Warrant! C or D?

Metal Sludge Interviews Jani Lane

Metal Sludge Does a Rewind with Jani Lane

Metal Sludge Does a Three-Wind with Jani Lane

...plus at no extra cost to you, the reader:

Recently Fired Drummer Mike Fasano Talks Some Amusing Smack

You are severely misguided here.

I'm not gonna deny "Heaven" (though it's possible) and "Down Boys" and some others have their charms, but while the first album is listenable it's also largely forgettable. Their self-awareness doesn't cancel out their dumbness. Also, they're f'in ugly.

Ned's statement on this thread fills me with joy.

http://www.metal-sludge.com/JaniMohawk1.jpg
Now

what does that have to do with Warrant???

got a lotta nerve to call me cheat, even though its true!
well i said hookers! and whores! anbd teenage sluts on my bedroom floor! i'm in love i'm in love i'm in love i'm in love i'm in love!

umm can't remember any more right now but i'm realy fond of "in the sticks", being a country girl and all. oh heh "you're gonna be a brand new country girl when i get through with you". magic. actually i haven't heard any other warrant albums at all.

I mean, does it get any better than that?

I actually realized this song is in some ways an homage to Billy Squier.

The Billy Squier diaspora cannot be overstated.

(© Joan Jett)

Yeah, "I Love Rock n' Roll" and "The Stroke" both seem implicated.

The Billy Squier diaspora cannot be overstated.

Heavens no.

Ohhh, Di. Your DFRSR approval melts my hearrrrrt. In the middle of the night, in the pouring rain, you can count on me!

Actually, looking over the lyrics, this COULD be a song by Arthur Lee of Love. Check it out:

Spend my time and all my money
On a knob for my brass bed
Climb to the top of the highest mountain
Just to see how far I get
Dancin' with my shadow
But I let my shandow lead
And if I die with a penny in my pocket
then I guess thats all I need

Oooh baby where you going to
I was thinking that maybe I would
Come along with you
I could walk on down the road
Till I found me someone new
But I think I'll stay just one more day
Cuz i'm in love with you
Ohh Ohh

Yeah
Ooh Ooh baby yeah
32 pennies in a Ragu jar
That's all I've got to my name
But I love her and she loves me
To the pennies its all the same

haha doesn't everyone love it in "dirty rotten filthy stinking rich", how jani lane goes "maybe i'll even PIERCE my nose!" as if thats a really extravagant thing to do, up there with owning an italian car as long as his street and wearing exotic animals on his feet.

Love/Hate are better, as are Junkyard and Skid Row.

jani lane and sebastian bach both made my top 5 list of men i wanted to marry when i was 8.

The funny thing is I HATED this kinda music when it came out. I was a diehard R.E.M./B-52's fan at the time. These guys were WAY too confident (esp. sexually) for my taste at the time. But things change, I guess...

AC/DC's "Long Way To The Top" references hotel motel but not holiday Inn, so you might be thinking of something else.

Gotta problem with Dag Nasty?! FITE!

I must find my Warrant and Love/Hate tapes today.

WOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

See, all these stupid 90s kids totally write off hair-metal and say things like, "Thank God for Saint Kurt slaying the dragon of poodle-hair metal and ridding the world of Bon Jovi forever!" but dammit! I liked it! It was FUNNY!! They had a sense of humor!! I don't know. Maybe it's because I grew up with the stuff, but I never understood what's so bad about big heavy arena rock riffs, thumpin' 80s drums, and loud fuckin' rock God guitar solos. I dug it! All together now: "SWINGIN' in the BATHROOM!! SWINGIN' in the KITCHEN!!"

"WARRANT. great band, great live band, two great hammer-down hard rock albums that no one (outside of their fan base) even knows exist--DOG EAT DOG and ULTRAPHOBIC. great songwriter (jani lane). great lead singer (jani lane). oh, and one of the best stage "frontmen" ever (again, jani lane). Warrant and JL (as a writer/singer/frontman) are absolutely the most underrated rock band of all time, from Little Richard through Hilary Duff.

If they'd had a cool name, a "cool image" (like the MC5 who took great photos but when push came to shove, were fuck-up loser junkies who choked over and over outside of their midwest fan base...as in, Grand Funk took the "detroit sound" to the country, however watered down or second-rate; MC5 totally failed, not to mention their halfassed studio recordings, third-rate at best), and had never done the "Cherry Pie" video or tune (which nonetheless is total trash-rock genius, close to the "Louie Louie" of its time)...i dunno, use your imagination.

if "Poison" (giant green logo everywhere, not bad) had been named "Warrant" (uncool name, no logo) and "Warrant" vice versa, is anyone gonna bet me two-bits that Warrant (with the different, cooler name) wouldn't be the no 1 band on that VH1 Top 40 Hair Metal Band Of All Time countdown?

Just punch up http://www.amazon.com and see what Warrant's fan base thought of DOG EAT DOG in the "buyer's reviews"...that is possibly the best heavy-guitar melodic heavy metal album of its entire generation. close to amazing. seriously. It of course came out it the hellmouth of the explosion of 1992 grunge crap-deluge everywhere, and so got buried; the band's manager died, their headlining tour tanked and was canned halfway through, the band splintered/broke up for a year...etc. There's probably a great unreleased Jani Lane solo album between the various (later) Jabberwocky and Lane-solo stuff that CBS eventually decided not to put out (he initially retained a CBS deal after the band was dropped in the mass purge of nearly all major-label hair metal bands, most of whom obviously deserved to return to the hellhole they came from).

if you are a hard rock/metal fan but don't own those 3rd and 4th Warrant albums DOG EAT DOG and ULTRAPHOBIC, your entire collection should be confiscated and traded in for Hilary Duff DVD's yesterday. I say this as someone who heard and loved it all first-wave heavy metal from ground zero, Sabbath in 1970-71 until "heavy metal" turned to formula crap within about a decade. For Warrant to cut a substantial body of truly great or near-great melodic and heavy melodic-metal during the nadir of idiot clueless poser hair-metal and speedmetal bands, was a remarkable accomplishment. (In baseball, that'd be called the "ballpark factor").

After the Beatles, Kinks, and Beach Boys (or whoever you prefer) as 60's giants, i rate Warrant's catalog (much smaller obviously) as impressive as anyone's since. AC/DC w/Bon included. also: if you don't own the CBS catalog best-ofvCD, THE BEST OF WARRANT, you know nothing about this band's music! that is a truly great, near-perfectly sequenced 16-tune set. And top to bottom it rocks as hard as ANY rock bandof the 80's.

for the record, i rate the Small Faces, Green Day, Warrant and a couple others as my favorite catalogs since the Class Of 1963-64 trioka (i'm rounding up a bit with the Beach Boys). I love AC/DC and Sabbath but there's only really two albums by each that kick my ass (and not the common favorites...over here it's LET THERE BE ROCK and IF YOU WANT BLOOD YOU'VE GOT IT, all the way."

yes. Poison were, if not sweet, at least charming. Charming goes a long way.

Not at present, no. Some dude named Jaime St. James I think. But Steven Sweet is back in...

This is pretty overstated. I think that, like lots of great bands that never really make it, the MC5 didn't break nationally or internationally because they just didn't tour enough! They didn't stay out on the road. Am I wrong? How did they "choke" apart from that?

Thing is, you can say that about tons of bands. And their 2nd and 3rd albums have problems production-wise, but their not such a travesty--not worse than lots of bands' records from the time.

---
Warrant Plays Christian Club in Ft. Worth, TX

I am not sure if this is the curse of Obi Steinman or what, but the names Warrant and Christian Club do not seem to go together. You can see that Warrant is scheduled to play premier festivals and venues like the House of Blues on their tour itinerary, but a Christian club? That's like Carman playing on the next Rock Never Stops Tour.

Warrant was scheduled to play The Asylum in Ft. Worth, Texas. For being a Christian Club the name doesn't seem to fit. The club's website says "BYOB." Not bring your own beer, but "Bring Your Own Bibles." I am not kidding! It says this on their site. No alcohol is served, no smoking, and all opening acts will be spreading the word of Jesus Christ. Now, when I think of Warrant, I think of the soundtrack to my youth, getting laid, and an entertaining show. Well, no one was going to get laid at this show and no one was having a good time - that's for sure. The show was not mentioned on radio, or advertized by the venue. If only Christian bands play this place, what makes anyone think that they are going to be coming out to do the Warrant High Sign on a Friday night? To make it worse, this venue was out in the middle of nowhere - right next to a junkyard and in front of a trailer park. This was far from a House of Blues. I tried buying pre-sale tickets, but the place was never open and the manager would never return my phone calls. Finally, the manager returned my call and said that he would meet me to sell me tickets. This is sad. I e-mailed Erik Turner telling him all of this. This all seemed like some kind of bad dream. We could barely even find this place. But, I will digress.

The three warm up bands were all Christian bands who were reaching to the ceiling and saying "Praise God" all night. I highly doubt they were awaiting to see Warrant and sing along to songs where they say, "You won't be able to walk tomorrow, so we might as well do it some more." Many of the opening bands even left after their performances. Once again, this is poor planning and not a smart way of making money on everyone's part.

The venue holds about 500 in capacity. For the show not being advertised, being a BYOB Christian venue, 100 miles away from Dallas, and pouring down rain - I am surprised the 150 plus even found the place. There are Warrant fans out there who probably got fed up and turned back because they got lost. We even thought about it as well.

Me and my crew have never missed a Warrant show ever. We have never seen a bad Warrant show. But after tonight, and I think everyone would agree, that everyone would take a fat ass, mohawk wearing, Jani Lane in a heartbeat - especially with the original line up. Stephen Pearcy had better stage raps and more charisma than Jaime St. James. He looked like he was about to have an anurism on every song. Jaime seemed to be thinking about every lyric as he sang them - not quite sure as to what was coming next. He even forgot the words to "Bridges are Burning" and I was hoping he would read my lips through the entire first verse to get them right since I was on the front row. But, nope. There was no funny jokes, banter, stories, NOTHING! And this guy had a record deal and was on MTV? I felt as though Steven Sweet was thinking to himself, "I should have stuck with making pet portraits" as he was playing. The one and only time Jaime seemed to know what to do was on the one Black and Blue song they did - "Hold on to 18." Everyone knows Warrant for the entertainment factor in between the songs and during the songs. Jani better be working out with a trainer and getting his ass in shape, because this is the only this band is going to have some success.

Notes:

- Steven Sweet looks better today than he did back in day.
- Joey Allen looks like he hit the gym before the tour and has some guns and some new tats.
- Erik Turner has gone back to playing dual leads like he used to on the first two records and was top notch. He even did the intro to "Sometimes She Cries" - which was amazing. He would doodle around in between songs. He is better than many people think. I would put Joey and Erik right there with Scotti Hills/Snake Sabos, Izzy/Slashs, DeGarmos and Wiltons and so forth.
- Jerry was Jerry. That guys doesn't age.
- Jaime St. James can't handle a crowd. At one time Steven Sweet started talking to the audience and was more intriguing. He isn't a bad singer, just not a front man. Granted, Jani, Butch Walker, and Paul Stanley are the best in rock and they are hard to beat. But puh-leeze.
- The set list is hard to beat. More Dog Eat Dog stuff would be great, but they basically play the entire Cherry Pie album.

I got to meet the band after the show. Erik seemed sad. He even said, "Sorry the show wasn't that good." To me, the show never had a chance to be good due to the club. However, I was front row, sang every lyric, and saw Joey and Erik tear it up old school. Joey seemed happy to be away from his computer job and back on the stage. What's depressing is that Warrant always had good songs - better than Poison. But, too many member shuffles, lead singer issues, and management have killed this band. They could still be touring every summer in similat venues as Poison (if Jani took care fo himself).

Warrant needs Jani. Fact.

I'm out like the Bibles at a Warrant show.

-- Van Slammer
---

April 15

April 24

April 30

From here on in, it's just ugly:

May 8

May 9

May 9 followup

May 14

May 18

May 19

May 19 followup

Nothing new since.

Yes, I remember it well. The streets were aflow with anti-cunnilingus rhetoric, and we could feel the coming revolution in the air.

Of course, not all could come up with clever lines which is what made Warrant a cut above. Although I suppose there is something unintentionally funny about a hair metal band which takes itself entirely seriously. What else is funny about your observation is that the musical antecedents of both grunge and hair metal were so similar, just packaged differently.

From one of Ned's Metal Sludge links:

'Jani Lane would not go on until he had the last of his 17 towels, and then waited another half an hour after that.'

This reminded me of that old Golden Nugget casino/hotel commercial when Frank Sinatra asked Steve Wynn for more towels and Wynn goes 'Tooowwweellls!?' And then they followed it up with a Dolly Parton/Kenny Rogers which was also pretty funny entirely due to the way Dolly exclaimed Kenny's name.

RIP Jani Lane

Holy shit. You got all the attention that I could never get from every girl at my lunch table in 7th grade. R.I.P. guy.

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

shit!

His real name was John Kennedy Oswald.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw-Jlg6ZgAw

xpost -- what makes that especially weird is that he was born three months *after* Kennedy was killed in Dallas. "Honey, I've got the perfect name!"

What a fantastic voice. This makes me unexpectedly sad.

saw this on a trashy UK newssite a sec ago (dailymail.co.uk) & the story says:

"Lane's private interests included football and cooking. He enjoyed experimenting with food- a particular favourite recipe was Mexican Lasagne."

RIP of course but that's a weird detail.