Garbage Days Revisited #50: Skid Row - "Revolutions Per Minute" (2006)

 

"I'm countin' on a future, forgettin' 'bout the past/'Cos knowing you're not honest, well I guessed it couldn't last..." - Skid Row - You Lie

Skid Row were probably one of the first hair metal bands I got into as a kid. I still remember hearing 18 & Life on Top of the Pops as an 11-year-old and it just sounded incredibly dangerous mixed in with all the PWL stuff that was clogging up the charts at that time. I still love that song to this day and that guitar solo that cuts in midway through from Snake Sabo is an absolute killer.

Looking back at ver Row's original run 30 years on though, I have to be honest and say that while they were a band who definitely had their moments (Youth Gone Wild, Monkey Business, Slave To The Grind), similar to G'n'R once they’d broken big and got complacent, there was just something a bit too brash and cocky about them that kind of stopped me from being a mega-fan. Sure, they sounded like bad-asses in places but put 'em up against the sheer scumminess of Love/Hate's Blackout In The Red Room or W.A.S.P. at their most gleefully straight-baiting and they just sounded a bit tame by comparison.

And then there's the whole Sebastian Bach thing. I have to be honest, Bas is just one of those frontmen that I never warmed to. Even ignoring some quite regrettable homophobic comments he made in an early Skid Row interview (which, to be fair, I believe he did subsequently apologise for similar to how Axl eventually did for One In A Million), he always came across as a bit of a spoilt brat with his macho posturing and diva behaviour. Maybe it's just me but he always felt like the rock star version of one of those jock school bullies who enjoyed tormenting the less athletically gifted and chubbier kids in their year. And as a chubby kid with little or no interest in sports apart from going to watch the football at that age who was already having his fair share of run-ins at school with sadistic rugby playing bullies, it's maybe not a surprise that I had my reservations about the guy.

Anyway, as with a lot of their glam metal/sleaze rock compatriots who were hanging on in '91, Skid Row were comprehensively sunk by a combination of grunge making them pretty much obsolete overnight and the growing tensions between Bas and the rest of the band. They managed to hang on as late as 1995 for the decidedly underwhelming Subhuman Race album before things finally boiled over and Seb was fired. The band would go on hiatus for a few years before returning with a new singer, the then pretty much unknown Johnny Solinger, for 2003's Thickskin which was pretty much universally panned in the rock press.

Personally though, I didn't think Thickskin deserved a lot of the flack it got - yeah, it probably isn't up to the standard of Skid Row's first two albums but it's a valiant effort with the likes of New Generation, Ghost and Thick Is The Skin being decent enough. And the surprise was that in its follow-up, 2006's Revolutions Per Minute, they came up with a decent effort which to my mind at least, pretty much helped to legitimise the Mk2 band as being a worthy outfit even with their egomaniac ex-singer gone.

Quite simply, Revolutions Per Minute is a good solid album which sees the band playing to their strengths of old (that mix of sleaze rock swagger and lean mean punk attitude that comes from bassist and chief songwriter Rachel Bolan's oft-professed love of the Ramones and the Dead Boys) with a few extra tricks you maybe wouldn't expect. For example, the snarling White Trash and the cowpunk blitz of You Lie definitely have Solinger's Texan fingerprints all over them while a surprisingly competent cover of the old Alarm classic Strength (y'know what, we're probably due an Alarm GDR at some point, watch this space) is as unexpected as it is enjoyable. Elsewhere, the likes of Disease and Pulling My Heart Out From Under Me have plenty of the old Skid Row spite and fury of old and work well.

Like its predecessor, Revolutions Per Minute received lukewarm reviews at best but I remember going to see the band on that tour at Leeds Rio's and they were on good form with Solinger especially coming across as a likeable guy who could hold a crowd well - I've got fond memories of them starting up I Remember You and Johnny, upon hearing the crowd doing a mass singalong, turning the mic towards the audience and conducting them then applauding them with a smile of "Fuckin' A, guys!" after the first chorus and taking the vocals back over himself. He looked like someone who was just genuinely enjoying being up there fronting a band like Skid Row and given his predecessor's reputation for tantrums it really felt like a proper change of the guard that worked.

Sadly, the good times wouldn't last - the group would go quiet after Revolutions in terms of recorded output before resurfacing in 2013 with what was meant to be a series of EP's under the United World Rebellion banner which I presume were supposed to come together as some sort of American Idiot style punk concept opera type thing. Unfortunately they only got two of them out before Solinger was suddenly sacked to be replaced by Tony Harnell, former frontman with Norwegian glam metallers TNT, who then made way for ex-Dragonforce man ZP Theart. I saw the ZP line-up a few years ago headlining the first Stone Deaf Festival in Newark which also featured the Quireboys and Wolfsbane on the bill and fair play, they put on a good performance. Hopefully some new material will be forthcoming soon.

Like a lot of people, I was genuinely shocked to hear of Johnny Solinger's sudden death last year at the age of just 55 from liver failure. Hopefully in the wake of his passing, a few people might revisit Thickskin and Revolutions Per Minute and realise that actually, they were a couple of pretty solid additions to the Skid Row discography (hell, I'd take either of them over Subhuman Race any day of the week). RIP feller and god speed.