The Glowing Edge

Tag: motley crue

  • Fight Walk-In Rock Playlist

    Fight Walk-In Rock Playlist

    During my second fight I had really wanted some calm, soothing music to keep my heart rate under control during the long hours of waiting before I actually entered the arena to get in ring. That playlist was called “The Unexpected Bell” (since I didn’t know I was going to fight until the day of) and it worked, completely and totally.

    So naturally as I prepped for fight number three I created a similar, calm and quiet — even inspiring! — playlist. Since I was fighting in Atlanta, I called the list “Coollanta” and I filled it with Paul Simon, Manhattan Transfer, Luciano Pavarotti, and the like.

    As it turned out, the Coollanta playlist was a complete flop. I didn’t want “calm” at all. I wanted hype.

    So when I returned, I made the list I wished I’d had, and it includes my walk in music for that fight, which was Mötley Crüe’s “Kickstart My Heart” (I love you Nikki Sixx!). This still isn’t the playlist I really want it to be, but I have time before my next fight, which is slated for August 2011, to refine.

    Meanwhile, here’s some of the list in its early form. I call it “Walk In Rock.” These are actually in order of how many times I’ve played them on my Shuffle. I’ve kept it well-known old school, but I may make a back-up list with more deep cuts from the 80s. Stuff like King Kobra and W.A.S.P. and Kix.

    If you have some great hair metal to suggest, please tell me in the comments so I can get this bad girl hot and blistering before the next fight. Otherwise, enjoy. Fight update coming soon.

    Walk In Rock

    Back In Black, AC/DC
    Heavy Metal, Sammy Hagar
    Rock You Like a Hurricane, Scorpions
    Down on Me, Jackyl
    Turn Me Loose, Loverboy
    Crazy Train, Ozzy Osbourne
    Coming of Age, Damn Yankees
    Tie Your Mother Down, Queen
    Sweet Emotion, Aerosmith
    Youth Gone Wild, Skid Row
    You Shook Me All Night Long, AC/DC
    Walk this Way, Aerosmith
    Unskinny Bop, Poison
    Paradise City, Guns N’ Roses
    Nothing But A Good Time, Poison
    Love In An Elevator, Aerosmith
    Living After Midnight, Judas Priest
    Once Bitten Twice Shy, Great White
    Bang Your Head, Quiet Riot
    Bad Medicine, Bon Jovi
    Sweet Child O’ Mine, Guns N’ Roses
    Lick It Up, Kiss
    Kickstart My Heart, Mötley Crüe
    Fly By Night, Rush
    Super Freak, Rick James
    Celebrity Skin, Hole
    Rockin’ Into the Night, .38 Special
    Boom, P.O.D.
    Breadfan, Metallica
    Primal Scream, Mötley Crüe
    Shout at the Devil, Mötley Crüe
    Dr Feelgood, Mötley Crüe
    Over Now, Alice In Chains
    Again, Alice In Chains
    Take It Off, The Donnas
    You Wanna Get Me High, The Donnas
    Immigrant Song, Led Zeppelin
    Crazy Train, Ozzy Osbourne
    Iron Man, Ozzy Osbourne
    Don’t Stop Me Now, Queen
    Hell Yeah, Rev Theory
    Dragula, Rob Zombie
    Spookshow Baby, Rob Zombie
    Light Up, Styx

  • Hair Metal Playlist for Running and Roping

    Hair Metal Playlist for Running and Roping

    Warning: rambling post filled with (clearly labeled!) tangents ahead. Feel free to skip to the bottom for the playlist.

    It was about 90 degrees outside but the sun was dropping when I headed out for a run. I’m not yet acclimatized to summer heat workouts, although I have no choice but to get there eventually.

    I was just about to drop onto a 2 mile circuit when a man ran past me, looking like he was on a ten-minute per mile pace, which is where I was feeling I would be running. He was there first, so I watched him cruise past. I’m a bit anal about pace suckers running right behind or in front of me, so I cranked up my Shuffle and stretched until I was pretty sure I’d given him at least a quarter-mile lead.

    Tangent #1: The pan-galactic rule is, if they are there before you are and they are running on your pace, give them room. Don’t be a leech. I don’t care what planet you’re from, there’s no excuse. (And I think I’m not the only one who feels this way.)

    Fortunately, I wasn’t in a hurry.

    I just needed a little baby 20 minute run and 20 teeny minutes on the jump rope, since it was my “off” day.

    Tangent #2, or why I call this an “off” day. Boxing-specific training is sometimes so hard on my body that I can’t always do it two or three days in a row. I’m at a new gym and working my way up to a Mon-Tue-Thur (plus Sundays training with Jay) boxing-specific schedule, which is ambitious simply because of that three-day marathon at the beginning of the week. So far I’ve had to skip the Tuesdays. On off days I run and jump rope and do other stuff. I do actually take at least one or two off-off days each week. Was that clear at all? Let’s just keep digging, shall we?

    Tangent #3: Sometimes I use the language of “non-boxing-specific” to designate “off” days. But that sounds a bit awkward, don’t you think? Maybe I’m just linguistically lazy. I do flip flop on it, because I also think it sounds painfully pretentious to be working out on an “off” day.

    Feh. Whatever.

    I was telling you about my off day, during which I run, rope, and sometimes do hurdles (I don’t do those 2 days in a row, either).

    (Here I’m powerfully resisting an entire fresh tangent on my hurdles. You’re welcome.)

    Once my path was cleared of people on my same pace, I dropped on and the first mile felt pretty fast, especially considering the heat. In fact, I was chagrined to catch up to the man on my pace, but fortunately he finished his run just as I passed him on the trail. I may have been doing 9.5 minute miles; I know they felt easy.

    It was the rope that was hard.

    I was already stripped down to a sports bra and shorts, and I was sweating so much the foam padding on the jump rope handles was soaked and kept slipping out of my hands. There was a perfect circle of sweat droplets around me on the picnic shelter’s cement floor. I was in the shade, thankfully, but I could feel myself riding the edge of overheating.

    I took 4 or 5 fifteen-second breaks to sip and spit water (if you swallow it, you end up jumping rope and sloshing, which is uncomfortable — woo, narrowly avoided a Tangent there.), but I was careful and never got that eerie, suddenly chilled feeling that indicates onset of real problems.

    And as I was reflecting on the reasons I ran so fast and worked so hard to make it through my simple, short “off” day workout, I decided it wasn’t the heat that was the determining factor.

    IT WAS ALL THE FAULT OF HAIR METAL.

    It’s crazy how much music controls my pace! I think this playlist was part of why I had such a fast run, and also why my rope session was way too fast and difficult — hair metal rocks! So I am putting a few more low-bpm power ballads in the mix next time. Every Rose Has It’s Thorn or something.

    Tangent #4: I just downloaded an app called beaTunes that will catalog my music collection and tell me the acutal beats per minute on all my songs. (Strangely, iTunes doesn’t do this automagically. But don’t even get me started on an iTunes Tangent, because I have a whole series of those and they’re better termed Rants.) The app hasn’t had time to work yet, so you don’t get the playlist ordered by bpm, so if you go for a run and rope in the heat on your off day, you’re on your own.

    Oh, and I gotta give credit — or possibly blame — to Jay, with whom I regularly exchange hair metal playlists. He’s the one responsible for a chunk of these songs.

    Actually I only want to say very nice things about Jay, on account of his vicious hooks.

    Anyway, hair metal is accustomed to taking the blame for all sorts of ills. One more won’t matter. I hereby dub this playlist:

    Overheated

    1. Welcome to the Jungle / GNR
    2. Ready to Strike / King Kobra
    3. Big Guns / Skid Row
    4. Hellion / W.A.S.P.
    5. Blind Faith / Scorpions
    6. Slide it In / Whitesnake
    7. Bang Go the Bells / Babylon A.D.
    8. Heartbreak Station / Cinderella
    9. Rocket Queen / GNR
    10. Hunger / King Kobra
    11. Wait / White Lion
    12. Cold Blood / Kix
    13. Electric Gypsy / L.A. Guns
    14. Heaven / Warrant
    15. Back for More / Ratt
    16. Unchained / Van Halen
    17. Knock ‘Em Dead, Kid / Motley Crue
    18. Hang Tough / Tesla
    19. Wild Child / W.A.S.P.

    Okay, final tangent, #5, not that you’re keeping track: I realize there are absolutely no Megadeth songs on here, and yet I’ve posted a picture of Dave Mustaine. It’s that incredible hair!!

    Long live hair metal, and the hair that goes with it. Tell me your fave Megadeth songs and I’ll cue ’em up for the next playlist!

    Image by ghoulmann on Flickr.

  • Crüefest 2, Raw and Uncut

    Crüefest 2, Raw and Uncut

    I might have guessed when they split the entering crowd into a men’s line and a women’s line for a full-body pat-down that Crüefest might get a little out of control. It was hot as hell, no breeze, the drinking began well before any of the featured bands hit the main stage, and the inhalables were out before the sun went down. The crowd ran the gamut, but tended toward overweight, underdressed, rock rednecks who had girlfriends eager to strip off their shirts in public. If I don’t see another beer-bellied dude with pierced nipples for a long time I’ll be okay with that. And if the crowd was unruly, the bands, when they stopped playing and started talking, were way worse. When did great music become disconnected with the ability to complete a coherent sentence without dozens of f-bombs? I could be getting old.

    Nah. I’ve been to great concerts before, this just wasn’t one of them.

    Charm City Devils
    The first decent band to take the stage was Baltimore-based Charm City Devils, a straight-up garage-shaking classic rock band in the tradition of AC/DC and Guns n Roses, before either of those bands made it big. Their first release is being piloted by Crüe’s own Nikki Sixx through Eleven Seven Music. Their big single “Let’s Rock and Roll” seemed to go off well with the crowd, although I thought “It’s All About the Money” was much better. And high-voltage frontman John Allen, no less that many of the bigger bands at Crüefest, needs to shut up and sing. The patter is unbearably banal.

    Cavo
    While Drowning Pool did their screamo thing, I wandered over to a side stage and was pleased to catch Cavo in high rock mode, thrashing out earth-shattering guitar riffs and making my skin vibrate. I love standing three feet from a 16-speaker stack. Cavo is a bit more heavy metal than Charm City Devils, and they did a respectable job of rockloading that stage. Special props to grinning, bechained bass player Brian Smith, who delivered excellent frontman support and engaged the fans as well. (And he clearly works out; check out those biceps. I have such a thing for bass players. Was that a 5-string bass?) Btw, they did a nice video on YouTube thanking their fans for helping their single, Champagne climb up the charts. I didn’t hear them do Champagne, but Blame was a huge crowd pleaser during the time I was at their stage.

    Mosh WatchTheory of a Deadman
    When these guys took the main stage I had high hopes, but ended up being disappointed. They had drawn a good number of followers to the venue; I saw lots of home-made fanmerch (most notably super-tight, ripped, and puffy-painted “Bad Bad Girlfriend” tees) and expected the subsequent delivery of solid rock goods. However, lead singer Tyler Connolly had continuous trouble staying on pitch. He may have just been having a bad (bad) night, but he definitely had one all night long during this performance at Crüefest. They seemed to connect with the angst-flooded teen crowd, though, especially with I Hate My Life, which had every single high-schooler in the arena (and they were legion) on their feet, screaming the lyrics with fists in the air. ToaD “gets” highschoolers, I think. And what a great acronym, huh?

    Best of Show: Rev Theory
    So while ToaD riled up the teens, I headed over to a side stage to catch Rev Theory, which Rev Theorywas hands down the shock-runaway success of my entire Crüefest. This experienced band out of NYC has seen a good bit of success already, notably with World Wrestling Entertainment pushing some of their songs to the top of the charts, and leading them to a gig with Xbox LIVE. I happened to walk in on Far From Over (you MUST click through!), and got instantly pummeled by the grandeloquent, superinflated, unapologetic overload of heavy rock. These people NEED AN ARENA! And pyrotechnics! And more tight, slit-open leather, oh, yes, far far more! I was sucked in and giving them my full participation in Gimme a Hell, Gimme a Yeah, and actually got caught in a spontanteous mosh which broke my favorite pair of sunglasses and nearly got me squashed by an overzealous sweaty Hell Yeah dude, but it was all good. It was all excellent! It was a Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Queen-inspired, beyond Metallica wünderbeast. Screaming riff heaven. And the guitar player with the nose-ring and the long black hair? Torturously delicious rock crush. If you do nothing else, download Rev Theory NOW and turn it way, way up. Skip Drowning Pool, ToaD, even (gasp! I’m gonna say it!) Godsmack and Crüe, and give me more speakers, more power, and far more Rev Theory.

    I don’t know if I can continue, but I’ll try.

    Godsmack
    Let’s begin with the “don’t talk” part. True, I was still not recovered from the Rev Theory tsunami, but Godsmack was where I began to grow intensely weary of the endless string of uncreative profanity and meaningless chatter. The music was great, even outstanding, and there were certainly plenty of fireballs belched onto the stage to engage the most Rev Theory-dazed jade. Frontman Sully Erna knows how to do a show, but this one felt a little overscripted. The dueling-drum set piece was refreshing by virtue of Erna’s set being entirely done with hand drums and cymbals, and the intrumental break he spent encouraging front-row fans to take the guitar pick from his mouth was… diverting, but I wasn’t excited by the “Show us your t*ts” plea, and I ended up feeling underwhelmed by the show, despite a solid musical performance.

    Mötley Crüe
    This was arena rock in the great tradition of ELO, Journey, Styx, and Queen. The eerily-greenish padded cell (for the opener, Dr. Feelgood) was creepy and beautiful, and the strobe-lit walls were slowly split and flown up to be part of the mental-hospital-operating-room big set at the end of the number. The band rocked without a hitch through the entire Dr. Feelgood album, and thrilled the crowd with Kicksteart My Heart, Without You, and Same Ol’ Situation. The two long-legged glitter girls seemed a bit unnecessary, but I understand the desire of aging rock stars to keep baby candy on hand. I have to say, though, that Vince Neil is missing absolutely NONE of his range. That was deeply satisfying, and no mean trick.

    In retrospect, I’m not thrilled that I took my middle-schoolers to the show. I was proud of them, though; they listened carefully to my warnings to get clear of mosh pits as quickly as possible, and they were quiet and thoughtful when I shared my discouragement at the overall bad behavior, wretched language, and overt drug use at the concert. I think they loved the music for the music’s sake, and that’s the best way to come away from this Crüefest.

    Well, that and Rev Theory. Yeah.

    Rock Boyz

  • Poison and Def Leppard Light Up Walnut Creek

    Poison and Def Leppard Light Up Walnut Creek

    Thank you so much, friend of @ericstroud who had a wedding on the night that Cheap Trick, Poison, and Def Leppard were scheduled to play the Walnut Creek ampitheater. And thank you Eric, for tweeting out your tix when you couldn’t go, great idea!

    There were a few bumps, however. In the “band drama” department, someone decided two hours before the concert that no cameras would be allowed, which caused a HUGE pile-up at the gates as people either DefLep2turned around and walked back to leave them in their cars, then came and got in the line again, or else turned in their cameras to Security (our choice) and hoped for the best (we got it back by waiting in line AGAIN in order to leave). They’re not saying which of the prima donnas uttered this ridiculous “Oh dear, we can’t be caught on film!” decree, but I vote for Brett Michaels just because I can. He seems to stay hip-deep in drama; apparently he fractured his nose last month as he was exiting the stage at the Tony Awards — a descending piece of the set bashed him in the face. (Can you even picture him with Pamela Anderson? Me either, and don’t send me the link to that sex tape, people.)

    The entrance Pile Up Of Thousands meant we totally missed Cheap Trick, although we could hear them a little bit over the drunken grousing as we waited in line.

    Poison, Brett Michaels included, delivered the goods, and then some. After I got over the shock of paying $10 for a Yuengling (gasp — and I bought two), I went up front to see if I could get close to the stage for an iPhone photo (don’t tell the band), but the bouncers were in fine form and you can’t get past them to even enter the area with the seats at all. ‘Sokay, tho — you could hear juuuust fine, and if you can’t witness the glam up close and personal, at least you can ride the groove. And the peaceable crowd made a nice contrast with the recent insanity of Joan Jett in Moore Square.

    DefLep3Def Leppard can raise up some jam, too, and it was great to hear them do it. I forgave Joe Elliot‘s inability to hit the high notes all night long — it was clever of him to let the crowd carry part of the burden on a couple of their songs, and after all he HAS been doing this since 1977. Gotta cut the dude some slack, Jack.

    Classic bands, great music, fabulous night. AND I scored a couple of $10 tickets to CrueFest later this month. Motley Crue will be playing with Godsmack, Theory of a Dead Man, and Drowning Pool, and I’ve already heard great things about it.

    Planning to take the First, who is utterly stoked. Gotta raise up the next generation right.