Gazing at that lonely stack of records in my teenage bedroom - Translator, Wire Train, Romeo Void, Red Rockers - I wondered which of these beloved bands I'd wind up having to share with the rest of the world.
Truth be told, any one of them would have been worthy of the mass adulation, but I had long ago determined that just because I was crazy about something didn't mean that the rest of the world would ever care.
That didn't stop me from putting my own basement party make-out session on-hold to commandeer the turntable and introduce my fellow hormonal deviants to any number of bands they'd never heard.
In hindsight, some of my attempts to break the monotony of Loverboy and Def Leppard radio hits bordered on the comical, but most went on to be pretty big hits 3-6 months later.
The first time I spun Red Rockers' "China", for example, I was greeted by a barrage of Solo cups and insults. Three months later, the song was all over MTV and several of my harshest critics were now convinced I could tell the future.
They couldn't fathom that all I had done was walk into a record store and take a chance on a band that wasn't already Top 40-approved. To them, a song or band didn't actually exist until they'd heard them on the radio or MTV so when their mind flashed with recognition upon hearing "China" blasting out of a radio or a TV set three months after I started playing it at parties, it was all they could do to not burn me at the stake.
At the time, I thought it wouldn't be long before "China" went Top 40 and Red Rockers would be selling out the Notre Dame ACC - the area's biggest concert venue located on the University of Notre Dame campus - but, incredulously, that day never came.
Making matters more confusing for the locals who'd begrudgingly become fans of the band, another Red Rockers song that I had introduced to many a party audience ("Blood From A Stone") wound up becoming a radio hit for a completely different band, the Hooters, a year or so later.
When I tried to explain that, in fact, the Hooters had originally written the tune, but that Red Rockers had recorded it first, but that both versions had been produced by the same guy (Rick Chertoff) who had also produced Cyndi Lauper's She's So Unusual, I took a certain perverse joy in watching their eyes glaze over.
Sadly, I would soon graduate high school, never to attend another dank teenage basement party. Around that same time, Red Rockers, themselves, would hang up their guitars and call it a day.
Coincidence?
Tags:
red rockers rule