The Steel Horse Archives: Firehouse, “Don’t Treat Me Bad”

FIREHOUSE
TITLE: “Don’t Treat Me Bad”
ALBUM: Firehouse
RELEASE DATE: Aug. 21, 1990

Why You Remember Them: For one of two reasons: Either for their two-ply, baby-soft semi-rocker “Don’t Treat Me Bad,” in which our protagonist testifies, at some length, about being treated bad (he’s against it), or the power-tool ballad “Love of a Lifetime,” which actually caused spontaneous intestinal combustion in listeners in California in 1990. Oh, of course you didn’t hear about that in your elitist anti-Firehouse mainstream media.

Number Of Your Judgmental Hypocrites Who Bought This Record in 1990: 2 million. I see you, Bradshaw.

Key Tracks: “Don’t Treat Me Bad,” “Love of a Lifetime,” “All She Wrote”

Means by Which Firehouse Served as Unintentional Metaphor for the Uncomfortably Visible Death of a Major Awards Telecast: Legendarily, at the 1992 American Music Awards, Firehouse won for best New Hard Rock/Metal Band over Alice in Chains and Saigon Kick. Wait, I mean Nirvana. Their acceptance speech, in short, went something like this: “Guys, we are so, so sorry.”

Number of Firehouses You Have to Click Through on Google to Get to This One: Two: the sandwich-based fast-food chain and, you know, one about people who fight fires and junk.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/ZAeRkhyEkZk" width="600" height="344" allowfullscreen="true" fvars="fs=1" /]

Is There Some Way the Director of the Video Could Work in That Band Name?: Fantastic question. How about a piping-hot “circle of fire” effect that pretty much is a frame-by-frame remake of the opening of Bonanza? DONE. Also, how about a set decorated with as many tiny, controlled sort-of-blazes as a $650 budget would allow. DONE. What about even an album cover in which a strangely unattractive model stands in front of a mural of a building with flame decals taped on it? PRINT IT, LUCY.

Is There Chest Hair in That Video?: God, is there.

But America Sucks. Is There Some Other Place They’re Still Popular?: Yes! Much like the execrable Mr. Big, Firehouse remained huge in Japan, Thailand and Singapore, where music fans are dumb. According to the Wikipedia Internet Machine, Firehouse is estimated to have sold 7 million albums worldwide. Do you hear that, American Music Awards? You can come out now!

Best Part of Their Wikipedia Entry: “The band’s first Indian date, in Shillong When the Maharaja of Tripura Kirit Pradyot Deb Burman invited them, took place in front of a sold out stadium crowd of over 40,000.” Way to suck, Mayor Burman.

Most Improbable Song Title: They’re actually all really innocuous: “Reach for the Sky,” “Body Language,” “Take Me Away,” “Jumpin’ .” FireHouse may be the only hair band in the world to have avoided the post-Nirvana self-loathing freakout. YAWN.

Recent News: The song “Don’t Walk Away” appeared in The Wrestler, marking the 13th time that Firehouse and Bruce Springsteen appeared on the same Mickey Rourke soundtrack.

Arbitarily Scored Ferocity of Devil-Horns Thrust: 1. Fire bad.