play-in game
(14) krokus, "eat the rich"
defeats
(14) danger danger, "naughty naughty"
50-31
and will play in march shredness
Read the essays, watch the videos, listen to the songs, feel free to argue below in the comments or tweet at us, and consider. Winner is the aggregate of the poll below and the @marchshredness twitter poll. Polls closed @ 9am Arizona time on Jan 30, 2018.
Krokus is the only Swiss band on the docket for your potential Shredness consideration which would make them the only Swiss band in the tourney. “Eat the Rich” is the second single off of their gold US album Head Hunter (seventh studio album but the first to do well in the US) and its video might possibly be an early Burning Man prototype (sans the aspirational high vibrations). Like today’s wee youths’ addiction to all mobile Apple products, my drug of choice at that age was MTV. And my seven year old mind thought this song and its visual component was some heavy church-burning bigfoot. Revisiting this song however with an arsenal of semiotic reading skills I’m realizing “Eat The Rich” is a little sludgier than that first listen in childhood. And now as an adult especially after a couple years living in the Bay Area I recognize those leather chest harnessed revelers obviously time traveled from Folsom Street Fair. Did you notice how the guitars come carved straight out of the Hyborian Age? And Maltese singer Marc Storace addressing structural economic disparity via spiked microphone as their video is basically the basement in Matlow’s hierarchy of capitalism partying in the Thunderdome. Both atavistic and prescient its themes still feel pretty timely. “Eat the Rich” with its crunchy chords and punctuated English elocution can be heard bumping from a biker bar jukebox where Beastmaster and Road Warrior play on loop. In hindsight maybe not hardcore enough to be caught on Southern California serial killer Richard “Night Stalker” Ramirez’ person, you still couldn’t say shit to anyone rocking that Midnight Maniac Krokus concert tee in my Southeast Los Angeles neighborhood.
Three years ago a guy named David Bradley posted the following comment on the YouTube page containing Danger Danger’s biggest hit, “Frikkin' defined 80's hair metal; big hair, hot girl, great riffs, great keyboards; too much fun back then! All u youngin's just don't understand what it was back then..........f'ng awesome!” When he say’s “f’ng awesome” I believe him. However, I was the “youngin’” in the 80s and so I can only from a distance say that the gender ambiguity as gaslighting tactic that was Headbanger’s Ball’s modus operandi left a deep imprint on my pre-pubescent self torn between desiring being and doing both Axl in Welcome to the Jungle and Bret in Talk Dirty To Me. As in gender bending = ok; same sexing = not so much. I wanted all of us to just be girls with boy names. Who was who in the 80s? A query left forever unanswered by David Bradley. Still, a band like Danger Danger continue to live in the ghostly interstices of 80s hair metal for they had the potential makings of neon-clad glam kings. “Naughty, Naughty,” (and the other hit of that album “Bang, Bang”—are you seeing a pattern?) after all lived in the full-length kingdom called Live & Nude. Hand over the keys, man, this is a sure thing. Or better yet what happened to this Queens band of merry skirt-lifters besides being immortalized on the Santa Clause 2 Soundtrack? I mean being one of Tim Allen’s faves is already more than any of us have managed to accomplish.
Raquel Gutiérrez was first introduced to the politics of space when in 5th grade got dropped off at the Music Plus in Lakewood, California to stand in line for Guns N'Roses tickets only to realize she was a browner kind of fan. A former life involved working music retail marketing for a Soundscan competitor back in the pre-MP3 days and now Gutiérrez is a poet and essayist pursuing her MFA degree in poetry at the University of Arizona. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she writes about space and institutionality and publishes chapbooks by queers of color with the tiny press Econo Textual Objects, established in 2014. Her work has found homes in FENCE, Zócalo Public Square, ASAP Journal, Huizache, The Portland Review, Los Angeles Weekly, and Entropy.