As usual I tend to fall into a bit of a torpor at this time of year; goddamn whichever branch of the evolutionary tree discounted hibernation as a valid survival tactic for home sapiens!
Working from home deepens the malaise as it cuts out the need to actually leave the house and make an impression on others, so I sit here steeping in my own juices, sprouting hair all over the place*, willfully stagnating.
So I need a bit of a musical jolt now and then, something to quicken the pulse, something to remind me of the joys of yesteryear and something to entice me to lumber out of my cave.
Enter Tattooed Love Boys Why Waltz When You Can Rock ‘n’ Roll, some primo homegrown sleaze from 1987.
The Tattooed Love Boys were a bunch of sleaze-os from London-ish who seemed to get mentioned in every single issue of Kerrang! back in the late 80’s**. London sleaze having a long, proud, slightly punky history stretching back to Roman times with likes of Hollywood Brats, Silverhead, The Babysitters, Soho Roses, Marionette and a host of others swirling around joints like the Speakeasy and the Marquee. It all seemed intoxicatingly dangerous to a farm boy from West Wales, still does.
Why Waltz When You Can Rock ‘n’ Roll serves a gloriously of-its-time exuberant trio of primo glam tunes. It is the sound of a band playing fast and loud high on testosterone and youthful possibilities.
The title track starts with a snatch of ‘Blue Danube’ which quickly gets yanked off the turntable and overtaken by a barrage of drums, all manner of sleazy come ons and guitars doing everything they needed to back in ’87. There is a breakdown into a talkie bit, a very revved-up guitar solo and wham-bang-Kerrang! it’s spent.
The track ‘Why Waltz When You Can Rock ‘n’ Roll’ does make me grin, it is infectiously good and fun, clearly in thrall to the likes of Ratt, GNR and those Motley chaps but enough of its own bunny to stand tall. The (self) production is pretty good for an indie rock release, a touch echoey maybe but a class better than a lot of other offerings around then.
Musically future Wildhearts guitarist Cris C.J Jagdhar is the standout for me, there’s a bit more than adrenalin going on in his playing.
B-sides? there’s ‘Down And Out’ which is a little rougher, built around a riff spliced from AC/DC’s ‘Gimme A Bullet To Bite On’. I like it and it passed the mixtape test way back then, because of the riff and additional guitariation. Final track is ‘If I Should Ever Fall From Grace With God’ which is the real ace in the hat band. Of course it is built along similar lines to the other two but there is just something really great about the melody here, better vocals too, hinting at more to come from the band.
There may well have been more to come from Tattooed Love Boys but I never quite got around to snaffling up a copy of their debut LP, the excellently titled Bleeding Hearts And Needle Marks and they folded around ’91 as Seattle triumphed. Ah well, they stand for a happy, amusingly innocent (in hindsight) time in my personal evolution when everything and anything was possible as long as I didn’t lose my hair.
I really enjoy the back sleeve of Why Waltz When You Can Rock ‘n’ Roll, it is wonderfully endearingly amateurish, lots of thanks for people with brackets in their names, references to Kerrang! journalists and Jack Daniels. Plus I love it when record sleeves tell you to play the contents loud, I see it as a sacred duty.
1119 Down.
*apart from the top of my head, obvs.
**from memory, ‘scuse any inaccuracies.
They look like an off-brand mash-up of Mötley Crüe, Poison and G’n’R but I’m glad they made some recordings before grunge crushed the movement.
Also: “Working from home deepens the malaise as it cuts out the need to actually leave the house and make an impression on others, so I sit here steeping in my own juices, sprouting hair all over the place*, willfully stagnating.” This was me, track pants and too much access to the fridge. Got me right in the feels.
It takes Tattooed Love Boys to stir you out of your torpor then? Just as I suspected…
I dunno though… they all look suspiciously un-inked in the photos
I was thinking the same thing. I don’t think these boys are tattooed!!
I know! You’ll be telling me there are no metallic predators in Steel Panther next!
Well….there are predators…just sexual!!
You’d have a good case for a Trading Standards complaint there. The LP cover pictured them being inked – maybe it was done via crude 80’s CGI?
Yup, my lady magnet persona is all a bit of a smokescreen.
Good one. I didn’t clock this ’80s scene at all but maybe The Quireboys et al were the ‘commercial’ version?
Hey Matt, in some ways yes – there was a very grimy little scene of its own that GNR turbocharged when they got big. I would totally recommend a book called Sick On You: The Disastrous Story Of The Hollywood Brats. The title says it all really …
As 1537 is my go-to site for sleaze rock (a hashtag I follow assiduously over all soc med formats) I consumed this like a hair metal guitarist consumed product.*
* I’m trusting that you know no more about hair products than I, bodily sproutings not withstanding.
My knowledge of hair products, like my knowledge of space travel, promiscuity and particle physics is pretty theoretical I’m afraid Bruce.