"My lady's on the fly
And she's never coming back
My love is like a steam train
Rolling down the tracks, yeah, yeah"
Like most of us during the past couple years of pandemic life I've looked back at "better", simpler times for comfort. The times of skating parties, parachute pants, and Mr T. Some things revisited don't quite hold up like you thought (Sorry Alf, I'm looking at you) while others keep weaving in and out of your life and mature like a fine wine. For me 80's metal (or hair metal if you're nasty) is that vintage bordeaux. Sure some bands were fluff, but under the ripped jeans, sequined shirts, teased hair and makeup lied some amazing musicians with an ability to craft extremely catchy tunes. Of course most of the bands of this genre had to have a ballad or two up their sleeves. These songs turned a sausage party situation to having more ladies come to the shows. I believe I mentioned it earlier, but I'm a total mark for a metal ballad. Cinderella was one of those bands that had quite a few amazing ballads, while also pumping out some bluesy hard rock anthems.
Putting this music on does take me back to the late 80's/early 90's being an awkward middle school kid that loved pro wrestling, Halloween and MTV. I remember two girls in particular in my class that loved the metal scene. They were the girls that smoked cigarettes, wore ripped jeans and were always sporting black t shirts featuring Motley Crue, Skid Row, Cinderella, etc. The kind of shirts you can probably find at Hot Topic today. They also hung out with the older kids and were quite frankly a bit intimidating. I was the goofy, slightly preppy kid but the cool thing about music was that it was a common bond I had with the metal chicks. I loved the songs too, but I didn't express it with a "uniform". Quite frankly I was probably too insecure to rock a Poison t-shirt at the time. One of my older cousins tried to hip us up with a cool shirt but it backfired. She worked at a record store in Massachusetts and mailed my brother and I Guns N' Roses shirts. I was in 5th grade at the time and Appetite for Destruction was a monster album. I remember the shirt had a skull on it (OK cool) the name of the band (right on) and a hypodermic needle (Doh!) Suppose my mom didn't want her 5th and 7th graders sporting t-shirts referencing heroin. Oh well. After a quick search I believe the above picture was the beginning and end of my black metal t-shirt days. The only other time I got in trouble from a shirt was when I bought a Big Johnson t-shirt (remember those?) Yeah that didn't go over too well in the Smith household.
Not sure if Carol and Julie knew we had the love of hair metal in common and I don't know what happened to their lives after 1992, but hearing these tunes in 2022 does bring me back to those simpler times. Let's celebrate two of the ballads today. One for Carol and one for Julie, wherever they are.
