America 250 Rocktober Song #16: "Streets In Paradise" by Vixen

It's hard to believe we only have a week left in Rocktober.  But I suppose that's an expected consequence of the wrenched, unforgiving hands of time.  As always, because next week is Halloween week, all the songs will be about death, monsters, demons, daemons, or devils, or will otherwise have some sort of dark theme.

But before we get there, we have another Hair Band Friday in Rocktober.  We're going back to the Midwest, to the frosty, mosquito ridden capital of Minnesota, St. Paul, where Vixen formed in 1980.  In a male-dominated genre like hair band music, the all-female Vixen was a unique and inspirational band.  They released their self-titled debut in 1988, and a year before that, they appeared in the legendary documentary The Decline of Western Civilization II: The Metal Years.  Their first album featured their two biggest hits on the Billboard Hot 100:  "Edge of a Broken Heart" (#24) (co-written and produced by Richard Marx) and "Cryin'" (#22).

But I'm going with a deep cut from the band's second album, 1990's Rev It Up.  While their more popular songs are more on the pop metal side, they could rock out too.  "Streets In Paradise" is hot from the get-go, with a great riff and driving beat.  And the song keeps up the energy the whole time.  Parts of the song would have been fantastic in movie training montage or a montage where the gang is working together to build something that naysayers said they couldn't build.

Unfortunately, Rev It Up didn't perform as well as the first album, so their record label dropped them, and then they broke up in 1992, before reforming a few years later and releasing an album in 1998.  They have disbanded and reunited several times, including in 2004 to be on VH1's Band Reunited, putting out their last studio album in 2006 -- though they have remained together (in different iterations) and touring pretty much since then.