We didn’t rush — it was a hot summer afternoon, and beer was destined to be consumed, so it seemed prudent to take it easy. This meant that we missed a lot of the early bands, like Trixter and L.A. Guns. We were in the parking lot eating Subway sandwiches and drinking beers while Winger was tearing up the crowd. I can live with being that close to Winger and never catching a glimpse.

But I was pleased that we managed to catch Bang Tango on the second stage. They are one of those bands I never knew very well, but liked. My older brother was all into Bang Tango, and I can remember him driving around with their tapes blasting, circa 1990. They put on a good show.

Here they are playing “Ready to Go”:

But my favorite moment of the performance was spotting this chick with a Queensrÿche tattoo! How awesome is this??

My head was still reeling a little from the Queensrÿche tattoo when, after Bang Tango, we wandered to the mainstage to see Kix. After decades of never getting around to seeing Kix, the biggest semi-hometown band of my youth, this was my second time seeing them in the past year. Last time, I was full of complex, ambivalent feelings. This time I was more willing to just enjoy them for being a silly, great rock band. They are not a band that you should spend a whole lot of time projecting personal Angst upon.

They looked about the same as last time, Steve Whiteman ugly as sin, the band totally rocking the joint. Here you can check them out doing one of their best songs, “Cold Blood” (I was singing along):

Having enough of the Kix experience (they played a pretty long set), we left during the last song (the one I dislike, “Yeah Yeah Yeah”) to go back to the other stage and check out Dizzy Reed.

I have never listened to any of Dizzy’s solo stuff, but I have long admired the name of his solo band, Hookers N’ Blow. He put on a pretty great set, playing covers and who-knows-what-else; there were a couple of Guns N’ Roses songs thrown in. He actually sounds quite a bit like Axl Rose. This was a fun performance, and from the stage banter, it seemed like the band was just sort of thrown together. I would go see Dizzy at a club sometime. I kinda want to go to L.A. and hang out with him.

Dizzy Reed – “Cheers to Oblivion” :

After Dizzy’s set, we moved to the mainstage and abandoned the back-and-forth action (meaning we missed Warrant). Up next was Vince Neil, who put on one of the more baffling performances I’ve ever seen. I really like Mötley Crüe, or anyway I like the idea of Mötley Crüe. They seemed to occupy a sweet spot in the ’80s hard rock hierarchy — heavy enough to seem semi-tough, but with plenty of chick appeal via all the ballads. But then sometimes I wonder if they aren’t just another party rock band like Poison. So much philosophical debate!

Anyway I was sort of interested to see what Vince Neil would do, I was assuming it would be a Crüe greatest hits sort of show. And it seemed that way at first. His band was awesome, but Vince Neil himself was awful. He ran around, sang intermittently, and then — weirdest of all — wandered off-stage for like 10 or 15 minutes at one point. The band seemed to be covering up, playing a Zeppelin medley where the guitarist proved to be a better singer than Neil himself. I was sort of thinking — hoping? — that Vince Neil had disappeared, perhaps in a helicopter heading home sweet home. But he eventually wandered back onto the stage, sang some Zeppelin himself, and finished the show. How odd! It was like a week afterwards that he made the news for getting arrested for drunk driving.

Anyway here is Vince doing a Crüe hit:

After Vince Neil’s set, while we sat and skipped the Warrant performance in the background, was one of the weirder moments of the night. As background music over the speakers, somebody put on the first Burning Airlines record, and played almost the whole thing. Amusing! I wonder what sort of statement that staffperson was making. Maybe it was “these bands rock, and so does J. Robbins!” I would like to hope so, anyway it was funny and incongruous and I enjoyed listening. Thanks, IMP Productions employee!

After Mission: Control! was turned off, we got to see the awesomest performance of the night: Cinderella!

I’ve always liked Cinderella, and one of the first few CDs I ever bought was by them. I haven’t listened to them in ages and ages, though, and I have learned an awful lot more about music in the intervening couple of decades. So it was fun to listen to them, and relive my adolescence a bit, and figure out what I think of this band nowadays.

Obviously, they are a bit past their prime, but they really sounded pretty good and energetic. They started off sounding pretty metal — in the vein of Judas Priest almost. But gradually they eased into just plain ole’ rock and roll, the same kind played by a lot of great bands through the years, from the Black Crowes to the Rolling Stones. This is a great style — hard rock, slightly metal-inflected, mixed with Stones-y swagger. Guns N’ Roses did something similar from time to time, but I kind of think Cinderella have a more interesting take on it. Really good stuff. Also Tom Keifer turned out to be a good musician rather than just a frontman, it helped put Vince Neil’s earlier performance to shame, playing guitar and piano and saxophone (!).

Here’s “Nobody’s Fool” which is of course a great song, though maybe not typical:

Cinderella was a hard act to follow and I am not sure the Scorpions were up to the challenge. I really like the Scorpions but they came on late (there were all kinds of technical problems in getting them onstage) and the crowd was getting restless. Klaus Meine was sick (though you couldn’t really tell from his voice). Many folks had been out in the hot sun for like 10 hours, and were itching to go beat traffic.

Even I was feeling a little worn out, though I totally wanted to be attentive. This was supposedly a farewell tour for the ancient Germans.

Probably the coolest thing about the Scorpions’ performance was their sheer attitude. These guys aren’t screwin’ around, they are acting like a right proper metal band. A Teutonic metal band! They had a ridiculous pneumatic drum riser thing straight out of a Spinal Tap performance, they all wore black leather. Super sweet. At a certain point, Vince Neil came out to join them for a song (why??) and the contrast was ridiculous, with Vince basically looking like a slovenly Jimmy Buffett in comparison.

The performance was pretty good, and fun. Great rock band. But I think they might have been better served headlining a more reasonable show, not a ridiculous all-day festival. If it had just been Scorps and Cinderella it would’ve totally roooled.

Here they are doing one of my old favorites, “Holiday.” Funny, with the Scorpions I almost like their ballads better than their rockers (not “Wind of Change” though).

Going to see Priest again was a pretty random, last-second decision, and I probably would not have gone except that an old friend was kinda interested, and I have always sort of wanted to see Kix. Priest had been on tour with Whitesnake for much of the summer, but I never really gave a damn about Whitesnake. So I was pretty excited that David Coverdale had laryngitis and dropped out of the tour and Kix somehow got tapped to open up at least at the local show.

I’ve already talked recently about Judas Priest — and the show at Merriweather was superior in most ways to the show last month in Milwaukee — so I will talk a bit here about Kix, and ’80s metal in general.

So, yeah, Kix. Wow. What a band! I find that I can’t think about Kix without experiencing the same mixture of pride and shame that colors my discussions of my hometown area — rural western Maryland. On the one hand, I deeply love the band yet on the other hand I cringe with embarrassment at some of their antics and words. Same thing with the rural Marylanders/West Virginians I grew up with! Kix are basically exactly like the people from my hometown, in fact they practically are from my hometown; their wikipedia entry talks about how the singer met the others in Ridgeley, West Virginia; they were somewhat based in Hagerstown. They were really popular in western Maryland when I was growing up in the ’80s.

But let me describe the show. Kix were pretty good! But my god they looked old! Or anyway, sleazy frontman Steve Whiteman looked old! I have tracked down some old videos on youtube of Kix in the ’80s and I am not sure he was ever such a looker… and since some of his lyrics are predominantly about lovin’ the ladies, his skeezy look was sort of a distraction. The jumbotrons didn’t make them look any better. Also, physical appearance is semi-relevant since Kix songs are none too subtle, with songs like “Sex” and the following semi-hit, during which the friend I went with was asking “Blow my what?”

A lot of Kix songs are superior to the standard hair-metal canon, and though articles on the web often compare Kix to Poison, I think they are more similar to harder-edged pop-metal bands like Mötley Crüe and Ratt. On the other hand I believe their biggest hit was a power ballad, “Don’t Close Your Eyes” :

The band sounded great and seemed to be having fun. Whiteman talked about how they were doing some more local reunion shows where they could play a longer set, but it seemed like plenty to me, they must have played for something like an hour and 15 minutes, maybe even an hour and a half.

My favorite two songs were “The Itch” :

and also “Cold Blood” — there is a video of the ending here. “Cold Blood” is a great song, actually, and if there were any justice in the world, Kix would still be getting nice royalty checks from it, or at least it would be a popular Guitar Hero track.

So ok, those are the Kix highlights. But of course there are some low-lights too. I don’t actually care about the physical appearance thing, but there is a vibe to Kix that I have always been uncomfortable with, and I have spent 25 years being annoyed by Kix’s fairly revolting date-rape anthem, “Yeah Yeah Yeah.” (Here’s a clip from another recent Merriweather show if you’re not familiar.) I guess it is all meant to be fun, but honestly this is the kind of stuff that my old rock heroes Cobain and Vedder were railing against. The casual misogyny of party-metal is one of the main strikes against it (along with its general meat-headedness, casual homophobia (“In 1989, [Sebastian] Bach was heavily criticized for wearing a t-shirt on stage that a fan had thrown to him before he could read it, with the slogan “AIDS Kills Fags Dead” emblazoned on it … Although he made light of the incident in his original apology, Bach has since repeatedly apologized for and disavowed the statement” – via wp), conservative politics, bizarre anti-internationalism, idiot fans, etc, etc.) There is a pretty clear line — of correlation, not causality — connecting dumbass lyrics by the likes of Steve Whiteman and the rapes-to-Limp Bizkit of Woodstock ’99.

Sorry to go on a P.C. tirade but I am a P.C. kinda guy. (I have similar issues with misogynist hip-hop lyrics too. Somehow can’t get the humor in violence against women, I guess I’m just a total killjoy.) But the Kix song “Yeah Yeah Yeah” has bugged me for ages, with its “quit throwing up, don’t tell me no, tell me yeah yeah yeah!” Check out the lyrics and decide for yourself, I guess. (And by the way what was the deal with quaaludes? I was too young to ever catch that scene…)

It’s weird, I have no problem with vile lyrics coming from the likes of Cannibal Corpse, and am kinda amused by songs about necrophilia and cannibalism. I also am not against graphic sex in song lyrics, though it doesn’t seem like there are many good examples, aside from some rap songs. So maybe part of the reason I’m uncomfortable with frat-boy style lyrics about sexin’ it up has to do with the particular dudes who are singing. I mean, it’s one thing for Mick Jagger to beg for some action, or David Lee Roth to be hot for teacher. But then there are the Steve Whitemans and Vince Neils of the world, who are in a whole ‘nother category. You can pretty easily believe that a Steve Whiteman would lure a woman back to his trailer for Jack Daniels followed by comatose sex.

And yeah, I said “trailer,” here I am being snobby about my own people. I guess my thoughts about my hometown, and my thoughts about Kix, go like this: out in the boondocks, there are a lot of good people, despite a decent-sized contingent of slobbering racist assholes; there are also a lot of basically good people who are thoughtlessly racist, sexist, homophobic, and politically loony. Just because they are good people doesn’t mean I can’t condemn their racism, sexism, etc.

Ok time for a break from the rant; I really did enjoy Kix overall. So let’s look at some Judas Priest videos. Here is a montage of videos and photos from a youtuber who caught K.K. Downing’s guitar pick! I’m jealous :

Here’s a video of “Metal Gods” :

The highlight was probably “Victim of Changes” (not a super great video):

And for good measure here is “You’ve Got Another Thing Coming” :

As a last bit of sociopolitical commentary, somewhat relevant to a Judas Priest show, my friend and I had a conversation at some point during the show about the homosexual subtext of heavy metal fandom. It’s totally there. There were some shirtless dudes near us, who were constantly grabbing each other amidst their headbanging. Other metal dudes, happy and screaming, locked forehead to forehead, eye to eye. I was doing some quick web searching (wonder how many other google scholar searches there are for terms like “gay heavy metal”) and couldn’t find much about the topic, surprisingly. I am sure it has been studied, that dissertations have been written about this. (If not maybe I have a new thesis topic!)

(Coincidentally, the City Paper’s Sexist blog today discusses the top 5 gay metal icons and I disagree about Doug Pinnick, I think he is pretty damn metal…)

The whole Rob Halford being gay thing was a total non-issue to me when I found out about it. I didn’t even think about it the last time I saw them; why would I? Based on the fans — and I’m now a veteran of two Priest shows and counting — it seems to be a non-issue to everyone. I would say the shirtless headbangers seemed at least as open-minded as a typical hardcore punk mosh pit. (Maybe I could do a comparative study! More thesis ideas!) Anyway it’s nice to see. I guess it’s possible that the rabid homophobic metal fans just avoid Priest, but I think more likely this is progress of a sort.