The Obscure 80's Hair Band Thread

[jaguarr]

Recently I've been getting back into cheesy 80's hair bands. There was some great music and musicanship from those days and much of it surprisingly stands up to the test of time and is really great even to this day. Some of it is just so cheesy that you can't help but love it, either (then again some of it is so bad it's unbearable). Sure, we all know about the big bands from those days like Def Leppard, The Scorpions, Van Halen, Motley Crue, Whitesnake, Ratt, etc. But what about all those more obscure, lesser known bands from that time? Some of them had some GREAT albums, even if they never made it big or turned out to be one hit wonders. This thread is dedicated to those bands. So, know of a lesser known rock band from that era that you really like and would like to share with folks? This is a thread to do just that.

I'll kick things off with a REALLY obscure band. They had only one album, and were built around guitar virtuoso and singer Gene Marchello of the well known Long Island Marchello clan. In fact Gene's dad, Peppi, produced the album. The band's name? Why, Marchello, of course. Their 1989 album "Destiny" yielded one big hit, "First Love", which had a video that received fairly heavy airplay on MTV that was fairly cliche' and somewhat funny for all the wrong reasons (look out for a then unknown Gina Gershon as the obligatory "hot girl" in the video, replete with some BIG ASS HAIR). Still, "First Love" was hardly the best song on the album. Their sound featured some pretty impressive guitar AND vocal work by Gene. He was obviously channelling Steve Perry as far as a vocal influence, and his guitar playing gave a fairly obvious tip of the hat to both Eddie Van Halen and Ynwgie Malmsteen as well as Rick Emmett. Their sound was melodic hard rock and had a bit of Triumph, a bit of Journey and a bit of Silver Mountain (another obscure band in their own right). There is a bootleg of an unreleased second album out there, but I have yet to get my hands on it. Supposedly it's very good.

At any rate, it's a band worth running down if you enjoy this kind of music. Once in awhile I see a CD pressing of it in the used music bin at the record stores. I've seen it all over the file sharing networks, too, if that's your bag. Gene now plays with his brother (a drummer) in his dad's band The Good Rats, which have been around in various incarnations in the greater NYC/Long Island area. He's probably too talented to be in a local band, IMHO, but whatever floats his boat I guess.

Favorite Track: Destiny (the title track)

jag

 

[Whirlysplat]

Recently I've been getting back into cheesy 80's hair bands. There was some great music and musicanship from those days and much of it surprisingly stands up to the test of time and is really great even to this day. Some of it is just so cheesy that you can't help but love it, either (then again some of it is so bad it's unbearable). Sure, we all know about the big bands from those days like Def Leppard, The Scorpions, Van Halen, Motley Crue, Whitesnake, Ratt, etc. But what about all those more obscure, lesser known bands from that time? Some of them had some GREAT albums, even if they never made it big or turned out to be one hit wonders. This thread is dedicated to those bands. So, know of a lesser known rock band from that era that you really like and would like to share with folks? This is a thread to do just that.

I'll kick things off with a REALLY obscure band. They had only one album, and were built around guitar virtuoso and singer Gene Marchello of the well known Long Island Marchello clan. In fact Gene's dad, Peppi, produced the album. The band's name? Why, Marchello, of course. Their 1989 album "Destiny" yielded one big hit, "First Love", which had a video that received fairly heavy airplay on MTV that was fairly cliche' and somewhat funny for all the wrong reasons (look out for a then unknown Gina Gershon as the obligatory "hot girl" in the video, replete with some BIG ASS HAIR). Still, "First Love" was hardly the best song on the album. Their sound featured some pretty impressive guitar AND vocal work by Gene. He was obviously channelling Steve Perry as far as a vocal influence, and his guitar playing gave a fairly obvious tip of the hat to both Eddie Van Halen and Ynwgie Malmsteen as well as Rick Emmett. Their sound was melodic hard rock and had a bit of Triumph, a bit of Journey and a bit of Silver Mountain (another obscure band in their own right). There is a bootleg of an unreleased second album out there, but I have yet to get my hands on it. Supposedly it's very good.

At any rate, it's a band worth running down if you enjoy this kind of music. Once in awhile I see a CD pressing of it in the used music bin at the record stores. I've seen it all over the file sharing networks, too, if that's your bag. Gene now plays with his brother (a drummer) in his dad's band The Good Rats, which have been around in various incarnations in the greater NYC/Long Island area. He's probably too talented to be in a local band, IMHO, but whatever floats his boat I guess.

Favorite Track: Destiny (the title track)

jag

lol how about White Sister for obscurity.

- Whirly

 

[jaguarr]

Daaaaaamn, Whirly. That *IS* obscure. Do a write-up of 'em, man. It may just be us old-timers in this thread reminiscing, but it ought to be a fun one.

jag

 

[Whirlysplat]

Daaaaaamn, Whirly. That *IS* obscure. Do a write-up of 'em, man. It may just be us old-timers in this thread reminiscing, but it ought to be a fun one.

jag

I can't remember much about them, they had an album called Fashion by Pashion and it had a track on it called "Ghost in Your Heart" that was very catchy. I still have it on tape somewhere.

- Whirly

 

[Jager X]

how can you have this thread and not mention cyndi lauper?

 

[GarudA]

Skid Row Rule

 

[GNR]

Don't even lump Van Halen with that group.They were way ahead of their time.

 

[jaguarr]

how can you have this thread and not mention cyndi lauper?

How can you read the title of this thread and mention Cyndi Lauper at all? Were you a crack baby? While Lauper was certainly very talented, she was neither obscure nor part of a hair band in the 80's (or any other decade for that matter).

jag

 

[jaguarr]

Skid Row Rule

While I really like Skid Row myself, they were hardly obscure, man. They were one of the bigger hard rock acts from that time period.

jag

 

[jaguarr]

Don't even lump Van Halen with that group.They were way ahead of their time.

I was using them as an example of a well known band from that time period and thus one that we wouldn't necessarily bring up here, since we're after the lesser known acts from that era. It wasn't meant to be an all inclusive list.

jag

 

[jaguarr]

I can't remember much about them, they had an album called Fashion by Pashion and it had a track on it called "Ghost in Your Heart" that was very catchy. I still have it on tape somewhere.

- Whirly

Indeed, "Fashion By Passion" was their ONLY album. They have a pretty complete bio here and seem to still be somewhat active according to their website. Interesting that they cling harder to the White Sister moniker than the Tattoo Rodeo one, as they found a bit more success with that incarnation of the band. Guess the Giuffria inspired synth-rock is where their heart is, rather than the bluesier sound they had while playing as TR.

jag

 

[jimmy]

Who could forget, Nitro!

Firehouse!

Dokken. . .

PanterA \m/

 

[jaguarr]

Well, Pantera and Dokken are HARDLY obscure, man. They were two of the bigger bands of that era.

However...NITRO!!! LOFL! Those guys used to crack me up because they took themselves so freakin' serious. The singer used to actually shatter wine glasses with his voice, unamplified, which was pretty impressive. And that four-necked guitar the guitarist played was ridiculous. Yeah, they were very accomplished technical musicians, but they came off as a parody of themselves. THESE are the kinds of bands I'm talking about with this thread.

And Firehouse. I think they had one hit song with that "Baby, Don't Treat Me Bad" tune and then faded away into total obscurity.

jag

 

[PLAS]

Steelheart (don't remember any of their songs, but they are not even worth remembering)
Zebra (same thing)
Pretty Boy Floyd (these guys were soooo lame, they were even funny)
Slik Toxik (I got their tape free from the columbia house club, I sold it)
Danger Danger (their guitar player, Andy Timmons was unjustly underrated, but the guy had chops... although what would you expect from a band whose singles were "naughty, naughty" and "bang, bang"?)
Bang Tango (I really liked those guys, although the singer had one of the crappiest voices I've heard, but he made it work... listen to "Someone like you", the video is great too)
Nuclear Valdez (multiracial tex-mex hair rock with very thought provoking lyrics, "summer", their only hit is still one of my all time favorite songs)
Electric Boyz (I have their debut album, which I bought in '90, and honestly, to this day I haven't heard it)
Enuff Z'Nuff (Poison meets The Beatles, once you got past their extremely ridiculous image, you'd find some great, solid songwritting, which was a rarity back then)
Tora Tora ("Walking Shoes" was a great song)
Kix (a long career, several albums and only one hit single... sad, isn't it?)
Little Ceasar (their cover of "Chain of fools" was really nice)
Dangerous Toys ("teas'n pleas'n" and "scared" were the two singles, the whole albums was actually nice, their second album wasn't)

I'll post more as I remember them

 

[Wilhelm-Scream]

Vinnie Vincent inVASION!!!!!

and I liked that Bullet Boys song

 

[PLAS]

Vinnie Vincent inVASION!!!!!

and I liked that Bullet Boys song

VVI, which paved the way to Slaughter

the Bulletfags, weren't they the guys who wanted to copy David Lee Roth?

 

[Wilhelm-Scream]

The singer pranced around like a water nymph, yes.
But Smooth Opinion was a very nice little "Let's get wasted and air guitar while we drive to the pawty." song.

 

[PLAS]

The singer pranced around like a water nymph, yes.
But Smooth Opinion was a very nice little "Let's get wasted and air guitar while we drive to the pawty." song.

I hated those bands back then, some were okay, but others were a copy of the copy of the copy

I mean, wasn't Warrant a lame copy of .38 Special, which was already a pretty lame band to begin with?

 

[jaguarr]

The singer pranced around like a water nymph, yes.
But Smooth Opinion was a very nice little "Let's get wasted and air guitar while we drive to the pawty." song.

Actually, it was "Smooth Up In Ya", a not so subtle reference to f**king. Classy. LOL! I actually really liked the Bullet Boys. They weren't virtuoso's by any means, but they wrote some good, solid hard rock. It was perfect for testosterone jacked 18 year old guys to drink beer and destroy public property to.

And VVI. Vinnie Vincent's post-KISS vehicle. Robert Fleischman of former Journey fame (before they fired him for being an a-hole and hired Steve Perry) was the singer on the first album, which was surprisingly good. Then they fired him for being an a-hole before they even filmed the first video (I seem to remember that he didn't want to dress like a cheap hooker like the rest of them) and hired Mark Slaughter in his place, who I didn't think really had quite the vocal chops of Fleischman. Their subsequent second album wasn't as good as the first, IMHO. I also remember a bunch of controversy over Vincent's playing in this band as opposed to what he'd done on KISS's "Lick It Up Album" as he was trying very hard to be much more of a shredder with the VVI group, and there were a lot of people who accused him of using studio tricks to speed up his playing on the albums and saying he couldn't play those licks in a live setting nearly as fast. Heh!

jag

 

[Wilhelm-Scream]

Actually, it was "Smooth Up In Ya",

heh, dude, I know. That was intentional.
In S.L.C., if you had KBER on at work you were guaranteed to hear at least one naive Jack-Mormon call in and request "Smooth Opinion". lol
I thought it was that way all over the world.

 

[jaguarr]

Steelheart (don't remember any of their songs, but they are not even worth remembering)

While their lead singer's voice is incredibly impressive (amazing high end range), a lot of their songs kind of blur together. The lead singer recorded all of the vocal parts for Mark Wahlberg's character in "Rock Star", as a bit of trivia.

Zebra (same thing)

They were pretty unremarkable. I just remember hearing that song "No Tellin' Lies" and thinking "WTF is this crap?"

Pretty Boy Floyd (these guys were soooo lame, they were even funny)

These guys wanted to be Poison sooooooo baaaaaaaaad! Unfortunately, they were even less talented musicians that Poison, which is incredibly sad.

Slik Toxik (I got their tape free from the columbia house club, I sold it)

So obscure that I never even heard of them.

Danger Danger (their guitar player, Andy Timmons was unjustly underrated, but the guy had chops... although what would you expect from a band whose singles were "naughty, naughty" and "bang, bang"?)

A VERY underrated band, IMO. They only had a couple of minor hits but kept making records for quite awhile. I really liked a lot of their songs.

Bang Tango (I really liked those guys, although the singer had one of the crappiest voices I've heard, but he made it work... listen to "Someone like you", the video is great too)

Oh, F**K I hated these guys! Every time their video came on we'd change the channel. They had the WORST singer in all of hard rock.

Nuclear Valdez (multiracial tex-mex hair rock with very thought provoking lyrics, "summer", their only hit is still one of my all time favorite songs)

These guys could have easily adopted their sound and image just a bit into the grunge era. Good band with some good songwriting. Too bad they faded out.

Electric Boyz (I have their debut album, which I bought in '90, and honestly, to this day I haven't heard it)

Never heard of them, either.

Enuff Z'Nuff (Poison meets The Beatles, once you got past their extremely ridiculous image, you'd find some great, solid songwritting, which was a rarity back then)

Another 80's hair band that I really couldn't stand. They were *****es with guitars.

Tora Tora ("Walking Shoes" was a great song)

That was a great song. I remember when these guys got signed, everyone made a HUGE deal about it. And then they delivered one lackluster album after another.

Kix (a long career, several albums and only one hit single... sad, isn't it?)

These guys wanted to be AC/DC soooooooo baaaaaaaaad!

Little Ceasar (their cover of "Chain of fools" was really nice)

One of my very favorite obscure bands of that timeframe. They weren't really a hard rock outfit and they definitely weren't a hair band. They looked like bikers but they played some really great soulful, R&B tinged rock and roll. Their lead singer had some definite soul. Definitely worth checking out if you run across any of their stuff.

Dangerous Toys ("teas'n pleas'n" and "scared" were the two singles, the whole albums was actually nice, their second album wasn't)

I f**king hated these guys. They were sh1t on vinyl.



Good picks, PLAS. All of those were pretty obscure. There were SO many bands recording during that era.


jag

 

[jaguarr]

heh, dude, I know. That was intentional.
In S.L.C., if you had KBER on at work you were guaranteed to hear at least one naive Jack-Mormon call in and request "Smooth Opinion". lol
I thought it was that way all over the world.

LOL! Okay, now this makes more sense. "Smooth Opinion". LOFL! Were they even paying attention to the crap he sang about in that song? Oh, man...LOFL! That has me truly cracking up.

jag

 

[maxwell's demon]

the post White Snake "super group"

 

[PLAS]

While their lead singer's voice is incredibly impressive (amazing high end range), a lot of their songs kind of blur together. The lead singer recorded all of the vocal parts for Mark Wahlberg's character in "Rock Star", as a bit of trivia.



They were pretty unremarkable. I just remember hearing that song "No Tellin' Lies" and thinking "WTF is this crap?"



These guys wanted to be Poison sooooooo baaaaaaaaad! Unfortunately, they were even less talented musicians that Poison, which is incredibly sad.



So obscure that I never even heard of them.



A VERY underrated band, IMO. They only had a couple of minor hits but kept making records for quite awhile. I really liked a lot of their songs.



Oh, F**K I hated these guys! Every time their video came on we'd change the channel. They had the WORST singer in all of hard rock.



These guys could have easily adopted their sound and image just a bit into the grunge era. Good band with some good songwriting. Too bad they faded out.



Never heard of them, either.



Another 80's hair band that I really couldn't stand. They were *****es with guitars.



That was a great song. I remember when these guys got signed, everyone made a HUGE deal about it. And then they delivered one lackluster album after another.



These guys wanted to be AC/DC soooooooo baaaaaaaaad!



One of my very favorite obscure bands of that timeframe. They weren't really a hard rock outfit and they definitely weren't a hair band. They looked like bikers but they played some really great soulful, R&B tinged rock and roll. Their lead singer had some definite soul. Definitely worth checking out if you run across any of their stuff.



I f**king hated these guys. They were sh1t on vinyl.



Good picks, PLAS. All of those were pretty obscure. There were SO many bands recording during that era.


jag

I was telling the drummer in the band how I felt how all the fall out boys and good charlotes and the like are the equivalent of those bands, but 20 years before... maybe the influences weren't the same, but the plastic attitude is

 

[Wilhelm-Scream]

LOL! Okay,

It makes no sense.lol
like, "Whoa, Henry Kissinger's opinion on Palestine is suh-MOOTH "


EDIT: also, I thought Dangerous Toys did the evocative piece entitled "Sportin' A Woody".