Sweetz Bitz: If Hollywood Vampires exist, they'd look like LA Guns

Monday, June 21, 2010

If Hollywood Vampires exist, they'd look like LA Guns

I’m back down on memory lane to the late 80s. My favourite time for music.

OK, ever since I linked that LA Guns video playing the acoustic version of Ballad of Jayne, I’ve been watching a lot of their old videos on YouTube lately. Their video for Ballad of Jayne is one of my all-time favourite videos. All my siblings like that one too. How can you not like something so beautiful? Great song, pretty men in black and red roses.

Oh, I am reminded of how beautiful they all used to look like back then. In fact, to me, collectively, LA Guns classic lineup of Tracii Guns, Phil Lewis, Kelly Nickels, Mick Cripps and Steve Riley were the prettiest band ever to come out of LA. Other bands normally have 1 or 2 pretty faces but LA Guns was visually appealing in each. I mean, Phil was like a Manga vampire doll and Kelly was basically a Warren DeMartini lookalike back in the day. Mick was the one with the Johnny Depp cheekbones and pout. Steve and his piercing blue eyes. Tracii made the short floppy hair look cool in a metal band a few years before throngs of teeny boybands adopted that look to wow girls.

What I liked about them visually was their dark hair as the frame to their piercing eyes and the myriads of tattoos giving them the edgier, vampirish and more mysterious look compared to other bands at the time. No blonds for LA Guns back then. Even today, a blond in the band would stick out like a sore thumb (yes, it’s you Marty Casey). Let’s face it, blonds don’t look dangerous.

I was once so visually taken by the band that I even wrote a teen novel with 5 characters in it named after the band members with Tracii as the lead character of a troubled teen. I didn’t finish it of course because I ran out of ideas. I read out the story to a friend and she asked me “Why are the guys’ names like girls’?” Yeah, that’s another unique thing about LA Guns. The girly names. They used to have Tracii and Kelly and now there’s Stacey in there.

At the moment, I am addicted to this video. LA Guns and their song Malaria.

Heck, even the video looks good to be in the 90s and even today. No corny cheesy scenes. Just a band rocking out in raw performance.

I don’t know about other people but to my ears, this song can fit well into today’s music. In the 90s, guitar solos found no place in rock (sadly) but this song has very strong rhythm section which is the way I like it. Thumping bass lines and drums. Add to that the Egyptian-sounding guitar solo. So my taste :-)

Of course, here are the visual excuses for my "addiction" ;-)