Published on Aug 7, 1998
Uncle. I’m not made of the lightweight but very sturdy steel
frame that is my mountain bike. As a fan of music, you should keep
an open mind to everything, from the avant garde to the bubblegum
pop. So, I nut it up, I dig Cinderella.
And I know why now! Yes, they were more formulatic than
“Armageddon”, big ass hair, glam costumes that looked like they
were hand-outs at Steven Tyler’s garage sale and some of the riffs
were overcooked bloaters, but for some reason, they just seemed to
rock a bit more than their peers.
And they never rocked as hard as they did on their first major
release,
Night Songs. Straight from the cuffs of Bon Jovi, Cinderella
were good pals with the band and wasted no time recruiting
heartthrob Jovi to be in their videos and have the band open for
them on their tour.
If the band had to pay an official royalty check, it would have
to go to AC/DC. Tom Keifer seems to do all he can to imitate the
nasal delivery of
Back In Black and he actually does a damn good job.
Fortunately, they also took something from AC/DC: a love for
southern-get down boogie-blues. And they make it their own in the
glorious 40 minutes of
Night Songs.
The album begins with the slow, moody title track. There, the
band lays the groundwork for an album that was bound to scare
ignorant parents. I heard all the propoganda: Cinderella actually
meant, ‘Sin’-derella.
Night Songs was a semi-endorsement of paeganistic activity.
The sophomoric tales of trying to bed the bad girl (“Once Around
The Ride”, “Push Push”) are there as well as teen-age geek dreams
of being a hard ass with the blazing, “Hell On Wheels”.
The songs that can still make me crank the volume in my car are
“Shake Me” and “In From The Outside”. “Shake Me” is just a kick ass
number, thanks guitarist Jeff LaBar and Keifer for laying such a
solid riff. The easy scream-a-long chorus also make the song stand
out. “In From The Outside” and “Somebody Save Me” are just solid
rockers by any standard.
Of course, even a short album of this material can go a long way
now. If you’re looking for a good dose of the band, you’re better
off getting their greatest hits collection, where you can see the
band persued their blues love even more with some material off of
Heartbreak Station. “Push, Push” and “Back Home Again” are
weak choices to close an album that was doing pretty good with
making fluff material rock.
They were once in arenas, now they’re playing at the dive bar
that’s about two miles from where my apartment is. Fortunately,
their best album was the one that most people were able to get.
Night Songs stood for everything that was good about the
hair metal trend of the 80s. Their chops were tighter than Poison,
they didn’t self-destruct ala Motley Crue and most everybody knows,
Tom Keifer could kick Kip Winger’s ass on any given day.