Hair Metal

tohostudios wrote:

MetalGuy71 wrote:

muckie wrote:

As far as forgotten artists go, does anyone here remember/like Bang Tango?

Psycho Cafe and Dancin' on Coals are awesome. After those 2 though, they kinda fell off the map for me.

Have you ever checked out the Beautiful Creatures S/T?  That's the band members of Bang Tango formed after BT.  They put out two albums I think; the second one is pretty bad but the first one is golden in my book.

I have BC's first album. It's ok, but not something I play often. It was missing the funky bass that made Bang Tango stand out. I think I had BC's second album too at one point but ditched it.

I remember getting copies of the debut sent to work and it came with a press release touting them as this new, young, hot band that was going to conquer the world. I immediately recognized Joe Leste from BT and all the other LA Strip gutter rats that had been around the block. "New"? "Young"? Pleeeeeze.

MetalGuy71 wrote:

It was missing the funky bass that made Bang Tango stand out.

I feel like Bang Tango were one of the most original bands at the time (maybe they stole their shtick from someone else, I don't know).

The videos that hung our for a long time on Dial MTV did not look like anybody else's video and they also had a cohesive look that tied them together. The band themselves didn't look like their contemporaries. And that funky vibe...they were so good. I'm gonna listen to Psycho Cafe now.

MetalGuy71 wrote:

tohostudios wrote:

MetalGuy71 wrote:

muckie wrote:

As far as forgotten artists go, does anyone here remember/like Bang Tango?

Psycho Cafe and Dancin' on Coals are awesome. After those 2 though, they kinda fell off the map for me.

Have you ever checked out the Beautiful Creatures S/T?  That's the band members of Bang Tango formed after BT.  They put out two albums I think; the second one is pretty bad but the first one is golden in my book.

I have BC's first album. It's ok, but not something I play often. It was missing the funky bass that made Bang Tango stand out. I think I had BC's second album too at one point but ditched it.

I remember getting copies of the debut sent to work and it came with a press release touting them as this new, young, hot band that was going to conquer the world. I immediately recognized Joe Leste from BT and all the other LA Strip gutter rats that had been around the block. "New"? "Young"? Pleeeeeze.

I only hear that funky bass thing on Dancing On Coals. I think the first BC album sounds a lot like Psycho Café.

I'd have to listen to BC again. It's been years. I'm actually surprised I still have my copy. It somehow survived several purges.

Wiki'd Bang Tango....random bit of news...though I don't guess it materialized in 2015 as state, but:

"Bang Tango will be the subject of the documentary Attack of Life: The Bang Tango Movie which is set to be released in 2015.

As of May 2015, Attack of Life: The Bang Tango Movie filmmaker Drew Fortier joined Bang Tango as their rhythm guitarist."

Add another rock doc to the ever growing stack.

Well, color me curious. What could there possibly be to document about these guys? I like them and all, but is there some interesting backstory about 'Love Injection' that we need to know? I think I can glean more than enough info about the band from their Wikipedia page.

Ah, who am I kidding? I know I'd watch it if it was on Netflix or cable.

Hec_The_Wreck wrote:

Never used to hear the term "hair metal" back then,we just called them posers,guys like zebraman where what they looked like and if they showed up at any concert where they didn't belong they got bashed,I seen it happen back in 84 at a Metallica gig,one guy with his poofy hair walking around with his spandex got his ass kicked.the music was lame that's why the Motorhead and fans of bands like that never accepted it.remember the classic Mentors song "Hetrosexuals Have The Right To Rock"? well that was like an anthem against all that.

Agreed. You see lots of young people these days wearing that stuff now and putting on a bunch of extreme metal patches on their vests or tattooing the speed metal wheel on themselves. It's almost like a self-parody of the music to be "ironic". Another thing that I've been seeing is people confusing any sort of melody in heavy metal with "hair metal". Something on the level of Nightmare's debut album.

Heres another long forgotten band that I really liked. I'm sure some of you will remember them. Killer vocals IMO.

Thrasher73 wrote:

Heres another long forgotten band that I really liked. I'm sure some of you will remember them. Killer vocals IMO.

I am a huge Banshee fan! I don't consider them glam metal though. I think they are U.S. power metal like Leatherwolf.

"Hair metal" and "glam metal" aren't actually genres to me. It's more the look than the sound itself. Riot looked "glammy" during the Thundersteel era, but the music was a whole different subject.

It's usually either hard rock or heavy/power/speed metal. Icon's first album is definitely metal, despite what the reverse of the sleeve shows.

Witchfinder wrote:

Thrasher73 wrote:

Heres another long forgotten band that I really liked. I'm sure some of you will remember them. Killer vocals IMO.

I am a huge Banshee fan!  I don't consider them glam metal though.  I think they are U.S. power metal like Leatherwolf.

Wow. That's a good one. Thanks for sharing.

Painkiller wrote:

"Hair metal" and "glam metal" aren't actually genres to me. It's more the look than the sound itself. Riot looked "glammy" during the Thundersteel era, but the music was a whole different subject.

It's usually either hard rock or heavy/power/speed metal. Icon's first album is definitely metal, despite what the reverse of the sleeve shows.

Kind of true but some bands went down a very commercial, easily accessible very safe route and that's what I consider to be hair metal. G&R were not hair metal, neither were Hanoi Rocks, W.A.S.P or Dogs D'Amour, all of them were just sleazy rock & roll and I loved that. Motley, Ratt, Europe & Poison didn't start out hair metal  but were seduced by the dark side (MTV) although Poison's music was always pretty safe at least their image was kinda subversive (It get's brushed over nowadays but Poison & Stryper were actively championed by the underground in the early days, at least in the U.K) Cinderella & Skid Row were  fantastic bands who just happened to be too pretty for their own good. Bon Jovi were hair metal but it suited them.

Then there were bands that adopted the image because they thought that it would help them sell more records (It usually didn't) and get laid (It probably did) like Riot, Whitesnake, even Raven (kind of)

Either way it was the sound that I didn't like not really the image.

Witchfinder wrote:

Thrasher73 wrote:

Heres another long forgotten band that I really liked. I'm sure some of you will remember them. Killer vocals IMO.

I am a huge Banshee fan!  I don't consider them glam metal though.  I think they are U.S. power metal like Leatherwolf.

Yeah I agree with you that they are power metal. I just happened to think of them as this song got a little AirPlay during that era.

Thrasher73 wrote:

Witchfinder wrote:

Thrasher73 wrote:

Heres another long forgotten band that I really liked. I'm sure some of you will remember them. Killer vocals IMO.

I am a huge Banshee fan!  I don't consider them glam metal though.  I think they are U.S. power metal like Leatherwolf.

Yeah I agree with you that they are power metal. I just happened to think of them as this song got a little AirPlay during that era.

In the old (pre internet) days a lot of bands were lumped in simply b/c of image as it wasn't possible to hear everyone's music. I think the labels used that image to their advantage to sell records. I recall a couple of times buying something based on look and being disappointed. But, more often than not, I was very pleased.

It should be noted as well that a lot of bands who are commonly thought of as "hair metal" were a lot heavier in the early-mid 80s. It wasnt until 1986-87 that they started going for a more commercial sound. Heck, even Bon Jovi's first albums had some songs that at least were a little more "crunchy" (ie, Burning For Love, To The Fire).

Hadley wrote:

It should be noted as well that a lot of bands who are commonly thought of as "hair metal" were a lot heavier in the early-mid 80s. It wasnt until 1986-87 that they started going for a more commercial sound. Heck, even Bon Jovi's first albums had some songs that at least were a little more "crunchy" (ie, Burning For Love, To The Fire).

Very true. This was touched upon in my review thread regarding Europe and White Lion. I blame the labels for this for interfering with recording and production. I have read on Ult's site (dozens of times) how the slick and glossy big '80's production robbed an album of it's power and crunch.

Saigon Kick is a good example of a band getting mislabeled as "hair metal". Yeah, if the only song you ever heard by them was "Love Is On The Way" that would make sense. But their music is all over the map, from heavy metal to Beatles-esque tunes; one thing they ain't is "hair metal".

Very true. But, unfortunately, back in the day it was a lot easier to miss on a band because all you got was the one song exposure from it being looped on the radio and in constant rotation on Mtv or VH1. Thank goodness for Metal Edge and Hit Parader and good old word of mouth or I would have missed on a lot of faves that didn't get exposure like Hurricane, Lillian Axe, and Hericane Alice.

Painkiller wrote:

"Hair metal" and "glam metal" aren't actually genres to me. It's more the look than the sound itself. Riot looked "glammy" during the Thundersteel era, but the music was a whole different subject.

It's usually either hard rock or heavy/power/speed metal. Icon's first album is definitely metal, despite what the reverse of the sleeve shows.

Completely agree here. I'd also add AOR as another genre actually played by many bands considered "hair metal".

What I never understood, though, was why does it seem so many people who are into AC/DC, Zepp, Aerosmith, Nazareth and other '70s hard rock bands tend to dismiss the entire '80s/'early '90s hard rock scene when it was pretty much the continuation of what these bands did, only with an updated production.

I even saw a guy comment once how he hated those glam bands like Cinderella and listened to classic rock like REO at the time. f*ckin' REO, whose hits of the period mostly make Poison sound like Maiden. WTF.