Sunday
Jul262009
This Video Irks Me
Sunday, July 26, 2009 at 12:01AM
Here's a video with a bunch of thrash bands mocking our Glam heroes. Screw that...and while we're on the subject, Glam bands have better guitarists than trash acts, too. So there.
Reader Comments (13)
I've been playing guitar seriously since I was 11 (that would be 35 years now!)You are correct in that playing faster does noe equate to commercial sucess (see Malmsteen,Yngwie for example) It pretty much comes down to the hooks & big azzed choruses that GIRLS will sing along too and purchase. Because you know what, if the girls dig it, the guys will tolerate it! (see Bon Jovi, Jon as an example).Who do you think has a bigger bank acount and has gotten laid more, Richie Sambora or Kerry King?? When it comes down to brass tacks, Kerry would smoke him on the guitar, but I'm guessing Kerry hasn't seen Heather Locklear or Denise Richards naked inside of "his" 25 million dollar mansion!Sambora has.... 8>)
I will say this: guys like Mustaine, Hammett are certainly more technically proficient with their instruments than most guitarists, glam or not. It's simply harder to play crazy-fast, classically-based metal riffs than it is to play punk & blues-based rock. Unfortunately for King, his type of music is less likely to make girls want to sleep with him, and that's probably why he's cranky.
then there is everything else
that said, I think a little background is relevant to this discussion. I am speaking as somebody who absolutely lived and breathed underground thrash in the 80s to the point where I actually did a weekly thrash radio show in '86 and '87. There was definitely, albeit one-sided, an us versus them mentality in the thrash community back then. You have to remember that, by the mid 80s, hair metal was mainstream and completely bastardized by major record companies. thrash was anything but mainstream back then, but it did develop a devoted following by spitting in the face of anything mainstream, including hair metal. so, if that's what they did back then, why shouldn't they continue to do it now? There are plenty of hair metal guys who are pushing 50 that are acting like it's still 1986 so, if you're gonna hate the thrash guys for acting like they did 20 something years ago, fairness would dictate that you hate the hair metal guys for doing the same thing.
Bob - you're spot on, too. When you're in the underground, you either wish for the spotlight, or you assume the people in the spotlight are morons and take pride in your underground status. The thrash movement was not the first or last to do that. Of course, speaking as someone who was 'there' ( in that I was in Australia, I was not there, but I was a thrash fan in the 80s ), I remember it being all about the hot girls not wanting to talk to me anyhow, so I decided they were all clones who had sold out, and that being into thrash proved I was better than them anyhow. So, a defence mechanism for the socially inept.
Ding Ding Ding, we have a winner Johnny!! Tell Christian what he's won! Couldn't have expressed that any better myself. I definitely wasn't trying to get down on thrash, as I have a pretty extensive collection of it on the old I-Pod.It's all good buddy, it just pizz's me off when one genre looks down it's nose at another. There's room for ANY good music in this old guys book! 8>)