seventeen

When I was younger, Winger's "Seventeen" was one of my favorite hair metal songs. The song enjoyed a resurgence of popularity in my family in 1999, when I started dating Becca. She was 17; I was 23. A perfect song for the occasion, especially if you pay attention to the lyrics, such as:

"Daddy says she's too young, but she's old enough for me."




Back then, most of the guys in metal bands had perms and looked rather fem, so Winger's appearance never struck me as particularly odd. Watching this video now, however, makes me feel kind of weird. These guys look pretty freakin' gay. The song is still pretty cool, though. In a genre where many of the musicians were poseurs of the worst kind, these guys could actually play pretty well.

I had the pleasure of meeting Kip Winger, the bass player/lead singer, a couple years ago. He and a bunch of other hair metal has-beens were doing an acoustic tour together, and since my company was sponsoring the tour, they did a free concert in our cafeteria. Kip had aged better than most of the other guys, which I believe meant that he had done fewer drugs than the others. I brought my copy of Winger's Greatest Hits for Kip to sign. When I handed it to him, he leaned over to one of the other has-beens (I believe it was Stephen Pearcy of Ratt--one of my other hair metal faves), and said "This is that CD I was telling you about. I never authorized this." I was mortified, but he grinned at me and signed it anyway.