A Poll To Make Your Head Explode

[|iR|Focalor]

This poll sucks.

[Sgt. Dick]

The best thing Warrant ever did was have Bobbie Brown in there videos.

I wanted to vote for this band, but they were not in the poll.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gU5Vg2JokU

[bluemeanies]

These guys are the worst 80's hair band.

Bet you can't watch the whole thing...

<span data-s9e-mediaembed="youtube" style="display:inline-block;width:100%;max-width:640px"><span style="display:block;overflow:hidden;position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%"><iframe allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no" style="background:url(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/x1W6-ErrHls/hqdefault.jpg) 50% 50% / cover;border:0;height:100%;left:0;position:absolute;width:100%" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/x1W6-ErrHls"></iframe></span></span><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/x1W6-ErrHls" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/x1W6-ErrHls</a>

[bluemeanies]

2 minutes in and I seriously think these guys have fucked each other at least a few times...

[Sgt. Dick]

2 minutes in and I seriously think these guys have fucked each other at least a few times...

 

I made it through the video, it was painful and funny at the same time.

[fdrjk]

warrant.

i feel better knowing im not the only one who hates hair metal.

[Sgt. Dick]

i feel better knowing im not the only one who hates hair metal.

I'll admit that I thought it was pretty good at the time, some of it I still do.  I was a fan of bands like Def Leppard, AC/DC, ZZ Top, Scorpions, Queensryche, Bon Jovi, Quiet Riot, Motley Crue, Ozzy, Guns & Roses, Van Halen.

If there are any guys who were teens in the Disco days, I know you were styling in your leisure suits.
 

[|iR|Focalor]

Europe... Nelson... ewww.

No, I don't have to watch that Nelson video all the way through. I already watched it plenty back in 1990 when they played it all the time on MTV. I grew up in the 80's watching a lot of shit on the Disney channel like a lot of kids. Back then, they still aired quite a bit of the older classic shit. It was weird seeing how much those two looked just like Ricky Nelson did back in the late 50's and early 60's. Never particularly liked their music, but I'd watch it on MTV mainly because my sister was into that late 80's/early 90's hair band power ballad shit like most girls were. Yeah, Europe too. Back then, we thought that hair band shit was bad-ass since they had long hair and crazy clothes.

Not ALL the hair metal bands were completely useless. A few of them, minus the crappy lyrics and vocals, made decent tunes and had some pretty bad ass guitarists. Skid Row for example. Sebastian Bach was a fucking puke, but guitarist Dave Sabo could play the shit out of a guitar. White Lion's another example. White Lion sucks fucking balls, but guitarist Vito Bratta was one bad motherfucker.

Warrant and Poison on the other hand... they sucked from every angle. Out of both bands, C.C. DeVille was the only one with any resemblance of talent, and he still sucked in my opinion.

i feel better knowing im not the only one who hates hair metal.

I'll admit that I thought it was pretty good at the time, some of it I still do.  I was a fan of bands like Def Leppard, AC/DC, ZZ Top, Scorpions, Queensryche, Bon Jovi, Quiet Riot, Motley Crue, Ozzy, Guns & Roses, Van Halen.

If there are any guys who were teens in the Disco days, I know you were styling in your leisure suits.
 

AC/DC is NOT hair metal. AC/DC came out of the 70's before that shit was ever conceived. AC/DC is and always was just plain old no-frills hard rock. ZZ Top was 70's too and purely blues rock, although I think they technically started in the very late 60's. Their first album as "ZZ Top" came out in 71, but Billy Gibbons started playing in bands back in the 60's.

I know [BTF]DeathStalker likes him some BeeGee's. I remember him putting together a video of a Coca-Cola 600 race at Charlotte Motor Speedway that we ran in BTR with the Nascar Racing 2003 video game and it featured some BeeGee's music at one point. Nascar and BeeGee's... that shit just ain't right.

[fdrjk]

i feel better knowing im not the only one who hates hair metal.

I'll admit that I thought it was pretty good at the time, some of it I still do.  I was a fan of bands like Def Leppard, AC/DC, ZZ Top, Scorpions, Queensryche, Bon Jovi, Quiet Riot, Motley Crue, Ozzy, Guns & Roses, Van Halen.

If there are any guys who were teens in the Disco days, I know you were styling in your leisure suits.
 

i dont know, the whole sound just doesnt appeal to me at all. plus, the really over the top vocals in most hair metal i think sound silly as hell. i love glam rock like t.rex and the new york dolls, though.

never been a fan of van halen or guns n roses either.

[quadz]

never been a fan of van halen or guns n roses either.

Though the playlists on my system don't seem to have much Van Halen in them anymore, this sort of sound was carving out new territory in 1979:

<span data-s9e-mediaembed="youtube" style="display:inline-block;width:100%;max-width:640px"><span style="display:block;overflow:hidden;position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%"><iframe allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no" style="background:url(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/G2EzV5WSjFg/hqdefault.jpg) 50% 50% / cover;border:0;height:100%;left:0;position:absolute;width:100%" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/G2EzV5WSjFg"></iframe></span></span><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/G2EzV5WSjFg" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/G2EzV5WSjFg</a>

One aspect of their production on early albums that I didn't notice until years later, and which still strikes me as badass, is it doesn't follow the familiar model of multiple/backing guitar tracks, rhythm guitar tracks under the solo, etc.

Rather it's just, plug in the guitar, crank the Marshall to maximum, pan it left a bit, add some reverb... and it's just one track! When he does fills or solos, there's no backing guitar track. Really kind of ballsy and awesome, and amazing the resulting sound was so full, considering.

[fdrjk]

meh, the riff is p good, but that hard rock/heavy metal sound just never appealed to me, man. i love black sabbath though.

[haunted]

Fader, don't talk dirty to me... (poison reference/never badmouth Eddie van halen again)

[|iR|Focalor]

Van Halen was so unlike anything else at the time. Just the sound of the guitar alone. He used to use an old late-60's 100watt Marshall amp that he'd crank all the juice he could get through it, and then run THAT signal through yet another amp. A little later, he hooked up with somebody that custom modded his Marshall amps, which if I'm not mistaken, was kinda-sorta the blueprint for his 5150 line of signature series amps from Peavey back in the 90's. But he was a total innovator. He took all the crazy shit that Hendrix was doing with whammy bars and went fuckin' nuts with it. Basically every last guitarist from the 80's metal era and beyond owes their style of playing to him.

Then you had the wild man David Lee Roth on vocals. Dude just sounded like the best crazy party ever on every album.

And Alex Van Halen... holy shit, you can't find a better drummer than him. Dudes kits were so expansive. And his timing was always perfect. You fucking test metronomes by Alex Van Halen, not the other way around.

And the member that never got enough credit for creating their overall hooky sound was Michael Anthony on bass. He was a pretty good bassist, but an even better backup vocalist. All those harmonized chorus hooks are due solely to his backup vocals.

And after David Lee Roth parted ways, they brought Sammy Hagar aboard. I'm more of a David Lee Roth man than a Sammy Hagar man, but they did do some decent shit with Hagar. And the cool part about having Hagar was that Sammy could play rhythm guitar while singing, freeing up Eddie to do all that gay shit with synths that he got into. Remember watching a few old Van Halen full concert videos years ago. Never got to see them live in person, but the videos always made their shows look like the best fucking concert you could ever hope to witness.

[fdrjk]