So lately I’ve been on this kick for 80s music, the stuff from my preteen and teenage years. My love of rock and heavy metal music goes back to late 1983 when we got cable in the townhouse that I grew up in, and I spent hours watching MTV (so revolutionary for its time–so sad what its become). I was an impressionable 10 year old already obsessed with music. Putting a visual and sometimes narrative element to music had me hook, line and sinker. The dream of becoming a rock star was instant, and it colored all the dreams and fantasies I would have for the next decade.
One of my favorite hard rock/pop metal bands of the 80s was Ratt out of Los Angeles (via San Diego). Their seminal trinity of albums: Out of the Cellar (1984), Invasion of Your Privacy (1985) and Dancing Undercover (1986) — all platinum selling — got countless hours of play on my boomboxes in those years, and I still come back to them on at least an annual basis these days.
This video for the song “Lay it Down” was cheesy as hell with all the big hair, eyeliner and silly storyline. But at 11 years old when it got heavy airplay that summer, I watched it every time I could, using my mom’s tennis racquet as a makeshift guitar, or my stepdad’s drum sticks for air drumming.
They say geeks are made at a very young age. When it comes to music, I’m certainly living proof of that.
Ratt n’ Roll Forever, brother
Lost Signal 