The Lesser Knowns "Rock"Too
80s Rock/Hair/Metal and MTB Series: Installment #4
We all have those trails, those networks of trails, that don’t get all the notoriety, but they are on par with all the other “good stuff” out there. You know, there’s Moab, Crested Butte and Pisgah and then there’s … your local place that maybe doesn’t get the attention but you still get your fix there.
1980s glam/hair/metal/sleaze bands have Motley and GnR and Poison. There were numerous other bands, of course, and for me, a teenager buying cassettes through Columbia House and BMG mail-ins and paying for them with money orders from the corner convenient store, I’d go to the mall, look at album cover art, remember band names and then order them through the mail.
I had no idea what I was going to get!
Enter … Shotgun Messiah.
Swedish glam band with a hit titled, Heartbreak Boulevard. I had zero experience with that, but the song sounded great to me then.
It’s kind of like some of my first mountain biking rides on trails in Gettysburg National Military Park and Codorus State Park during a time when it was all I knew about riding and it was always great. I had zero complaints. Rigid Mongoose Switchback. Completely happy in my no-understanding of what things could or should be.
Same for Shotgun. I cranked it up and had no cares for what they were about or saying, as a band. Loud was good enough for me.
Next up … Bablyon A.D.
From the San Francisco Bay area, Clive Davis signed them to Arista Records in 1989. F’in A! This tape, I nearly wore out!
Remember Robocop 2?!
The 80s were wonderful and crazy and dumb and strange, in all it’s mad-yet-fun world kind of way.
So are all of those trails that were built long ago by the 3 C’s and the WPA, the ones we still ride today and walk away from thinking: maybe I like these non-purpose-built-for-mountain-biking kinds of trails. The ones that have no flow but feel good. The ones that beat you up and beat you down, and you somehow smile when you’re collecting yourself at the end of the ride.
There’s the red trail up top on the backside of the Keweenaw system that I still think about from time to time. Back east, there are numerous ones in state and national forests that are pocked with rocks. Everywhere. Rock gardens are the trails, e.g. Iceberg in the Fred Shed.
Not quite the 80s, but the vibe was there, no?!
Cheers, y’all! Enjoy the lesser knowns that still satisfy.
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