Chuck Klosterman on Rock Chuck Klosterman

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.” Most of the initial attention surrounding this album was granted to “Babylon,” a rap song that seemed like an attempt to rip off Anthrax’s attempt at ripping off Licensed to III, but it sure seemed funny at the time.However, it was the second side of Faster Pussycat that paid the rent.“Smash Alley” examined the downside of high heels and switchblades and also reminded me that I should probably listen to my Smashed Gladys cassette more often.“Ship Rolls In” was pretty much an Aerosmith song, but it wonderfully captured the identity of glam metal in three lines from vocalist/fellatio advocate Taime Downe: “You gotta roll with the punches, spin like a top / I ain’t got much, but I got a lot of PER-SO-NAL-ITEEEE / And that’s all that counts.” Taime, you’re pretty smart for a wussy.(Jack Factor: $580)Vinnie Vincent, Invasion (1986, Chrysalis): Like a Tasmanian devil whirling toward vaginas and self-destruction, the guitarmageddon unleashed by ex-KISS wackmobile Vincent on this solo debut is so schlockily stunning that I still have to play this album at least six times every year.Never was metal as brilliantly self-indulgent as it was on Invasion (which would soon become part of the group’s actual name, hence the better known moniker “Vinnie Vincent Invasion”).After this first record, the group hired Mark Slaughter’s throat and Vinnie went to hell, both as a rocker and as a human being (for all I know, Vinnie now lives on the moon and wears his Egyptian ankh makeup whenever he surfs the Internet for alt.talk.creaturesofthenight).But for select moments on Invasion, V V is the fastest, craziest, and downright best six-string shredder to ever wear pinkish lavender in public.Right from track number one, you know what you’re getting: “Boys Are Gonna Rock” has two and a half guitar solos.Singer Robert Fleischman screams about sadomasochism and ejaculations, but—for all practical purposes—this may as well be an instrumental album.At the conclusion of “Animal,” Vincent plays faster and harder and faster and harder and faster and stupider and he’s going nowhere but he’s getting there fast and now your neighbors are banging on the wall and your bookcase speakers are starting to melt and your beagle is in obvious pain and suddenly you suspect that everything in your house is going to IMPLODE.And then Vinnie collapses, and then you hear six seconds of reverb.And then the next song begins (with a guitar solo).It should be also noted that Invasion ultimately ends with 151 seconds of Vincent replicating a car alarm (or perhaps a grain elevator).This is rock ’n’ roll.This is rock ’n’ roll? This is rock ’n’ roll! (Jack Factor: $675)Def Leppard, Pyromania (1983, PolyGram): First of all, let me say—purely as a fan—I probably prefer Lep’s 1981 release High ’n’ Dry.The title track on that record smokes everything here, and “Let It Go” is dandy rock candy.But I also realize that Pyromania is the better record.For a bunch of twenty-one-year-old alcoholics in need of personalities, the level of musical sophistication on Pyromania is amazing.I suppose the majority of that credit should go to Robert “Mutt” Lange, who earned the right to sleep with Shania Twain for producing an album this immaculate.The knock against Def Leppard has always been that they’re “overproduced,” which is precisely what artists want when they ask Lange to engineer their records.Most producers—like Bob Rock, for example—took metal bands and tried to capture the “liveness” of the sound (when Rock did Mötley Crüe’s Dr.Feelgood, he played up the guitar tones and Tommy Lee’s orangutan drumming).Lange does the opposite; he works more like a smart copyeditor.Everything is polished until it’s ultraclean and hyperefficient, so you only notice the main riff and the soaring vocals (this was even more obvious when he produced Back in Black).Granted, this kind of recording philosophy doesn’t work with a lot of artists.But it’s a perfect recipe for a legitimately talented metal outfit, and that’s exactly what Def Leppard was.“Rock! Rock! (Till You Drop)” is the ideal opening, and “Photograph” is the best Journey song ever made.Pyromania is infected with a bunch of pre-irony studio gimmicks (like the intro to “Rock of Ages” and the supposedly “space age” crap after track ten), but it doesn’t have any bad songs, either.Critics of ’80s hard rock sometimes point to Pyromania as an example of what was wrong with the whole industry: The stock argument is that this record is sanitized arena pop that doesn’t deliver anything that could affect a listener—the lyrics are about nothing, the music is perfectly calculated, there’s no emotional investment by the artist, and there’s not even a constructed sense of humanity [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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