All month long
VH-1 has been celebrating what they call Metal Month. The month will end in an awards show that I'm pretty sure Jethro Tull will not win an award at. Super Group debuted this past week (and it was mildly amusing., but can someone tell me, did Sebastian Bach try to have surgery or is that just age?). They have a 4-part documentary called
Heavy: The Story of Metal. I have seen the first episode. While I feel that they are kinda on track on how the music spread the way it did, I think they had a bit of narrow-minded-ness. To them Metal spawned from Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. While in some respect I can see that, Metal also spawned from Alice Cooper (grandfather of the now Goth Movement) and even as much as I regret saying it (Dynasty anyone), and Kiss (forefathers of the glam movement). The series episode titles seem to cover it all. "Welcome To My Nightmare" (episode 1), "Looks that Kill" (Glam Episode), "British Steel" (70s British Rock), and "Seek and Destroy" (as they word it, "A walk on the dark side").
One thing I notice (and perhaps that will change this evening) is that the heavier end of the spectrum is left in the lurch. While I love the mainstream glam as much as the next gal, I must say there has been little to no mention of harder stuff. Everything they are playing is mainstream safe music. I think something like this would have been better suited to
FUSE rather than VH-1. I have yet to hear a mention of the heavier side of metal, even the skater punk music of the 80s (hell Suicidal was in Encino man), the thrash end has been well, vanilla, and heaven forbid I have yet to hear a mention of death metal. I don't know if they feel playing
Some Kind of Monster covers their butt on that end, but if you didn't like Metallica before, watching them cry will make you like them even less.
Anyhow, I'm babbling,
Rock Honors will be Wednesday May 31, 2006 and the honorees are Kiss, Queen, Judas Priest, and Def Leppard. No mention which members will be in Kiss makeup. Am I thrilled with the choices? Not necessarily. Will I watch? Yes. Bands performing that evening will be Foo Fighters, All American Rejects and Godsmack. There is also an Air Guitar Championship.
I think for nostalgia's sake it will be fun. The whole month has been. But as always I'm left feeling a bit miffed that many of my favorites have been left by the side for the vanilla side of rock. The month is almost over, but if you find yourself sitting around the house doing nothing this holiday weekend, kick back and relax with the older stuff. Nothing ground breaking here. You may find some laughs. Of course remember to watch the
Pantera BTM Friday night. Our touch of sprinkles on the vanilla sundae of Metal.