Scrapple tastes gooooood. Pork chop tastes goooood.
All of these things are awesome. All of these things at the same time still could be awesome. But it'd also be really confusing, almost impossible to digest, and probably in the end it might not be so, well, satisfying. You'll probably vomit at least once that night. You'll definitely shit yourself silly the next day.
What happened on Jan. 18, 1989, is similar to the very same feast described above. At the end of a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony that saw The Rolling Stones, The Temptations, Otis Redding, Stevie Wonder and Dion (not a bad class) go in, as well as cockface Phil Spector, who proved once again why he's as much of a cockface as he is a genius producer by inviting both Ike AND Tina Turner to induct him in the Hall. Interestingly enough, Ike is the one who pussed out, saying he was uncomfortable being around her.
At the end of what was probably a quite entertaining event to attend, all of the groups and an absolutely amazing assemblage of guests got on stage for a big jamfest performance of "Satisfaction."
Sure why the f*ck not, get out the cowbell.
Besides the inductees you had Dylan, Springsteen, George Harrison, a-hole Mike Love, a very uncomfortable looking John Fogerty (but when is John Fogerty ever comfortable looking?), possibly a coked out Billy Joel on the keys (it was possibly him, but whoever it was definitely was coked out); and then a super solid B team that included Mick Jones of Foreigner, Jeff Lynne, Arlo Guthrie, maybe Todd Rundgren and a few of the other Beach Boy dweebs.
There were so many f*ckers up there I'm not sure if any of the other Stones were up there besides Jagger.
The dizzying roster and the decent performance makes this a pretty incredible Rock Hall moment, but we're teetering on vomit, we're teetering on overindulgence and a sense that this might be too much, and then two more things take it to Over The Top Ville.
One is the presence of Paul Shaffer. But it's not just that he's there. It's that he used a Keytar to get himself front and center, whoring his way to the center of the action, like some dude nudging his way into the Last Supper scene so he could make the painting. F*ck you, Paul Shaffer.
This I get. The other thing, not so much.
Then there's what happens at 2:40. Bruce and Mick, sharing the mic like it was a metal schlong with a wire. When Bruce and Little Steven do this, it's cool. It's a bro thing. I get it. But here there's 400 mics sitting around, and no one's using them, and Bruce doesn't even have a guitar (another puzzling aspect), and there's no reason for them to get so close that their teeth are touching.
I dunno. The more I write about this the more I'm thinking this really is "great."
The cage match continues: Def Lep's "Adrenalize" vs. Bon Jovi's "New Jersey."
Round 4, Track 4:
Bon Jovi's "Living In Sin"
Michael Anthony: OK, so it's not the worst song recorded in 1989 (here you go!), but it's a close second. And the fact that it's even mentioned in the same breath as that stank travesty is all you need to know. That it hit #9 on the charts should make us all ashamed to be American.
Now that we've gotten that out of the way, here are some fun facts about the great American band, Bon Jovi:
1. Did you know that Mr. Biongiovianni's 2009 non-hit "We Weren't Born To Follow (In The U.S.A. (To Run))" was seminally responsible for the Arab Spring, in which ordinary citizens in Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt, among others, rose up and successfully overthrew regimes responsible for everything from corruption and poor economic conditions to authoritarian oppression and state-sponsored censorship?
You didn't? Me either! I've never even heard the song to begin with! Because it got literally zero airplay! But boy did it change the political climate of the Middle East!
Here, I've taken a screenshot of the actual Wiki page, so you can see it before it gets removed:
Brayan: Least-bad-ass keyboard player in the history of rock?
2. Kroeger-haired BJ keyboardist David Brayan has released two solo albums. The first contains an intstrumental version of 1993's "In These Arms", and about a dozen other masterworks. The second, released five years later, contains the exact same songs as the first one, except now "In These Arms" has vocals again! And they're David's!
3. Bon Jovi re-recorded the oft-mentioned "Living On A Prayer" as a lite-grunge/folk/hip-hop hybrid called "Prayer 94". Why?
I suppose I shouldn't have to waste my breath, but I will anyway: it's BAD.
3a. Bon Jovi's grunge counterpart, Art Alexakis - and his sub-literate, trailer-park Springsteenisms - has foisted upon the public re-recorded versions of Everclear tunes, not once, but TWICE in two years. I mean, I kinda dig those tunes to be honest, but why are they doing this at all, let alone, all the time? Is it some kind of twisted, self-deprecating in-joke about how all their songs soundthesame? Hopefully it's not just some kind of cash-grab!
RATING: -0.0 (out of 10)
No doubt Carvey's "look at my butt" skit was an inspiration.
G.E. Smith: Maybe something's wrong with my eyesight, but I think there's a mistake in the credit on "Living in Sin." It says "J. Bon Jovi" when it should say "Michael/ J. Bon Jovi/ Springsteen." It should say that because the verse is a carbon copy of the verse to George Michael's smash hit "Father Figure," released just a year earlier, and because the outro lifts the ending to about 50 Bruce Springsteen songs. But hey, no big deal, a typo is just a typo. We have our share here on CDNR, and a typo on a blog read by 6 people everyday is on the same level as neglecting to give credit to two guys who dominated the pop charts in the '80s when you so obviously ripped them off, er, used their songs.
Look, this is JBJ's time in the spotlight as a songwriter on "New Jersey," so let's not let an act of complete thievery ruin the occasion. Of all the stains on this skid-mark-laced pair of worn-for-five-days boxer shorts, this is the only one that he can take all the credit for - and, well, all the blame.
He's swinging for the fences, trying to capture that timeless story of young love on the run, the kind of thing Bruuuce was a master of. Instead, he continues his devolution into some kind of sappy-ass white trash version of Barry White, breathing hot and heavy about some chick he wants to pry from her daddy's overprotective arms so he can get her all to himself back at his place. He calls it "love," they call it "living in sin," I call it a creepy ass dude abducting an underage girl.
Marx: Don't touch the hair.
And instead of getting anywhere close to something like The Boss' "Born To Run," he ends up delivering a homeless man's version of a vintage Desmond Child song rife with Child's knack for McWriting and dumbing-down of a concept: Pack a verse with more cliches than a Richard Marx song ("sign it on a dotted line," "look me in the eye," "your daddy don't approve," "get me through the night") throttle up for a soaring refrain, cue the cookie-cutter Sambora solo, then break it down with a slow-it-down clambake ("I don't know ... just where we fit in ...") punctuated by a line that's spoken through a muffle of chest hair and Old Spice: "Sometimes it scares me."
Yeah, I'm scared too. I'm scared that this failed Casanova and his band of hacks could get into the Hall one day.
RATING: .2 out of 10
Def Lep circa 'Adrenalize.' Obviously, someone is "Bonerized."
Def Leppard's "Tonight"
Michael Anthony: All hail the Lep! Even though they resort to rippingoff themselves - albeit with with slightly diminished returns - it's a wise decision that you can't really blame them for. Clearly, they've run out of ideas, melodies, and any knack for writing guitar hooks, so why not steal the arpeggiated riffs and shout-along style of earlier tunes? It worked then, right?
The tune doesn't measure up to something you might find in the guts of a solid block of Metal Mania - but it has this propulsive, rhythmic quality to it that a lot of power ballads are missing, proving that corny romantic wimp-rock bereft of any lyrical value doesn't have to be slow on top of everything else.
There's no way Def Lep (or any band besides this) could have lost this round up against "Living In STINK", but regardless, Joe Elliot and co. came up big in the clutch.
RATING: 6.65 (out of 10)
G.E. Smith: Yeah man, musically this is more like it. Instead of banging away at chords like they had He-Man pal Fisto's big silver hand, there's some actual playing like back in the "High N' Dry"-"Pyromania" days.
Oh yeah, some guy on 'Game of Thrones' gets stabbed in the neck.
You're right, the song ain't great by any stretch - you know something awesome is going to happen when those verses finally unravel, but the pay off is like the "Star Wars" prequels (Is that it? All we get is a bunch of Yoda tricks and Darth Vader putting on his helmet?) or the finale of the first season of HBO's "Game of Thrones," where a string of heart attack-inducing shows in which the creators gave one eff you after another by killing off main characters, cutting the screen to black to create unreal cliff-hangers and making heads explode (not literally) by doing things like showing someone getting their neck ripped out (literally) came to an end with a head-scratcher where a chick made three dragon eggs hatch, well, dragons and dead people started coming out of the forest.
Also, I'm not really sure what a "haute beat" is, as in "listen to your haute beat," but I do think that sometimes these guys sing like they just got out of the dentists' chair.
Our prize fight, Def Leppard's "Adrenalize" vs. Bon Jovi's "New Jersey," winner gains entrance to the Rock Hall, continues. Round 2 of these two casks of cow semen pits their second tracks against each other: "Heaven Is" vs. "Bad Medicine."
"Bad Medicine"
Michael Anthony: How inventive! It may seem minor, but on "Bad Medicine", Jonny and crew give us the chorus first, which pre-empts all the bad stuff you usually get. Isn't that what you listen to a Bon Jovi song for - the epic chorus? True, there are those who listen for the faux-bluesman solo stylings of Sambora, or the occasional ham-fistedkey-change ending, but with "Bad Medicine", we know what to do right away: ignore the stodgy blues/garage chord progression weakened even further by the pointlessly treated guitars - this one is all about that chorus.
Maybe it's not quite "epic" (or "Epic"), but you give me a BJ song that starts with a chorus and I'm a happy man. There's also a decent pre-chorus that gets away from the blues-riffing with a fairly striking chord change.
Ripped often, and incorrectly.
So, yes, I still like this song 20+ years later, but in some ways, they really dropped the ball.
In going for a somewhat more organic "live" sound, believe it or not, they did capture something akin to what Bruce was doing on The River, which itself was a clone of glam-rock gods the New York Dolls. Good job! However, though it aligned the Jove with the Dolls in more ways than spandex and teased hair, it was really just cosmetic and did them no favors. Who wants a "gritty" sounding Bon Jovi? (No one.) I'll take the high-gloss (pun intended) 80's junk with even more bombast and true nutless rock opera singing over this any day.
RATING: 4.69 (out of 10)
G.E. Smith: I smell the bathroom of a nasty strip club where the hottest chick has a bad c-section scar and a tooth missing. I smell sweaty mullets and cig-smoke smothered acid wash jeans. I smell the complacency of a band on autopilot because they know they can do whatever they freak they want and still hit the top of the charts blindfolded.
Still, your point is valid. I DO still dig this song, and it's funny - it sounds 10 times better without the video where the skanks get handed cameras to shoot the band, who mug for the cameras before getting their pants unzipped. We've watched the clip for this track together on Classic at 2 in the morning 20 times and ripped it to shreds, yet right now I'm not feeling the same venom.
All the telltale signs of a decently plotted but nauseatingly bland lead single are there: the aforementioned starting with the chorus, shout-along pre-choruses, another patented by-the-numbers solo by Sambora. Words are crammed in everywhere, like they discovered the music didn't match the words and just said bleep it, hit record and let's go sniff some more white stuff. Not that they said that, but you know what I'm saying.
The ending only hammers home how bad this really is. Just when you think it's going to end, JonBon breaks it down again, with a lame stab at Springsteen songspeak: "I got it bad, I got it I got it, I gotta do it again, wait a minute, wait a minute, hold on, I'm not done, one more time with feeling! Help me out now!" and then he rolls back into a chorus that is really not worth a second outro.
Rating: 3.79 (out of 10)
"Heaven Is":
Clearly Clark was missed.
G.E. Smith: OK, I danced around this in Round 1, and I know it's as morbid as Ashton Kutcher's career, but I feel the Lep sinking fast and I gotta go there: We can't underestimate the loss of guitarist Steve Clark, the Johnny Thunders-esque glam master who died after "Hysteria" came out. Why did Def Lep have so many sick singles before "Adrenalize"? Because of Clark. Why did they suck monkey balls after? Because of the Kenny G. of hair metal, Vivian Campbell.
I'm not as down on "Heaven Is" as I know you'll be in a few seconds. We've got another Cheap Trick rip in the opening riff, and if you're going to keep pilfering from a band, that ain't a bad one to hit up. The verses are pretty cool - Phil Collen bangs out some nice beefy power chords, clearly some of the same cream that glazed "Hysteria," "Pyromania" and the rest of the band's good stuff.
Anyone who could pull this off has to be a genius.
But that's about it. The chorus has way too much Mutt Lange going on - it's like Mutt pushed the "No Balls" button on his machine before returning to picking up hot chicks despite looking like a handsome version of Beastman.
Lep shows why X-rays would reveal rocks in their head - wonder where they got the idea for this brilliant pre-chorus: "Leave your name at the sound of the tone, call you right back when I get home." Clark tried to bust out of his coffin when he heard Campbell try to ape him and fail in the solo.
In a Joe Elliot statement on the "Rock of Ages" and "Best Of" compilation albums, he referred this song's backing vocals on the chorus sounded much like The Beach Boys, and said that it was the first time Def Leppard went that far. He also referred this song as "More Queen than Queen".
Did Joe mean these Beach Boys?
Really? I assume Joe "Chris" Elliot is a reasonable man who understands and appreciates music - and knows what The Beach Boys and Queen sound like - and it's perfectly fine if he was emulating or perhaps just listening to those two bands when "Heaven Is" was recorded.
But seriously? I do not hear anything remotely Queen-esque in this song. In fact, it's probably much less Queen than, I dunno, King's X. I will personally paypal $5 to anyone who can point out any valid, legitimate Queen-isms in this song.
And those supposed Beach Boys harmonies do not fit at all - with the rest of the song being as densely overproduced as it is, it simply adds up to a grotesque mush.
Despite its endless flaws, unbelievable ignorance and moronic choices, The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has at times done the impossible. In 2002, it reunited The Talking Heads. In 1993, it brought about the temporary reformation of eternal prick Eric Clapton and his overrated but still-Hall worthy band Cream.
But that same year, it could not bring about the reunion of Creedence Clearwater Revival, despite the fact that John Fogerty went out of his way to appear at the podium with his former bandmates, Doug Clifford and Stu Cook (cue the most sarcastic golf clap one can muster).
Apparently Fogerty was still pissed about plagiarizing himself, or maybe he was pissed that he had barely made any good music for two-plus decades. Or maybe he could even see the future and the ridiculous vaudeville-circus-like Credence Clearwater Revisited act that Cook and Clifford would take on the road to play for dozens of people at a time.
Whatever the reason, all three surviving members (Tom Fogerty died in 1990) were standing right there on Jan. 12, 1993. All they had to do was walk over to the stage, pick up their instruments, and start playing "dude dude dude lookin' out my back door."
Instead, they fumbled at their acceptance speeches, Clifford going first because no one else would, Cook looking dopey going last and reminding us why Fogerty might have booted him along with Clifford, all while Fogerty bounced around in the background uncomfortably. He took the mic second and backhandedly thanked his fellow bandmates.
In a word, it was awkberg.
"We've disagreed a lot over the years but there was a time when we made really great music together, and I think that's actually the whole reason, the real deal why we're all here at all. So thank you guys ..."
Crickets followed "guys" where there should have been thunderous applause.
Then Fogerty went and played "Green River," "Who'll Stop The Rain" and "Born on the Bayou" with a group of hired hands that included Bruce Springsteen and Robbie Robertson, the latter of which would hilariously copy Fogerty's act of pettiness by not performing with The Band when they went in the next year.
John Freaking Fogerty. What else can you say about a guy who screwed his fans on his 1985 and 1986 tours by refusing to play CCR songs because of his war with his old record label?
Enjoy this crappy rendition of "Green River" at the 1993 induction.
