If I’d never encountered Richie Sambora’s  Stranger In This Town, Skid Row’s self-titled album would be a strong contender for my favorite album of all time.   There are so few albums that contain nothing but songs that I like, and I have a certain degree of affection for every single track on this album.

‘Youth Gone Wild’ was never one of my favorite songs on this album.  However, that was more because of what it has to compete with rather than any fault in the song itself.  (Songs like ’18 and Life’ aren’t easy competition.)

I like loud, hard rock, and this song delivers that.  The lyrics themselves might border on cliche rock rebellion, but in combination with the rest of the song, they work.

The riff in this song is great.  It could be annoying in the wrong hands, as it’s kind of repetitive, but here it works.  I think the key to the whole thing is the combination of the lyrics and the riff.  Combined, the two make this into a song that’s guaranteed to stick in your head.  (I would know.  Every time it came up when I was playing Brutal Legend, it would rattle around inside my skull for the next half hour.)

This song also delivers a great guitar solo.  It fits perfectly in with the rest of the song, while still managing to differentiate itself from the sound of the rest of the verses.   It also strikes a really good balance between showcasing the player’s virtuosity and being too fiddly, and it doesn’t overstay its welcome.  (I wouldn’t have minded if it had been several seconds longer, actually.)   A really good guitar solo is a rare thing, and this song has one.

All told, the ability to deliver songs like this one is why I like Skid Row so much.

Related posts:

1. Random Song: Immigrant Song
2. Random Song: Queen of New Orleans
3. Random Song: Always Run to You

I caught the tail end of the episode dedicated to Wayne Isham. The name honestly meant nothing to me. I had conked out and was too tired to keep up with the game I had been playing on the Xbox, so I powered down and settled for watching VH1 Classic until the show I was waiting for came on.

As it turned out, I got lucky. Wayne Isham directed the video for Livin’ on a Prayer, and the Prayer video was one of the ones featured in his episode. There’s no profound insights here, but some interesting storytelling from Wayne Isham himself. I had always figured that the silhouette of the guy running through the curtain of sparks was deliberate–but that’s the director, abruptly realizing that he was parked in the middle of the shot. That may have been a complete accident, but I always thought that it worked.

As for the rest of it, there’s nothing really profound there, other than a few brief interview clips with Richie. He mostly talks about how Isham helped the band break big. Not sure when it was recorded. Judging by how Richie looked in the clips, it was probably fairly recent.

The other neat video included in the show was the video for Skid Row’s 18 and Life, another one of my favorite songs. Once again, nothing terribly profound, but at least on that one they got Sebastian Bach to show up. Bach’s comments were more interesting–he was remarking on how, even after all this time, he can watch the video for 18 and Life without getting embarrassed. He has a point–Isham did do a fantastic job on that video, and it really does stand the test of time better than many of the other videos from the same time period that tried to tell a story.

It was kind of neat, just tuning in randomly and getting the scoop (such as it was) on the videos to two of my favorite songs.

Related posts:

1. When We Were Beautiful Video Review
2. ‘What Do You Got’ Video Review
3. The ten songs that made me like music