Shots Fired Sunday: Scab Edition

Happy #ShotsFiredSunday everyone!

Here's another sacred cow to dismantle. There are too many scab versions of bands we love these days. Great White (and thus Jack Russell's Great White), RATT and Quiet Riot are pretty big offenders. Whenever I write about one of those bands, I inevitably get some angry comments and more than one person uses the word "joke." So maybe we should call a spade a spade and just call these versions for what they are: scabs. Is it time for us to stop supporting these scab versions of bands we love? If we quit paying to see nuRatt, will Stephen Pearcy and company knock it off and come to their senses? Probably not.

Tell The World: The Very Best Of Ratt

It's impossible to replace dead members so I do have sympathy for that, especially when that person was the lead singer as in Quiet Riot's case. But the ones left behind are professional musicians. Wouldn't it be better to create a new project? Another big issue here is that by putting a stake in the ground and saying "No More!" to scab versions of these bands, it means we're cutting off a part of our history. We're stuck in a time where RATT, for example, was the core five guys playing "Round and Round" live in 1987. There are very few bands that have been around for decades that maintain the core group of members from the beginning. Music is work and you have probably changed jobs a few times, too. So where does that leave us? I'm honestly not sure. I continue to write about the bands I've loved for decades because I don't want to let them go. Maybe I should.