Sometimes you give your best effort and nothing happens. Other times you phone it in but strike gold anyway.
A song released today in 1983 is proof of that second category.
In fact, the band that recorded that song was kind of trying to tank the session at the time.
This was the band Quiet Riot.
The hard rockers had built up a following in and around Los Angeles, but they hadn’t broken through anywhere else.
Meanwhile, record producer Spencer Proffer had an idea.
He’d kind of become obsessed with the song “Cum On Feel The Noise” by the English band Slade.
It’d been a hit in the UK but not in America, and Proffer was convinced the right band could make it their own and climb up the charts.
He thought Quiet Riot was the right band, and he made them an offer: if you come into the studio and record “Cum On Feel The Noise,” I’ll let you record some of your original songs for free.
The band said yes, but they weren’t necessarily happy about putting their own songs on the back burner.
So they tried a kind of malicious compliance: they agreed to record the song, but they didn’t really practice it or even completely learn it before the tape started rolling.
They thought maybe the producer might just give up on the Slade song and turn his attention to theirs.
But the band’s wild, uninhibited take on the song turned out to be just what the producer was looking for.
It was apparently what music fans were looking for too: Quiet Riot’s version of “Cum On Feel The Noise” – the one that they tried not to record at all – was a huge hit.
It reached number five on the Billboard pop chart.
And those original songs did ok too: the album “Metal Health” became the first heavy metal record to hit number one on the album chart, selling six million copies.
Today is July 11, so on 7/11 here’s a story about a 7/11.
There’s a 7/11 convenience store in Monterrey, Mexico that has a tree right in the middle of the store.
The idea was to build a store in a more eco-friendly way, and part of that meant leaving a 50 year walnut tree on the store site in place, and just building the store around it.
The top branches pop out through the roof of the building.
Cum On Feel The Noize by Quiet Riot (Songfacts)
This 7-11 in Monterrey Mexico has a tree growing through it. (lostfoundartny via Instagram)
