The Metal Years: A Handful of LA Metal Obscurities from the 80's

Creature, live in the cage circa 1989.

Most people who have ready any of this blog know that I am, to put it mildly, a latecomer to heavy metal.  Growing up in the late 70’s/early 80’s in Southern California, I was weaned on punk, post-punk, and new wave. 

1986 was a major year in the transition of popular music from punk/new wave to metal in Southern California.  One of the biggest events was the conversion of the Long Beach CA radio station KNAC from an alternative/new wave format to a heavy metal format in 1986.  As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, this was an absolute watershed moment in my youth, an all-or-none dividing point between my generation and the younger generation of younger siblings who came of age after us.  KNAC was beloved by all of my friends as the hipper, homier version of Pasadena alternative rock powerhouse radio station KROQ.  Its playlist was more eclectic and original, the DJs cooler and more laid back.  But you have to give them credit—when they went metal they went really all-out metal, focusing primarily (but not exclusively) on true heavy metal rather than hair metal.  Most of their set list consisted of bands like Ozzy Ozbourne, Iron Maiden, Metallica, and Dio who weren’t getting a huge amount of play elsewhere at that time.  

Meanwhile, the hair metal scene in LA was still in its infancy.  Bands like Van Halen, Quiet Riot, and Ratt had gotten the ball rolling in the late 70's (in Van Halen's case) and early 80's.  For awhile new wave and hair metal co-existed uneasily in the LA club scene.  Around 1985 a band appeared that attempted to straddle this line, LA’s own Bang Bang.  I can vividly remember seeing the video for their song“This is Love” on local TV sometime around 1985 or so; amazingly, this video is available for download on iTunes (though none of their musical output is).  Their look and sound can only be described as Duran Duran meets Poison; teased hair, lipstick and eye shadow combined with unstructured “Miami Vice” inspired blazers, duster coats, and panama hats.  The music had heavy saxophone (shades of “Rio”) and synthesizers.  Singer Julian Raymond’s voice was very distinctive, wavering between Simon Le Bon and a slightly more yowly and show-tuney version of Pete Burns of Dead Or Alive.  Its strangely peppy and catchy but still just so hard to categorize; too rock-y to appeal to new wavers into Kajagoogoo, way too new wave-y for most metalers (even metal-lite music like Poison).  “Dark Intentions” has been uploaded to YouTube and is even more confusing; starting with a pulsing keyboard line and soft, crooned vocals by Raymond, this sounds more like an outtake from Japan’s Tin Drum album.  “Shilo”, also on YouTube has lush keyboards and soaring vocals but is low key and burbling; this reminds me of Cetu Javu or some other second-tier Depeche clone.  It also kind of reminds me of Glass Tiger or “Burning Flame” by Vitamin Z.  Not terrible but again I think most people would have trouble figuring out how to categorize this music.

 By 1987 the LA metal scene had started its ascendancy and such experiments were largely forgotten, and more and more bands started following the same hair/glam metal formula.  This to me represented one of the biggest nadirs in popular music; from 1987 till about 1991 the airwaves (and MTV) were saturated with the same formulaic take on lite metal, and most of these bands were so faceless and interchangeable.  The look was the same (a heavy dose of the New York Dolls hairsprayed androgyny along with Diamond Dave's spandex and a dash of Rob Halford of Judas Priest's chains and leather), the sound was the same (glam/pop metal with some powerpop elements combined with AC/DC or Zep riffs and arena rock solos), with very little (to my ears anyway) to differentiate or distinguish one band from another.  There were plenty of bandwagon-jumpers in the punk and new wave scenes as well, but at least in the case of new wave most of these bands came up with a distinctive look and sound.  Haircut 100 was very different from Heaven 17 who were very different from the Thompson Twins or Erasure.  But every hair metal band had two types of songs, one about partying/pussy/incoherent rebellion, and the other was a ballad showing off their tender side (and to make young women buy their album too). It was rock at its most formulaic and boring and I never really got into it.

Virtually overnight the Sunset Strip was overrun by teased out hexers riding hogs and wearing lipstick.  LA was quickly flooded with wannabe rock stars from every corner of the globe, hoping to become the next Ratt or Poison.  It became almost amusing to read local publications like BAM (actually a Bay Area Magazine, that’s what BAM stands for, but BAM had an LA outlet too) and flip past endless pages of ads for cheesy glam metal bands looking to make it big.  During this time, most of the major clubs in LA, including Gazzarri’s, Coconut Teaszer, the Rainbow, the Roxy, the Whiskey, etc., changed to a pay-to-play format where bands were forced to pay an up-front fee, essentially guaranteeing the club owner money up front which the band would then hope to recoup from paying fans.  But since there were so many (anonymous, faceless) bands, few were able to generate any fan base and most attendees of their concerts were friends, family members, well wishers, and hangers-on who were let in for free.  Many bands spent all their resources trying to build a successful career to no avail.  

 One band whose name I remembered from those days was Cherry St.  I recall seeing this band’s ads in BAM and its fliers pasted all over the Strip in those days.  I thought the name was really lame and assumed the band and their sound was too.   But recently I happened across some of their songs uploaded to YouTube and imagine my surprise when I found that I actually like them!!   Lead singer Taz (somehow I doubt that’s his given name) has a screechy yowl that falls just on the right side of AC/DC’s Brian Johnson, and their sound is rooted more in bluesy hard rock than metal lite.  “Whisky” off their 1993 album Squeeze It Dry sounds like a cross between Back In Black era AC/DC and Guns n' Roses.   “No Doubt About It” continues in this sleazy, bluesy vein and is another strong track.  “Luv Junkie” and “Good In a Bad Way” off their album X Rated are also solid.  It just goes to show you can’t always judge a book by its cover.

1987 was the year I first heard of a band garnering widespread interest called Guns n’ Roses.  I never saw GnR live but in late fall 1987 I briefly started dating again an old girlfriend who was really into them.  She was a former punkette who attended UC Irvine and was friends with my best friend John who also went there.  She was one of the first people I knew who was transitioning from the punk to the metal/hard rock scene. By early ’88 she was going to GnR shows at some of the LA clubs, and had induced me to buy their just-released album, Appetite For Destruction.  I still like several songs off this album, mostly the harder-edged stuff like “Out Ta Get Me”, “It’s So Easy”, and “Night Train”. 

And as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I liked some of the similarly-oriented music in LA and elsewhere that drew upon sleazy AC/DC influenced hard rock (often with a punky edge), and in particular liked the bands Junkyard, the Hangmen, and the Sea Hags.  “Rotten Sunday” by the Hangmen is still one of my favorite songs of that era, and even now it evokes that smoke-saturated, hungover feeling I always had after going to clubs like Scream and Power Tools.  I actually saw the Hangmen play at Scream around 1988 or thereabouts and they were fantastic; grungy, sleazy, greasy punked up hard rock. 

But by and large I didn’t go to many hard rock or metal concerts.  The music just didn’t speak to me like punk rock did.  However, one night my then-girlfriend (now wife) and her roommate and a guy friend of hers were bopping about the Westside and couldn’t find a good concert to go to.  So we decided to go to the Troubadour and see what was playing.  It ended up being one of the funniest nights of my life.  The opening act was this metal band called Armed N’ Dangerus (gee, how original) who played a fairly straightforward Van Halen influenced heavy metal.  There was all of about 10 people in the audience (including the 4 of us) but I have to confess, these guys performed like they were onstage at the Coliseum.  They strutted and did choreographed moves and gave it their all.  Their guitarist was this hugely muscled and tanned macho man type who would rotate his neck to the music like it was on a ball and socket.  One funny moment was when I was approached by this dyed-in-the-wool Strip bimbo—she looked like a parody of Pamela Anderson.  She was hyper-tan, had huge round breasts and long skinny legs, a haystack of peroxided blonde hair, and frosted lipstick.  She was wearing a tight, tiny, clingy knit dress that barely grazed the bottom of her crotch and towering high heels.  She was the girlfriend of the lead singer and was approaching all single males in the club to get them to sign up for the Armed N’ Dangerus mailing list.  I signed up for it just to see the look of pure malice my girlfriend gave me! 

I have looked everywhere for information on this band but all I’ve found is one very brief Facebook page that MIGHT be them.  I remember them as being from somewhere else—Chatsworth maybe or Orange County.  Alas no MP3s posted anywhere.

The headlining band that night was the almost-legendary band Creature.  Creature was, for want of a better description, a sort of Kiss tribute band that played their own original music.  They performed in full whiteface makeup and codpieced leather jumpsuits exactly like Kiss.  That night they did one of their infamous “live in the cage” performances, where the stage was caged off and they played inside it—think of the Scorpions in the video for “Rock You Like A Hurricane”.  It was both ludicrous and sublime.  None of the four of us could stop laughing.  They also had these stepped risers ascending toward the back of the stage and the guitarists would scuttle up and down them like roaches.  They too were striving for the bigger-than-life Kiss live in some giant stadium feel but it came off as pathetic and humorous in the tight confines of the Troubadour.  We still laugh about that concert and how lame it was.

The thing was, the music wasn’t terrible.  It was pretty much as you’d expect, metalized pseudo-Kiss stuff, with elements of Alice Cooper and early Crue.  It had some of the crunchiness and catchiness of classic Kiss (such as “Detroit Rock City” or “Strutter”) but was more metal, so leaned more toward Lick It Up post-makeup era Kiss.  Not great but not terrible either.  Former Creature guitarist Trixxian Vitolo has a fantastic web site (http://trixxianvitolo.com/creature.htm) where he’s collected images, media stories, and MP3s from Creature’s heyday.  “Too Many Girls” has a repetitive metal riff and vocals that hint at a cross between Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley; its perhaps Creature’s best and catchiest song, although it goes on for a bit too long. This struts nicely between “Cold Gin” and “Too Fast For Love”.  “Wicked Witch” again has crunchy metal riffs but the high pitched squeaky chorus of “wicked witch” sounds goofy to me.    “We Want The World” sounds like early Motley Crue, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but like “Girls” it goes on about 2 minutes too long.   “Take Me, Shake Me”, which is not on Trixxian’s web site but was off their much-discussed demo and has been uploaded to YouTube, is much more metallic, with shrieky lead vocals and a punchy, driving metal rhythm.  Former drummer Johnny Lust has also uploaded “Shock The World” to YouTube; the vocals here are very similar to Axl Rose’s on “Welcome To the Jungle” and even the music sounds very GnR.