Sleaze rock legends Faster Pussycat hit the stage Sunday, June 12^th at 6pm at Akron’s Ripper Owens Tap House. Buzzbin recently caught up with lead singer Taime Downe to talk about the show and what’s coming up for FP. To many, glam metal defined their lives, fashion and opinions in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Teased-out mullets, tight stone-washed jeans, too much whiskey and cigarettes, penicillin- these all made regular appearances on the scene, which centered around the music emerging from LA’s Sunset Strip. The almost mythical heart of the Sunset Strip was the Cathouse, a converted discotheque opened as a rock dance club by entrepreneurs Riki Rachtmann and Taime Downe in 1986. You should know Riki as the host of MTV’s “Headbangers Ball” from 1990-95 (and appearances on various “Rock of Love” iterations) and Taime as the lead singer of sleaze rockers Faster Pussycat. That is where our story begins. Taime was a struggling musician working at Melrose’s popular boutique, Retail Slut, and singing with FP. “Riki and I decided to start a dance club. (The Cathouse) was a place we could throw a party and didn’t have to clean up.” The club was only open one night a week and had a strict no-camera policy. It soon became a popular hangout for local bands and visiting musicians. “The first week we had 100 people, the second about 125. Aerosmith was there the third week (and they were still partying then). From then on, we were always over capacity (1200+).” As well as for the excessive partying with rock n’ roll’s finest, the Cathouse was well known for its high caliber, often unannounced shows. During its 6 year history, the club featured appearances by LA Guns, Guns n’ Roses, Black Crowes, Tool, Alice in Chains, STP, Alice Cooper and Danzig to name a few. Axl Rose even wears a Cathouse shirt in the video for Paradise City. Of course, Faster Pussycat played there, too, and were experiencing the apex of the commercial success with 1987′s self-titled debut and 1989′s Wake Me When It’s Over. Although FP is intrinsically considered a glam metal band, they were dirtier and scarier than their peers, taking the seedy sound and subjects to the extreme. By the time 1992′s Whipped! was released, glam metal was on the decline having been replaced by grunge as MTV’s favorite genre. By 1993, both FP and the Cathouse were gone. Up to this point, Taime had had a pretty good life- a successful night club, a gold record- but now it was time for a change of scenery and musical direction. He moved briefly to Chicago to work with underground industrial supergroup Pigface and then headed back to LA to start the Newlydeads, an industrial rock band he pushed through the late 2000s. During this time Taime continued to dabble in club ownership and management. In 2001, FP played their first show in eight years with basically the same line up as the Newlydeads. Now the band fused the industrial rock of the ’90s with the glam style of their original songs. They tour with mostly the same line up today and have just released their first live album, Front Row for the Donkey Show. I ended up catching up with Taime by phone the day after he was back from a couple weeks touring the Easter Seaboard. I told him that Akron is excited to see FP and confirmed that this won’t be his first visit to the North Coast. “Oh no. I’ve been through there many, many times. In fact, I’ve got a lot of family in the Youngstown area- I’m Italian. Do you know Warren?” Throughout our conversation, we were interrupted several times as Taime, who was sitting on his deck in LA, was attacked by flies and then a bee. I asked, “So did you take the first quarter million dollars you made and buy a nice house in the (Hollywood) Hills? Is that where you’re talking to me from?” “Shit, I never made a quarter million. The first thing I did was make sure my mom was taken care of. I can keep gypsy-ing my ass around for the rest of my life.” So what it’s like for Taime after 25 years on the road? Did he ever think that he’d still be making it as a pro touring musician, living his dream? “It’s what I’ve been doing since I was a teenager- I never gave ‘no’ a chance. Shit, I’m 46 years old now. This is what I do.”