![]() Sandwiched between was the ballad No Room For Emotion all strong songs with great pacing over all but there is a ‘familiarity breeds contempt’ with the singles overshadowing the remainder – although the smash ‘n’ grab of Bottle In Front Of Me does see the album out with a snotty bang.įaster Pussycat remains an album that is of its time but it is certainly a record that makes a statement as to the excesses of the decade.įaster Pussycat toured their debut heavily supporting acts such as Motörhead and Alice Cooper but within two years of their debut, the quintet released their sophomore effort Wake Me When It’s Over. This is not to say that the latter half of the album is bad but the earlier half features the two heavy rotated singles and the other two songs featured in the The Decline Of The Western Civilisation documentary. As an album, if there is one thing that Faster Pussycat suffers from is the same as when it was released that (in vinyl terms) side one was better than side two. With songs like Cathouse – named after the club that Downe owned along with DJ Riki Rachtman – or the sleaze anthem Bathroom Wall and its ode to “for a good time call” liaisons, there was no hiding behind metaphors and while some of the lyrics are toe curlingly puerile, these are the quicksands of excess that may be unrecognisable today but still impossible not to be drawn into. In a sense, Faster Pussycat is something of an uncorking, a branching of an existing sound and taking a blowtorch to it a deliberately sloppy and snarling version of Aerosmith, and a band revelling in the scene that spawned them, the best and worst of L.A. Revisiting Faster Pussycat reveals clean sonics, as screechy as Downe’s vocals are, they knit overall sound which is not too glossy and a more fitting earthy atmosphere and destined for the L.A. In retrospect, the sound fed into the attitude of the day – not lazy as in ‘no effort’ lazy but lazy as in ‘low slung’ and absolutely zero fucks given, it was an arrival and one brimming with confidence and self belief. Visually, the quintet had all of their pussycats in a row the self titling of the album, the band adorned cover – pouty stares, hats, bandanas, sunglasses and a smoke dangling from the corner of a mouth, the album knew what it wanted to be and was going to land – and hard. On the other hand, it was a time lived in the moment and while Faster Pussycat’s 1987 debut album does hark back to a bygone age, there is still plenty of pull on a considerable number of tracks on the record that raise a smile as well as the occasional face palm. ![]() Obviously, music evolves and so do people and attitudes and the hedonism and excesses of the 1980s was not exactly positive. Sometimes the glance into the rear-view mirror is an uncomfortable one. The band and performances of Cathouse and Babylon also featured in the influential documentary The Decline Of The Western Civilisation Part II – The Metal Years directed by Penelope Spheeris. There was no self-releases or independent labels, no climbing up the ladder, Faster Pussycat immediately signed with Elektra Records to release their debut in 1987 creating momentum on the back of music videos for Don’t Change That Song (directed by Russ Meyer) and Bathroom Wall. ![]() Named after sexploitation film director’s 1965 film Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, the quintet formed in Los Angeles in 1985 by vocalist Taime Downe, guitarists Brent Muscat and Greg Steele, drummer Mark Michaels and bassist Kelly Nichols – although the latter suffered a motorcycle accident before the debut album was recorded and was replaced by Eric Stacy. One band that arrived with the hype but managed to live up to it was Faster Pussycat. Taking inspiration from 1970s glam rock, there was a punk aesthetic as trailblazed by Finnish legends Hanoi Rocks and with bands such as Motley Crue and Ratt receiving ever increasing MTV and radio air-play, glam metal became a dominating musical force throughout the 1980s – although where there is popularity there is replication and saturation and it has to be said that there were a fair few dud acts on the circuit. With its centre point of Los Angeles, California, glam metal was all androgynous looks, make up and enough hairspray to blow a hole through the now-never-mentioned ozone layer. If there is one music scene from the 1980s that is often uttered with a sneery disparaging tone then it is “hair metal.” It was something of an umbrella terms that would include the pop and commercial end of metal, anything from Def Leppard and Whitesnake to Winger and Skid Row and would stretch into the more glam and sleaze end of the spectrum.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |