I must admit it - and it might therefore seems strange that I have been posting here for 15 years! - but I have never really been a big fan of hair metal. Oh, I made mistakes and bought some turds but I never ever fell for Warrant, Ratt, Poison and the likes.

My tastes always led me to the blusier side of rock, or AOR at the other end, and I somewhat remained unmoved by most of the hair metal bands. It will come as no surprise that my favourite bands from the early to mid- 80's were outfits like Great White, Blackfoot (OK they are from the 70's), Y&T (same as Blackfoot), Tesla and Rough Cutt.

Although Tesla and Great White became very successful - my take is that they have kind of a "rocky" side to them that appealed to fans of Springsteen for instance thus seriously widening their target audience - - it always somewhat surpised me that Rough Cutt's career never really took off.

I believe that RC were too different from the rest of the 80's bands. They were quite heavy to start with. Much heavier than other melody inclined bands of the time. They did not have pop songs that were radio friendly, with great sing-along choruses . At the same time, they may not have been heavy enough for fans of Metallica and sorts.

Their music is more layered than it first appears. It might sound "immediate", but it is not. The guitars are not that flashy, and in my opinion are closer to the spirit of Tony Iommi than the superficial crap of CC DeVille.

Then they had a very original singer, whose voice may be an acquired taste. I personally love it. This said, Shortino's voice was not in line with the "girlie" voices of the time (Dokken, Michaels, Neil, etc.). This gave the band a lot of personality but also, perhaps, prevented it from reaching a wider audience.

I am currently listening to their albums again after a long pause. I am really surprised by the musical depth of their songs, something that certainly escaped me when I first got into them.

The only issue I have, but it is the same with 90 % of melodic rock bands, is that the lyrics for the most part are really poor. If that was important, then Poison should never have had a career!

Were RC ahead of their time? I do not think so. However, I feel that their timing was off. Had they come a few years earlier or later when heaviness was more embraced by the masses, they may have had a very different career.

That is a long thread to say that I love RC and Shortino LOL.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/11/2013 04:23AM by Laurent.