Songoftheday 5/23/14 - know you don't really know me I know you don't really care to see me, I'm into total affection not being scared if you never please me...

Ratt - "Lay It Down"
from the album Invasion Of Your Privacy (1985)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #40 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 1

Today's Song of the Day belongs to the Californian glam metal band Ratt, who scored their first top-40 hit with their single "Round And Round" from their debut full-length album. It was no doubt helped by the music video, featuring a dragged-up Milton Berle, and was all over MTV. A year later, they released their sophomore set Invasion Of Your Privacy, and though the video for first single "Lay It Down" didn't have Milton, it did have a well-film concept of a kid's idea of a fun birthday, as well as a guitar riff that killed...

"Lay It Down" popped into the American top-40 for a week in August of 1985, while scaling to #11 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock radio chart. Internationally the single would be their first top-40 hit in Germany, and it was a minor hit in England (#77) and Switzerland (#61).

It would be the band's final time in the pop top-40; they would continue to sell albums and have a few more minor pop hits, ending with the more bluesy "Way Cool Jr.", which peaked at #75 in 1989. However, with declining sales and guitarist Robbin Crosby's heroin addiction causing him to exit the band, Ratt laid it down in 1991. After pursuing other projects separately, lead singer Stephen Pearcy and a couple of the original bandmates reunited, and with a self-titled album in 1999 had a single that cracked the top-40 on the rock chart, "Over The Edge". That reunion didn't last long, and not only did Ratt break up yet again, former guitarist Robbin Crosby, who was too messed up to participate in the 1999 album, and had already revealed that he was HIV positive, died of an overdose in 2002. After another brief reunion in 2000, the band fractured yet again, and you may see any myriad of lineups cavorting around the country performing the songs.

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Here's Ratt recorded live in England touring behind the album...

And an incarnation of Ratt featuring Pearcy from 2012...

Up tomorrow: Flint funksters want a gal Down Under....