Goddamn government shutdown. All the chatter about it is driving me crazy. The moment a man lowers himself to talking politics, the Devil laughs and H.L. Mencken chuckles in his grave. Anyway, all the useless fretting and fist shaking has left me feeling lactose intolerant to the milk of human kindness, and I find myself inclined to say something unkind. So here goes: Metal is music for lunkheads. Top of Form
Or so I used to think. The only metalheads I knew in high school were the greasers who hung outside metal shop, forever tinkering beneath the hoods of their muscle cars as Deep Purple puked up “Smoke on the Water.” Meanwhile all we “smart” kids were listening to Frank Zappa sing about the yellow snow, which just goes to show we weren’t nearly as bright as we thought we were.
I’ve long since come to discover die-hard metal fans to be some of your more intelligent Homo sapiens, and metal to be a richly diverse and innovative genre full of mind-bendingly original bands. And I feel fairly shitty about having been so close-minded for all those years. But I still can’t seem to embrace metal, because I’m afraid if I become too open-minded, my brain will fall out.
Besides, and this is a big problem for me, metal is not exactly known for its sense of humor. Of course there are exceptions, and I really hope no one feels compelled to write an angry letter listing every one of them. Still, metal tends to be a very macho genre, and machismo and mirth just don’t mix. Just look at The Dictators. The more metallic they got, the less amusing they were. Metal leached the funny right out of them, and it’s a goddamn shame.
So I’m happy to report I’ve finally found a metal band I truly love—namely Kix, and particularly their 1981 eponymous debut LP. Baltimore’s (and the world’s) finest glam metal band, Kix looked—or at least they did in 1981—like a hair metal band, wrote songs with great melodies and irresistible hooks, then topped them off with wonderfully self-deprecating lyrics that never strayed far from the subjects of hunting for girls, getting blue balls because of girls, and getting thrown up on by girls.
In short, Kix is one of the few metal bands I can laugh with, rather than at, like I do with Angel, Stryper, Poison, Manowar (their Blow Your Speakers may boast the single most hilariously stupid cover ever), and any death metal band—which basically means every death metal band—with lyrics as dumb as Children of Bodom’s “In the dusk of evening I tuck you up with feather/Forever I’ll stand by your side/In the dead of night I’m laughing/While stabbing you one hundred and thirteen times.” I haven’t the faintest clue what “tucked up with feathers” means, but I’ve been stabbed 113 times—by a Skillet fan wearing a “Jesus Loves You” t-shirt, no less—and believe me, it’s that 113th one that really hurts.
Kix’s best album is their 1981 debut, the eponymous Kix. Not only does it include the brilliant “Kix Are For Kids,” the hilarious “Yeah Yeah Yeah,” and a whole slew of other great songs, but there’s no learning curve involved. It took me 30 years to warm up to Robert Plant’s adenoidal wail, and exactly 30 seconds to fall head over heels in love with “The Itch.” And I’m not alone in my love for Kix; the great Chuck Eddy put the LP at No. 5 in his book Stairway to Hell: The 500 Best Heavy Metal Albums in the Universe. Then again Eddy gave The Jimmy Castor Bunch the No. 10 spot, so his methodology—and sanity—are at best questionable.
Kix opens with “Atomic Bombs” and the sound of an air raid siren—it was 1981, after all, and everybody had nuclear apocalypse on the brain. World War III has started, but lead singer Steve Whiteman—who sings like a smartass punk—and his girl are snug in their own little bomb shelter. Featuring big power chords and chugging guitar riffs by Ronnie Younkins and Brian Forsythe, “Atomic Bombs” hurtles along like a Soviet SS-20 nuclear ballistic missile headed towards Charm City. Meanwhile Whiteman sings, “Hear the people scratch/On the shelter door/Leave us alone/Nobody lives here no more,” before getting to the chorus, “Make love to you all night long/Listen to atomic bombs.” It may not be one of Kix’s funnier songs, but it’ll make the perfect bomb shelter soundtrack when the North Koreans go nuts and the nukes begin to nose down.
The super-catchy “Love at First Sight” is a rip-snorting anti-power ballad, which is to say that despite its title it’s not exactly the tune you’ll want to play while seducing your girl. Because while Whiteman may sing about falling in love with a girl who’s “6.8 on the Richter Scale,” it turns out he already has “1, 2, 3, 4—Pretty girl friends/I got to keep on getting while the getting is good/Now 5, 6, 7, 8—I would if I could.” I suspect he’s joking, or deluding himself—it’s either that or this is the one song on Kix where Whiteman doesn’t play the feckless loser. But what I love most about the song is its chorus, and the way Whiteman throws everything he’s got into “Love!!” then slides in “Love at first sight” almost as an afterthought.
“Heartache” kinda sounds like a Cheap Trick song but better, because the only great song Cheap Trick ever produced was “Surrender” and it’s about time people just admitted it. It opens with some great drumming and very Rick Nielsen guitar, then bops lightheartedly along, stopping only for a back-to-back pair of guitar solos. Meanwhile Whiteman tries to play the heartbroken lover with a straight face but blows it by singing, “I got heartbreak/I got love smeared all over my face.” Meanwhile the band demonstrates its uncanny ability to produce Raspberries-like vocal harmonies, singing, “I said love don’t let me down/I’ll make it up to you the next time around,” then performing some call and response with Whiteman, singing, “He’s got heartbreak” over and over while Whiteman responds with an “Oh wos,” “Oh nos,” and the like.
The femme-fatale-themed “Poison” opens with Jimmy Chalfant’s rapid drum thump and some very un-metallic guitar, and sounds almost as much like a New Wave tune as a metal one, what with its syncopated drumming and by-the-clock guitar riffs. “Poison” is more generic-sounding than anything else on the LP and is its weakest link, although I love Whiteman’s impassioned vocals, the kick drum/guitar riff face-off about midway through the song, and the band’s call and response with Whiteman, with the former repeating, “She p-p-p-put poison” while Whiteman responds “I can’t fight it.”
I’ve said that Kix is a funny band, but they don’t really demonstrate it until the “The Itch.” Fact is Kix is a slow starter, and if the whole album followed the pattern of “Atomic Bombs,” “Love at First Sight,” and “Poison,” I would have written off Kix as a band of melodic geniuses with fantastic vocals and paid them no more mind.
And even “The Itch” isn’t precisely hilarious, but it’s funny enough, and boasts an unforgettable melody, more great backing vocals, and some wonderful vocals by Whiteman. It opens with a very cool guitar riff, some increasingly loud drumming, and Whiteman singing, “Woke up this morning/Fell out of bed/An all night juke box/Pounding in my head.” Then comes the chorus, in which Whiteman sings “I got the itch” and the band follows in perfect harmony, “I got it!” I love the lines, “I got ants in my pants/Let’s dance!” (they’re so wonderfully dumb) but not nearly as much as I love the lines, “Hey boy—My dad he’s got it!/Hey boy—My mom she’s got it!/Hey boy—The dog he’s got it!/Hey boy—The boys they got it!!” Because you know if the dog’s got it, it must be bad.
“Kix Are For Kids” isn’t just an album highlight—it’s one of my all-time faves. The song opens with an AC/DC flourish of guitars, then dashes off to make mayhem like an 8-year-old ADD kid on a sugary cereal rush. Meanwhile Whiteman does his best Brian Johnson imitation, screaming the lyrics from the opening lines (“Don’t scream when you realize/Don’t scream when you tow the line/Remember the craze back in ’65/Wasn’t it great to be alive?”) to the closing “Kix are for kids,” which he utters in a silly voice straight out of the old Trix commercials. Kix’s great vocal harmonies are on full display here, both in the chorus and in the section where the band sings, “Wake up!” and Whiteman sings, “Gonna wake up the old folks home!/Gonna let the good times roll!/Let the good times roll!” Throw in a ferocious guitar solo and the heavy metal thunder at song’s end, and what you have is a song so manic, hook mad, and brilliant I’ve arranged that it be played continuously from speakers atop my tombstone, in the hope of making my final resting place a must-stop on every local stoned adolescent’s nightly bong circuit.
Next up is “Contrary Mary,” a nursery rhyme of a song in the Aerosmith mode. It’s a lightweight pop-metal confection and hardly my fave, and opens with a drum that sounds like a carpenter going at it with a hammer and some Beatlesesque guitars. Unfortunately the lyrics are relatively banal, and while the melody is catchy I don’t much care it. In short, “Contrary Mary” doesn’t have much to recommend it besides its great chorus, which once again features some great back and forth between the band and Whiteman. Still, despite its faults “Contrary Mary” still beats most of the swill coming out of your car radio. Like Bruno Mars, for instance, who the other night I heard singing about making love like gorillas, which just confirmed me in my opinion that the vast majority of the world’s performing artists are clueless ass-clowns.
“The Kid” is an instant classic, a metallic KO of a song about a nuisance of a friend who doesn’t seem to get that three’s a crowd. The song is all crushing guitars but still wonderfully melodic, and features lots of ass-kicking group vocals, including the opening lines, “We gotta get rid of the kid ’cause the kid’s a crowd/We gotta get rid of the kid ’cause the kid’s too loud.” Every time Whiteman finds himself alone with his girl “here comes the kid come knocking on my door,” but the annoyance factor doesn’t stop him from playing one humdinger of a harmonica solo, followed by more totally cool push and pull between him and the band:
Whiteman: “Well hey kid, the kid’s a crowd!”
The band, real loud: “We gotta get rid of the kid!”
Whiteman: “Hey kid, the kid’s too loud!”
The band, real loud: “We gotta get rid of the kid!”
Whiteman: “Hey kid, what’d ya want anyway?”
The band, real loud: “We gotta get rid of the kid!”
Whiteman then closes the song by saying, “Hey kid/What’d ya need?/Candy? Here’s a quarter, beat it,” then as the song fades out, “You’re worse than a hangover/I got a hangover/It hurts/It hurts bad.”
Album closer “Yeah Yeah Yeah” is Kix’s tour de force, an epic farce about a one-night stand gone terribly, terribly amiss. It opens with an REM-sounding guitar intro, then the drums and power chords kick in and what you have is a heavy metal/power pop number full of “yeah yeah yeahs” and “hey hey heys” followed by some great extended guitar interplay, at which point a crowd starts cheering and we’ve gone live, or sham live, I can’t tell which. Anyway, the band falls into the background while Whiteman delivers the funniest rock monologue I’ve ever heard.
He begins by imitating Elmer Fudd, saying, “Shhhh—Be very very quiet/It’s woman season—I’m woman hunting… hauh hauh hauh hauh hauh.” Then he ceases channeling Elmer to deliver a diatribe on his girl troubles, concluding, “Any girl’d be nice every now and then/I’m a nice guy—I bathe/Sure I got blue arms—So what?/It doesn’t make me a baaad person.”
Then he tells his story: “The girl that walked out on me New Year’s Eve?/Well she came back last night/And she said, “I don’t have to go home tonight.”/I said, “All right.”/So—I bought again… a case of cold, cold Heineken/And then—I had it in the van/A big bottle of Jack Daniels, not the little one, the big one/And I always carry a stash… cuz you never know/I had two left, two ludes, for the girl of my dreams/Now again, she drinks my beer/She drinks my whiskey/She does my quaaludes/5 o’clock comes/”Oh I feel sick—I gotta go home now.”/And she threw up all over the floor/I said, “Freeze, freeze—go outside and do that!”/I said, “The hell with this. I don’t neeeed this.”/”I’ll go to the geisha house where it’s free.”
Then the song kicks back into motion, with Whiteman singing, “Don’t tell me no/Tell me yeah yeah yeah” before finally shutting the song down with a cryptic “Trust me/Ooooo/A-E-I-O-U.”
And that’s that. In the end, I suspect what I love most about Kix is their normalcy. Kix’s music is totally devoid of the bullshit machismo and evil posturing that characterize so much metal, and I find that utterly refreshing. They sound like a bunch of kids growing up, fucking up, and failing to get laid, and I can relate to that in a way I’ll never be able to relate to Black Sabbath’s bogus Satanism, Motörhead’s badder-than-thou amphetamine swagger, and Dimmu Borgir’s Silenoz and Shagrath (really? I bet their real names are Fleegle and Snorky).
The guys in Kix aren’t pretending to be anything they’re not, and the biggest threat they offer to the world are the burning M-8os—or maybe they’re flares, I can’t tell the diff—Whiteman is holding on the album cover. Which, knowing his luck, probably blew up in his hands. We’re all losers, but Kix, god bless ‘em , actually ‘fess up. Imagine: talking like Elmer Fudd about how your girl blew chunks all over your hopes of getting laid. Why, that’s about as metal as admitting you knit.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
