![]() “I coulda went to college like rich kids do, Buy some weed with the money that your mom sent you, But I don’t give a damn bout no higher degree, Cause you know in rock and roll, I got a PhD…” – (a brilliant anthem that will no doubt raise the ambitions of today’s youth) The most memorable/humorous moment for me came during the seventh song with the performance of the band’s newest single “Rich Kids” (a lament, according to singer Jake Scherer, directed at those darned “rich kids” from high school) thanks to the following lyric: The first opener was New Medicine who right out of the gates effectively fulfilled my expectations for the evening through their execution of several crowd pleasing sing-a-longs and power ballads. My first priority, however, was to quench my sentimental thirst for some cheap and cheesy tunes – and with Halestorm’s song titles including “Love Bites (So Do I),” “Daughters of Darkness,” and “You Call Me a Bitch Like it’s a Bad Thing” how could I lose? The headliner of the evening was Halestorm, featuring the babelicious Lizzy Hale on lead vocal, leaving me to wonder if the show was worth it for the music or just to see Lizzy prance around stage in tight leather pants. ![]() Such bands seem to be a dime a dozen these days including the likes of Seether, Daughtry, Adelitas Way, and Rev Theory. Having a fit of nostalgia for such musical stylings, I ventured into Clifton Park, New York several weeks ago to catch a few bands who carry the characteristics of many of the early 80s metal bands (easy hooks and endless riffs). These were artists who supplied plenty of repetitive riffs and catchy hooks satisfying the appetite for hard rock of any twelve year old dime store stoner. Those were the days of uncountable pop metal outfits (or what we simply called back then “metal” bands – a sound and look recently and regrettably reconstructed as “hair metal”), and some of my favorites were groups like Don Dokken, Ron Keel, Fastway, Ratt, Michael Schenker, Accept, Yngwie Malmsteen, Krokus, and Alcatraz. Anyway, the only thing that saved us from getting booed off the stage night after night was our lead singer – a gorgeous, twenty one year blond bombshell, thanks to whom people actually paid attention during our sets and even clapped between songs. Comforts (I remember opening a few times for probably the best heavy metal band in Utah at the time called Truce). ![]() We played several shows at a greasy venue on State Street in Salt Lake called R. We sucked (and I stood out as the suckiest of the bunch) and performed mostly tired covers of familiar rock FM radio tunes (“Living after Midnight” / Judas Priest, “Rock and Roll” / Led Zeppelin, and of course “Paranoid” / Black Sabbath), and some pretty lame original songs. ![]() When I was fifteen years old back in the early 80s, I played drums in a goofy rock band called White Raven. ![]()
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