Long-hair Metal Poodles Come Up Short! (Sorry Ethiopia)

For a generation drunk on histrionic power ballads, coke, over-indulgent fashion, and the constant threat of thermonuclear war, Live Aid may've seemed the perfect sedative:
The problem: A severe drought in Ethiopia causing catastrophic stress on food resources. This in turn made worse by the abuses of a ruthless local government. Eventually, as many as 8.5 million would be effected.
The response: Back when televisions bulged thicker than the Berlin Wall, the West witnessed the catastrophe play out from the distance of the evening news. The leaky-bleaky hearts of rock's (white) elite community would be spurred into action, or song at least. This spur would eventually take the form of Band Aid in 1984, and then Live Aid a year later.

The brainchild of Irish and Scottish do-gooders and middling has-been rockers Bob Geldof (Boomtown Rats who was temporarily knighted for his effort, the Irish) and Midge Ure (bubble-gum era Ultravox, the Scottish). Beginning successfully with the recording of Do They Know It's Christmas under the moniker Band Aid, the record raised $24 million. (It'd be re-recorded in 1989 and 2004.)

Live Aid was to be a double concert extravaganza that would live telecast a simultaneous performance from both sides of the Atlantic (London and Philadelphia). The event would also inspire same-day concerts around the world including the Soviet Union, Japan, Canada, and Australia. For its part, the London concert would famously feature The Greatest Live Performance in the History of Rock Music! 

In the end, the positive effect of Live Aid has been the subject of debate. It was estimated that the concerts ultimately raised $225 million (£150 million) – that's $526 million in 2018 dollars. Though, it was later estimated that a fat portion of that money was siphoned off by the country's ruthless president and, even more sadly, the starving in Ethiopia only continued, being even worse today.

Back to the viking north of 1985: Wanting to toss their coins to the cause, Sweden responded with their own fund-raising performance featuring 80 of its top metal poodles, blonder than the Playboy mansion grotto and enough flammable hair product to fuel several Hindenburgs. With heaving hearts and unctuous vocalizing, the moussed mob stood together and sang a Joey Tempest ditty (he from the Swedish band best remembered for The Final Countdown) written for the cause: Give a Helping Hand. Take note: The pitchiness in the video may've been an omen: The record sold a paltry 50,000 copies – not enough to cover even Live Aid's craft services. (Though, note that the gender representation is far better than Live Aid’s)

Beyond simply fueling sniggers for our endless amusement, the vid may've also documented the last dying gasps of Nordic hair metal. Several years later the much rawer genres of death and black metal would become all the rage in the hinterlands and these coiffed cuties would be curbed for evermore.

Power Surge: Prisoner (Love Theme from The Eyes of Laura Mars)

OMG! Where to begin? A bubble-gum hair metal band takes on a minor Streisand gobbet ca. 1991: Words won't suffice. Hear for yourself:

From deep within the fusty bowels of the waning pop metal years is the Long Island bar band Power Surge. (Google searches offered no history.) They’re a band that understood Spinal Tap as a template and not a parody. (My wife had friends in bands like these.) 

The band’s vocal stylist, Corey Bond, presents squeals that imagine a cross of Bruce Dickinson with Geddy Lee crotch-tased. His vibrato creates swells that’d splash over the deck of the Titanic. His castrato upper register is impressive and muscular though his hapless uvula had a habit of going rogue at times. Here, much of that upper register can rascally as the pitch gets flattened like linguini noodles. Poodle-cut guitarist Michael Klotz solos like a Berlitz version of Hanon finger exercises (though thankfully restrained from shopworn Van Halen tapping), and drummer Tom Pizzela (if those aren't Long Island names!) proves his metallic ecstasy by screwing his visage into an variant duck faces. No mention in the credits for the platinum crop-top bassist—perhaps he was lost in a later acrimonious Power Surge divorce. While head banging and devil horns may’ve been de rigueur for the time, between Power Surge’s and Streisand’s Prisoner, I might point my horns toward Streisand.

An appropriate soundtrack for cracking twelvers of Rolling Rock and toking pipes made in shop class. As ever at Jellyroll, love and praise for courageous effort. Pardon us for any fussiness on the part of our earholes.