"Over The Edge" - Ratt

Buy this song on iTunes

This song just came on the "Hair Guitar" SonicTap channel on DirecTV, so I felt compelled to write about it.

When this song, and the album it was on, Ratt's self-titled 1999 album came out, I was living with my (now recently deceased) aunt in a small town north of Kansas City, MO called Plattsburg.  I had recently moved back in with my aunt as my uncle had just passed away and I was there to keep her company while she was still adjusting to life without him.  A store had just opened in Plattsburg called Place's, which is kind of a cross between an old-school TG&Y (if you're even old enough to remember those stores) and a Dollar General.  Anyway, Place's had a very very small electronics section, and I was beyond thrilled to find the new Ratt CD on the shelf and bought it then and there.  I played it over and over and over, and fell in love with the first song on the disc, "Over The Edge".  Shortly after the album's release, I got the opportunity to see Ratt live for the very first time ever, at Roadhouse Ruby's South in Olathe, KS.  This would mark the first of what would become dozens of Ratt live shows for me.

Over the years, Ratt would occasionally put "Over the Edge" in the set, and it made me scream for joy every single time.  One such time I remember clearly, the band was playing a field behind the Silver Slipper Saloon (strip club...ha!) in Ottawa, IL on the Metal Edge Rockfest tour in 2002.  The crowd happened to have quieted down some, and the band began the familiar intro to the song, and I squealed...and several hundred heads turned to look at me like I was a crazy person.  Good times.  That was also the show where I got nearly the worst sunburn I ever got in my life, second only to the one I got last year in the Bahamas.  Brutal.  I was hurting.  Drove all the way back to KC without a seatbelt on because I would have rather risked death than have a seatbelt cross my charred shoulders.  My at-the-time boyfriend, Jeremy, also was burned, and I remember as we were hanging out in the strip club for the afterparty, Ratt bassist Robbie Crane comes over to greet us, and did that guy thing to Jeremy where you kind of smack another dude across the back in lieu of hugging them.  Jer yelped like a dog whose tail had been stepped on.  Minutes after Robbie did that, Warrant drummer Mike Fasano came over and did the same thing to him.  It was funny.  I mean, pain is funny, right? LOL