Why Hair Metal is Better than Thrash Metal

Don't get me wrong, not all hair metal is good music and not all thrash is bad music. I'm a fan of both genres, thrash metal is still newer to me but I love it. And what this article means to say is not really to express a personal opinion stating that hair metal is better than thrash metal, because I do not feel that way, I just wanted to supply some counter-arguments to the belief that hair metal sucks and that thrash should be acclaimed. Cause I hear that too much, hair metal gets too much unnecessary hate, and some thrash metal gets inexplicably high amounts of love in comparison, so I wanted to offer some points that would even out the score a little bit.

     First of all, hair metal songs are much more song oriented and individual songs do a better job of maintaining song individuality and recognizability. For example, if you hear a hair metal song on the radio, most likely the name of the song and band will come to mind instantly if it is a song you are even somewhat familiar with. Thrash metal songs individually are much less distinctive. Listening to a thrash metal album, you may not even be aware when a song ends and when a new one beings. You hear a thrash song on the radio and you may be able to identify the genre or maybe the band if their musicianship is distinctive enough, but the songs don't have a particular sense of individual identity. With the low growling vocals and long guitar solos and lack of any catchy choruses or vocal melodies, it can be hard for any people, music experts to amateurs, to tell the difference. 

     Hair metal generally is also a lot more positive. It tends to focus on the happy, good things in life, it says that life is a nice big fun party and you should go enjoy it to it's maximum. Maybe it preaches some irresponsibility as we'll, but overall it is a kind of music which celebrates the fun and joy of life. It brings out better moods and more optimistic feelings than thrash metal does. Let's face it- thrash metal is not something you would play at a wedding or at a good natured party. Its main themes include death, violence, and pure negativity. That definitely has it's time and place, as anything does, but good feelings are generally a lot healthier than bad ones and that is a major difference between the two bands.

     And now let's get superficial. Visually, hair metal was maybe the greatest genre of music that ever lived. Taking influences from Shock Rock and the early 70s glam rock, hair metal produced a look that was fun, colorful, and exciting. I'm not the only person out there who could watch hair metal videos all day long and not get tired! The musicians were mostly pretty gorgeous and I love the hair- admit it, you do too. The image of these long haired and happy looking musicians making videos that make you laugh and entertain you and being out such positive vibes, the idea of these lucky Californian boys living the dream life, it really is great. It's a great music scene visually, the visual aspect is probably greater than the music, and let's face it, the image does take a large role in a band's success and fan appeal. The whole image of thrash metal was much darker and less inviting. Hair metal said "Come party with us, we'll have a great time," while thrash metal said "Get out of here, we don't care about you." Which reception do you prefer?

      I shall remind you again that in this argument I am neutral and take no side, I love thrash and hair metal, but hearing so much about how hair metal bands are garbage and so much praise for thrash is starting to bug me and I wanted to make sure some good counter arguments on the topic were made. But both genres were great and should be loved. And really, I still don't understand how music as positive as hair metal can be so hated, and as negative as thrash can be so loved. So ironic...     

      

Hair Metal Is Not (Necessarily) A Derogatory Term

     Hair metal was a term originally coined as a sort of derogatory reference to the American rock bands of the 80s. While many fans of bands like Motley Crue, Bon Jovi or Dokken vehemently hate the term and call it insulting, I, biggest hair metal maniac out there, have got to take a second to say that it really isn't a rude thing at all.
     Hair metal means hair, as in the look of these bands, and metal, as in the music of these bands. The two are mentioned in equal importance in the monicker because in this genre, the look was every bit as important as the music. Don't deny that. Hair metal was about being hot, and singing about being hot. It's a central value of the genre of music, so it only makes sense that the title of this brand of music relates to the appearance as well as the music of these groups.
     Hair metal was a term coined by thrash bands which was meant originally as a way to write off these bands as rubbish. That much is true. However, it's still simply just a word. The word itself is not rude or derogatory, it is the intention with which the word is used. I say hair metal in a positive manner and to me it is a simple and correct term which applies well to so many of my favorite groups. Others may say hair metal in the context of "just another crappy hair metal band" and that to me is wrong and derogatory, but it is not the word hair metal which is insulting here. It is the way people use it to generalize and write off all those bands. The same goes for all other categories of music too. You can say "just another crappy hair metal band" just as easily as "just another crappy grunge band" or "just another crappy thrash band." Anything can be made to be an insult. We call redheads gingers, don't we?
     And plus, hair metal is just the normal, current term for this brand of music. If classic rock from the 80s is John Mellencamp and Bruce Springsteen heavy metal is Iron Maiden and Motorhead, and pop music is Madonna and Michael Jackson, well, what we call hair metal cannot really be associated with any of those bands. Hair metal is too pop to be rock, too heavy to be pop and too commercial to be rock. It is a separate entity, its own kind of music. That's not to say it isn't versatile though. Within hair metal you find many other divisions. There are "pretty" or "glam" bands like Poison, there are "sleazy" bands like Guns N' Roses or Faster Pussycat. Some of these bands even have a direct blues influence like Cinderella or Whitesnake. The term hair metal designates such a wide range of music that to use it as a write off is ignorant as well as pointless. Hair metal is a term, a word, simply to help distinguish a very awesome kind of music. Anybody who finds it derogatory has just got to get over themselves by now, or simply change their perspective.

I Don't Think Janis Joplin Was A Suicide

...Title says it all. I don't. I've been reading about Janis and the state she was in before her death lately, and the more I read, the more I feel that it wasn't suicide. It may have been an accidental overdose, or it may have been foul play... I have a strong feeling it was foul play.
Janis Joplin wasn't always a very happy person, buy everybody who was around her in the time shortly before she passed away said they had never seen her happier. She was working on Pearl and planning on getting married. It was believed that she was really picking herself up and moving along after the demise of Big Brother and the Holding Company.
That makes it seem to me that she herself didn't want to do herself in; the circumstances under which her body was found also suggest foul play. She had track marks up her arm, a bloody broken nose, and her body was found in her hotel room wedged in between the bed and nightstand. It's possible she OD'd, fell down, broke her nose and was stuck there. It's a long shot though. I can't help but feel that somebody else was involved, something else happened which the world may never know about... But until more concrete evidence is found, we can only speculate that it was an overdose.

The Censorship of Motley Crue's "You're All I Need".

I'm an honest person, and I can say quite honestly that while hair metal kicked a lot of ass, a lot of those ballads really SUCKED ass. The late 80s turned out a lot of sap. But a couple really, really good songs also came out of that era. Guns N' Roses had Estranged, Bon Jovi had Wanted Dead or Alive. Motley Crue had You're All I Need.
While most ballads traditionally have been about things such as love, or about loved ones passed on, You're All I Need is about both, but it puts a very different twist on things. It's a chilling story of obsession, about a derranged teenager who falls head over heels with a girl who just doesn't love him back the way he thinks he loves her, so he murders her so nobody else can have her.
It's a fascinating song and story. Not only are the lyrics and the story based on an interesting, poignant subject matter,the poetry of them and the style they're written in is genius. Beautiful lyrics accompanied by a haunting guitar solo, a great piano intro, and Vince's dramatic and emotional vocals, with Nikki's creepy lyrics. It's an utterly perfect song. The black and white video suits it supremely well, following the story of the song. It was a well casted, non cheesy video. The whole act screamed of classiness, and I consider the video to be one of the most important ever made: a sad, true reminder that sometimes, obsession can be mistaken for love, and that sometimes love can just go too far.
So of course the video gets banned. Wow. Figures. Motley would go and create such a masterpiece and then MTV would repay them by refusing to play their video. Why? Because the video's depiction of murder was "too violent" for television.
Okay honestly, come on and give me a break. It's not a violent video. It shows the cops cleaning up, it shows the aftermath of the murder, but not a drop of blood is shed over the course of the video. On top of that, back in the eighties even, there was Madonna. MTV absolutely ate her up, playing her shocking videos in heavy roatation. MTV would play Madonna's videos featuring shocking sexuality, which is far more damaging to our society with a video featuring traces of violence off screen. This was all a perfect case of the media overreacting. Motley Crue were a metal band with a bad boy image. Forget the fact that they were louay fighters and sweethearts. MTV saw them as street trash, so their most beautiful video was labelled as street trash.
To me, my friends, this is the ultimate in senseless prejudice. People just want to associate garbage with trash. Motley weren't trash and this video sure wasn't. When it was censored from MTV, a lot of kids didn't see an important cultural landmark and there's a good chance society suffered more from the video's lack of airplay than they would have had the "graphic" video been aired.

The Death of Steve Marriott and a Very Scary Coincedence

When Steve Marriott, frontman and guitarist of Humble Pie and the Small Faces, died at age 44 back in 1991, nobody was really surprised to hear that he was gone. He had a strong cocaine habit, and he was also a heavy smoker and drinker. The cause of his death was the shocker: house fire. Steve was alone when he died, so we can never know exactly what happened, but it is speculated that Marriott, exhausted and jet lagged, lit a cigarette, fell asleep and dropped it, which caught the house on fire. Firefighters found his body next to his bed as if he was trying to escape.
It's a sad, strange story, but thanks to an obscure old article, it's about to get stranger. It doesn't matter if this is true or not, point is, Steve Marriott stated in an interview in a 1975 CREEM magazine that when he was fourteen, he was smoking cigarettes in the school washroom, dropped one, and burnt down part of the school.
Wow. What a coincedence. Either there was some crazy karma going on here or Stevie really was the victim of a vengeful fate...