cinderella: classic or dud? search and destroy

Search: the German import I have that has 23 of the best songs off all the albums. Somebody Save Me! Gypsy Road!

In my early teenaged years, I could occasionally stomach Bon Jovi, but only barely and never for long. Cinderella, on the other hand, was pure poop, overblown and unbearable. Keifer, to me, always sounded like he had just finished gargling nails. They were, and still are, one of the only bands which will convince me to stand up and run across a room to hit the volume control.

That said, Cinderella had some entertaining singles for their time.

SEARCH: "Shake Me," "Gypsy Rose"

DESTROY: "Don't Know What Ya Got `Til It's Gone."

sounds like something that should appeal to an industrial fan.

and i think a cinderella review was one of my first nylpm posts so this should come as no surprise.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKGgu74H_PU

listening to 'Long Cold Winter' for the first time in 18 years (found sealed vinyl copy) ... sounds good!

it is

awesome

the one after is even better, i think

Spinning this new "official bootleg" recorded in Tokyo in 1990. It's from Heartbreak Station tour. It's really kind of awesome!

What I dig about Cinderella is how they mastered all the boogie-rock touchstones: slide guitar, piano, horns, etc. Yet they never resorted to straight up retro-moves like the Crowes, Four Horsemen, etc. Those bands pretended as if Aerosmith, AC/DC and Hanoi Rocks never existed. And now I'm sounding like a total dork.

I should add Judas Priest to this line: Those bands pretended as if Aerosmith, AC/DC and Hanoi Rocks never existed.

i always associated raging slab w/the crowes/horsemen too.

rock city angels were more in the cinderella camp

I've actually never listened to the Rock City Angels. I need to give them a spin. Last time I went on a Cinderella rant an friend of mine mentioned them.

I saw Raging Slab once, and yeah, they definitely went for that "nothing existed after 1972" aesthetic.

i only know them cuz i saw them open for jimmy page once (outrider tour haha)

i have the cassette somewhere...it was a double album i think.

i bet xhuckx would know something about them

Heartbreak Station is great......

Tom Keifer released a solo album this year and it's just as good as any Cinderella album. I'd rank it slightly ahead of Still Climbing and Long Cold Winter maybe not quite as good as Heartbreak Station. The first single "The Flower Song" is apparently getting some radio play too. It's funny someone mentioned GN'R earlier in this thread seeing as it took Tom Keifer longer (1994-2013) to put out a new studio record than Axl Rose (1993-2008), but according to Tom this is mostly due a long legal battle with Sony.

From Rolling Country (!) 2013:

Speaking of noncountry, I'm listening to the new album by Schoolly D's favorite artist Tom Keifer. On a quick skim it seems very good; none of it makes any effort to register as country, but it's full of riffs that a lot of male country singers would love accompanying them (and for those of you who weren't paying attention in 2002, Andy Griggs had himself some Keifer licks in the excellent Keifer collaboration "A Hundred Miles Of Bad Road").
― Frank Kogan, Sunday, 23 June 2013 07:47

Oh yeah, I like that Tom Keifer album as well. Not allowed to call him "metal" anymore obviously (I think a law finally passed on that a few years ago), so I was hoping I could move him over to "country," but that doesn't really work either. I guess it's just "rock," though rock fans don't care about him much anymore either. Real good album, regardless.
― xhuxk, Sunday, 23 June 2013 15:03

Haven't listened to my Cinderella albums in something like 15 years, not even sure what box the cassettes are in; but if Keifer no longer counts as metal, so much the worse for metal. He can still approximate that high hysteria turn-of-the-'60s-into-'70s pitch that comes from nowhere else.
Also, new Keifer alb, The Way Life Goes, sounds more like what my fallible memory says Long Cold Winter sounded like than like what Fallibility & Crew attribute to Heartbreak Station, which is good since Mr. Fallible Frank far prefers the engaging former to the relatively respectable and austere latter.
― Frank Kogan, Sunday, 23 June 2013 17:56

As for the Keifer album, the late '60s/early '70s rock I hear on it seems a lot closer to the Faces or (sometimes country leaning) Stones or even Joplin than to, say, Iron Butterfly or Blue Cheer or Blues Image or Bloodrock or Rare Earth or Uriah Heep or Deep Purple. So I'm guessing metal heads, at least these days, would hear it as a lacking a certain elephantine riff density that has increasingly been considered a metal requirement. (There may be moments of elephantine density here and there; I'm not sure -- My advance CD's back in the car player now, inspired by this thread, after being on the shelf for a month or two -- but if so I don't really remember any. But believe me, I'll take any excuse I can to slot is as metal for Rhapsody readers if I can convince myself it qualifies, so I may be open to persuasion.) Obviously it sort of qualifies as metal merely on the basis of Keifer being grandfathered in as the leader of what was once considered a metal band (Dug Pinnick of King's X's latest solo album, which isn't is good as Keifer's but which I still like pretty well, is grandfathered in partly for that reason, but it also seems heavier to me), but the late '80s might be sort of a historical blip in that bands like Bon Jovi (and maybe Cinderella), who probably wouldn't have been heavy enough to be considered metal before or since, were.

I'm not saying that era was wrong -- and metal fans are ridiculous, in that Blue Cheer, Heep, Purple, etc., are these days widely referred to as "proto"-metal, which is absolute historical revisionism but I've shamefully taken to using the phrase now and then myself just because of how it's so widely understood. Anyway, I'm not sure I'm right about this, but I'm guessing Keifer's new one might feel even less metal (i.e. less heavy) than Cinderella did on even their earliest albums. (Long Cold Winter is easily my favorite too; always was. And right, Heartbreak Station was their respectable blues-rock move. Debut Night Songs, a lot of it an AC/DC rip, was arguably their most metal album, and this year a sort of doom metal band from Ohio, Robot Lords of Tokyo, even covered the title cut.)
― xhuxk, Sunday, 23 June 2013 21:28

Anyway, now I'm noticing a few tracks on the second half of Keifer's The Way Life Goes that might approach the heaviness of, say, Stone Temple Pilots or the less muscular side of '70s Aerosmith ("Mood Elevator," "Welcome To My Mind," "Ain't That A Bitch," "Babylon" -- possibly "Solid Ground" or "Cold Day In Hell" on the first half too, though those are probably stretching it even more), but that's as heavy as it gets. Nazareth's Dan McCafferty conceivably still a vocal inspiration too. But I'm still doubtful about calling it metal, by current definitions at least. Also don't hear a "Gypsy Road" on the thing. But I can still see this being Keifer's best album in a quarter-century regardless (and I say that as a weirdo who actually Pazz&Jopped Still Climbing, which peaked at #178 in Billboard, in 1994, though I do remember thinking that a weak year at the time.) If I did count The Way Life Goes as either metal or country, I'd say it would have a good chance on making year-end top 10s in those genres. Probably not my favorite new "rock" album I've heard this year (I'd put it behind Corsair, Mustasch, probably Voivod, and especially the Thin Lizzy spinoff Black Star Riders -- all more metal -- so far), but close.
― xhuxk, Monday, 24 June 2013 01:46

Ha, I'd be a little interested in hearing the Keifer. I'm pretty sure it was your book that got me to buy Cinderella albums again in 2001. I'm not sure I've actually played them since 2001, tbh. I could still enjoy "Gypsy Road" if I heard it, I'm pretty sure.

(Also, that's a good point about what 'metal' meant in the late 80s!)

I'M NOT YOUR FOOL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XOWYe9TgaU

i have been watching a lot of crappy hair metal videos on Plex via Vevo. and MAN do i ever appreciate the rare appearance of a good band like Cinderella - the videos for some reason are mostly 88-91 downward swing (so much Mr Big & Firehouse you’d think they were sponsoring) but every now and then a rare mid 80’s gem pops up like the Nobody’s Fool video

so glorious & also slightly strange

what’s with the girls with the weird clocks on their heads? what’s with the girl who runs out of the auditorium?
who even knows
meanwhile the band look fucking awesome in front of a bright yellowy/orangey/pink backdrop dressed in full Bowie Labyrinth cosplay and weird chunky glitter falling all over them, it rules A LOT

also Tom Kiefer looks v handsome imo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCOrtJMQmVs

No doubt there are a lot of videos from 1988 through 1991 just because that was the era when every mediocre band that got signed to a major label in the wake of the 1984 through 1987 breakthrough/artistic peak was getting pushed hard by the major labels, and that was just the era of peak commercial dominance. And I think it's really something I didn't notice until many years later, but on the hard rock/pop metal radio stations I listened to, so much of the good stuff came out before 1988, and there was so much terrible shit getting incessant radio airplay that was getting released on a weekly basis. Firehouse is probably one of the greatest examples of such a band being pushed, those songs were everywhere for months and months and they just wouldn't go away. There are a few classics that got dropped during the latter time frame, but most of them were from established excellent bands. Case in point, Long cold winter in 1988.

exactly! like Firehouse aren’t BAD but they’re really just a normcore bar band.
the songs are … ok and they’re just ok on camera. yawn. the second wave bands just don’t really hit with any of the personality and/or music of the first wave bands like Cinderella. it’s just an endless parade of flat perms and soooo much goddamn denim

first wave glam is much more exciting because most of those bands were trying so fucking hard to make it & it comes through in their weird quirky videos. i think.

The women in the polka dot outfits are in each of the videos from Night Songs! I guess just a bit of marketing to tie the era together.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptPekKOigkQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUkqBRC1zUA

But I was not aware of Cinderella in 1986. I was only around for Long Cold Winter. So the Cinderella I knew were these guys:

https://i.discogs.com/z5APKkflEct7WS5AbElhwHazQoVwIR79CTuTcdnWQoM/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:591/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTEwMTgw/NzUzLTE2NDkxMDY5/ODEtNzQ0OS5qcGVn.jpeg

Then in the late 90s, they came out with this greatest hits album, and I was like "what. the. fuck."

https://i.discogs.com/YqEtai0ZaEvR7SYVCzKrLKD_kCRcxHpKmDaYGW6kzDo/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:500/w:500/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTI3NDgx/MjAtMTI5OTI1NTgx/NS5qcGVn.jpeg

I think the girl ran out of the auditorium because she realized she was covered in spiders.

I think the greatest of the second wave acts would be maybe Skid Row or Extreme, but if I remember my hair metal history correctly they also had roots in the earlier era, and they were just simply a couple of great bands that released at least one classic LP during the hair metal decline which, through sheer force of talent, became hits and I think still sound good to this day. Too many of the other bands that came out in that second wave sounded like, I don't know, Damn Yankees.

yeah i think i’d go along w that

Warrant were around for a few years before they got signed in 88, I think they’re also top tier of second wave because they were absolutely ready & had great singles, and really good album tracks . Similar to Skid Row, striving for a while made it so that when they did get their shot they could step up (though a lot of their drive seemed to come from Sabo but still)

but yeah so much more ordinary flannel leather vest denim hard rock in the second wave

welcome to our hair metal ted talk lol

https://image-pastemagazine-com-public-bucket.storage.googleapis.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/21084130/ylt_Sugarcube_main.jpg

TIL that Cinderella guitarist Jeff LaBar died in 2021. I didn’t even know! Bummer.

https://blabbermouth.net/news/cinderellas-tom-keifer-opens-up-about-jeff-labars-death-i-loved-him-and-i-know-in-my-heart-he-loved-me/