Headbanger's ball

More than 13,000 people showed up to the Red River Valley Fairgrounds Thursday night to see the musical equivalent to the Steam Threshers Reunion.

Part spectacle and part nostalgia brought an all-age audience to West Fargo to check out some heavy metal relics.

Metal Edge Rock Fest 2002, featuring heavy-metal hair bands L.A. Guns, Firehouse, Warrant, Ratt and Dokken, kicked off with a slight drizzle in the air and tattoos abound.

L.A. Guns were up first showcasing their brand of Southern California sleaze and rock in a raw form rarely heard these days.

"We're gonna get old- school," said L.A. Guns vocalist, Phil Lewis, to the audience in a dig against the current rap-rock fad. "We ain't gonna scratch. We ain't gonna bust a move."

And they sure didn't. Though the band wasn't as polished as their line-up successors, they exuded a certain trashiness and an "I'm-androgynous-but-I-can-still whoop you" danger to the concert.

L.A. Guns has style. The bass player has a hair styles that's a cross between Keith Richards' and Sid Vicious'. And he knew how to smoke a cigarette with perfect nonchalance while picking off the eighth notes.

Few in the audience knew the band's rockers, but "The Ballad of Jane" managed to raise a few mugs that read "Big Iron" -- not likely a mere metal coincidence.

Mullet awareness is killing the rock scene.

The connoisseurship that was once reserved for hipsters keen on the long-in-back and short-in-front haircut, has now trickled down to the animal house culture.

There are probably more mullet spotters at the fair than people who have them. It's getting harder and harder all the time to cut loose at a rock show.

But, I guess hair metal is about the hair. The next step, I figured, was to spot the mullet spotters. I saw some and met a decoy.

"It's a trainer mullet," said Ben Gunkelman, Kindred, N.D., who was sporting a chestnut-colored mullet wig he said he got from "a girlfriend's friend's buddy."

Gunkelman bravely said he was there be cause he liked '80s music but isn't ready to grow the hair yet.

"My head is really itchy right now, but it's worth it," he added.

The audience was less like a back-yard party chat and more like a rock show when all eyes were fixed on Firehouse and their more radio-friendly metal.

The droplets of rain coming down on the audience couldn't keep the Zippos out when the band whipped out their ballad medley of "When I Look into Your Eyes" and "Love of a Lifetime."

Warrant was up next. They played their hits, of course including power ballads "Heaven" and "I Saw Red."

Ratt was greeted to the stage with a barrage of Indian taco-fueled cheers.

They got the crowd churning like a vat of cheese curds with "Round and Round."

Ratt has its original guitar god with a cool name, Warren DeMartini, but a new lead singer, Jizzy Pearl, formerly of cult favorite, Love/Hate.

When the rock show veterans went into the chorus of "Lay It Down," it seemed to promise a night of manufactured decadence and a whole lotta Rokken with Dokken.

Hahn is a reporter at The Detroit Lakes Tribune, a Forum Communications newspaper.