" Hair Metal" vs Grunge

[Marla1977]

Heavy metal is the only real metal.

Megadeth, Metallica, Anthrax, Motorhead, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath...etc.

Love ballads are not in their vocabulary.

Back then the genres weren't nearly as defined as they are now. It was all METAL. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=g-R1OaUrMf8

 

[Luk]

Agreed it had become a cartoon of itself.

I always kind of thought that maybe my dislike a Pearl Jam was Eddie Vedder specific but I can't really stand Bono but I love U2s music.

Where do you stand on Van Hagar?

When Van Halen was really Van Halen I was not a David Lee Roth fan and he just seemed self-aggrandizing in my perception of him was that he was sort of loud and I didn't really think of him as musically talented.

Sammy Hagar I already liked all right and I thought that would be a good combination but I don't know it just didn't work for me. Van Hagar sounded to me like a Van Halen cover band that wasn't very good. Could have been Eddie's personal and drug problems and the addition of keyboards I don't know.

I was watching David Lee Roth interviewed by Rogan, and he was both more of a self-aggrandizing cartoon of himself than I thought but also I had way more depth and musical training and experience than I had any idea about. His personal life sounded pretty interesting going kayaking while he was at the height of Fame down the Hudson River? WTF? Kind of awesome.

Kinda cute, we feel the same way about U2. And there is no Van Hagar. It's Van Fuckin' Halen.

I saw Roth on Rogan. It was cool for him to talk about how dark his lyrics were no matter the catchiness of the songs.

 

[Hal9000_]

Back then the genres weren't nearly as defined as they are now. It was all METAL. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=g-R1OaUrMf8

No way. Skid Row was never METAL. Or Guns n Roses...or any Hair band.

 

[Marla1977]

No way. Skid Row was never METAL. Or Guns n Roses...or any Hair band.

The dreadful and pejorative term "hair metal" was never, ever, not once used in the eighties/early nineties. It was all Heavy Metal. Rock was never better then at the 80s/early 90s when Heavy Metal bands were ruling the world. When grunge came out, it became fashionable to be average musicians, sing songs about depression and cringe at anyone who had big hair and was actually good at playing an instrument. In that wake of Grunge there were a lot of bands that didn't deserve to be thrown by the wayside.



I think Nirvana is overrated in the sense that people act like they are the greatest band to have made grunge music when in my eyes Alice in Chains, Sound Garden, Stone Temple Pilots (early albums), Mother Love Bone are much better bands in terms of musical talent. They were also somewhat responsible for taking the guitar solo out of music that had been so prominent in the 70s and 80s and I hate them for that. For me their whole status is massively inflated by this (perceived by many) rebellious rock ' n roll suicide romanticism of Cobain shooting himself dead at the age of 27 after years as a heroin junkie, so it's like that whole James Dean thing (who was a lousy actor who made a few mostly pretty terrible movies that gained huge appeal after his death) and John Belushi (for me a moderately talented comedian) and Sid Vicious (who never had a single musical bone in his body) - you wonder if guys like this had lived they'd all by now be living in disgraceful middle-age, and starring on celebrity ballroom dancing reality shows? As a fan of "hair metal" , I like discussing its rise and fall. I miss the 80s/early 90s good times and good memories. I grew up on heavy metal. love hair metal. There was some good rock music in the 80s-early 90s. Rock music was butchered in 90s by media and people who were jealous of rock music's popularity. Late 80s/early 90s for me was the best years ever

 

[Marla1977]

No way. Skid Row was never METAL. Or Guns n Roses...or any Hair band.

One thing you have to admit; as goofy as the 80's hair band guitarists looked with the big hair, make-up and spandex they spent years mastering their craft with blistering guitar riffs and killer solos whereas Cobain shot up the charts playing rinky-dink power chords and amateurish piss ant guitar solos. Go figure! A few months back I was in a local music store and saw this young 15-ish looking boy playing the guitar intro to Alice Cooper's "Poison" on a Fender Strat. I walked up to him and shook his hand and thanked him for NOT playing that "Come as you are" or "Smells like Teen Spirit" bullshit like most people I hear his age play. Judging from the smile he gave me he knew exactly what I was getting at!

 

[heathergives]

Heavy metal is the only real metal.

Megadeth, Metallica, Anthrax, Motorhead, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath...etc.

Love ballads are not in their vocabulary.

Def Leppard = heavy melody.

 

[Marla1977]

No way. Skid Row was never METAL. Or Guns n Roses...or any Hair band.

You can laugh at the haircuts, videos, outfits, lyrics and album covers and the banality of power chords but there was a reason why this stuff was popular - it had some fine hooks, riffs and great hot singers. I wish Heavy Metal songs could be top 10 hits on the Hot 100 again played along with the pop and rap songs on radio stations. I just wish that rock/metal ruled the world again. Metal's glory years were 1980-1992. I'm a big fan of those years in Metal .'Hair Metal' was SOOO huge that top 10 Billboard charts and MTV most requested videos we're metal almost top to bottom for a few years. That's why I pick up Hair metal over Grunge. I never liked music only to be depressing, pessimist or dull. Never been a fan or existentialism in music

Of course "serious" magazines and bullshit judgements by the comitee (Rolling Stone and others) media only pick up music to depress like indie, grunge, punk, etc. All Cobain sang about was depression, gloom, doom, misery, angst, despair, loss and a terrible life growing up. Sure, he wasn't the first nor the last to sing songs like that but that was ALL he sang about! Take John Lennon for example; his dad abandoned him and his mom when he was a kid and John was practically destroyed when his mother was killed by an off duty police officer who was driving drunk but looking at his music it wasn't all about doom and gloom......and he didn't commit suicide either. All that alternative music that sounds the same was or is never going to be rock and roll. It was Nirvana who took the spirit of rock and messed it up completely. Kurt Cobain was heavily influenced by the Meat Puppets and the Pixies and told anyone who cared that the Teen Spirit structure came straight from Gouge Away. And the riff from Come As You Are was taken from Killing Joke's Eighties . Nirvana have no meaning behind their lyrics. To quote Kurt himself "a lot of times when I write lyrics it's in the last second because I'm lazy. Then I find myself having to come up with explanations". 99% of the time, Nirvana wrote down random phrases, tied them together and let people make up bullshit about it. Listen to today's commercial rock music and then listen to Nirvana. Any difference? They even wear almost the same clothes. Nirvana influenced those.

Give me Kiss over Sex Pistols, give me Bon Jovi over The Cure, Def Leppard over Nirvana, Poison over Pixies, Guns n Roses over Sonic Youth, etc. For me the late 80s/early 90s were a great time to be a metal fan. I think it was a lot of fun, got our blood flowing...unlike grunge that came after it, with it's gloomy outlook on life. After 1994 I found it harder to get excited about newer metal bands. I still love and listen to the older 80's and early 90's metal.

 

[BotanyBoy]

You can laugh at the haircuts, videos, outfits, lyrics and album covers and the banality of power chords but there was a reason why this stuff was popular - it had some fine hooks, riffs and great hot singers. I wish Heavy Metal songs could be top 10 hits on the Hot 100 again played along with the pop and rap songs on radio stations. I just wish that rock/metal ruled the world again. Metal's glory years were 1980-1992.

Metal's glory years are right now.....due to the internet metal flourishes on a global scale and is better than ever.

Vitalism for example is amazing.

Pop music today is what's in the dumpster and on fire.

 

[Chernosoth]

Grunge was a stage in rock music running out of new things to do. Rock now is mostly dead and replaced by rap, like rock succeeded jazz and blues. Personally, grunge was my era. Decades later, I still like some of Nirvana and not much else in the grunge bin. Hair metal is still silly BS. Rock had already peaked before the hair metal era.

 

[jaF0]

Post Rock Instrumental.

Russian Circles, Pray For Sound, Tides Of Man, Coma Recovery, et al.

 

[jaF0]

Symphonic Rock.

Nightwish, Epica, Kamelot, et al.

 

[ctarrantella]

I just found this thread.
Dead on!! Nailed it!!

 

[HumpDayHoratio]

As a fan of many genres of music this is an interesting topic. I saw an interview with Dee Snider of Twisted Sister several years ago explaining what happened in the hair metal era. I couldn’t find that exact clip but found another where he’s riffing (and adding to) his theory. Enjoy!