Retro Video of the Week: "Cum On Feel The Noize" by Quiet Riot

This Saturday will mark the 40th anniversary of the release of LA rockers Quiet Riot's third studio album, Metal Health.  The album turned out to be a watershed for hard rock and heavy metal, as it was the first heavy metal album to reach #1 on the Billboard album chart, helping to usher in the dominance of hair bands for the rest of the decade.  The album has gone on to be certified 6x platinum in the U.S. and sell over ten million copies worldwide.

The band's most successful single from the album (and ever, for that matter) was a cover of British glam band Slade's UK #1 1973 hit "Cum On Feel The Noize."  Funnily enough, Quiet Riot was against recording the song because they wanted their album to feature only songs that they had written.  So they purposely tried to play the song badly, so that the record label wouldn't allow it on the album.  Their plan backfired, the song ended up on the album, it was released as a single, and it went on to reach #5 on the Billboard Hot 100.

The video got steady airplay on MTV, though for some reason it is categorized on YouTube as age-restricted, so you can only watch it on YouTube.  As the song says, "I don't know why, I don't know why," as the song doesn't have any explicit language, and the video is your standard early '80s video about a teenager in his room who can't turn off his stereo, which then grows in size, and then he has a flashback to a Quiet Riot concert, and then wakes up to realize it was all a dream.