Bad Assssss Song of the Day: Kick Start My Heart
Here's the video - kinda can't get help but get fired up when you hear this song. Also, the video has Sam Kinison, say no more. From FTLOSBW official news agency Wikipedia: "On December 23, 1987, Sixx suffered a near-fatal heroin overdose. He was declared legally dead on the way to the hospital, but the medic, who was a Crüe fan, revived Sixx by giving him two shots of adrenaline the heart, bringing him back to life. His two minutes in death were the inspiration for the song." Not that you didn't know that, I didn't.
This is a band I would have loved to see in their prime, I'm not talking 1987 when I was 13 but I am talking 1987 if I was 22.
To comply with copyright law: photo from heavyharmonies.com I hope this shows good faith in my using others images. If not, then, well, I have nothing.
11 Comments:
Dude, I am not going to argue that this was not a kick ass song in 1990, it was. Every high school locker room played this before every sporting event. The Crue was a cut above all the other hair bands. Poison, Warrant, Skid Row and whatever other wannabes were all a notch lower if not more. The Crue created that scene. I just think that you are two posts late with it. I think it probably more falls in the guilty pleasure category. If we were at a bar and this came on and you said a little too loud "good song," I would cringe and hope that no one heard you. Depending on who we were with I might even save face and make fun of you, praying that you did not break out some of my cheesy favorites.
This song was too popular to be one from the vault caliber. Now if you had thrown something out there like Rocket Queen by Guns N Roses, I would have been like "that is a kick ass song that I have not heard in ages. I totally forgot about that one." When Kick Start My Heart comes on the radio, I do listen to it more times than I flip stations. I am guessing by our overall music tastes that I have listened to this song a few more times than you possibly resulting in my semi-lack of enthusiasm. While you were finding the Beatles and Police and truly talented bands in high school, I was... well... lets just say not so much.
For the record I was waiting for MCA to post since he saw Motley Crue on the Dr Feelgood tour. However, it appears if I did that, we would never get a response.
February 13, 2012 at 9:21 PM
Sorry, dudes, for my tardiness. Say what? I don't feel tardy. Class dismissed!!!
I cringe when I recall that I liked Motley Crue. It is true, as RTS says, that they were in fact a cut above Warrant, Poison, Great White, Skid Row, White Snake and the others. And it's not as though I listened exclusively to hair bands. Far from it - I was a music omnivore, so I can tell myself it's OK because I also liked Bach and U2 and Johnny Cash.
Two other thing are also, unfortunately, true:
1. To say a band is a cut above Skid Row is like saying "This burrito's I'm eating is less greasy than one from Taco Burrito #2 on Halsted."
2. I listened to some of those other bands at age 14, too, and for the most part didn't differentiate Motley Crue as significantly less cringeworthy than the rest. Although I never purchased any albums by Cinderella, Twisted Sister, Warrant or most of the others, I guess. Or went to their concerts.
This entire genre was, if I can analogize hard rock music to Faulkner (The Sound And The Fury sounds appropos, no?), clearly the third generation of an aristocratic family. Whereas Led Zeppelin was General Compson, hero of the war, titan of industry and keeper of the flame, by the time you passed through his children (Van Halen, Black Sabbath, cousin Metallica) to the grandkids, the talent and wealth has been completely pissed away, and you're left with a combination of degeneration, desperate clinging to the past, marriages to pwt, and a total collapse of humanity; a collection of morons and incest and wild-eyed murderer rednecks. Poison was the Benjy Compson of the group, incapable of comprehensible speech, spending their days wandering the yard looking for golf balls and shrieking at people. Most of those bands, however, claimed some common lineage with Colonel Sartoris and General Compton and still had their way paid to Ole Miss law school, so it's easy for them to take in impressionistic 13-year-olds. It's only years later we learn how scarred we are, and figure out that they were metaphorically raping our ears with a corn cob.
February 14, 2012 at 12:06 PM
On FTLOSBW you can do whatever you want and if you want to make an analogy between hard rock and Faulkner, then goddam it go ahead and do it. However you lost me after "if I can analogize hard rock music to Faulkner" - basically crickets on this end while reading that but I was able to appreciate the effort.
I don't blame MCA for wanting to hide his love for the Crue (I once drove around blasting Deee-Lite "Groove is in the Heart" thinking I had just discovered the next Adele or Whitney (how apropos are those references! I'm hip/I'm cool.) Can we just agree that we can still get a boner when we hear some of the Crue's shit as it pertains to making us feel awesome?
February 14, 2012 at 8:30 PM
Ahhhh, Dee-Lite, the soundtrack to the first time I ever got drunk. Still have to admit, that bass line was pretty dope.
Jan, not my problem they don't teach the classics of American literature at that notorious jock school Tufts, with its bigtime athletics and massive Greek system.
Shorthand - Faulkner had a minor obsession with the downward spiral of great families (a la Chekov), early 20th century American South edition. Starting from when an individual reaches the apex and greatness and admittance into the aristocracy, all you need is two more generations to devolve into total batshit insane desperation and starting the cycle of reaching the top all over again. It took Nirvana and Pearl Jam to rescue the family lineage of hard rock from its wallowing depths of lusting after their sisters and sleeping with dead people in their attic bedrooms.
Yeah, you're right. Weird analogy. Oh, well. Whatever. Nevermind.
Back to the song at hand. I vaguely remembered the story behind it, which makes me think I must have heard it at some point. Pretty cool story, if it can be believed. The part about being declared dead of a heroin overdose I don't doubt. It's more the adrenaline and the EMT being a big fan that I find a little apocryphal sounding.
I went back and listened. Pretty decent opening riff, and the lick right before the refrain's pretty good, too. Bass: anonymous. Drums: competent, unimaginative. Singing: does not compute? That is singing? Alternates between trying to sound like a crackhead feline and straight up shouting. Still and all there's something there, I suspect the lead guitar, that makes it a decent listen. Nonetheless, I will for the most part continue to deny ever liking this song all that much as it's just too painful for me to contemplate how, even at the advanced age of 38 sitting in a living room with Chinese paintings and wing-backed chairs and a laptop on the coffee table, I'm not that far removed from the acned 14-year-old who thought "Here I Go Again on My Own" was maybe the coolest most epic song ever, and knew every word to "You've Gotta Fight (for The Right to Party)" despite never having at said time actually, you know, attended a party.
February 14, 2012 at 10:43 PM
MCA - Your perspective is precisely what FTLOSBW, journalism in general, and the basic concept of the free press, makes America great. Don't let my ape-like brain dissuade you from your Faulkner-like analogies - while my alma mater did offer that as part of the curriculum, yours truly stuck to Home Economics.
February 15, 2012 at 12:10 AM
Seriously, where else is someone going to get a lesson in the classics while talking about Motley Crue? I think we are on to something here. It is like the urban math tests except the discussion is PC.
I think MCA forgot to mention his brandy snifter while creating his home scene.
Just hearing the name Dee-Lite reminds me of driving around Lake Harriet and Lake Calhoun. My wife and I have had conversations about "Groove is in the Heart," where for me it is is such a defining high school song and for her it is the start of college.
Back to the metal scene, I have a pretty good test to determine whether the band was high end metal or shit wannabes. Here it is:
If the only place you ever saw someone where the band's shirts was at Valley Fair, they were a shit band. If you saw people around town wearing their stuff they were upper tier and it was acceptable to be sucked in, although still not necessarily an endorsement of good music.
Groups in the former: White Lion, White Snake, Great White, Kix, Kiss (without make up, I am thinking of shirts that had Anamalize printed on them), Warrant, Slaughter, Cinderella, Helloween, LA Guns, Iron Maiden and Mega Death.
Groups in the latter: Motley Crue, Guns N Roses, Metallica, Poison, Def Leopard and Bon Jovi.
Those fears of wearing the wrong thing to school are somewhat founded. Sure you have to be your own person, but you have to willing to face the consequences of the masses too. At some point is HS Holly M wore a Skid Row shirt to school. She may have worn it a couple of times, she may have worn it a lot, I do not remember. what I do remember is from that first time on she was referred to as Skid Row and it stuck all the way through, a definite black balling. If I mentioned it to anyone in our group of friends now and called her Holly M, I am sure someone would pipe in and say "You mean Skid Row."
February 15, 2012 at 9:13 AM
RTS - rye, not brandy. And a smoking jacket and velvet slippers.
I'd never heard of the urban math test and googled it. Wow, people have bad judgment.
Love the Valley Fair test. As with most things like this, I suspect there's also a State Fair tie, too. Seems to me you could rephrase it as "if there was ever the possibility of seeing that band play at the Minnesota State Fair, they were not legitimate enough to admit listening to." The bands in your first group I could see onstage at the Grandstand playing for 4,500 people with cheese curd and chocolate chip cookie stains all over their pants. The bands in the latter group would've been at the Target Center.
February 15, 2012 at 1:03 PM
As has been the case, I am way late, but I love this discussion. I saw Van Halen, Poison and GnR in high school, so I guess I wasn't sucked in my the others. That said, I've already admitted my guilty pleasure of various Boston songs...ugh.
Dee Lite was phenomenal back in the day. I think I literally did one of those lip synch videos at Valley Fair to that song!!! Oy vey.
February 15, 2012 at 8:26 PM
P.S. RTS, great analogy about judging a band based on where you see the t-shirt worn. Was Valley Fair really so horrible? Maybe I just wasn't as upper crust as you Blake guys...
February 15, 2012 at 8:30 PM
I am not sure what you mean by horrible. If you mean the park itself, I always loved going to Valley Fair. It is quite a bit smaller than a lot of the other parks but when I was a kid that was all I knew. Did it attract horrible dirty people, who used going to Valley Fair as an opportunity to wear their Lita Ford T-Shirts? Absolutely.
February 16, 2012 at 7:59 AM
$100 to whoever can come up with a copy of that Dee-Lite lip syncing video. I am sure that it was Puttin' On The Hits quality.
February 16, 2012 at 8:02 AM
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