Ah, the delights of hair metal. Marc, you have really opened up a can of glam worms with that post on vintage Poison! Here in its engorged entirety is still the best document of the mid-80s spandex metal years I have seen, though how most of these bands qualify as “metal” is beyond me, as is the fact that most of these men were considered red-blooded, macho heterosexuals! This whole world has been undergoing a re-appraisal in recent years, possibly as being the last time mainstream rock was this fun, stupid and thoroughly enjoyable. To quote Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler “And then that pussy Cobain came along and ruined everything”.

Decline… Pt 2 has lots of recognisable faces (Kiss without their make-up, a surprisingly lucid Ozzy Osbourne, the Toxic Twins from Aerosmith, wisened elder Lemmy) but the real stars of the film are the musicians and fans plucked straight from the Sunset Strip who we have never heard from again. The “where are they now” pathos, especially at the end, is almost heart-breaking. But don’t let that detract from the fun, especially the sight of Paul Stanley on a bed full of groupies, and Chris Holmes from W.A.S.P. pouring fake vodka into his own face while floating in a swimming pool and shouting at his mother: 
 

 
Last year Dangerous Minds featured the Kronenbourg beer ad in which Motorhead play “Ace Of Spades” at half speed (see the link below). Well, here’s a documentary about the recording sessions that led to the commercial.
 

 
Here’s the finished product: French beer commercial with Motorhead doing acoustic version of “Ace Of Spades.”

 
We’ve been having alot of fun here at Dangerous Minds sharing deconstructed songs from many of our rock and roll heroes. And in our neverending search to bring you the best isolated tracks we can get our music loving hands on, I present to you one of the more unusual discoveries I’ve come across: Lemmy’s vocals for ‘Ace Of Spades’. 

I have the feeling that Lemmy usually goes with the first take.

Have we hit the threshold yet?

Nah.
 

 
The hardest working rocker in show business, the godfather of punk and heavy metal, wizened philosopher, shameless hedonist and virtually indestructible, presenting Lemmy Kilmister.

Lemmy talks about how the new, twentieth Motorhead album is shaped by the current political climate, and his his anger at the BP oil spill. “You can love the individual, but you can’t love the race… we’re arrogant bastards. We’re like a dose of crabs”, and adds that human cooperation could learn from our smaller fellows on this spinning planet: “talk to the ants, they’ve got communism working.”

 
The new Motorhead video ‘Get Back In Line’ and Lemmy’s thoughts on John Lennon after the jump….

 
35 years and still rocking, Motorhead has indeed become an institution. Who woulda thunk they’d be doing TV commercials for beer in 2010.

From the Kronenbourg website:

On October 4th 2010, we took Lemmy and his band Motörhead to a French bar. Here, inspired by the laid back atmosphere and a slow, cold Kronenbourg 1664, they played their legendary manic song, The Ace of Spades, at half the normal speed.

 
Sometimes a picture IS worth a thousand words. This is one of them.

Via the fuck yeah tanaka Tumblr blog

 
I just did a quick search and to my surprise, none of us has ever posted about the magnificent spacerock maelstrom that is the Hawkwind sound. One of rock’s longest running groups, Hawkwind has always stood outside of any particular era or fashion. With their statuesque dancer Stacia Blake, a pioneer of onstage nudity (who often appeared buck naked except for body paint) and lyrical contributions from Michael Moorcock, there was noting even remotely similar to what Hawkwind was doing onstage in the early ‘70s. It’s apropriate probably, to compare them to the Grateful Dead, an act that was more about the live experience than the albums.

A big influence on groups like the Psychedelic Furs, the driving sci-fi metal drone of Hawkwind would eventually give rise to one of the heaviest combos of all time, when bassist Lemmy Kilmister would leave the group—after being arrested for possession of speed—and form Motorhead. (Lemmy once told me personally that speed did what cocaine is supposed to do. So now you know!).

Below is a mind-twisting live performance clip, originally shown on Top of the Pops in 1972 of Hawkwind performing SIlver Machine with the lovely Stacia in tow.