The Spectacle of Paradox

Badd Madame at the Eighties Club Bands database.

"All I've got is a photograph" - Def Leppard, Photograph

Without a doubt, the homoerotic pageantry of late-80s "butt rock" was high paradox, a spectacle of drifting genders and mirrored shades that nowadays leaves most of us laughing at our cultural past in an eye-rolling embrace of a once-guilty pleasure.

Perhaps kitsch is where this sort of thing works best, "high" and "low" locking lips in star-crossed union, good taste (and common sense) be damned. Things just get more authentic when viewed at the local level. The burgeoning database of Eighties Club Bands demonstrates, yes, vintage rock sleaze. But you won't hear about these bands on VH1. They're unknowns, forgotten heroes of the glam revolution, curious artifacts, each one now reduced to a quaint, dusty photograph.

Chief exhibits include BareBac, Maniac, Fantasy, Ice Water Mansion, Sweet Savage, and High Risk.

Comments

[Erin]

My day camp counselor's boyfriend played in Sweet Savage. I shit you not.

[j]

kitsch: I have found,that your use of this word has been overwhelmingly useless.

(You do not need to make an attempt to rebut my comment, as well as know the comentee: me.)

[SarahMU]

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