Betty Blowtorch
Are You Man Enough?
2001, Foodchain Records
I’m just your regular, everyday, Miller Lite-drinking, heterosexual guy who happens to have “Size Queen”, an anthem about big dicks, permanently stuck in his head.
It’s a nuclear-powered rock song from the greatest, raunchiest AC/DC album ever made by an all-girl band from Hollywood. I can turn it up in the car and not be embarrassed one tiny bit by lyrics such as “I want a man with man-size toys” and “Pull it out and I’ll be the judge/ I’ll let you know if you’re well-hung”. That’s all fine with me. I’m not fragile. Get me drunk enough and I’ll even sing along with that shit. I don’t give a damn.
No, the thing that makes my asshole pucker is when a raucous and ready for action Vanilla Ice shows up for a quick guest spot during the bridge and throws out bon mots such “You know I got it all/ A long white dick almost ten inches tall!”
It’s not a moment for the faint for heart, but Betty Blowtorch doesn’t make music for wimps or critics. Their sole album is a monument to high-flying tastlessness. They miss the glory days of hair metal. They don’t understand why anyone would even want to make music that ISN’T about sex and good times and bad times on The Sunset Strip and settling old grudges. Betty Blowtorch pack humor, hooks, and attitude onto this album like a chick with DDs might fill out a Kiss tank-top that’s at least two sizes too small. Vanilla Ice slips in neatly between Betty Blowtorch’s cleavage and plays a small part on one of my favorite rock records of all time.
Tell you the truth, I’m not 100% sure why I even bought this album back in 2002 or 2003. I remember the years because I played this like crazy through headphones while I worked a shit office job at the time. It was a place where everyone seemed half-alive and I needed some music that was fully alive to keep me sane–and Betty Blowtorch were exactly what I needed.
And I guess something about this CD caught my eye in the used bins because I’m otherwise not exactly Marvin the Metal Fan here.
Black Sabbath are cool. Judas Priest are cool. That’s all classic rock to me, though. I like them for the same reason why I like Blue Oyster Cult and The Rolling Stones. In the 80s, as a pre-pube, I briefly clung to the likes of Ratt and Motley Crue, but I tossed them aside when I discovered The Monkees through afternoon reruns of their TV show on MTV.
Ever since, I’ve been about as metal as Bob Newhart, but I guess some residual fondness for 80s glam ferments under my dome because I clung to this album from the first time I heard it and I’ve never stopped needing it.
I’d even say that one of its best songs is “Big Hair, Broken Heart”, a heart-wrenching anthem that asks “Where did those hair bands go?”. Here, Betty Blowtorch reminisce about being LA scene “groupie sluts” who fawn over Quiet Riot and pass out flyers for their boyfriends’ bands. It’s one of a few songs here that owes as much to 60s girl group pop as it does 80s hot licks.
A lesser band would put a should-be-a-hit like that the very beginning or the very end, but Betty Blowtorch have a bunch of killer songs and so they slot their big heart-ripper at track 10 on their fifteen-song album and follow it up with some of their fiercest tracks (“Rock My World”, the sensitive story of a girl who makes a date with a hot guy only for him to not show up on time and so she just masturbates and forgets about him, is a top-shelf highlight).
I love every song. I love the snarling intro, “Hell on Wheels”. I love the venom-filled depection of a marriage on the skids, “Love/Hate”. I love the ugly kid’s anthem “I’m Ugly And I Don’t Know Why”, a new version of an old song by most of Betty Blowtorch’s previous band, Butt Trumpet. “Shut Up and Fuck” and “I Wish You’d Die” are every bit as mean their titles. Meanwhile, the pop-tastic “No Integrity” (another song that goes for 60s girl group kicks) dresses down the millionaire pop star while also implying that Betty Blowtorch might be willing to make that same deal with the devil.
Like anyone who’s truly funny, Betty Blowtorch sees the corruption in life’s big game–and they also realize that they are full participants in it.
This album is such a thunderbolt that I would have been willing to follow Betty Blowtorch for the next fifty years.
But then singer/screamer/bassist Bianca Halstead (aka Bianca Butthole) had to up and die in December 2001, not long after the album came out. Car accident.
Shit.
One of the most full-of-life singers I’ve ever heard was dead by the time I got to hear her.
I feel sad for about a minute and then I play the album and the tornado re-starts and Bianca Halstead lives again and is ready to conquer the world. They went for broke on this one. They did it right and made this like it was going to be last album they’d ever make–and it was.
Most great rock albums are like that. People have been saying that rock music is dead for so long that its imminent death has become a part of its character. Every great rock song should sound like a last gasp. Every great rock band should sound like they entered the studio with bombs strapped to their chests. Every great rock record should sound like it all ends here. The house is on fire and nobody’s getting out alive.
Are You Man Enough? is one of those classics that ends in flames. Rock is dead (again) when it’s over. Until the some other great band revives it five minutes later, at least.
If you like it, also necessary is Last Call, a righteous 2003 collection of outtakes, demos, live recordings, radio clips, old Butt Trumpet tapes and songs from an out-of-print earlier EP. It’s strange and silly and it contains the band’s most disturbing moment, “Get Off”, on which Halstead recounts, by way of a terrifying and blunt hard rock song, how she was raped by her stepfather. On it, Halstead screams like she’s exorcising demons–but we know she’ll never get rid of them all no matter how much she abuses our ears. It’s a song that I can’t always play. It makes me queasy.
Yet it’s still an essential moment because underneath the jokes and the fun, Halstead was a real rocker. She was scarred and tough and vicious. She made music because she needed to do it. Also, while she never took herself too seriously, she still sounds like the kind of woman you don’t want to cross.
I keep these CDs not only because they rock and I love them, but also because it’s important to me that Bianca Halstead never stops screaming for vengeance. As long as someone out there is still listening, she’s alive and winning.