ROCKTOBERFEST: A Most Excellent Countdown of the 31 Most Bitchin Glam Metal Albums
#29 Pretty Boy Floyd – Leather Boyz with Electric Toyz (Released 1989) #130 Billboard Albums Chart
Steve “Sex” Summers (Really Nice Eyebrows) – Vocals
Kristy “Krash” Majors (Ugliest Drag Queen) – Lead Guitar
Vinnie Chas (I dub him “One Chord”) – Bass
Kari ‘The Mouth” Kane (Best Tommy Lee Wannabe) – Drums
Dude Looks Like A Lady: A Gallery of Glam
INTERVIEWER: Did you really haul off and smack a woman?
Vince Neil (Lead Singer, Motley Crue): No, but ya know everyone in Hollywood looks like a woman.
“One time, I ran out of eye-liner. I had to use magic marker. Now that’s commitment!” – Rikki Rocketr Drummer, Posion
One of the HARDEST things to swallow in glam metal is Tommy Lee’s cock, unfortunately Pamela Anderson declined to be interviewed when I inquired this past weekend. This left me scrambling for a column for tonight, but unlike Pamela Anderson my well never runs DRY (ROASTED!), I decided upon the always controversial and hard to swallow (see I brought it back around) attire of glam metal musicians. This blog will not explore the reason why these aggressively heterosexual men dressed up as their favorite call-girls and will not seek to resolve how this hyper-masculine genre is compatible with cross-dressing. Instead, this blog will display all the different looks that could be seen on the Sunset Strip in 1980’s.
Pretty Boy Floyd is one of the most extreme visually glam bands. I am comfortable enough in my sexuality (read: watched a lot of Ke$ha videos, looked at a lot of Kim Kardahsian and Scarlett Johannson pictures to reassure myself) to say that Steve “Sex” Summers “got” me one night about four years ago. He is among the most convincing drag queens of the Strip and it is only proper that his lead guitarist is one hideous drag queen (Mick Mars and Jack Russel of Great White give Majors a run for his money). Pretty Boy Floyd’s intention clearly was to wear enough make-up and style their hair well-enough to make every Sunset Strip hooker feel underdressed. They stick with the typical glam metal attire of tight leather pants, spandex and sleeveless leather vests. (Sleeves are totally for losers). While Pretty Boy Floyd sought to emulate Motley Crue musically (Check out the drummer stealing all of Tommy Lee’s facial expressions including the O-FACE!), they looked more like their counterparts: Poison.
Poison, for better or for worse, is the quintessential glam metal band (they are NOT the best or my favorite). The goal of Poison was to take the glam image and make it prettier, girlier and more extreme than before. The boys in Poison looked to Playboy and Vogue for their fashion tips. They teased their hair higher and bigger than all the other bands and they applied make-up in a very similar fashion to strippers they so adored. They broke new ground by wearing female jewelry, which was not actually common in the glam metal scene. Couple this with mega-hits Every Rose Has Its Thorn and Nothin But A Good Time and Poison has become the band the mainstream has associated with glam metal. However, the band that Poison had to thank for pioneering the genre and the look: Motley Crue had a myriad of costumes as they reigned as the Kingpins of the Sunset Strip.
I once read that Nikki Sixx stated that “Motley Crue never sought to use glam to look pretty”. I immediately wanted to yell “THEATRE OF PAIN, YOU DUMBASS”. The Theatre of Pain look saw Motley Crue at their most feminine as they lifted more from the 1970’s glam rock genre that Nikki Sixx so adored. Sixx, who had already taken his hair style from Johnny Thunders of the New York Dolls, began wearing bedazzled jumpsuits common to Sweet and Slade. Vince Neil began wearing bright white, assless chaps to match with his penchant for purple-pink clothing and make-up. His hair was butchered for the Home Sweet Home music video as his signature blonde locks were mowed into a hideous mullet. Mullets are NEVER glam, no matter what Joe Elliot of Def Leppard tells you. This extreme usage of make-up led to a aggressive reaction from bands like Guns N Roses, Motley Crue would summarily follow suit on the Girls, Girls, Girls album by re-vamping themselves as leather-clad bikers.
The leather and denim biker look with hair that looks it has been washed with motor oil was a common look for bands that wanted to retain their masculinity. This look still had many similar glam characteristics that are common to most bands. The usage of bandannas, tight leather pants, sleevelees vest, fingerless gloves tight & ripped shirts, long & thick hair, aviator sunglasses and switchblades were employed to promote a bad boy image. This late 1980’s glam look and the “pretty” look contrasted vividly with the comedic, controversy magnet of Twisted Sister.
The men in Twisted Sister had no desire to look pretty or tough. They looked like cross-dressing Stone Age clowns. Dee Snider was a big fan of 70s glam rock bands such as Slade and Mott the Hoople and sought to conjure an air of controversy around his band by wearing obnoxious garish make-up and women’s clothing. This move paid off when MTV took off and Twisted Sister was poised to cash in with huge anthems such as I Wanna Rock and We’re Not Gonna Take It and a ready-made interesting, but defiant image. Out of all these images, my favorite image belongs to the pseudo-Satanic, post-Apocalyptic look of early Motley Crue and W.A.S.P.
I do not care what any person ever tells me, the costumes of Shout At The Devil-Era Motley Crue were FUCKIN BADASS!!! Just as Britney Spears taught us in her music video for “Dance Til The World Ends” (penned by the Sleaze Queen, Ke$ha, herself) everybody gets hotter in the post-Apocalypse. The leather studs, the red & black color scheme, the chains, the make-up, the spiked shoulder pads all worked together to create a wicked cool image of that achieved the goals of looking hyper-sexual, evil and tough. These four ghouls win hands-down in my opinion for best glam metal attire.
Leather Boyz With Electric Toyz is a very, very guilty pleasure of mine. Summers high nasal sneer should be enough to drive off most humans, but his attitude and sleazy swagger carry off these sexual lyrics. Krash’s guitar work is very fundamental with a basic power chord approach and short melodic solos. So what makes this release worthwhile? It is irresistibly FRIGGIN FUN! The chants of “Cock Rock Shock Rock”, “We are Rock N Roll Outlaws” and an ardent desire to set shit on fire like the sky or the night make you laugh and want to nail every hot chick in sight. The album is an easily digestible form of glam metal. All of the worst facets and excesses of glam metal are rolled up into one album and put on display here. This is the album that alternative fans and metalheads look at say “This is why glam metal fuckin sucks and it is just a bunch of preening and bullshit.” You know what I agree with them. Then I would tell them they can GO FUCK THEMSELVES. I like serious music like Led Zeppelin, Nirvana or Megadeth, but if I am going to listen to garbage I want to listen to this because it is fuckin fun.
Total tangent: On the scale of Aqua's Barbie Girl (zero pretentiousness) to anything Kraftwerk ever produced (Rush and David Bowie are jealous of you): How pretentious is it to title your lead single, "Rock N Roll"? Do you think you are fucking Led Zeppelin? Do you think this is the DEFINITIVE, QUINTESSENTIAL Rock N Roll song? What of course makes this all so hilarious is that "pretentious" is the last adjective I would use to describe Pretty Boy Floyd. Now I have to wonder will those who adore art rock jump on the Pretty Boy Floyd bandwagon now that their true pompous, pretentious colors have been exposed by this intrepid and stunningly handsome reporter. Time will tell...
The first song is my favorite and their most metallic song, the title track, Leather Boyz With Electric Toyz. It is their longest song clocking in just under 5 minutes. It features a gang- shout of “WOAH!” throughout the song and I have a longstanding belief that a song CANNOT suck if WOAH is employed. (Name one song that sucks with WOAH in it. Come on, yep that’s what I thought, you cant!) The song is a good example of a conventional Pretty Boy Floyd song in terms of lyrical content as it is about bad boys that like to party and nail chicks.
Pretty Boy Floyd is by no means a mainstream band and therefore it is hard to get youtube videos of their music. The last selection is a video of their power ballad (I prefer Wild Angels), but I Wanna Be With You is a typical power ballad that builds to a crescendo of a gang-shout of “I WANNA BE WITH YOU”.
Pretty Boy Floyd is at fault for inspiring the wretched "bubbleglam" genre that includes such woefully inept bands as Glamevestite Vampirez (with a name like that I had high hopes), the Candy Harlots and the Cadillac Bratz. However, Pretty Boy Floyd while inspiring the genre, never ventures into bubbleglam territory.
Leather Boyz With Electric Toyz is not nearly as good as the two previously listed albums, but this is NOT a best of list. This is MY FAVORITES and I spin Pretty Boy Floyd’s debut album a little more than the others because it is filled with tons of hooks, sleazy lyrics, sneering vocals and dumb, dumb, WICKED DUMB music. Sometimes straightforward rock n roll is all you need to set the night on fire. (Hey a cheesy album deserves an equally cheesy clincher so stop looking at me like that. Seriously, stop. Does it help that next album comes from RATT!!!!!! RATT! RATT! RATT!)
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