When Peroxide Ruled the World

God knows why, but during the commercial breaks for the Star Trek Movie Marathon on Spike (which conspicuously lacked Wrath of Khan...what's that all about?) yesterday, I switched to VH1 and caught little glimpses of their special "When Metal Ruled the World" (I was indeed desperate to avoid another commercial for the John Benson Project. Is it just me, or is he begging for an on-camera atomic wedgie?). They of course refer to Hair Metal, not actual Heavy metal of the Black Sabbath/Motorhead/Metallica tradition, but the Music Historian in me watched anyway. I saw all the bad hair and all the grotesque lipstick, and some images of girls, too.

I sat through all of this for the purpose of enjoying the hair-god's inevitable fall: how the kids dropped Poison like so much radioactive debris when they heard "Smells Like Teen Spirit." But the show ruined it by making the unforgivable mistake of allowing Vince Neil to whine about it. He didn't like grunge then, and doesn't like it now, and can't understand why anyone would want to listen to something depressing and heavy when they could jam to the high-octane escapist fun that was Motely Crue.

Poor Vince. All those platinum records, and he never scraped together the wherewithal to buy himself a piece of self-awareness. Did no one bother to mention to him that every crappy pop act justifies themselves as "just being good fun?" That's how every teenage girl explained her loyalty to N'Sync or Britney or Andy Gibb. Hell, ABBA is a fun escape from the day-to-day grind if you've had enough champagne at a wedding.

You wanna know why Nirvana's downward spiral struck such a chord? It's simple. A lot of kids felt about music and pop culture the same way they did in the summer of '91. A lot of kids were tired of having to pretend to admire as rock heroes a bunch of useless drug chimps prancing in spandex making a bad imitation of the New York Dolls. A lot of kids identified more with songs about post-modern confusion and irony than songs about racing down the Sunset Strip in a red Lamborghini with five grand of blow in your schnozz. You can argue about whether Kurt Cobain was any more admirable, given that he and Nikki Six had similar tastes in narcotics. But Cobain was at least trying to say something, even if that something was negative and derivative.

I'm hoping that one of these days these hacks grasp that, that their time on the horse (bad pun! BAD!) lasts only so long as there's nothing better around. Nirvana was a potent blend of garage, punk, and blues. Hair Metal was an exercise in faux-musical sybaritism. So Vince, I'm sure Dave Grohl is really sorry that he burst your happy bubble. I'm sure if you got in touch with him, he'd apologize. Good luck with that.