How to go
What: Hairbanger’s Ball
When: 8 p.m. Friday, Jan. 29
Where: Bogart’s, 2621 Vine St., Cincinnati
Cost: $10
More info: 513-872-8801 or www.bogarts.com
If someone told you they were going to see a 1980s heavy metal tribute band, you’d be forgiven for thinking they were going to see a group of over-the-hill Generation Xers squeezed into vinyl pants.
“The most surprising thing is that our youngest member, who is 26, knows more about 80s metal than the rest of us,” said Tony Martino, music director, marketing manager and the onstage bassist for Hairbanger’s Ball, who will be playing Bogart’s this weekend. “The oldest in our group is 34.”
Ever since hair metal was demolished by grunge in the early 1990s, it has remained more or less in the cultural doghouse. Martino, who joined the Chicago-based band in 2012, came of age in the 1990s. Like some of his bandmates, he was introduced to the much-maligned music of the previous decade by an older sibling even as he was disenchanted with current trends.
“My era started with rock and ended with bad pop,” he said. “The boy bands, Britney Spears, that Chumbawamba crap. I discovered Def Leppard in the fifth grade, and it was unlike anything I’d ever heard. As I got older, I just thought (of the genre as) good-time party music. My first live experience with it was a Tesla/Firehouse show.”
Martino sees genuine musicality in bands such as Steelheart and Slaughter. He feels the genre has been misrepresented.
“Bands like Poison and Enuff Z’nuff were probably cheesier than most,” he said. “And whenever you watch a documentary about the era, it seems like they show the most cliched clips.”
Hairbanger’s Ball was actually formed in 2001. There is only one founding member still with the band. Martino said the original idea came when the members, who were a typical ’90s band at that point, thought it’d be a lark to dress up and act the part of being an ’80s metal band.
“They grew up loving the music,” Martino said. “That first show sold out, and it just took off from there.”
Hairbanger’s Ball plays about 130 shows per year. Although they primarily play clubs, they also do festivals, private parties, corporate events, and about four weddings per year. As far as repertoire, Martino said their “bread and butter” are ’80s bands still being played on the radio today, like Leppard and Guns N’ Roses.
“Ninety percent of our set list are songs people know,” he said. “The other 10 percent is what we like to do. You can only play ‘Pour Some Sugar On Me’ so many times before we want to go deeper in the Def catalog, with something like ‘Too Late for Love.’ We’ve done some Metallica and Megadeth. We’d love to do Steelheart, but we have to make sure our singer can hit those high notes. Otherwise, there’s no point in doing it.”
Martino said the audience for their club shows depends on the market.
“In Chicago, it ranges from 23 to 60,” he said. “But in a college market, it’s all 19-23. We like (wide age ranges) because it means we can play more markets.”
Martino said that exactitude is key, from the music to the presentation.
“We use the eyeliner and hairspray,” he said. “We’ll use fire at the clubs that will let us. We find a lot of our clothes online and at thrift stores. I’ll look at what Motley Crue wore in 1981 as well as 2015 and combine the two. For the songs, sometimes we’ll have to change the arrangement, chop it down if it’s too long. But the most important thing is to make sure everyone is playing the right part, putting the proper accent on certain words. We want to make it sound exactly the same, or better than the original.”
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