Faster Pussycat and L.A. Guns – to bands that my teenage ears completely missed during the hair/glam heyday. Sure, I knew Def Leppard, Bon Jovi and Guns n Roses, but I never dug deep, not then.

Thanks to the collapse of grunge and the alienating nature of nu-metal, hard rock in it’s most basic form was beginning a resurrgence thanks to bands as diverse as Buckcherry, The Hellacopters and, soon, The Darkness. Some of the old guard remained, and more and more tours featured a selection of hair/glam second and third tier acts that had been buried in the ’90s.

Bands like L.A. Guns stuck to their, um, guns, pumping out music similar in vein to their breakthrough record Cocked & Loaded. Faster Pussycat, on the other hand, took a different route, trying to reinvent their look and sound in a more modern way, which apparently meant ripping off Marilyn Manson’s look and goth-rock sound.

Guns, with the respected Tracii Guns on guitar, put on a straight-up rock and roll set, probably not far off from their early days, minus the pyro. Faster Pussycat took a less subtle approach, and quite frankly, were kind of embarrassing. In trying to be relevant, they simply looked like they were playing dress-up.