#26 Faster Pussycat - Wake Me When It's Over: Blow My Whistle

ROCKTOBERFEST: A Most Excellent Countdown of the 31 Most Bitchin Glam Metal Albums

#26 Faster Pussycat – Wake Me When It’s Over (Released 1989) Gold #48 Billboard Albums Chart

Taime Downe (Sleaziest Voice in Sleaze) – Vocals

Greg Steele(Looks good in front of a wind machine) – Lead & Rhythm Guitar

Brent Muscat (A really convincing average-looking woman) – Rhythm & Lead Guitar

Eric Stacy (Generic Sleaze Dude) - Bass

Mark Michals (Blackhole of Khur-As-Ma) – Drums

Blow My Whistle: The Sleaziest Band in Rock N Roll

Faster Pussycat is the inspiration for many of the punk ‘n’ roll heavy modern sleaze bands (LA Guns inspires more of the metallic sleaze bands). This extremely sleazy brand of rock n roll sounds as dirty and sweaty as it is highly addictive with a thousand hooks per second and vocals that make up for technical ineptitude with swag that make many hip-hop artists very jealous (this only holds if they knew who Faster Pussycat was). Faster Pussycat’s sound is a confluence of the New York Dolls, Aerosmith and Motley Crue.

The New York Dolls supply that fast and loose rhythm sound that energizes even the most chill (read: boring-fuckin) person. (O you didn’t know, I am leading the war against chill.) In addition, The Dolls contributed very self-aware and playful lyrics to Faster Pussycat. The imagery and employment of colorful metaphors make Faster Pussycat not only a fun band to party to, but a fun one to actually listen to. (Once again, I use my imagination to conjure up this fantasy land where glam metal is used to party. No such party has existed since 1992.) Faster Pussycat do not look like a collection of MENSA members, but only Nikki Sixx is their peer in lyrical quality.  

Aerosmith provides the boys in Faster Pussycat that dirty blues sound that just romps and stomps through their songs. Wake Me When It’s Over is a more blues-oriented album than the punkish eponymous debut album. The songs are much longer in composition with all of them at least 4:30 in length (Damn Vince think how many times you would have to sing the chorus to fill up all that time). The leads and solos take more of a blues tone with almost no finger-tapping on the whole album. Finally, Downe’s screams and unintelligible utterings are mostly derived from the “Screamin Demon” himself, Steven Tyler.

Motley Crue brought the image and the party, sex, drugs and rock n roll model to Faster Pussycat. The boys in Pussycat sure knew how to through one helluva party as they operated a rock n roll dive dubbed the Cathouse (“Where pussy aint no feline” to quote them) and I will give you three guesses what went on down there. Faster Pussycat used Motley Crue as template, they said something sleazy like “You are going to take my disease” and we will one-up them with “Blow my whistle”. They did blew coke and shot up heroin, we will do more and go harder and faster. They bang a million groupies, we are going to fuckin own and operate a brothel on the Sunset Strip. It is this type of competition that makes America so fuckin awesome and the fact Faster Pussycat is from USA, fuck yeah. U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!

Wake Me When It’s Over begins with a galloping rhythm section and a really grooving riff that tells you right off the bat, “Yeah this album is going to melt my face”. The opening song is Where There’s A Whip, There’s A Way. Does it get sleazier? Many will try and many will fail because you just cant compete with the combination of this infectious sneer and catchy lyrics. The song is about BDSM, for the naïve and sheltered that would be Bondage Domination Sado-Masochism. Whatever butters your corn-cob is what I always say. Yes twenty-two years before Rihanna “pushed the envelope”, Faster Pussycat sung about strapping and de-humanizing on an album that went Gold.  Taime screams “You better start your talking because I get what I go after” and I just love it. The persistent Crue influence comes from the gang-shouts you will hear throughout the album.

The next song begins ominously and hauntingly before a killer circular, blues riff is seared into brain over two cycles before Taime hits with his signature strutting sneer on Little Dove. This song features Faster Pussycat’s sleaziest and catchiest chorus “Blow my whistle//rock me little dove//Rock my missile//blow me little dove.” Some Peter Frampton-esque guitar-theatrics are utilized in the solo, I believe saying “I love you.” I could do without the last minute of the song that starts the ugly trend of these songs just being too damn long for their good. Tighten this shit up. That is the problem in the late 80’s when everyone was making the transition to CDs. Now all of sudden albums went from 45 minutes to 60 minutes and the results at least in the glam world tended not to be pretty. The first four minutes of the song smokes. Check it.

The next song is the lead single off the album, Poison Ivy, because women are either afflictions or addictions.  The hooks on this one are the piano playing during the chorus and the grooving, dirty-blues bassline that makes it a workout for me to control my hips. (Seriously listening to Faster Pussycat, I just want to start finger-wagging, foot-tapping and hip-shakin then I remember I am on the bus with a  bunch of humorless twats.) The blues-based solo is also one of the best on the album showing off the great guitar work by Greg Steele before leading into the chorus.  

The next song is my favorite off the album and it is probably Faster Pussycat’s most well-known song and it is a power ballad. Yeah I said power ballad. Power ballads can be cool, guys. Seriously. You know this has to one damn good power ballad for me to say this is my favorite song after those three smoke-shows and it truly is. This is one of the best power ballads of all time. We are talking Top 5 shit. This song is so moving that I will skip it when it comes up on shuffle because it always tugs at my heart-strings. The song is about a child, whose dad abandons him and he is just left wondering where his dad has gone off to. If the earnestness of the lyrics and Downe’s  vocal delivery you don’t have a fuckin soul. Go listen to this one right meow.

After four songs of burning, thundering high-energy rock n roll and one magnificent power ballad we start to hit the filler in the album. The next song on the docket is Gonna Walk and it is a perfectly adequate cut of punky blues-rock that Pussycat is known for, but lacks the hooks of the previous offerings to really stand-out and shine on this album. Following this is Pulling Weeds, which sounds like a low-grade version of their killer song, Bottle In Front Of Me only with less rawness and more length. Plagiarism is still plagiarism, kids, even if it is form yourself.

The album returns to form over the next three songs with hooks and some more variety. In Slip of the Tongue, we finally get that punky Dolls sound, we loved so much on the debut album. The sneer and energy is back in full force on this song. I love the delivery of “Damned if I do// Damned If I Don’t” just sounds really fuckin cool, don’t know how else to explain it. It features a great gang-shout chorus that I would shout along with my friends if I knew anybody who listened to Faster Pussycat.

The next song is the borderline masterpiece, Cryin Shame. The grinding riff in this song sets it apart from the rest of the grooving riffs on the album I really cant decide, sometimes I think to myself that has all the qualities of a sleaze masterpiece: great hook (“Wake me when it’s over…”), interesting subject (the murder of a street-punk), a really sleazy, grinding riff, and Downe’s signature sneer. Yet I am still vacillating. The song just leaves me wanting a little more (probably in the solo, but that’s my biggest problem with Pussycat anyways), but definitely check it out.

Wrapping up this bitchin three song stretch is the blues-rock stomper, Tattoo, with its catchy chorus of “She’s got my name//She’s got my name//Tattoo’d on the//backside of her brain”. This chorus is the hook that avoids this song from being deemed filler. In addition, this is definitely one of the better solos on the album as Steele really unloads on this one when he often keeps you wanting more.

The final three songs are good, but I would not put them in the class of the brethren that I have singled out earlier. The next song on tap is Aint No Way Around It is a high-energy blues-y stomper the hook is the guitar fill in between the lyrics and it sounds pretty good. The chorus just isn’t there for me and I think Downe’s sneer just doesn’t have the energy on this one. I will give Arizona Indian Doll this, it definitely sounds different and I don’t think a song like this has ever been attempted by a sleaze band. The song opens with some some finger-snapping, light cymbal-stapping, big bass-line and piano sound that all seem fit for a JAZZ LOUNGE!?!?!?! Yeah, it is not my steeze (it is a Ke$ha word that I am trying on for size. I don’t know if I like it when I use it). However I could seem someone digging this and I give them points for trying. It beats putting on yet another bluesy by way of Aerosmith song. The final song is the lengthy (clocking in at 6:25, most glam songs don’t exceed 3:30, DAMN) Please Dear, which is a power ballad, not a typical one, but it has the big harmonized chorus, so I am sticking it in there. Anyways, it just does not do much for me. All in all it is a disappointing way to end an album that smoke more often than not.

Faster Pussycat’s Wake Me When It’s Over can be a bit repetitive and could definitely use some tightening up, but I have found these hour-long albums suffer frequently from these maladies. However when you are sporting House of Pain, Cryin Shame and Where There’s A Whip There’s A Way on your album it is hard not to deem your one of the greatest sleaze albums of all time. This is definitely recommended for those who are fans of Aerosmith, New York Dolls or Motley Crue. Though I would be remiss to mention that Taime Downe’s voice is not the prettiest and definitely can take sometime getting used to his sneer. However, when you do I think you will find Faster Pussycat to be a sleazy good time.