Introducing rock to your kids #8 - Motorhead "Ace of Spades"

Walk down the street in Brooklyn.  Every toddler has a Stones shirt, an AC/DC shirt (or rather AB/CD), a Guns n' Roses shirt.  But how many kids rock a Motorhead shirt?  Very few and here's the reason why.

Motorhead is not, and will never be, mainstream rock.  They formed during the year I was born, 1975, and have essentially written the same song over and over for more than a quarter of a century.  Here's the formula:

1. Guitar riff starts out
2. Band kicks in
3. Lemmy begins shouting unintelligible lyrics
4. guitar solo
5. end

So why do Motorhead's fans love them if each song sounds like the next?  Because it's a really good song.  And the most famous of these is called "Ace of Spades," the opening track off their awesome album with the same name, released in 1980.

My son likes this song because of the few lyrics he is able to decipher.  This is a boy who requests the Eagles song "Witchy Woman" repeatedly, simply because it has the word "witch" in the title.  Somewhere during pre-k, he became fascinated with all forms of monsters:  zombies, vampires, goblins, devils, demons, witches, you name it.  "Ace of Spades" plays into this fascination, as Lemmy sings things like "dancing with the devil," "snake eyes watchin' you" and "don't forget the joker! (he relates this last lyric to Batman's Joker)."

So next time your strolling down a block in Brooklyn, make your way past the sea of Def Leppard onesies, grab your kid's hand and sing, "the only card I need is the ace of spades, the ace of spades."

Neal

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