1288. Vixen / Rev It Up. 1990. 4/5

The late 1980’s was a period in music that was just made for a band like Vixen. Hair metal, glam metal, hard rock, whatever you want to call it, this was a style of music that lent itself to being interpreted by an all girl band who looked the part but could also play music. And that is what Vixen was during that period. Indeed, it is hard to believe that lead guitarist and band founder Jan Kuehnemund was 35 years old when the debut album was released, and that she had been in bands for almost 20 years by the time it was released. The band Vixen was first formed in 1980, and went through a rotational doorway of band member changes through the years. By 1987, the band had settled on the four piece that would take their music forward – Kuehnemund on lead guitar, Janet Gardner on rhythm guitar and lead vocals, Share Pederson on bass and Roxy Petrucci on drums. All three of the other girls were almost a decade younger than the vastly more experienced band leader. Thus in 1988, with glam metal at the height of its popularity, Vixen was signed by EMI and recorded their debut album. Coming on board to champion their career, among others, was Richard Marx, who had already had success as a songwriter and whose own singing career was about to take off. Not only did he co-produce the album, but he co-wrote the lead off track and first single from the album “Edge of a Broken Heart”.
Vixen spent the next year touring the world, supporting acts such as Ozzy Osbourne, Scorpions, and Bon Jovi, as well as headlining their own shows. The videos of the singles were on constant rotation on MTV and other music video programs. Their exposure to their primetime audience was significant. All that was required now was to write and record a follow up album that could take full advantage of the place they had arrived at. Whereas the first album had had several producers and guest writers to craft the perfect album to showcase the band, meticulously planned to take advantage of every asset the band had, this time around there was one producer, Randy Nicklaus, and the girls themselves had a much more hands on approach with the writing of the songs. The result was their sophomore album “Rev It Up”, one that could be seen to be the make or break album of the band’s career.

“Rev It Up” operates in the main on two separate writing partnerships – not solely, but in the main the two partnerships orbit the spectrum and are the ones that create the tides that flow through the album. The two songs that buck this trend are the two power ballads, both of which have different writers from the core group. “It Wouldn’t Be Love” is written by Dianne Warren, best known for those other dreadful power ballad tracks “If I Could Turn Back Time” by Cher and “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” by Aerosmith. This song is either one of her throwaway songs that was offered to the band on the back of her reputation, or the band fails to find the kind of energy needed to make this a memorable addition to the album. Coming in as the penultimate track it is the most disappointing offering on this album. It would be far better without it. The other is “Love is a Killer” which was released as the second single from the album. This is written by drummer Roxy Petrucci and Harry Paress. This is a truer power ballad and offers a great insight into Roxy’s writing capabilities. Unlike “It Wouldn’t Be Love”, you can hear the passion exuding from this song, mostly from Janet Gardner’s amazing vocal performance which gives it the gravitas to lift it from an ordinary power ballad into something that at least offers something to hold onto. Jan Kuehnemund’s atypical power solo fits the bill nicely.
One of the two main songwriting partnerships is between Janet Gardner and bass guitarist Share Pedersen, and they contribute five tracks to the album. The opening title track is the first of those, on which Ron Keel also contributes to the writing along with Steve Diamond. It has a solid opening guitar riff, an inbuilt crowd participation bridge and chorus, and nice solo spot from Kuehnemund through the middle section. “Not as Minute Too Soon” is a stock standard hard rock track from the point of view of the girl who is trying to stop making bad decisions in love but of course the hero of the story is making himself appear, and not a minute too soon. Nothing extraordinary here, but one of the solid core of songs an album needs to be a good album. “Hard 16” follows the excellent “Streets in Paradise” and continues with the great energy that track emits. Sure, the lyrics are a familiar story, of the teenage girl leaving home to escape her parents and find a new life, but the song does it justice. The vocals, especially the rise through the last minute of the song from Gardner and Pedersen gives it a deserved great finish. More of the same lyrically follows in “Only a Heartbeat Away”. There aren’t any barriers being broken with the lyrics or musically for that matter, but it is being done n a fun way. Their final contribution is the closing track “Wrecking Ball”, which picks up the pieces of the ballad “It Wouldn’t Be Love” and gives the album the finish that it deserves, a party song that leaves the boy and girl storylines behind and just concentrates on having a great time.
The other writing partnership comes from band leader and lead guitarist Jan Kuehnemund, who has her fingers in the other four songs of the album. The first two are co-written with Jack Conrad and Steve Plunkett, better known for the band Autograph. Both of these songs are the best this album has to offer. The first is the first single from the album, “How Much Love”, a cracking hard rock song made for the times, showcasing all four band members in their best light, with great drumming from Petrucci, perfect rhythm in Gardner’s guitar and Pedersen’s bass and the lead from Kuehnemund herself, not to mention terrific vocals from Janet again with support from her bandmates. The second is “Streets in Paradise”, a rollicking track that picks up the pace of the album and makes all the necessary correction to launch the album once again. You can hear the contributions of Plunkett in both of these songs, but it is the four girls who make these tracks as good as they are. “How Much Love” is a karaoke bar track, “Streets in Paradise” is an arm out the window while driving the car song. "Bad Reputation” is co-written with Janet Gardner and is typical of the tracks they did together on the debut album, bouncy and punchy and with the right amount of attitude to keep the song fun. And finally, “Fallen Hero” is co-written with Petrucci and is driven by her drum beat and Janet’s vocals in a party anthem style that helps flavour this album as the fun time it is to listen to.

I’m sure I must have seen the music videos that proliferated the airwaves from Vixen’s debut album, but I don’t recall them out of hand. At the same time as Lita Ford’s breakthrough self-titled album was creating waves for its style of candy flavoured hard rock and hair metal, Vixen had done the same with their Richard Marx composed “Edge of a Broken Heart”. For me though, I didn’t really discover the band until my fateful first journey to Bali in mid-1991, where I purchased a hundred cassettes for practically nothing of bands I had never thought to check out because the price was too high back home. Here though, I loaded up and brought home a plethora of albums to listen to. And two of those albums were “Vixen” and “Rev It Up”. And when I got around to picking up this album, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I couldn’t even tell you what it was that I enjoyed about it. In the long run, it was just the whole package of the catchy songs and great vocals that were a counterpoint to the much heavier stuff I was listening to at that time that perhaps made the difference. I mean, the music world was changing, and my own listening had narrowed significantly to those heavy metal and thrash metal bands that I loved more than anything else. So finding this album – and quite a few others, which I will get to down the line of this podcast – was actually a circuit breaker, something that gave me music that I could go to on occasions when I didn’t need to listen to those other albums for the thousandth time.
And I won’t lie to you, Vixen have been a guilty pleasure band of mine for those 30-odd years that have passed since that Bali trip. And probably this album in particular. OK, you can toss out “It Wouldn’t Be Love”, it is below the standards of this band and should have been left off the album entirely. But the absolute high calibre of “How Much Love” and “Streets in Paradise”, along with “Rev It Up”, “Love is a Killer”, “Hard 16”, “Bad Reputation” and “Wrecking Ball”, still make this a great listen for me every time I choose to take it out of the CD racks.
When I again brought this out for this episode, I wasn’t sure just how I was going to feel about it, or review it. C’mon, there would be very few people out there who are going to openly admit that they are a huge fan of Vixen’s music. But I am one of those people. And every time I have listened to this album over the past few days, I have been singing along (sometimes far too loud) and air drumming on my work desk. For me, it still hits the right places. If I’m down, it absolutely brings me back into equilibrium. And I know that sometimes I only want half of the tracks here, so I will use the skip button. But when I put it on just because I want an album to listen to, there is no need. Not even for “It Wouldn’t Be Love” ... though that would still be preferable.
Vixen spent the year following the release of this album touring, including headlining their own shows and supporting acts such as KISS and Deep Purple. Unfortunately for them, the music world was in upheaval, and their style of music was facing an eradication on a global scale. While both albums had charted in the US and the UK, the success was not great enough for their record label who was starting to chase the ambulances heading directly for Seattle and the grunge movement, and Vixen were soon dropped and forced to disband. It was not to be the end of their story, but their short rise with their original grouping had come to an end. One might just ask... how much love is it gonna take...