Cherry Pie :)

Beginning Line-Up

Warrant started as a “heavy metal band” from Hollywood, California, but like many of the other bands that started in the same area they were commonly considered hair metal or glam. Throughout 1989-1996, Warrant released five albums, which commonly beat the other bands of the era that didn’t make other album releases roughly after 1993. The band still made albums and attended concerts throughout the 90’s and 00’s, even after they had continuous problems with their line-up.  Warrant was formed by Erik Turner in 1984. Jani Lane and Steven Chamberlain joined the band a year later.

Jani Lane

January of 1988 seemed to be a great time for the band. Warrant signed a recording contract with Columbia and began recording their debut album in April. The album gained the band some real success and it spawned three singles. After they released the album, the band toured with Cinderella, Poison, and Motley Crue. The band releases a second record in 1991 and toured with Poison to promote it. The album spawned another three singles.

The ‘80s came and went, but this brought in the ‘90s, which proved to be a time of turmoil for the band. Warrant released another album in 1992, but it didn’t sell as well as the previous two. Later in the year, Jani Lane left the band, which had been dropped by Columbia records when the grunge movement came in. The band went on the Rock Never Stops Tour in 1998 and 2003. The guitarist and keyboardist left in 2000. Jani Lane left Warrant again in January of 2004, taking two other band mates with him.

Current Line-Up

The band seemed to be doing well as of recently and there had been take about a reunion between the band, but in 2008, the announcement was made  that Jani had once again left that band  and it was the last time that he would be performing with the band. By January 2011, the announcement was made that the band had some of the music down for Warrant’s new album. 

 On August 11, 2011 it was announced that Jani Lane was found dead at a Comfort Inn hotel on the 20100 block of Ventura Boulevard in Woodland Hills, California. It was rumoured that Lane died from alcohol poisoning. Later in October, the Coroner’s office finished the investigation and said that Lane suffered from “acute ethanol poisoning.”

 Current Members

Erik Turner – rhythm & lead guitars, backing vocals (1984-)
Jerry Dixon – bass guitar, backing vocals (1984-)
Steven Sweet – drums, percussion, backing vocals (1986-1994, 2004-)
Joey Allen – lead & rhythm guitars, acoustic guitar, talk box, backing vocals (1987-1994, 2004-)
Robert Mason – lead vocals (2008-)

 Discography

Dirty Rotten Filthy Stinking Rich (1989)
Cherry Pie (1990)
Dog Eat Dog (1992)
Ultraphobic (1995)
Belly to Belly (1996)
Greatest & Latest (1999)
Under the Influence (2001)
Born Again (2006)
Rockaholic (2011)

Welcome To The Jungle :)

Around 1987

The band began in Los Angeles around 1985 and began to gather a following with their mixture of punk, blues, thrash and the current fad at the time: hair metal. Appetite for Destruction was the debut album released by GNR on Geffen Records in late 1987. The album itself sold well despite the fears of the bands management. Geffen Records feared that the record wouldn’t sell and the band would be a complete dud, but boy, did they prove them wrong. Appetite sold well over 20 million copies and spawned 3 singles.

2009 lineup

During the early ‘90s, the band, more Axl Rose than anybody, fired drummer Steven Adler over his apparent heroin addiction. While it was a new start toward the band, many of the other members dealt with several other drug related problems at the time. As the band went into the studio to record the next albums, Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II, the band hired a new drummer Matt Sorum and a keyboardist Dizzy Reed. After the Use Your Illusion albums were released, the band endured a tour that lasted almost two and a half years. By then, rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin left the band to deal with some personal problems and, of course, with the fans this caused an uproar. Several videos on the internet show kids, who were possibly our age at the time, with signs asking “Where’s Izzy?”, but nobody would say for sure.

The Band around 1991

By 1994, Gilby Clarke quit the band. May of the members started their own side projects now that the band was starting to falter. In 1996, Slash quit saying that he and Axl were having creative differences. Within the next year or so, Duff McKagan and Dizzy Reed also left, leaving Axl as the only original member of the band left. 1998 rolled around and Axl Rose went into the studio with a new band, though they were still under the name Guns N’ Roses, and began to record a new album that would take almost ten years to finish. In 2008 the album Chinese Democracy was released, but didn’t really contain much of a following as the band’s first three albums did. Slash, Duff Mckagan, and Matt Sorum teamed up with Stone Temple Pilots front man to form Velvet Revolver.

Current Members:                    
Axl Rose- lead vocalist (1985- )                  
Tommy Stinson-Bassist (1997- )                                  
Brian Mania-Drums (2001- )                                         
Richard Fortus-Guitarist (2002- )                                 
Robin Finck-Guitarist (2002- )                                       
Dizzy Reed-Studio keyboardist (1990- )
Chris Pittman-Live keyboardist (1998- )
Past Members:

Tracii Guns, guitar (1985)
Robbie Gardner, guitar (1985)
Slash, guitar (1985-1986)
Duff McKagan, bass (1985-1997)
Izzy Stradlin, guitar (1985-1991)
Steven Adler, drums (1985-1990)
Matt Sorum, drums (1990-1997)
Robbie Gardner, guitar (1985)

Discography:

Appetite for Destruction (1987)

GN’R Lies (1988)

Use Your Illusion I (1991)

Use Your Illusion II (1991)

The Spaghetti Incident? (1993)

Chinese Democracy (2008)

Every Rose Has It's Thorn :)

Before I begin, I must say that I’m a little impartial to this band. I’ve seen them twice and absolutely love them. Granted, they’re also a band that my mom listened to when she was a little older than I was makes it awkward at times, but it also makes a cool bonding moment.
Imagine that it’s 1983, you’re jamming with your buddies in the garage, but you want to make this jamming real. You want to be famous. Playing in the garage was fine for a while, but you’re getting too old for that. You want to break out. You want to be famous. Imagine less than just a year later, you’re packing up your belongings and moving away from home. You’re moving to L.A. You're moving far away to the city of glitter, glitz, and rock n' roll. That’s exactly what Poison did. They kicked it to L.A. promoting and playing on the sunset strip. At this time Poison consisted of Bret Michaels, Matt Smith, Bobby Dall, and Rikki Rockett.

By the time the band had made it to the strip, their guitarist Matt Smith had become a father and thought that band wasn’t going anywhere. He left the band and returned home to Pennsylvania. The band auditioned replacement guitarists and eventually came down to three people who seemed to fit: Slash, who went on to become famous with Guns N’ Roses, Steve Silva from The Joe Perry Project, and a guitarist born in New York named C.C. DeVille. The band eventually agreed that C.C. made the best fit.

In 1986, the band was signed to Enigma Records. Their debut album: Look What the Cat Dragged In, was released on August 2of 1986.

From this album Poison released four singles, “Cry Tough”, “Talk Dirty to Me”, “I Want Action”, and “I Won’t Forget You”. Their debut earned the band with the fellow glam rockers Ratt, Cinderella, and Quiet Riot.

By 1988, the band was releasing yet another album called Open Up and Say…Ahh! The album spawned one of Poison’s biggest hits “Every Rose Has Its Thorn”, which was written about one of Bret Michaels’ ex-girlfriends. The album’s first cover caused a bit of trouble for the band, it showed a female demonic figure with a crazy long tongue. A censored version of the cover just focused on the girl’s eyes. As of 1989, the band had become the seventh-best-selling hard rock band in the United States in the ‘80s, behind Motley Crue, Def Leppard, Bon Jovi, Guns N’ Roses, Aerosmith, and Van Halen. In 1990, the band released the album Flesh & Blood, which contained the singles “Unskinny Bop”, “Ride The Wind”, and a the ballad “Something To Believe In”. Life Goes On was the fourth single and the last was the title cut.
After two years of being on the road and with the band, the members were at each other’s throat due to person differences, drug addictions, and other this. Poison recorded several live performances during its 1990/1991 Flesh & Blood tour and released a live album, Swallow This Live. The album included a new studio track including the single “So Tell Me Why”, which was one of the last songs recorded before C.C. DeVille departed from the band later that year.
After several years, Bret Michaels and C.C. DeVille patched up their differences, and C.C. returned to Poison in 1996. Bret Michaels co-founded a production company with Charlie Sheen and in 1998; he made his acting debut in A Letter from Death Row.
In 2010, Bret Michaels started his solo tour to promote the upcoming release of his autobiography. On April 12, he was rushed to the hospital after suffering stomach pains and an emergency appendectomy was performed. A little over 10 days later, Bret was returned to the hospital where they found that he had suffered a massive subarachnoid hemorrhage.
On March 1, Poison announced a 2011 summer tour with Motley Crue and New York Dolls to celebrate Poison’s 25^th anniversary and the Crue’s 30^th Anniversary named the Glam-A-Gaddeon tour. To go along with Poison’s 25^th anniversary, 35 of the bands top hits and fan favorites were put on “Poison – Double Dose: Ultimate Hits”, a new CD that ranges through their entire career and was released on May 3, 2011.

Hiya!

I'm here and clearly kicking. Haha. The blog that I have going on here will consist of the list of my fifteen favorite hair bands from the '80s. It should be quite interesting depending on how much of my knowledge on these bands I can apply. Have no fear though, we'll be going through this safely and alive (well, with the exclusion of Jani Lane), but we'll get to all of that later.
For now though, take a deep breath, sit down, grab a bowl of the saltiest snack that you can find and be prepared for a bumpy ride. We'll go through coming out, staying successful, burning out, dying, and well, everything that these hair spray, bubble gum, rock n' roll bands lived through. :)
See Ya!