I Wanna Point!

Patrick the Catholic, AJ, and the management were enjoying many, many beers at Black & White this week when AJ mentioned his newfound obsession with YouTube hunting. His main quarry? Hair Metal videos. And so, inspired, I set out to find some of my favorite music videos from the days when my eleven-year-old wardrobe included fingerless leather gloves, parachute pants, and (I shit you not) a zebra-striped bandana that I wore tied around my thigh.

I was being pulled in two directions, fashion-wise; you would think that my desire to join the cast of Breakin' didn't exactly dovetail with my equal need to become either the fifth member of Mötley Crüe or David Lee Roth himself. In my preadolescent wisdom, I chose a terrifying amalgam of the two styles. Strangely, this was pretty common... lots of kids had Puma windbreakers and spiked bracelets on at the same time. It is, in retrospect, troubling. This phase would eventually pass, as trend turnover seemed, to me at least, much faster in the '80s. Unfortunately, my next phase consisted of pegged Bugle Boy cargo pants, a "Don't Blame Me, I Voted for Bill & Opus" T-shirt, and whatever Maui & Sons items I could find on the sale rack at the big Santa Monica JC Penny's. It wasn't until around 1994 that I was able to dress myself properly. But I digress.

As I said, I was inspired to locate some of my favorite videos. I offer the following pair to dramatize the severe aesthetic tensions that warped my fragile young mind. First we have Ratt's "Lay It Down" video, which features a truly nasty creepy clown/creepy kid double-whammy. Please note how much Stephen Pearcy likes to point. It is rude to point. So what Stephen is saying, essentially, is, "Ratt is fucking rude! Fear Ratt!" His pirate shirt, however, turns our fear into eye-watering laughter.

...and then there was the other side. Ollie & Jerry's "There's No Stoppin' Us" was the massively inspirational jam that powered many a massively inspirational montage in Breakin' (which today simply inspires massive ridicule). Again, notice the ritual application of fashion accessories. At the time, this was considered quite "badass," or, as I used to say, "dude-ical." Today, however, it would be considered "gay," and would take place primarily in a five-person artist's loft on Williamsburg.

(A note on Breakin': I, and all of my peers, wanted to be like Turbo. No one wanted anything to do with Ozone's retarded zoot hat and feather earring. Even as impressionable youths, we knew this idiot was a complete waste of space.)

Anyway, thanks to AJ for the trip down memory lane and the clip of Def Leppard on Regis and Kelly. I always wondered what they said at the beginning of "Rock of Ages."