Oh no, it wasn’t Styx, this band’s not even a “household name” kinda band, just one I’ve been a huge fan of for close to 20 years. They’re called Enuff Z’Nuff, and their big “claim to fame” was a couple top 40 singles in 1989 (“Fly High Michelle” and “New Thing”) which had admittedly HORRIBLE music videos (picture big hair, spandex and neon day-glo colors, the kind of stuff that got made fun of big time on Beavis and Butt-head). They’re a hard rock outfit out of Chicago who were written off when glam rock died, because they were associated with the genre (in reality they were more of a hard rock band with heavy Beatles influence than a “glam metal” band, but when they got their record deal in ‘89, glam was what was popular so the record company made them throw on some lipstick and try to curry favor with Poison fans). I’d recommend their music to anyone who likes melodic hard rock or to anyone who is a big fan of the Beatles, Cheap Trick, Elvis Costello or Queen. They have several songs posted on their myspace page if you’re interested.
They have put out something like 16 albums and those of us who consider ourselves fans are really big time into them and they’ve “almost” gotten a break many many times, but bad luck just kind of seems to follow them (they almost had a song on the Jerry McGuire soundrack and the Home Alone 2 soundtrack, but both were cut at the last minute…two key members of the band have died over the years…and of course they have been inextricably and unfairly tied to a form of music which lost all credibility the minute Nirvana hit the scene). Several high profile celebrities and musicians can be counted among their fans (Paul Stanley, Robin Zander, Paul McCartney, Howard Stern, David Letterman, Clive Davis, Vince Neil, Slash, and Robert Plant among others).
Anyway, I’ve been a big fan since their first album and I’ve followed them through the many ups and downs of their career. Right now they’re still making new music, but they’ve kind of adopted an “if you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em” attitude towards their association with 80’s glam metal. So, even though they took the makeup off in 1991 when they released their 2nd album (a positive masterpiece and the favorite of every fan, “Strength”...an album that prompted Rolling Stone to predict incorrectly that they’d be the next big thing), a lot of the shows they’ve been playing in recent years have been 80’s revival kinds of shows, like Rocklahoma the last couple years, or the show where I saw them in 2003 in Minneapolis. Their then drummer (not the original drummer, but the guy who’d been in the band longer than the original drummer), Ricky Parent, was the guy I saw walking towards the bus, and I just hollered to him that I’d been a fan since the first album. He was a really great guy (I say was literally as he died of cancer in October of last year).
The band was in a weird place at the time, their lead singer had decided to stop touring with the band to kind of focus on a solo career, plus the fact that he had personality conflicts with the guitarist, and he just had a hard time playing to small crowds when in the earlier years they were playing arenas opening for some of the biggest bands of the day. The whole thing kind of started when one day the singer had a conflict and couldn’t show up for a gig, so the aforementioned guitarist stepped in to do the vocals, and as it turned out he sounded fantastic…if you closed your eyes you wouldn’t know it wasn’t the real singer…or so I’d heard, but I was skeptical. The singer was half the songwriting team, and he continuted to write and record music with the band, but he just didn’t go on tour with them.
Which is why I didn’t have a ticket to the show when they came to town. Honestly, I’d always wanted to see them live, and I’d made many, many attempts, but it had never worked out for me. I bought a ticket to a frickin’ Nelson concert in 1991 because they were supposed to open, and they didn’t show. Then for a period of several years, they’d come to the Twin Cities, and they’d play a show at some local club, but there would be no publicity for it, except for one ad in the free local alternative weekly, and about 5 times in a row it seemed to be that ONE week when I didn’t pick up the paper until the day after. Like the paper comes out on Wednesday and they’d do a show Thursday, and I wouldn’t get a paper until Friday…if they’d advertised the week before or if I’d picked up the paper a day or two earlier I’d have known. Then there were two years where I went to Chicago on vacation, and it just so happened that these guys, who are FROM Chicago, played in Minneapolis when I was in Chicago. So I’d missed nearly a dozen opportunities to see them live and I was pretty excited to know that they were playing this club in the next building over from where I was working.
But then I’d heard the guitarist was doing vocal duties, and I thought that this was not the way I wanted to see them. I thought that even though I actually had an opporunity to catch this show, I was going to skip it, because it wasn’t what I wanted my “first time” seeing them to be like. But I was still pretty excited to see their tour bus parked alongside the building I worked in (though I didn’t know for sure which of the two tour busses was theirs). So, I walked by the bus once on the way to lunch and once on the way back, but didn’t see anyone. Then in the afternoon, I went out for a break and that’s when I spotted the drummer. So, he brings me on the bus and tells the bass player (the other of the 2 founding member and the other half of the songwriting team with the no show singer) that I’d been a fan since the first album. So he shakes my hand and asks if I’m going to the show.
I told him I wasn’t…made some excuse about either my wife or son being sick (I think it was partially true) and I was just planning to head home, and he said he’d put me on the list just in case I could make it. Well I thought I couldn’t pass that up. They were on a 3 band bill with Pretty Boy Floyd opening and Faster Pussycat headlining. I got there just in time for Enuff Z’Nuff’s set, and hung around for a couple of Faster Pussycat’s songs, but I’d seen them twice in the 80s, once opening for Motley Crue and once opening for Kiss, and their schtick hadn’t changed in 15 years, so I left. On my way out, I spotted Ricky (the drummer) again, and waved and he had a couple of babes on his arm, but he waved me in anyway.
So I got in, and apparently Enuff was sharing a bus with Pretty Boy, as a couple of the people from PBF were hanging out on the bus with assorted hangers on. The bass player for PBF, Dish, introduced himself, and his girlfriend “Filthy Divine” who was actually from Minneapolis. Ricky disappeared into the back with the two babes he’d had on his arm and I didn’t see any of the other guys from Enuff that night.
Surprisingly if anything the whole on the bus experience was very low key, just like a few people hanging around chatting about minutea. All in all though it was a hell of a night, because when I heard the guitarist step in on vocals, let’s say I’d been mighty skeptical up until the second he opened his mouth, and he converted me instantly.
Only other time I met a rock band, was a show in 1990, (one of the other two aforementioned times I saw Faster Pussycat play). This was a Kiss concert, and both Faster Pussycat and Slaughter were opening for them, well I was there with this girl from school who was very much a wild party gal. She wanted to see if she could get us backstage (she was eventually successful in getting herself backstage, but not me…same thing happened a few months later when we went to see AC/DC together…she managed to get one backstage pass). I was never dating her, so I didn’t care what she had to do to get backstage, but I wouldn’t have put anything past her. Anyway when we were in the back at the musician’s entrance, Slaughter came out and chatted with those of us hanging out back there.
As an addendum to my Enuff Z’Nuff story, that guitarist who had kind of usurped the singer has now either quit or been fired from the band and the original singer is back as a touring member of the band (in theory, they have yet to mount a tour). They’ve recorded a new album with Jake E. Lee on guitar (best known for his days with Ozzy), and I’ll buy it IF it’s ever released…they’re working on it. I imagine when it does come out, they’ll be in town, and if I know about it, I’ll be there, even if I have to pay ransom to Ticketbastard to get in.
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