts? We’ve got a band called Fun. Oh, pardon me, no capital letters. Because that might frighten somebody. We’ve got bands called the Mowgli’s, the Neighbourhood… Very soothing, reassuring. Don’t ask me why I remember this, but the lead singer of a very forgettable band called SafetySuit once said in an interview that the goal of their music was to “make people feel safe.” And there’s actually a hit song (and not a bad one) called “Safe and Sound,” by Capital Cities.

I get it, I get it – life today is much more chaotic and dangerous than at any point in my memory. We send our kids to school, unsure if we’ll ever see them again. We send them to college, and there are precious few jobs waiting for them that don’t involve dark green apron strings. We go to work in the morning, uncertain if we’ll be able to make it out of the tower next time.

And God bless the Lumineers for bringing back rustic simplicity – along with storytelling, and vocals that don’t sound like a man fixing to hork up one of his own testicles. Ditto Mumford and Sons. Loved the American Gothic moralizing, no shit (“come out of your cave walking on your hands…”).

But whether they know it or not, such groups sit at the crest of a marketing wave that has convinced our faux Salvation Army vest-wearing offspring that the Dust Bowl was one big hootenanny – hobos making s’mores by a campfire, singing Woody Guthrie, and texting their hobo pals. When really, people were dying from lungs full of the barren earth that could no longer feed them.

Where’s the music about taking risks, transcending your humble origins? And not by busting a cap, otherwise fucking somebody over, or getting fleetingly shit-faced?

I’m talking “Tramps like us, baby we were born to run.”
“Even the losers get lucky sometime.”
“If the boys wanna fight, you better let ’em.”
Hell, I’d even settle for “two tickets to paradise.”

If you recognize all these references, you’re probably ready for your boner pill, followed by an afternoon of antiquing on your Rascal scooter. That’s kind of the point. We’ve given our kids plenty to rebel against, but not the stones to do it.

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Chomping

Dancing_mixdown_7-7

Check out this rehearsal recording! Things are starting to take shape. Still looking for that first show. A big stage, a big, sweet club PA (we hope). It’ll happen. I can tell the boys are itching to fire up the six-piece Bruce machine and, you know, see what happens.
And in the meantime, we’re going to be working on some guerrilla-style demo recordings in a secret Bruce-cave somewhere south of Denver. So that when Commissioner Clarence shines the Bruce-signal, we’re ready to fire up the Pink Cadillac and take it to the streets for one last chance to make it real. You know I could go on like this…

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My First Time

Bruce Springsteen on the cover of Time Magazine

Bruce Springsteen on the cover of Time Magazine

Does anybody remember the first time they heard Bruce Springsteen on the radio? I do, vividly.

I vaguely recall seeing his picture on that Time magazine cover of October 1975. Because, didn’t every family get Time magazine back then?

I’m not even sure I read the article. My immediate reaction was, “Who’s that bastard wearing a floppy hat indoors in the middle of summer?” So I filed that mental note away and didn’t give it another thought. I don’t know if it was a week later, a month later or what. But there I was on a Saturday afternoon, shooting baskets in the driveway at 15317 Walvern Blvd., listening to WMMS. And out of the tiny FM speaker plugged into the garage socket came this… voice. Singing “Born to Run.” And without anybody telling me, I immediately knew two things:

1. Oh crap, it’s the floppy hat bastard!

2. Holy crap, I gotta hear more of this!

So I spent the next couple years listening to almost nothing but Bruce. Which I’m pretty sure explains about 90% of my adult/relationship issues to this day. Sure, Tom Petty, Elvis Costello, John Mellencamp, David Bowie, Billy Idol, Jim Carroll (Catholic Boy), they got a few licks in. But since that moment in the driveway, my heart has belonged to Bruce! He’s one of the first singers who made sense to me, and who made it OK not to be Steve Perry, Brad Delp (Boston), Robert Plant etc. Fast forward 40 some years, and those are just a few of the reasons we started Trouble in the Heartland. Stay tuned for more!

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