Sweet Pain - S/T (Combat, 1985)
Current Gemm price: $39.07
Price I paid: $3.99 at In Your Ear Records, Cambridge
Worth: $25
By: Sleazegrinder
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"Cold Blood is runnin'/It happens all the time"

When Sweet Pain committed Flash Metal Suicide, they didn’t leave much evidence behind. Combat records – who were quickly getting outta the glam metal game and racing straight towards speedmetal hell by ’85 - dumped this record in the stores and left it there to rot, and, as a result, Sweet Pain obviously never got a whole lotta press or label support. And then they broke up a year later, probably for that exact reason. All I really remember about ‘em is that they were from NYC, and that they were reportedly a buncha sleazy, drugsucking reptiles. Which, really, is all ya need to know, isn’t it? This record got worn down to nothin’ but vinyl shreds at Teen Sleaze HQ when it was released, and I tell ya, they didn’t sound like the kinda band that was just gonna disappear. They sounded like fighters, not quitters. And when ya think about the timeline they existed in – Hanoi Rocks had just broken up, Guns N’ Roses wouldn’t hit for another year- well, who’s to say Sweet Pain wouldn’t have been the biggest “real” sleaze-glam band on the planet, if they had toughed it out?

But hey, I’m just guessing. Maybe they all hated each other, or maybe their next record woulda been hairspray nonsense anyway. Maybe we’ll never know what happened to Sweet Pain, and maybe that’s for the best. But the important thing is this- YOU GOTTA HAVE THIS FUCKING RECORD. Given that Sweet Pain copped their name from a Kiss song (it’s on Destroyer), and given that they wore zebra skin spandex and scarves and eyeliner and had poodle-perms and liked to pose with bottles of whiskey, chances are you’d take one look at ‘em and laugh them off as some kinda East-coast contingency of the Sunset-Strip poser mafia. I mean, they sure did look the part. But once you drop the needle down onto the wax (and you’d have to – ain’t no CD reissue for this ‘un, unless I do it myself, at some point), it’s a whole different story, man. Sure, their prevailing influence was KISS, but violence and drugs and mayhem were close runners-up. They welded big pop hooks and harmony-laden choruses and Van Halen pyrotechnics onto tough, Dollsy hard rock and filthed everything up with a deep layer of grime and criminal intent and punk attitude, and the results were pure, shameless cock n’ roll. True Sleaze, Jack. Ain’t nothin’ like it.

I mean, honestly, ya gotta hear this thing. Imagine Gary Glitter as a teenage punk backed-up by a buncha druggy KISS fanatics tryin’ to out-rock KIX at CBGB’s somewhere around 3 AM. And if they CAN’T out-rock ‘em, maybe they’ll just slit their bellies in the alley afterwards. That’s the Sweet Pain sound, man. There was a palpable sense of both arrogance and authentic debauchery to Sweet Pain’s music. Ronnie Taz rolls across his drum set every two minutes. Why? Hey, fuck you, man, why not? Corky delivers lines like “I got some blood on my sneakers, I don’t care/I got my ludes, I’m in the mood” (From Subway Terror, a Starz cover, which appears to be about getting high and tossing people onto the third rail for kicks) like he was sitting down in the studio, reading the paper and chain-smoking, while he recorded ’em. They’ve got glammy hand-claps in here, and they sound EVIL. How the fuck do you make party-metal-hand-claps sound evil? The cowbell might as well be a death knell, ya know? I believe that Antiseen’s Carolina shitkicker kingpin Jeff Clayton coined the term “has ceased to give a damn”. That explains the Sweet Pain musical theory perfectly. “Yeah, sure”, they seem to be saying. “We got an endless supply of classic pop-sleaze songs in our arsenal, but dig- we gotta coke party to hit at 9, so we’re just gonna stutter and slur our way through these fuckers, and you can go and try and figure out what we were after in 20 years or so, for all we care.”

I am about 99% sure that Detroit crash n’ roll superrockers The Lanternjack have never hear Sweet Pain, but “Shoot for Thrills (Into the Night”), before it hits the sugary chorus, rides a nasty, dive-bombing riff that sounds JUST LIKE the almighty ‘Jack (Corky mentions the night in almost every song, just like the Jack, too- even pronounces it “Ni-EE-ight" like Johnny Flash does). And, for a song that’s supposed to be glam metal, it’s kinda fuckin’ DARK- “Sleeping in the gutter/dirty as a rat/Hiding in the doorway/for the next attack” – dontya think? Then again, songs like “Wink of an Eye” and “Knock Your Socks Off” are pure cock rock, kinda like Wrathchild-does Aerosmith, but harder. And meaner. And with Johnny Thunders/Steve Jones guitar solos. “Get My Kix” ( I toldya they were after those fuckers) is a big dumb confetti cannon of flash metal riffs and slurry vocals- and Corky even cops the drunken storytelling bit from “Yeah Yeah Yeah”, the raucous closer to the first, pre-metal KIX album! The aforementioned Starz cover is alternately creepy and swaggering, and given it’s origins, pretty tough - until it hits the Blue Oyster Cult solo, that is. That’s probably Starz’ fault, tho. “Down in the Boulevard” is the cockin’-est of the rockin’-est song on the whole rekkid, and it’s mostly cowbells, a Dead Boys riff, and lotsa lippy talk about “You’re daddy don’t like it/Cuz I play in a long-haired rock n’ roll band”, that kinda thing. Bitchin’. "Back in LA", probably on purpose, rips off “Too Fast For Love”-era Crue, shamelessly- only Sweet Pain sound sleazier. Oh, and closer “New Toy” is god-awful, limp, flash metal filler, but one out of whatever ain’t bad. There was also one other Sweet Pain track floating around, “Two Time Love” , but it was a cassette only ‘bonus’, and never had the cassette. Anyway, that’s the rundown, and even aftr all these wasted years, it still sleazes and pleases. A lost treasure? Yep.

Like I said before, Sweet Pain pretty much burned down the shithouse on their way out, so there really isn’t a whole lot to tell you about their post-band exploits. Guitarist Kelly Nickels later went on to play with LA Guns (1986 to 1995), but then again, who didn’t, right? Corky Gunn talked to rock-mockers Metal Sludge in 2001 about hanging out with Motley Crue in the 80’s, but didn’t reveal anything about what he’d been up to. Ronnie Taz later went on to form The Throbs with vocalist Ronnie Sweetheart. Bass player Adrian Vance is anybody’s guess. And while the Throbs and LA Guns were both fitting after-bands for sleaze-beasts like these cats, ya can’t help but to wonder what woulda happened if their label had actually done their job and pushed Sweet Pain onto the people as yr new evil rock n’ roll anti-heroes, yr grand pervertors of teenage America , your ‘gateway drug’ into the hard-stuff? Well, they still would have probably been broken up by now, but at least we woulda had more than this paltry handful of songs. They’ll do, tho. As Corky sez in “Knock Your Socks Off”- “I ain’t seen nothin’ like this since my teenage years!”

Ain’t that the fuckin’ truth.

Further: You tell me.

-Sleazegrinder
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