hair metal

Hairy metal Horrible music that I like backpack rapmodern emomodern power metalhair metalMiami bass musicTejano music if I understand the wordsdance remixes of pop songs Horrible music that I dislike coke rapgoregrindsymphonic metalprom dress metalnu countryTejano music if I don’t understand the wordsdance remixes of pop songs

by Cosmo Lee Yesterday’s post made me revisit Alice Cooper’s Trash (Epic, 1989) for the first time in over 15 years. It was the first tape I ever bought for the sole purpose of shocking my mother with the cover. (It worked. I also remember feeling that the inside artwork in Appetite for Destruction had […]

by Cosmo Lee The music at my gym is mostly horrible Hi-NRG dance fare. I have made multiple complaints, to little avail. As a result, I have probably been subjected to more dance versions of pop songs than any other human alive, including “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire,” Skee-Lo’s “I […]

Speaking of Van Halen, have you ever noticed the similarity betweeen “Panama” and Ratt’s “Round and Round”? Both singles came out in 1984, but I’m not sure which was written and/or released first. I’d guess that “Panama” was written first, due to (a) Eddie Van Halen’s tendency to have tons of material lying around, often […]

Yesterday marked the 30th anniversary of Van Halen’s debut. I’m reading Everybody Wants Some, Ian Christe’s fine biography of the band, and I’ve had fun revisiting the old records (that is, until the Sammy Hagar era; 5150 is fucking repulsive). They’re fascinatingly varied (Fair Warning and 1984 are almost polar opposites), but I keep coming […]

Andrew at Aversionline has long banged on about the awesomeness of the first two Skid Row records. While in the back of my mind I’ve known he’s probably right, it’s been over 15 years since I heard those songs. Recently, though, I had occasion to revisit them while reviewing the new Sebastian Bach album, which […]

EW.com has a cheeky photo quiz up – “Name that hair metal band.” I’m somewhat embarrassed to say that I got a perfect score. I guess all that time spent reading Circus and Hit Parader in grocery stores as a child wasn’t for nothing.