I had already gotten albums from Columbia House records, which was that mail-order company that sold eight, twelve, or seventy albums for a penny. These two albums were not on the “for a penny” list (most of the records on that list were falling in popularity and they had to clear them out to make room for Bon Jovi and Whitesnake). When the Columbia House catalog came in, the prices for these albums were just north of outrageous (usually $12.95 plus shipping and handling) and I was not using my allowance to pay for one album. I could go to Disc Connection and get lots of good albums for cheap. Unfortunately for me, the two albums that I was seeking to make me cool were too new to be in the used section.
Finally, Christmas vacation came, and then Christmas Day, and I got my albums. I was finally, for that short time, “cool”. I listened to them and, frankly, I only remember the hits. There was nothing else on either of these albums that stuck out to me. They were pretty bland. “Here I Go Again” was an okay song at the time, but the half-assed guitar solo ruined the whole song (there’s this choppy progression in the middle of the solo that just takes me out of it…I could go on for hours about that ham-fisted, amateurish thing that was supposed to be a guitar solo, but I won’t…makes Paul Stanley look like a virtuoso…sorry, I’ll stop).
Christmas vacation ended and I was back to school and ready to unleash my new “cool”. “I got Whitesnake and Slippery When Wet,” I said.
“Oh, sorry, Bon Jovi is no longer cool,” I was told. Luckily, I was unable to remember what anybody thought the new cool band was. I decided from that point on, I was the only person allowed to dictate my musical tastes. If I liked a song, I liked it, and if I didn’t, well, it didn’t make it into to my record crate.
The moral of the story is: Bon Jovi sucks and so does Whitesnake. Neither of those albums ever made it to a mixtape or into my CD collection and I also have not listened to them on Google Play because they are not worth my time. Life’s too short for shitty guitar solos.