Retro Video of the Week: "House of Pain" by Faster Pussycat

For a second, let's realize how amazing the '80s were.  There was a marginally popular Sunset Strip hair band called Faster Pussycat.  They were named after a '60s Russ Meyer sexploitation film called Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, which I still show to fledgling lawyers on their first day at my firm.  The band's lead singer was Taime Downe, was the co-owner -- with Riki Rachtman, VJ of MTV Headbangers Ball fame -- of a legendary Sunset Strip club called The Cathouse.  After only having one album out, Faster Pussycat was also featured in Penelope Spheeris's magnificent documentary about Sunset Strip glam metal, The Decline of Western Civilization II:  The Metal Years.  The band never had an album that topped #48 on the Billboard album charts, but that album was their sophomore effort, 1989's Wake Me When It's Over, which was release 30 years ago this Friday.

Based on the title, the boys in Faster Pussycat have been awake for nearly as long, but not before they released their only song that charted on the Billboard Hot 100, "House of Pain," a lovely not-quite-power ballad about absent fathers, apparently.  It hit #28, but more importantly, perhaps not coincidentally, there were three high schoolers not too far away in the Valley, at Taft HS in Woodland Hills -- Erik Schrody, Leor Dimont, and Danny O'Connor -- who maybe heard this song and decided that the world needed some Irish-themed hip hop.  Three years later, we all knew them as Everlast, DJ Lethal, and Danny Boy, respectively.  Their name?  House of Pain. Prove me wrong.