Skid Row....
Skid Row were kinda one of the last ones of that kind you know? To me Skid Row and Ugly Kid Joe were kinda the last two. Ugly Kid Joe were kinda that glam band that were never gonna be cool and you knew it. But when you heard Skid Row even after Nirvana blew up you thought they could still do something. I think Sebastian Bach, honestly, had the best voice ever for that kind of music. They had that bad boy motorcycle gang cool aura but still had the long hair. There's no telling how big that band would have been if that movement had kept going. I remember them having a countdown on MTV and it would be like New Kids On The Block and Skid Row up there in the Top Five.
Van Halen...
Once I started getting into music they were obviously very big and 1984 came out right at that time and it was huge. Just in general though I still consider 1984 my favourite year for music. To me there are so many different stages of Van Halen that you can almost get confused because there's even different stages of David Lee Roth! Van Halen I and II are them as just a club band, they didn't really give a shit about anything and they just put it out there - it almost sounds like Roth is freekin making it up as he goes along you know?! Then you get the Diver Down days when it's obvious that they're like 'Hey man, we're making some money so let's get out there and make some more!' And '1984' is the exclamation point to a fantastic run - it's just 'Wow!'
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I even bought into Sammy Hagar at the time - I liked '5150' - not that I really dug all the songs but I thought the single 'Why Can't This Be Love' was great and certain others I really liked. I thought they did it really well too cause on the 'Live Without A Net' tour they did the new Van Halen but they also did Hagar songs and old Van Halen songs which I thought was such a cool way to approach it. It was like 'Fuck it, we're a rock band out here doing our thing'. They sorta lost me though around the time of 'F.U.C.K.' - that's when I pretty much jumped ship and really never paid too much attention again.
What's funny with the Gary Cherone album there so much drama going on around that time and I don't think the band handled it as well as they did when Sammy joined. I thought the Cherone single was awesome but with the Greatest Hits album and the whole 'Me Wise Magic' song with David Lee Roth at that time it kinda confused everybody and we all thought they were gonna get back together. I don't think that Gary Cherone ever got a fair shake.
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Pantera....
Pantera were one of those bands that I was going to watch when I was thirteen years old and they were doing Judas Priest covers and wearing Spandex pants. This was even before Phil (Anselmo) was in the band, they had a singer called Terence Lee and I had the first two albums which Phil didn't sing on and I still have them to this day on cassette. There was a lot of that music going on but they were definitely one of the bigger ones. There were bands around Dallas and in Oklahoma that were doing the spandex thing with hair spiked up everywhere - you know the full on thing!
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Guns n Roses...
I loved 'Appetite' and the acoustic album and I bought the 'Use Your Illusion' albums the day they came out. To me they're one of those bands that I loved so much but the more I grew to dislike Axl Rose, the less I liked the band. And that's tough because I honestly believe that 'Appetite For Destruction' is one of the greatest albums in history! The more you listed to it the more you appreciate it even today. That's one of those guys who you put in the studio and he did some great things but will never be able to sing like that live and probably never could.
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Poison...
I got the whole Poison thing. I was basically that whole MTV Headbangers Ball kid so any album they played on there I went and bought and if the Record Store didn't have it I ordered it. So Poison I bought into hook, line and sinker - I wanted to be Rikki Rockett! I actually think Poison is one of those bands that you don't realise but they continued to put out great fuckin songs! You buy their Greatest Hits and you're like 'Wow, I forgot about this and this and this!' 'Look What The Cat Dragged In' was my big album to mow the lawn to! |
