Writer & Editor
I was tagged by poet, writer, and mushroom photographer Ariel Gordon to take part in the Next Big Thing Blog Hop, so today I’m going to chat about my work-in-(interminable)-progress, Bark at the Moon.
(Before I forget, I’ve tagged Angélique Jamail, Noree Cosper, Jóhann Thorsson, and Peter Dawes, so hop on over and visit. And while I didn’t tag them myself, do check out Chadwick Ginther and Emmie Mears.)
Without further ado, here we go:
If you want to understand why glam metal was so popular in the late ’80s, you should listen to a band that had more bite than Poison and better sense of the absurd than Cinderella, which is to say: Faster Pussycat.
Named for the Russ Meyer movie Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill! the band was just as ludicrous and awesome as its namesake. On its debut album, the band is rough, cocky and a hell of a lot of fun, whether their lyrics are making sense or not.
With an album as popular as Def Leppard’s Hysteria, the memory of when you first heard it may be overshadowed by the point at which you became sick of it.
As with Def Leppard, so went the fates of pop metal — they reached their height of fame with Hysteria, released in 1987, and it’s arguably one of the last great albums in the genre. The numerous singles released from it kept it on the airwaves for years, and that was part of the problem.
A compilation album may not often make it onto a “best of” list, but I’ll always be biased when it comes to AC/DC’s Who Made Who. It was a Christmas present in 1986 and my gateway album into the world of heavy metal. Once I’d heard it, I never looked back.
Dear Teen Me:
When I look at you, just about to hit Grade 12, I think, who is that skinny kid? And right, the hair.
I’m going to try to put this in such a way that won’t make your trademark stubbornness (which got you through that nasty, soul-crushing period of self-doubt and depression in Grade 11) immediately shut your ears. Crap, I think I’ve blown it already.
I first had the opportunity to talk to Jon Mikl Thor back in 2005, while he was in the midst of a gruelling tour and had recently suffered an onstage accident in which he was nearly electrocuted. Despite that, he was very upbeat about his music career and made for a great interview. The only kicker was, I was interviewing him for Lögberg-Heimskringla, an Icelandic ethnic newspaper, and in the course of the interview learned he was not of Icelandic background at all.
