Makeup For The Silence

Warrant - Love In Stereo (Live in Japan, 1991)

I don’t have any great Warrant story.  I loved the Cherry Pie video as much as any other 11 year old boy did in 1990 — when it was getting the hourly-spin treatment from MTV (which I naturally watched for like six hours a day) — and dumped them when grunge rolled around like every other 13 year old boy did in 1992.

When I was home from college in the summer of 1999, I found a bunch of old cassettes that had been tucked away in my bedroom for a decade, and rediscovered my love of Warrant. The Cherry Pie album, along with Poison’s Flesh And Blood, became the soundtrack to my summer — I ended up picking both up on CD and played the hell out of them on my drive back and forth to work as a counselor at Camp JCC.

I’m not sure people now, especially the younger ones, remember how anathema hair metal was for most of the 90’s. (There’s a legendary story regarding Warrant walking into the Columbia Records office and discovering that a large framed promo poster of the band had been replaced by one of Alice In Chains, which almost seems like a too-perfect metaphor). There was none of the kitschy appeal or silly nostalgia for it, it was still too soon.  It was basically the least cool thing in the world, to the point where it couldn’t even be appreciated ironically. 

Not that I enjoy Warrant ironically.  I can say with 100% sincerity and zero shame that Cherry Pie is one of my all-time favorite albums, it’s absolutely flawless from start to finish.  Not only was Jani Lane one hell of a vocalist in his prime, but a great performer and songwriter (he wrote virtually everything the band recorded, at least on their first few records).  Sure his songs could be ridiculous, but it’s not like there wasn’t a knowingness to it all; this over-the-top ode to threesomes is a prime example.

Like many of the folks in that scene, Jani Lane’s life ran off the rails when the money stopped and the backlash started.  Call it a cautionary tale, I suppose.  It’s sad that he’s died so young; it’s tragic when you can look back and realize that, at least for a few years, he was so, so alive.