Mediocre Metal? A #threetunetuesday post

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I remember the night in the photo above quite well. Okay, I remember parts of the night in the photo above quite well. I do remember taking this photo as some colleagues and I were walking from one bar to another. It was in mid October and the town of Bellaire, MI had been decorated for Halloween. I was there for a professional conference that I attend every year and needless to say the after hours portion of the conference is where the real fun took place.

I was never much of a metal head growing up. When the radio was on, it was one of three genres: Oldies music (50's, 60's, 70's), Top 40 Music (this was the 80's and 90's, so it wasn't oldies yet), and Christian rock music. The worlds of metal, jazz, rap, R&B, and country didn't open up to me until much later unless those songs made it into the top 40.

Sure, I was familiar with Poison, Motley Crue, Def Leppard, Bon Jovi, Warrant, Great White, Van Halen, and a handful of other groups, but mostly only because of their big hits that were on the radio. Even Ozzy, KISS, Alice Cooper, and other early "metal" bands had passed me by.

It's only been in the past five to ten years that I started digging into more metal bands. Mostly thanks to my friend @diamonddave and his love for all things metal, specifically hair metal. Over the years I have started occasionally listening to the Sirius/XM station "Hair Nation" and that has opened a bunch of new doors for me in terms of cool bands to check out.

L.A. Guns is one such band that I am not going to cover today, but if you haven't heard of them, you should really check them out. "Cocked and Loaded Live" is an awesome album.

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Anyway, as you may or may not have guessed, this #threetunetuesday sponsored by @ablaze is going to focus on some of the more obscure 80's hair metal bands that you maybe haven't heard of but they still rock pretty dang hard.

I can't really say why they never got the mainstream recognition that some of the other bands did. As the title implies, it is possible that they were seen as mediocre, but I think fans of those bands would argue against that point.

Some of these bands and their songs just flat out rock. Perhaps if I had lived closer to a big city there might have been a radio station that highlighted them a bit more. The radio landscape was a much different place back then and it is easy to forget we didn't have any music we wanted at our fingertips like we do today.

So let's get started!

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Despite the implication of metal being cold and hard, we all probably know that ballads were a staple of the hair metal genre. "Burning Heart" by Vandenberg is one such example. It's actually a bit heavier than some ballads, but if you are looking for something a little harder from Vandenberg, I suggest you check out the song "Freight Train".

I had never heard of them before, but I was driving home one Monday from a late night at work and they mentioned them on that Hair Nation satellite station I mentioned above and played one of their songs. I was really impressed.

Where my Dutch folks at? Vandenberg is a Dutch American band with members from Amsterdam and Las Angeles that was formed in 1981. The guitarist Adriaan van den Berg gave the band their name.

They actually just released a new album in 2023 if you want to check it out. I haven't yet. I've been digging into more of their old stuff that they recorded across three albums from 1982 to 1985.

With so few albums, it might not be hard to imagine why they weren't more popular, but it definitely isn't because they weren't talented enough.

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"Inside Out" is a song by American hair metal band XYZ. According to wikipedia they were a staple on MTV in the early 90's when hair metal was moving towards just metal and grunge was on the horizon. I didn't really grow up with MTV since we didn't have cable where I lived, so that might be part of the reason they only came on my radar recently.

I think I remember first hearing them on Hair Nation and I thought "man, this band XYZ is pretty dang good, why have I never heard of them before". It turns out I was just way too sheltered growing up or something like that.

Like most hair metal bands, XYZ got their start in Los Angeles at Whisky a Go Go as the house band. It's pretty rare that a hair metal band didn't play at least once at the Whisky during their run.

While none of their songs went very high on the charts, I still think they are a pretty awesome group. One of the things I find really interesting is the fact that many of these groups have split up, but the individual members often get together with other members and do shows on "rock cruises" and things like that. Talk about a super group!

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As I mentioned before, I didn't have MTV growing up, so I missed out on a lot, but one thing hair metal bands gave us were some awesome videos. If you wanted scantily clad women dancing around giving you all those feelings a young man gets, then just flip on MTV and wait for a metal song to come on.

Y & T has probably the most success and longevity of the bands I am covering today. They aren't still recording (as far as I know) like Vandenberg, but they have the most studio albums of the other bands at a whopping 12 with the latest being recorded in 2010.

They also got their start much earlier than some of the other bands forming in 1972 as "Yesterday and Today". It wasn't until 1976 that they released their first album though. If you were going to take a deep dive into any of the bands I covered today, I would probably start with Y&T.

They started as a cover band in Oakland California, so I guess it is only natural that they would embrace hair metal when it became a thing.

They have a fan backed kickstarter documentary that you might want to check out if you can find it too.

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So there you go. A deep dive into some hair metal bands that you have maybe never heard of before. Then again, maybe you have. Either way, I hope you enjoyed!