Top 10 worst hair/sleaze metal bands...

Tall Tyrion wrote:

Of all the debates people get into on the boards, the "genre-wars" interest me the least.

I'm with you on that one. Very few bands fall into any particular genre these days and it is best to leave it up to the individual's preference. If somone considers this band this or that band that, unless their calling a country band metal or a rap artist a new age artist it's best to just let the matter dromp IMO.

I don't mind people stating opinions and then why they have them. It's the whole, I own their whole discography and slept with the bass player so i'm right, attitude that gets old.

Shiney wrote:

No such thing as bad hair/sleaze.....

HEY!!! That's what I said!

rattpoison wrote:

DeathCult wrote:

Actually, I had a couple of their albums and they sucked out loud. And they ARE sleaze.

That's fine, i wouldn't have had an issue if you listed them in the 10 worst bands of all time. But when you label them Hair Metal or even Sleaze (Come on really? Do you disagree with me labelling them a Power Pop band?) well i had to speak up. It's just one of my pet peeves i guess.

Power pop fits into the hair metal genre just fine. They dressed , now they can be labeled that. And quit trying to tell everybody that you're a fan, and we've only heard one song. We were there dude. You were shitting green.

Ah! Cry havoc!!!

SoldierUnderCommand wrote:

rattpoison wrote:

DeathCult wrote:

Actually, I had a couple of their albums and they sucked out loud. And they ARE sleaze.

That's fine, i wouldn't have had an issue if you listed them in the 10 worst bands of all time. But when you label them Hair Metal or even Sleaze (Come on really? Do you disagree with me labelling them a Power Pop band?) well i had to speak up. It's just one of my pet peeves i guess.

Power pop fits into the hair metal genre just fine. They dressed , now they can be labeled that. And quit trying to tell everybody that you're a fan, and we've only heard one song. We were there dude. You were shitting green.

Not really two completely different styles of music.

Image shouldn't be the judge of a style of music, look at the horrible pictures of Queensryche in their horrible frilly glam new romantic regalia. That image totally belies the music on Rage For Order.

The whole "Being There" argument is old, it means nothing and shouldn't be seen as essential when forming an opinion on the music of a band.

Quote :

Not really two completely different styles of music.

No, when you dress up in pink clothes and put your hair to the sky, you will be called hair, even when playing "power pop". One might say Stryper plays power pop. They're hair metal. Just like Danger Danger.

Quote :

The whole "Being There" argument is old, it means nothing and shouldn't be seen as essential when forming an opinion on the music of a band.

Notice I never say that to the other youngins' here, just you, since you act like the majority here knows nothing about music. Taht's why I remind YOu of that.

SoldierUnderCommand wrote:

Quote :

Not really two completely different styles of music.

No, when you dress up in pink clothes and put your hair to the sky, you will be called hair, even when playing "power pop". One might say Stryper plays power pop. They're hair metal. Just like Danger Danger.

Quote :

The whole "Being There" argument is old, it means nothing and shouldn't be seen as essential when forming an opinion on the music of a band.

Notice I never say that to the other youngins' here, just you, since you act like the majority here knows nothing about music. Taht's why I remind YOu of that.

Power Pop isn't simply guitar based pop, it's something different. Stryper and Danger Danger are hard rock/heavy metal bands who are poppy. That's not power pop, power pop is a distinct genre of music like heavy metal. Bands like Raspberries, Big Star, The Posies, Shoes, Jellyfish, Fountains Of Wayne etc fall under the Power Pop banner.

Just stop.

Nice avatar thrasher73. Good to see another D.R.I. fan here. As far as this thread goes there are not to many hair/sleaze bands I don't like so I won't name any. Well o.k I guess my least favorite two would be Poison and Stryper. Being a Christian I try and support Stryper, and own every one of their cd's, but honestly besides a song or three I really can't get into them very much. My favorite is probably Vain. No Respect is a true masterpiece.

rattpoison wrote:

Power Pop isn't simply guitar based pop, it's something different. Stryper and Danger Danger are hard rock/heavy metal bands who are poppy. That's not power pop, power pop is a distinct genre of music like heavy metal. Bands like Raspberries, Big Star, The Posies, Shoes, Jellyfish, Fountains Of Wayne etc fall under the Power Pop banner.

And Enuff Z'nuff has more in common with The Rock City Angels, London Quireboys, Faster Pu$$ycat, etc.. than any of those bands. Hence I would call the sleeze. If you disagree, then fine but why keep beating the horse? He's dead already.

I won't stop til you guys stop, so we can keep chasing each others tails.

Here's a compromise position. If I'm reading RP correctly between the lines, I don't believe he really thinks that Enuff Z' Nuff never actually flirted with a sort of hard hair rock early on; or that every song they ever did fits neatly into the power pop genre. True, the Badfinger "Wish You Were Here" album that he cited above is a virtual template for the Z'Enuff sound from what I know; but I think RP would have to admit that Z'nuff sporadically went far beyond anywhere Badfinger etc. ever went as far as heavyness is concerned, right to the fringes of hair "metal" in fact (and they did a good job of it when they wanted to IMO). Yeah, it was a different era and a different standard of heavyness, but still, I think I have a point.
However as a casual fan of Enuff z'nuff, I'll take the liberty of saying that I think it's not really accurate to evaluate the band as a lame hair band, for the simple reason that heavy rock wasn't really what they were trying to do most of the time. So I think that it's more fair to say that they were a good power pop band that might tend to disappoint the metal minded because they never really did more than dabble in the loud stuff. So I suspect you are all of you are right in a way, depending on your perspective.
As far as the "being there" angle, I disagree with RP on that one. I don't like to pull that card on people too much, but I realize from my own experience that there is a cultural perspective that is virtually impossible to recapture after the fact. I've had to admit that to myself regarding my Proto hard rock collection. Even though I've studied it backward and forward, and collected everything I could get my hards on, I still realize that there's no way I can fully appreciate the impact of early hard rock for the simple reason that I was just ten years old at the time. White boys playing black man's music at previously unimagined levels of amplication, amidst the highly charged political atmosphere of the day (assasination, Vietnam, civil rights, riots, Nixon, iron curtain, etc.) produced a shock effect that is probably impossible to fully appreciate to our metal hardened ears. I doubt that I fully grasp it anyway.
As far as the 70's go, I was paying attention then. One thing I feel that later generations have failed to appreciate about it is the laisseze-faire haze that we were living in (brought on largely by political fatigue and pot). We didn't take our music all that seriously. For example it was very common for a lot of people (girls especially) to be big fans of Bowie and Hoople but also Styx and Kansas too, with Queen as sort of a middle ground. I doubt that as many people of later generations shared an enthusiasm for all those bands at once. I think the reason for this is that after the punk revolution these bands were viewed very differently in retrospect; with Bowie and Mott being thought of as influences on the "smart" music that followed later, and Styx and Kansas being thought of as spawing bombastic, populist schlock. But this dichotomy simply didn't exist in my world until after people took up sides on punk. The self-serious critical consensus wasn't nearly as prevalent; we thought of it as all one big happy flashy party. It's one thing to understand the history and evolution of different kinds of music in retrospect, but I have no doubt that there is an original context to these musics that is hard to grasp if one wasn't there at the time. Sermon over.

Wow, you've had that in you for a while waiting to get it out.

Really interesting and I’ve got to agree on most points.

I have to make a concession about Enuff Z’Nuff; i can see where people are coming from because apart from the look on the first album it did partake in a few hair band trends musically at the time. The production is completely dated and more suited to the likes of Poison, Warrant etc. Horrible 80's drum sound and sheen to the point of almost AOR atrocity. Guitarist Derek Frigo abused his whammy bar and shredded like many GIT trained guitar hot shots of the time. Lay it down to the Van Halen influence that wound its way into many of the bands at the time.

But having said that underneath all the cosmetics and superficials is a power pop group driven by the songwriting nucleus of Donnie Vie and Chip Z'Nuff guys who debated who was Lennon and McCartney, grew up watching the Raspberries on Don Kirshner's rock concert and who blew their dough on way too many Elvis Costello records and lost power pop artifacts of the new wave era like Pezband.

After the first record, the hair band production was gone and Frigo reigned in the guitar wanking and Donnie and Chip concentrated on their Lennon/McCartney aspirations. Since then they are beloved by many power pop fans and critics, and produced what was in my opinion one of thee greatest power pop records of the 90's with the album Paraphernalia (1999) which featured members of Cheap Trick (Rick Nielson), Smashing Pumpkins (Billy Corgan) and Styx (James Young).

I always said if Enuff Z'Nuff had the production afforded to Redd Kross's album Third Eye (1990) then they would be viewed similarly to that band. They were the same thing but Redd Kross were entrenched in the Alternative/College crowd and Enuff Z'Nuff was with the Hard Rock/Heavy Metal crowd.

Redd Kross - Annie's Gone (See what I mean, their dead ringers in sound and style of music at the time. But note the MTV 120 minutes sign as opposed to the Headbanger's Ball sign that would have marked Enuff Z'Nuff's videos back in the day. That right there demonstrates my point and the camps both were in. But both could have been in both and no one would have blinked an eye (Well except if EZ's new thing video appeared in 120 minutes.)



Also Jellyfish - New Mistake video (Similar glammy power pop band with hard rock tendencies like RK and EZ who they were contemporary's of.)




And your right Sahb, about the being there point and how attitudes towards music change. I commit such a crime to an extent, I’m a big fan of Bowie and Mott the Hoople and Queen but think Styx and Kansas are lame! Although my attitude is driven by a certain like of Rock N' Roll and not what's cool and what's not, and Styx and Kansas don't possess that rock n' roll I’m after. That's why prog and aor are two genres that leave me cold.

Although i will say The Stooges, MC5 and Blue Cheer is some of the heaviest loudest stuff i've heard, and i would throw it up against any technical death metal or droning doom nowdays. That late 60's stuff is wild and unhinged heavy while todays 'heavy' is deliberate and wires are exposed. This statement is in regards to how it might by hard for young people nowdays or even yourself to appreciate how heavy these bands were back in the day. I guess i do. Also to demonstrate my opinion and were i'm coming from further is that to me early 80's band the Birthday Party is the heaviest and most extreme music i've heard and makes most of the growling contemporay death metal pack seem tame.

rattpoison wrote:

Wow, you've had that in you for a while waiting to get it out.

Really interesting and I’ve got to agree on most points.

I have to make a concession about Enuff Z’Nuff; i can see where people are coming from because apart from the look on the first album it did partake in a few hair band trends musically at the time. The production is completely dated and more suited to the likes of Poison, Warrant etc. Horrible 80's drum sound and sheen to the point of almost AOR atrocity. Guitarist Derek Frigo abused his whammy bar and shredded like many GIT trained guitar hot shots of the time. Lay it down to the Van Halen influence that wound its way into many of the bands at the time.

But having said that underneath all the cosmetics and superficials is a power pop group driven by the songwriting nucleus of Donnie Vie and Chip Z'Nuff guys who debated who was Lennon and McCartney, grew up watching the Raspberries on Don Kirshner's rock concert and who blew their dough on way too many Elvis Costello records and lost power pop artifacts of the new wave era like Pezband.

After the first record, the hair band production was gone and Frigo reigned in the guitar wanking and Donnie and Chip concentrated on their Lennon/McCartney aspirations. Since then they are beloved by many power pop fans and critics, and produced what was in my opinion one of thee greatest power pop records of the 90's with the album Paraphernalia (1999) which featured members of Cheap Trick (Rick Nielson), Smashing Pumpkins (Billy Corgan) and Styx (James Young).

I always said if Enuff Z'Nuff had the production afforded to Redd Kross's album Third Eye (1990) then they would be viewed similarly to that band. They were the same thing but Redd Kross were entrenched in the Alternative/College crowd and Enuff Z'Nuff was with the Hard Rock/Heavy Metal crowd.

Redd Kross - Annie's Gone (See what I mean, their dead ringers in sound and style of music at the time. But note the MTV 120 minutes sign as opposed to the Headbanger's Ball sign that would have marked Enuff Z'Nuff's videos back in the day. That right there demonstrates my point and the camps both were in. But both could have been in both and no one would have blinked an eye (Well except if EZ's new thing video appeared in 120 minutes.)



Also Jellyfish - New Mistake video (Similar glammy power pop band with hard rock tendencies like RK and EZ who they were contemporary's of.)




And your right Sahb, about the being there point and how attitudes towards music change. I commit such a crime to an extent, I’m a big fan of Bowie and Mott the Hoople and Queen but think Styx and Kansas are lame! Although my attitude is driven by a certain like of Rock N' Roll and not what's cool and what's not, and Styx and Kansas don't possess that rock n' roll I’m after. That's why prog and aor are two genres that leave me cold.

I wish I could elaborate on it more, but I can't.

Mott The Hoople is one of my favorite bands of all time.

I know, we should start a thread or somethin' .

SoldierUnderCommand wrote:

Shut up and list 10.

Why 10 when you can list 11...


(Naah...Spinal Tap is not in my top 10..._

[quote="Fat Freddy"]Wasnt' aware that Tracii now has L.A. Guns Mark III going without Paul Black. Good grief, you need a score card to keep track of what's going on in that camp.quote]

Here's some news about the new Tracii Guns version of LA Guns if anyone cares...


LOS ANGELES, CA (JUNE 3, 2008) - The rock ‘n’ roll band, L.A. GUNS, featuring guitarist Tracii Guns has some big news heading into their Summer Blackout Tour 2008.

The band will be hitting the road this month with a couple of new members on board. In addition to Tracii Guns on lead guitar, Jeremy Guns will be on bass along with Chad Stewart on drums, and the band has enlisted new rhythm guitar player Alec “Big Al” Bauer, who has been touring with the band since 2007.

Marty Casey, the “new blonde guy,” as the band has affectionately referred to him on their website, is the new voice of L.A. Guns. Casey gained recognition as a vocalist along with millions of fans during his run on the hit CBS show “Rock Star: INXS.” He was also instrumental in writing and creating new material on the upcoming L.A. Guns album.

The boys of L.A. Guns have another “big gun” in their pocket. The band is currently in Canada recording their new album with Multi Grammy Award Winning Producer Steve Thompson. Tracii describes the album by saying, “this definitely will not be your father’s L.A. GUNS” and the music is “slightly more advanced” and the lyrics are “more introspective, without losing the fun nature of our Rock ‘n’ Roll.”

L.A. Guns is currently signed with ALEXUS RECORDS. Look for these guys on tour this summer with Faster Pu$$ycat and Bang Tango as they blaze a trail through a city near you.

Glower wrote:

And 12 years later,


Love how old threads just pop up again..

assault_attack wrote:

Glower wrote:

And 12 years later,  


Love how old threads just pop up again..  

It's a good song actually. Not bad.