
So I find myself counting down exactly 1 hour and 58 minutes until I get the beginning of 6 Cortizone injections, to enable me to stand for more than 20 minutes at a time. (Really looking foward to it)...sarcasm implied...
Now, on to the real reason why I'm "Blogging" today (who coined that term anyways???) that'll be on another "blog". I think of it as an "E-Diary", one more syllable, and that might take you to a whole new internet fetish...ewwwww!!!. Anywho - please excuse my A.D.D. moments...
So i was born in 1973, the first band i really got into was Kiss, I had "Alive I" I'm not sure if it was the music or the Circus surrounding the music, doesn't really matter, I was into it. Next it was Van Halen, then Black Sabbath (Dio) Heaven and Hell. Was this the beginning of "Hairbands"? I'm really not sure, they all had hair, and lots of it. I just thought it was normal to be a rocker and have long hair and be in a band. hmm Hairband anyone???
So I turned 14 and heard Motley Crue's Theatre of pain, saw the video "Home Sweet Home" and said "Uh, I want to do that. Great music, beautiful women and dudes that have lots of hair. I'll add here that Aerosmith's song "Dude looks like a lady" is about Vice Neil. Although i never thought that.
I get my first guitar, learn all the pre-requisites, Smoke on the water, Iron Man, In a Ga-da-da vida (in the garden of eden) with a lisp. and practiced my ass off, hours and hours of practice, to become a reasonably good guitar player.
The bands of my time and that I was into during my journey into "Rockdom" were Tesla, Skid Row, Queensryche, Dokken, Bon Jovi, Extreme, Mr. Big, Warrant, Poison.. you get the picture. All great bands with better than average musicians, and LOTS of hair!
The bands I was in, played all of these bands' songs and it was great. BUT then along came 1991-92, Enter Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and the whole Seattle music scene. I completly understand musical styles changing along with the generations, it happens about every 10 years.
What I DONT get however, is how the "hairband" era is looked upon. It's almost to the point where people think its laughable to have liked any of these bands. So its bad to be great, almost virtuoso musicians? Its bad to write melodic memorable songs, that you can actually sing along to? Maybe Poison held a glimpse into the future when they wrote " Gotta be bad to be good"
I guess what I'm really getting at is, who the fuck cares, I loved that music, I still do, and with the success of the "Rocklahoma" music festival each year, it clearly still stands the test of time. I just saw Britny Fox recently, and they kicked my ass. I sometimes wonder if people who decide to trash that era, if they really ever heard any of it? Doesn't really matter to me, so with that I say...
"When in doubt, I whip it out, got me a Rock-n-Roll band, it's a FREE FOR ALL!"
Scott