October 26

Here’s what happens when I take my wife to the record store:

The first three records from hair metal, glam metal, butt rockers Kix… their 1981 self titled debut, 1983s Cool Kids and the album Midnight Dynamite from 1985.

My wife and I use the term butt rock affectionately, and not as a put down at all! Pretty much any band that came after New Wave and before Grunge fills the bill.

This is a particular period of music that we agree on! It is the one type of music that was the music that I was listening to in real time and music that she somehow came to love in her younger years.

Kix comes across as a mixture between 70’s glam band Sweet and Quiet Riot…  Guitar heavy with some goofy musical styling and vocals thrown in for good measure.

I saw Kix circa 1991 when they open for the Scorpions in Denver, Colorado. I knew them from frequent MTV airplay at the time… an un-remarkable power ballad of some sort if memory serves. Nothing familiar to me on these three albums, but the cover art did bring back one memory… in their live performance they all wore Converse sneakers which were my footwear of choice back in the day.

And I called them my “kicks” so we had that in common. I guess I was one of the cool kids after all!