1998.10.09 - Los Angeles Daily News - Squeaky Axl Gets The Grease

SHARPS & FLATS
SQUEAKY AXL GETS THE GREASE

Fred Shuster

You can't go anywhere in the record business these days without hearing that '80s hair bands are surely going to be the next big thing.

Of course, these Prada-clad seers were all wrong just two years ago when they predicted techno or electronica was going to sweep the nation. That bleating, one-dimensional Euro-noise got swept right out the back door without selling many records at all.

But Sunset Strip metal? It does seem to have some commercial potential, if only because there are so few guitar-oriented rock bands treading the boards at the moment.

So, we now have Cinderella, Motley Crue, Poison, WASP and RATT, among others, busy getting their hair teased and gearing up for the old reunion trek.

Generally considered the best of this bizarre genre was Guns N' Roses, whose 1988 debut album, "Appetite for Destruction,'' has lingered in the pop catalog chart for more than seven years.

You remember Guns N' Roses, don't you? Their once-ubiquitous hits included "Welcome to the Jungle,'' "Paradise City'' and "Sweet Child o' Mine.'' The videos were played on MTV practically every 11 minutes.
Today, there aren't many original Guns left in Guns N' Roses. By all accounts, it's down to just singer W. Axl Rose and bandanna bossing a bunch of anonymous session musicians around a dimly lit recording studio someplace.

One fellow that does remember is Silver Lake fop Andy Prieboy, composer-performer of "White Trash Wins Lotto,'' a cabaret piece loosely based on Rose's life.

Set in the style of a Gilbert & Sullivan musical, "White Trash'' is a bitingly funny look at the rock myth and all the decadence that goes along with it. Prieboy, who used to front Wall of Voodoo, next performs the witty spoof Oct. 22 at Largo in West Hollywood.

I've known Prieboy for almost 20 years. In the early '80s, we worked together at a horrible right-wing San Francisco law firm, survival jobs since we both played in bands. Prieboy was a messenger. Whenever it was his turn to make a run, another messenger would be dispatched to a forgotten storeroom to wake Prieboy up.

Even then, his band Eye Protection was considered "weird'' by the little Hitlers who ran the Bay Area's punk-rock good taste squad. Prieboy was banging a piano and performing rock cabaret at a time when anything beyond three chords was suspect.

It doesn't seem likely the Strip will ever again fill up with crowds willing to pay to see the latest straight-faced hard-rock outrage. But, if anything, Prieboy may just have a hit on his hands with his takeoff of a near-forgotten rock footnote.