Basement Party 2

Basement Party 2

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Tonight's Slab - RATT AND ROLL (OR PAY THE TOLL!)

A while back I picked up a copy of the RATT album "Invasion of Your Privacy" for a buck. It was money well-spent.

This meets all the requirements for an '80s album cover. Hot model? Check. Sense of foreboding? Check. Stylized logo? Check.

I first became familiar with this band about 9 years past their prime thanks to those grungy '90s cartoon cut-ups, Beavis and Butthead. Known for knocking all things '80s when it was fashionable to do so, I watched these 'toon goons rip on the RATT video for their song "I Want a Woman," which came out on their fourth album "Reach for the Sky." And for good reason...it was a pretty bad song. Recorded in the twilight days of hair metal, the video pretty much personified every cliche about the genre. It wasn't all bad though, as it showcased a lot of lovely '80s ladies (when each one appeared on the screen Butt-Head would say "...slut.")

For a long time liking hair metal would have been anathema to everything I believed in regarding heavy music, but as I aged I mellowed in this stance, and found myself listening to quite a bit of it about 5 years back. Thanks to my all-time favorite radio station WZUU I discovered RATT had more hits than the ubiquitous "Round and Round" and the aforementioned "I Want a Woman." The first one I remember really digging was from this album, a tune called "Lay It Down." Love that guitar intro! (Warning: a clown appears at the beginning, if you're scared of those dudes beware!)


Here's another good tune from this album:


What can I say? It's good party music! RATT weren't may favorite hair metal band (that would be Dokken), but they put out some fun jams.

2 comments:

  1. I see "Invasion of Your Privacy" all the time, but I've never picked it up...just because its not the one with "round and Round" on it.

    Ratt always reminds me of Sati. I just can't think of them separately.

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  2. Yeah, "Round and Round" is on their first one, "Out of the Cellar," which features another cantily clad model on the album cover.

    I think of Sati when I hear RATT too, but I think he was more of a Def Leppard fan.

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