- published: 26 Jan 2016
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Steel Panther is a band from Los Angeles, California mostly known for their profane and humorous lyrics as well as their exaggerated on-stage personas that reimagine and parody the glam metal music and lifestyle of the 1980s. Formed in 2000, the band has formerly been known as Danger Kitty, Metal Shop and Metal Skool. Steel Panther is one of the most popular bands out of Hollywood since Motley Crue, Guns N’ Roses and Poison were the main focus the Sunset Strip in the mid to late 1980's. Arriving in 2009 with debut album Feel The Steel, hailed by Kerrang! magazine as “close to perfect”, Steel Panther has won a legion of fans across the world. And now the band is aiming even higher with second album Balls Out.
The band broke through the mainstream success with their 2009 album Feel the Steel, especially with the single "Death to All but Metal". "The Aldo Nova song "Fantasy" was remade by the band into a faster paced song for the MTV original series Rob Dyrdek's Fantasy Factory. The remake was released on iTunes on December 8, 2009 and their album Feel the Steel was released in June 2009.
Ernie Ball (c.1930 – September 9, 2004) was an American entrepreneur, musician, and innovator, widely acclaimed as a revolutionary in the development of guitar-related products. He began as a club and local television musician and small business entrepreneur, building an international business in guitars and accessories that would eventually gross US$40 million a year.
Born Sherwood Roland Ball in Santa Monica, California, USA, “Ernie” Ball grew up in a musical family. His grandfather wrote the standard, When Irish Eyes Are Smiling and his father was a car salesman who taught Hawaiian steel guitar on the side. Although Ball initially picked up the steel at age nine to please his father, he became bored and gave it up. In his early teens he began to take a renewed interest in the instrument, practicing as many as three hours a day. Within a year he was a member of the Musicians Union.
While still in his early teens, Ball began playing professionally in South Central Los Angeles beer bars. By age 19 he joined the Tommy Duncan Band playing pedal steel guitar. Duncan, the former lead singer with Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, took the band on tour through the Southwestern United States. During the Korean War, he did a tour of duty in the United States Air Force Band, playing guitar and bass drum. After the military he returned to Los Angeles and continued playing in barrooms and lounges, until landing a job on the 1950s “Western Varieties” program at KTLA television. The position soon gained him wider recognition in the Los Angeles music scene and led to studio work and teaching jobs.