SMASHED GLADYS  - Social Intercourse (Elektra, 1988)
Current Gemm Price: $1.99- 115.00 (!)
Price Sleazegrinder paid: $3.99, In Your Ear Records, Cambridge
Price Pepsi Paid: 7 Years of hard luck
Worth: Somewhere between the two
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Only your handsome host, the Sleazegrinder himself's, gonna be able to dredge up any examples of more unintentionally hilarious bands as this NYC "street-rock" eighties glam band, and y'know, he really WORKS at it. Just check out their fuggin' album cover for starters, a slutty cartoon of sleazy brunette lead singer, Sally Cato, makin' it with a cowboy booted skeleton, their legs forming a peace sign. Unbelievable. People were absolute geniuses back in those days- I used to know this metal dude named "The Gostrich" - I can't make this shit up - and he wore checkered vans and bleached denim from head to toe and drew pictures of like, bats silhouetted in front of moons, and wrote band logos like "OZZY" and "Slayer" on the white spots in black sharpie and all day long he talked in this annoying, fake Jeff Spicoli voice, and drew these elaborately detailed portraits of the Iron Maiden mascot, Eddie, and like, Blackie Lawless "Inside The Electric Circus", and I remember one time right before I left high school for good when the vice principal threatened to press truancy charges against me for skipping last bell study-hall if I didn't let the head of the cosmetology department cut my hair, and like a beaten dog, I consented, and all the girls in the vocational department openly wept; well, one day in the cafeteria, this older, overbearing, lanky Gostrich maniac, came over to the table where my particular faction of gooney stoner kids sulked and gave me a charlie horse after grabbing my spankin' new cassette copy of "Live Like A Suicide" outta my hand and somehow discerning that G'N'R, who he hadn't heard of yet, were "fags". This from a guy with "Bon Jovi" sharpied onto his torn jeans, I kid you not!  Anyhoo, the cover of "Social Intercourse" immediately reminded me of something "The Goss" would've drawn the first time I saw it. 
  
Smashed Gladys' comely singer, Miss Cato's raspy growl often sounded like a dude and horn-dog sleazebag, Gene Simmons, naturally, produced their initial demo having spotted her in the Motley Crue video for "Too Young To Fall In Love". These were the halcyon days when everyone, and I mean everyone with an AC/DC t-shirt with the sleeves cut off, a studded belt, and dyed black hair were signed to a major label recording contract for $500,000. Won't you tell me-Where have all the good times gone? Smashed Gladys were the toast of the Gotham City glam circuit (Lismar Lounge, L'Amour, Scrap Bar, Danceteria, Cat Club, King Tut's Wah Wah Hut) alongside other Gotham glam third-stringers like the Cycle Sluts, Skin & Bones, Demolition Boy, The Love Tribe, The Spider Junkies, Princess Pang, and even our all-time heroes, CIRCUS OF POWER, back when they were still known as the STRANGERS and I still got the well-worn flyer autographed by Gary, Alex, and Ricky to prove it. Back then, everybody really did get wasted on Jack and Coke every single night and we all wore eyeliner all the time and the chicks seldom wore panties underneath those back mini-skirts and these ridiculously overcrowded NYC bars really did pulse with a beastly sexual electricity just like in that Circus Of Power video for "Call Of The Wild". It was unreal. Pure fuckin' raunch and adrenalline. You could just go anywhere and see people like Joey Ramone hangin' around. The sound systems in those sweaty rooms were amped so stupidly loud that I'm literally still suffering the consequences. The music was blared at such punishingly intense volumes back then, that you could physically feel every KIX, Bang Tango, or Cats In Boots song just pummeling you in woozy waves of barsmoke, hairspray, cheap perfume, vomit in every corner, and raw lust. I'll never forget the smell of all those hundreds of drunken, sultry girls who wore no panties. 
  
The inanely titled, "Social Intercourse" is home to some of the funniest songs of that whole era- and if you're readin' about the other bands in this here FLASH METAL SUICIDE column, you know that's really sayin' somethin'. "Wham, bam, here I am/I tell you honey I give all I can, not for the cash not for the fame...We Did It! We Did It! WE Did It! TO GET LAID!" What 120 lb. longhaired freak with "SEXGOD" proudly painted in brash purple letters on the back of his leather jacket ain't gonna fall for Sally Cato singin' such timeless love songs as "Legs Up" and "Hard To Swallow"?! They even absolutely bludgeoned "Metal Guru" on this album produced by Ric Browde and Michael Wagener of, oh geez, Poison, Faster Pussycat, Dogs D'Amour and Alice Cooper fame and if my liquor-shamed memory's wrong about any of the details, who cares. It was produced hysterically, even the very last run-out grooves of the album reprise the chorus, "To Get Laid! Get Laid! Get Laid! Get Laid!" When I met a Sally Cato-lookalike about a year or two later, who knew all the words to "17 Goin' On Crazy" and whom hated Sebastian Bach, I immediately moved in with her, and we spent a decade ruining one another and the decade since blaming one another, but I'm sick enough to still believe it was all worth it 'cos I did it to get laid, y'know? A couple of the dudes from Smashed Gladys went on to graduate up from ripped denim to purple velvet in other various red patent leather- clad, black-haired rockgroups like the Throbs (who just recently played a reunion gig at Don Hill's in NY after ten years of me asking everybody, "Whatever Happened To Ronnie Sweetheart?) and Michael Monroe's back-up band on the "Not Fakin' It" tour. Whatever Became Of Sally Cato is my natural next question, no clue, but everybody who digs dumb, fun, really silly party rock or chick vocalists should track this album down 'cos it falls into that so bad it's fucking amazing category. There's no way someone should like fuckin' Twisted Sister but not Smashed Gladys. If you could bottle this band, you could market it as Sleaze-Whiz, can ya dig what I'm sayin? 
 
Smashed Gladys Cast Of Nasties Tribute site 
 
-Pepsi Sheen (currently smashed by many things, from Gladys to the Black Death)   
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