This is my first entry on 80s-style melodic rock, my favorite type of music. My favorite band of the 80s is Great White. Per Wiki:

“Great White is an American blues-based Glam metal and Hard Rock band formed in Los Angeles that gained popularity during the 1980s and early 1990s. The band released several popular albums in the late 1980s and gained airplay on MTV with music videos for songs like “Once Bitten, Twice Shy”. The band reached their peak popularity with the album “…Twice Shy” in 1989, but their success soon declined along with most other bands in their genre.

The band continued to release new material into the 1990s, although none of their material charted in the United States. In 2003, the band made headlines when The Station nightclub fire led to the deaths of 100 people in West Warwick, Rhode Island, including the band’s guitarist Ty Longley, who had been a member of the band for three years. Great White made a comeback in 2007 with the release of a new album and an accompanying tour with the band’s classic line-up.”

Between the Wiki page, the band’s homepage, and fan sites, there is plenty more reading material I’ll not go into here. I’ll merely discuss what the band and their music means to me on a personal level.

I first heard Great White back in the summer of ‘84, when the local Portland station KRCK 101 played “Stick It”. It was very different from other types of music being played on the station back then, which consisted of what is now considered “classic rock” like Led Zepplin, early Van Halen and AC-DC, Pink Floyd, and Journey, to name a few. It had much more of a melodic sound than the classic stuff, and really appealed to me.

I missed the Shot in the Dark album while I was spending a year in hell in Korea (but that’s another story). Then while living in L.A. in 1987, I started hearing KNAC and KLOS playing “Rock Me”, which I think is one of the greatest rock songs ever recorded. Even the video is awesome, with a hot woman in a tight wetsuit and a speargun. This was the first single off the album “Once Bitten”.

Every song on this album is great. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no filler, every song has a great melody. There is an atmosphere in the recordings I really find appealing. When I listen to it I’m reminded of cruising down the Sunset strip at night and the L.A. beach cities by day with the windows open and this CD cranked. Those were some good times.

I discovered “Shot in the Dark” after the “Once Bitten” release, and feel it is almost as good – similar atmosphere and sound, great melodies, similar track layout, with just a slight notch below “Once Bitten” in songwriting.

I never really cared much for the albums that followed, but “once Bitten” is, for me, the best album of all 80s melodic rock.