Mike Saunders

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For the Canadian football player of the same name see Mike Saunders (football player).

Mike Saunders (born May 1952), better known as "Metal" Mike Saunders, is a rock critic and the singer of the Californian punk band Angry Samoans. He is credited with coining the music genre label "heavy metal" in a record review for Humble Pie's As Safe As Yesterday Is in the November 12, 1970 issue of Rolling Stone Magazine. (The original text is shown in the VH1 Classic documentary Heavy: the Story of Metal [1] from 2007). Six months later, he used the phrase again while reviewing Sir Lord Baltimore's first album, Kingdom Come, in the pages of Creem magazine in 1971.^[1]

Saunders was born in Little Rock, Arkansas in May 1952 and grew up in Little Rock. One odd note to his early life is that up to the age of five he lived across the alley from The Insect Trust clarinetist and rock & blues critic Robert Palmer (author/producer). He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in Statistics in 1973; eventually he received another bachelor's degree in Accounting from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, and kept his day job as an accountant throughout his years as a lead singer and guitarist for the Angry Samoans from 1978-present.

Saunders' political incorrectness and personal attacks in his lyrics got him and the Angry Samoans a lot of attention in the early 80's, especially due to their song "Get Off the Air." "Get Off the Air" was an ad hominem attack upon well-known KROQ DJ Rodney Bingenheimer.

Bumped/fired from drums to become a "frontman" in the tradition of fired-drummers Joey Ramone, Skip Spence, Iggy Pop, and Steven Tyler (Steven Tyler), Saunders played drums in these gigging bands:

VOM (punk rock band) see Angry Samoans (los angeles 1977 - 78) (with Richard Meltzer and future Angry Samoan Gregg Turner)
Fried Abortions (san francisco 1980 - 1982) who changed two members and their name to
Lennonburger (SF 1983-1984) (with MRR Jeff Bale on lead vocals)
Electric Koels (SF 1985 - 1988) 60's retro-garage band, 5 originals and 55 cover tunes

and also drummed on all the "Metal Mike" CDs usually missing from Angry Samoans discographies. Although he maintains that "drums are my best instrument," Saunders has written over 1,000 rock songs in his lifetime, all methodically recorded to mono on old fashioned Sony portable kitchen-table cassette recorders.

[edit] Discography

see Angry Samoans; as "Metal Mike", he recorded:
Plays The Hits of The 90's (CD-ep) (1991)
Ted Nugent Is Not My Dad (CD-ep) (1992)
My Girlfriend Is A Rock (CD-ep) (1993)
Next Stop Nowhere (CD 22-song comp) (1994)
Surf City Or Bust (CD) (20 tks inc. the 1969 Rockin' Blewz unpressed album I'M A ROADRUNNER MOTHERFUCKA) (1999)