A beastly mook with blinkless eyes seated nearby is suspicious. He fires a series of questions. "What are you writing in that note pad? Are you a writer? Who do you write for?"
I look at him. His hair is long and crimped and the color of a dirt yard. The hair belonging to those whose nights are dedicated to a tradition of sucking bongs and cans of Bud set against a soundtrack of Judas Priest and Manowar.
"Rolling Stone," I lie.
"Oh, yeah!" he crows, "I got a band, dude!" His eyes belie a look that says, "Fuck with me, bro, and you're dead."
"We're called Death Phinger, Brown Thumb. We're about fighting, 40s and fat chicks. And that's Phinger with a P-h, not an F."
"Death Phinger, Brown Thumb," I say, "with a P-h, eh? Ain't a bad name."
Even when he's not talking, I notice his mouth remains open. Gives him the appearance of a dirtball janitor gawking juvenile derrière sashaying down some high school hallway. "We're the hardest metal to hit the scene. You should see us, we are the real metal shit."
I consider the name Death Phinger, Brown Thumb. Just what could a name like that mean? Just what does "hardest metal" mean these days? I didn't see any urgent need in finding out. I turn to stand in line at will call.
The mook keeps going, his words taking aim at my back. "We're not about this reunion crap. Come see us, dude, you'll see."
The natural impulse would be to turn around and fuck with him, but I choose not to. The night is still young and I'm not drunk yet. Sobriety severely restricts the whims of risk-taking. Sobriety safeguards me from getting my face smashed in.
Queued up for tickets, I imagine that I'm at some DES office lined up for food stamps. It reminds me of a girlfriend who once waited for me back at some stucco, milk-crate-furnished nightmare when I actually did stand in line for food stamps. She had three kids, none of which was mine, and all under the age of 4. The thought makes me shiver.
I hear the mook still going at it. "This reunion crap is for pussies."
I think about the word "pussy." I hate anybody who devalues the pussy so. The mook, however, has a point. I look up at the marquee. I see the names Ratt, Warrant and L.A. Guns.
Joy.
Surrounding us at our vantage point in the half-full venue is a proletariat horde of nearly 1,200 AOR rock radio enthusiasts. All are gathered to drink, puke, pump fists and celebrate the dead -- to raise and consecrate a trio of spooks.
Salvation from the fall of Headbanger's Ball. Talk about your emotional quicksand.
The anachronism here, really, is an insufferable ode to a period Lita Ford once described as a time when "people knew how to rock." The show tonight is not only a revivalist wink donned in simulated hair, distended guts, rescued egos and references to how we, the audience, "can still kick some ass," but also the search for a sad echo that at one time moved this throng.
Many women stand obediently under the arms of their men. And, later, a staff of high-heeled strippers mans the bow of the stage.
On many men, fading tattoos span fattening forearms and biceps, as do bandannas and petty comb-overs weakly disguising retreating hairlines. Open, button-down shirts reveal Burger King breasts in need of support; a myriad of keys to pickup trucks and cinder-block dwellings dangle from belts which keep guts from making southerly drops. Some guzzle beer from plastic cups, and some reek of spoiled relish.
The women, if not summoning ghosts of strippers past, tuck stonewashed jeans into leather ankle or knee-high boots; satin skirts top Slim-Fast/meth-white legs; robin's egg blue eye shadow fills crow's feet lines. Many chicks sip beer from plastic cups. And most reek with late-night QVC perfume buying power.
When L.A. Guns arrives onstage, it's every Spinal Tap/Still Crazy moment bottlenecked and spurted forth like so much foam from a shaken can of beer. It's the glorious accumulation of every cliché fraught with so much self-importance and arrogance that it becomes absurd hard-rock theater. L.A. Guns is actually good at this; it's shtick made easy, and it is by far the best and most authentic band on the bill. And what does that say?
You sense the painful reality that these guys have dedicated their lives to rock 'n' roll since childhood, and now, pushing 40, they've nothing to show for it. There's a desperation in L.A. Guns that I can appreciate.
Singer Phil Lewis' thin white duke-ish frame seems ageless. He can masterfully control the timing of both the song and its gesture. His sinuous feline demeanor and sudden smile can still lay the flutter beneath the skirts of the stripper contingent. Yet Lewis' chuckle-inducing three-front war on baldness (headband + implants + extensions) ruined it for me. Wigs and rock 'n' roll don't mix.
"We're what's known as a cock-rock band," chirps Lewis, introducing Guns' standard "Kiss My Love Goodbye." The crowd whoops its approval.
Next, Warrant hits the stage. And boy, does it ever. Singer Jani Lane looks like an updated version of corpulent '70s hitster Randy Bachman, late of Bachman-Turner Overdrive. Worse, the band looks fright-wiggingly Jersey-istic. Picture a Bon Jovi tribute band with shit-eater grins and cholesterol jowls and you're close.
Attempts to match the downside of autumn-year girth with cheery guitar chord clang comes up thin, particularly on the opener, "Down Boys." Worse, Lane's constant apologies during a midset ballad medley ("Heaven"/"I Saw Red"/"Sometimes She Cries," etc.) lay an unintentionally condescending air over the crowd. Do ballads emasculate Jani so much that he need rationalize playing songs that allowed him to swim in champagne, boff ace ginch and live out his high school dreams?
What a wuss.
Lane is neither lanky nor cool and he is painfully without swagger and sexuality. How is/was he ever considered a rock 'n' roll star? I look around and begin to understand. Lane is preaching to the converted. By set's end, the heaviness wins -- the fat, that is, not the tunes.
Ratt comes on and suddenly before me flashes every miserable musical moment I experienced in high school; every unwanted emotion and urge; every attempt to slither out of my own skin. Ratt makes my hair hurt.
Jizzy Pearl, the latest Ratt shouter -- whose namesake is but a porn euphemism for seed -- adopts a self-serious/Kilmer-as-Morrison/poet-illiterate pose and seems uninformed of the fact that his job in Ratt -- as it was once in L.A. Guns -- is merely to occupy space between the all-important Warren DeMartini guitar solos. Jizzy's grimaced haiku wears as thin as the power chord cloud it rides upon.
The band promptly demonstrates a skilled disdain for that which is listenable. It's a racket that sends me up the stairs, through the lobby and out the door before the miserable turn of the Aerosmith cop "Round and Round" can take hold.
Out in the parking lot, I hear the call of a nightbird on a wire. Such a sweet, sweet sound. I don't even see the mook from Death Phinger, Brown Thumb. He must be in digging the show. The hypocrite.
At least my hair stopped hurting.
Obligatory Reviews:
No Authority
No Authority
(Maverick)
Amid the collection of Gap ad pics in the CD packaging, a member of No Authority is seen grappling his leather-clad ass cheeks and tossing a coy, lower Manhattan bathhouse glance over his left shoulder. The boy could be posing for gay porno box covers called Backdoor Boys or 'N Assync. It's like the teen throb is saying, "Thank you for all your help, Michael. P.S., I love you . . ." That Michael being, of course, Michael Jackson.
See, the gloved one took the four comely fledglings of No Authority under his, uh, wing, and secured them a recording contract with Madonna's Maverick Records. What's more, Jackson extended the band enlightened counsel from years of collected wisdom on the ways of flesh. Jackson is quoted by band member Ricky G as having said, "Girlfriends are what ruined a lot of groups." Yeah, baby.
To further the weird pedology contained, the tunes on No Authority are but a silken, Teen Beat collection of Britney knockoffs sung with lots of Jacksonesque inflection. The record just drips with the King of Pop's briny manliness. If one of the roles of teen pop is to typically mask and regulate anything hormonal, we can thank Jackson for the giving the boys of No Authority a shot. A money shot, that is.
Dee Snider
Never Let the Bastards Wear You Down
(Koch Records)
"I am definitely of the mind to put my musical career behind me," claims Dee Snider in the press pack bio. "I see this as the last chapter in my recording career."
Really, Snider's swan song is a set of songs somebody forgot to write. Songs left on the proverbial roadside with all the cow dung and beer cans and fast-food wrappers. Songs that were never recorded or even played by Twisted Sister. Songs that amount to nothing more than minutes of hard-rockin' CD running time of self-referential idiocy (and a hammy take on "The Wanderer") that only a mildly retarded west-side stoner could possibly find the least bit entertaining.
Although Snider's persona is as distinctive as Top Ramen (anyone remember his motion picture powerhouse Strangeland?), he seems truly to believe that some guys will purchase a CD to hear some Fred Gywnne look-alike shout over arena rawk power chords. Look for Dee Snider on a package tour next year that will feature a regrouped April Wine and Head East with only the original drummer.
