- STEPHANIE ELLENDT
The next Hattie's Highway to Rock 'n' Roll Trivia happens on Tuesday, November 27, at Hattie's Hat in Ballard, and it's bound to be fun as shit. Hosts Megan Cookies and Tracey Shug have so much knowledge, it's surreal. They ask questions like "Which LA band headlined Heavy Metal Day at the legendary US Festival in 1983?" (Answer: Van Halen, dummy.) Sometimes there are fill-in-the-lyrics tests, or audio rounds with live guitar players, or visual rounds with album-cover identifications. And throughout, loads of hair metal facts tribute the old scene, back when rock stars were all transvestited-up and hooker-y and sinuous and prancing and disoriented. It was the best men have ever been.
"All these guys were dating strippers, so they wore their lingerie and their makeup," Tracey says as we flip through photos of bands like Nitro and Hanoi Rocks, with their strings of pearls, their bouquets of crispy hair, their expressions of mock surprise, their lip gloss aglisten in the smoky lights. Ritzy codpieces also captured attention, or guys wore jeans so tight they fit like panties. "They wanna show the package, and show it tough," says Megan.
"Mötley Crüe was the quintessential LA glam band," Megan says, Tracey agrees, and the biography The Dirt details some fashion happenings. Nikki Sixx: "I was wearing leather pants, high heels, a torn T-shirt, and makeup. I was sweaty and still completely high." Vince Neil: "I was really into white. I'd wear white satin pants with white leg warmers, Capezio shoes, chains around my waist, and a white T-shirt that I had ripped up the sides and sewn together with lace. I dyed my hair as white as I could get it, and fluffed it until it added half a foot to my height."
