Jet Boy - Feel the Shake (MCA, 1988)
Current Gemm price: $4.39- $52.17
Price Pepsi paid: His innocence, man.
Worth: Wasn't worth much, really.
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In the days when there still really WERE people "out to get" Axl Rose, besides his heartbroken and spurned, long-suffering former bandmates (that his Sedona, AZ. new- age, healing crystal-guru, "Yoda", discourages him from associating with--if we're to believe Rolling Stone, but then again, we don't believe anything else those Britney Spears and the Strokes-phelching hacks, like Rob Sheffield, have to say)...When he had first moved to the city with a rattle-snake suit-case under his arm, in search of rocket queens to make his motor hum and whiskey-bent, rags to riches, platinum punk-metal glory (ATTENTION AXL! There is NO OTHER WAY for you to rescue your career except for you to Reunite. And only with Adler. All Five Original Members. Sorry Matt. Sorry Weiland. Sorry Buckethead. You're just NOT Guns N Roses.) ...When he first captured the imagination of the world by giving an inspirational, victory-or- death, Angry Anderson and Nazareth-influenced (And Cameo-come to think of it...think, "Word Up"..."Thaaang!") high-pitched shriek to smalltown misfits and manic-depressive law-breakers everywhere; In the long-gone daze before his rapid ascent into piano ballads, bicycle shorts, and supermodel-abuse, he used to have alot of us 18 year old, jailhouse-tattooed, shaggy little midwestern kids hangin' on his every word.

Back in them days, it was a big deal to have a little skull tattoo if you weren't a convict or sailor, it branded you an outlaw. It really did, you just didn't see rich girls walkin' round with full-sleeves, believe me-a little dragon tat was a big commitment.
  
We used to shop-lift all the metal mags from the book-store in the American Mall, just thrilled by the pictures of a harder-edged, Hanoi Rocks-influenced band of "street-gypsies" (horrible, I know, but we thought it sounded WICKED cool back when it first ran as some Hit Parader or Faces Rocks caption.)  with a "metal-edge", getting to act out all our favorite debauched, backstage, 70's Aerosmith rockstar motorcycle-fantasies on the Sunset Strip in full-color photo spreads, so when Guns 'N" Roses kept mentioning their friend Todd Crew (R.I.P./O.D.'d) and his band JETBOY (Dolls references were also rarer than you think, back then...) all us stoner punk glam delinquents were excited to hear 'em. Pictures of Jetboy started coming out and everybody who was wise to old biker-punk flash, ala Anti-Nowhere League or the Plasmatics or British hardcore GBH, and dug the real rocknroll side of the fence more than all the corporate-whore hair bands like Bon Jovi, were all excited by the larger than life or even C.C. Deville, JETBOY ROCK IMAGE!
   
THE JETBOY ROCK IMAGE consisted of Big white mohawks and liberty spikes and nose rings and concho straps and bolero hats and more concho straps and sparkley, pink scarves and cowboy boots and spurs and leopardskin and safety pins, and pepto-bismol pink creepers, and flashy blue-metallic vinyl and oriental nightgowns, and monterey-purple, heavily-zippered biker jackets; and 'Lip-Service' plastic lace-up acid-green faux leather and Andy McCoy baubles and bangles and bracelets and chartreusse regalia--and did I mention how they wore the most studded, leather concho straps this side of Shooting Gallery? All this trashy finery was elegantly vomited out all over five el lay hair farmers in cahoots with our beloved GUNS!
  
We couldn't wait! What a cool image, man, the bossest, baddest, shiniest image of 'em all back then. It took sack to cadge your stage name after the other guy from T. REX when you can't really sing, like, at all, and then, when they ousted Todd Crew and replaced him with SAMI YAFFA from the kingsnake-cadillac-daddy-rockers of our imaginary little Mystery City tinsel-kingdom, HANOI ROCKS, Wow! We knew these guys had to be the real thing. Sam Yaffa's involvement legitimized Jetboy in our eyes in such a way that me and my ace sidekick Little Dave were having conversations to the effect of, "Dude, Jetboy's got Sami Yaffa in their band. They might outrock GUNS!" , "Man, not even the Cult can outrock GUNS!" 
  
So their video premiered on Headbangers Ball and all the fringe-skirted, mysterious, older, Hairspray Queens from the pisstown metal club, the Wayside who had cable, all saw it and told us we'd love 'em, so we scrounged together the money to buy it from the aged Robin Zander-groupie who managed National Record Mart and would never give us jobs in the mall even back then, when we were basically harmless, but well... it just sort of fell flat.  I mean, "Rocknroll is gonna make the Earth shake/feel the shake/feel the earth shake" ,just couldn't hold a candle to all the really cool groups who were coming out at the time. Songs like, "Feel The Shake", "Snakebite", "Make Some Noise", and "Fire In My Heart" failed to outrock even Cinderella.  Also-Rans like Junkyard just blew Jetboy straight out of the water. Man, were we disappointed. A valuable lesson was learned that day about style versus substance. Our great white (cheezy pun intended. Sorry...) hopes just didn't back up their flashy, kingsize JETBOY ROCK IMAGE with good songs.  Their next album, "Damnation" had sports equipment on the cover, if I remember right, and it was all down hill from there, until...guitarist Billy Rowe started releasing their earlier, Too Fast For Love-style, Dollsy-punk junk on little labels like Perris and Cleopatra, enough time had gone by for us to collectively shake off all our animosity for the glut of bad lifeguard-metal crap poseur bandwagon-chasing hair-metal groups who had followed, ruining our rock scene by making it chic for jocks and assholes to don women's clothing and pink lipstick and big Ricki Rocket-style sno-mobile sunglasses, nipping at the heels of Guns N Roses and Poison's huge 80's success.
  
Fast forward to all the nauseatingly, tired and formulaic shit-rock that's ruled the airwaves recently and all these damned fluorescent lights always blaring down on this fully-commercialized jive-shtick-parody of a parody, heartlessly post-prefab, gutlessly insincere, always completely unoriginal, plastic-satanic pseudo-rawk underground (all purchased with a credit card online or from Hot Topic's new Burnt Church line in their Skumbag Department, TM...) in recent years, and well, I think I can speak for my own little reactionary gang of recovering rockscars and embittered glitterazis when I sez- hell, it was finally time for some revisionist nostalgia and the likes of Jetboy. Their somewhat vindicating rarities compilations, "Lost & Found" and "One More For Rocknroll" boast such re-assessed classics as "Heavy Chevy" and "Don't Mess With My Hair" and are worthier listens than much of the new crop of just goin' through the motions of throw-the-goat shlock-rock currently passing itself off as anything more than lame-o come latelys posing for oblivious dupes.
  
Then JETBOY guitar-star, Billy Rowe, teamed up with this top-notch vocalist named Lance Boone, and formed one of the best top-down, underground pop'n'roll bands of the past five years, AMERICAN HEARTBREAK, whose "Postcards From Hell" on Coldfront Records, is a pretty much flawless collection of fizzy blast pop and old,  A.M. radio anthems. Dunno where Fernie Rod and Mickey Finn are these days, and I'm too unmoved, ultimately, to even bother typing their names into Google to search for you. It's moot. The important things to remember here are how JETBOY'S out-takes/early demoes/ archival stuff beats the hell outta their big-budget major label let-down, and that Billy Rowe more than redeemed himself with AMERICAN HEARTBREAK, I mean, he really outdid himself.  American Heartbreak are astonishingly good, some of the hip few, leading lights of a real rocknroll underground. Billy Rowe's new crew pen such Perfect Hits that I almost wanna get on board and pretend like Jetboy were better than they were, if only for Billy's sake, but I'll leave that kinda revisionist-nostalgia and ego-massaging to all their Robot-Toy gifting Japanese groupies and those Motley Crue babies who post on the Glitzine msg. board and also rave about Heart Throb Mob and the Glamour Punks.
 
If American Heartbreak make even one or two more exceptional full-lengths, they'll qualify as genuine rock heroes and Billy Rowe can then be sainted as an under-rated guitar hero. In the end, he's already left a really fucking brilliantly checkered rocknroll legacy and I'll look forward to reading his sleazy tell-all autobiography someday. 

MORAL OF OUR STORY: BIG ROCK IMAGE just ain't enough, everybody just buys one of those nowadays here on Planet Fame, but to rock 4- Real, you gotta have good songs. Jetboy weren't no real great shakes, but AMERICAN HEARTBREAK fuckin' rock, man.
 
American Heartbreak website
Perris Records website
Coldfront Records website

-Pepsi Sheen
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