These Go To Eleven

I recently did a review for a newly acquired purchase of Rhino’s Heavy Metal Box. The review is over at Glorious Noise, but I wanted to do a little companion piece here, sort of an “it’d be cool if the box set had this” list.
Without getting into the usual suspects (Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, AC/DC, etc.), I thought it would be good to throw out a couple of tracks that would have added to the set for me. Consider that these tracks are by no means scientifically considered; I don’t imagine they would have much relevance for anyone except me and my reasons for inclusion are entirely superficial.
Motley Crue “Shout At The Devil”
I didn’t even notice the Crue was missing until I got the thing and started listening to it. I kept expect to hear something, fuck, even “Home Sweet Home,” but no. There is not a goddamn Crue song to be found here and those pieces of shits should be ridiculed for not being included. I can only imagine that it has something to do with money as they obviously parlayed financial struggles into a superficial reunion tour, even though they had to prop up Mick Mars throughout the entire run.
Seriously, you can’t discuss 80’s metal, include a piece on the entire Sunset Strip scene and not have a fucking song by Motley Crue! I remember Brad Brode coming to school in ’82 and showing a bunch of people at lunch a rock magazine with an ad for Too Fast For Love. It was based on the same picture that they used for the record sleeve: the one where all the members are dressed up all leathery in front of a huge pentagram. That image alone was enough for Brad to go “I’m going to get this” and, true to his word, he did. We went over to his house after he got it and I think I may have been the only one turned off by Vince Neil’s voice and Roy Thomas Baker’s strange production values. It sounded much weaker than I expected. When you have pictures of the band posing in leather, fire and pentagrams, you logically expect them to be totally brutal and not glammy. They won me back with Shout At The Devil and I did eventually come around to Too Fast, but Shout remains the band’s pinnacle and is deserving of some inclusion on Heavy Metal Box.
Autograph-“Turn Up The Radio”
I know, I know. Its total cheese and very little meat. This hard-rock anthem was (obviously) a one-hit wonder, but it was one of those songs that, when you heard it, you knew it would be huge. I went to a kegger once during high school out at this place called the sand pits just south of town next to the Des Moines river. It was like that kegger scene in Dazed & Confused except Autograph’s “Turn Up The Radio” was playing as I walked up to the party. Regardless of how stupid this song is, you’ve got to admit, that’s a near-perfect celluloid moment.
Helix-“Rock You”
See “Turn Up The Radio.” Another kegger, another anthem. This time it was indoors and someone had the good sense to throw in a Helix cassette. Perhaps a little more rockin’ than Autograph, but just as stupid. With it’s moronic chant of “Gimmie an R-O-C-K! Whacha got? (Rock!) And Whatach gonna do? (Rock You!),” and a name that’s equally stupid (Helix? Like a three-dimensional twist or a DNA helix?), you get exactly what you’d expect with a song called “Rock You.” I vaguely remember the video for this and, if I recall correctly, the lead singer had a tooth missing.
Def Leppard-“No No No”
I’d even take “Let It Go,” “High ‘n’ Dry,” “Lady Strange”…but “No No No” reminds me of yet another party (see a pattern?). This one was Bobby H.’s, a next-door neighbor that loved Kiss and other things metal. His parents were out of town and his older sister “supervised” a makeshift drinking party. For one partygoer, I’ll never forget this, the sound of Def Leppard’s High ‘n’ Dry album was enough to get him to sit on the couch in his denim jacket and bang his head in time to the music. Bobby was playing the record version, and at the end of “No No No,” there was a lock-groove where Joe Elliot’s yell of “No!” is repeated over and over, without stopping. This didn’t stop our drunken metalhead from trying to match him, stopping only when someone removed the needle and replaced the record. I think they replaced it with Kiss’ Lick It Up and I left the party as a result.
Kix-“Midnite Dynamite”
If you’re going to include fucking Poison in the Heavy Metal Box then for fuckssake, you’ve got to include Kix. Those guys completely lifted Kix’s stage show, which sucks because Poison couldn’t hold a candle to Kix musically and the only thing that brought Brett Michaels more notoriety than Kix vocalist Steve Whiteman is that he was cuter. So while Poison moved to L.A. to get closer to the major label’s tit, Kix continued to tour up and down the East Coast, endlessly and thanklessly paying their dues with little national recognition. A few of us did notice, particularly after one of the music channels played a Kix club performance during their support of Cool Kids. That album doesn’t rock as hard as Midnite Dynamite, which should’ve sold more copies than Look What The Cat Dragged In.
Any one of those songs would’ve appeased me more than, say, Manowar which is blessed with a spot on Heavy Metal Box with a song that contains the line “May your sword stay wet/Like a young girl in her prime.” Horrific. And metal shouldn’t be horrific. Stupid? Sometimes, but never to the point where the band is trying to convey some kind of Medieval imagery and is forced to include a line like that.