80's frontmen talk about MTV

[ThrillsNSpills]

Music videos could be a great artform.
You'd figure these dudes would appreciate the exposure but there's always that point where art and corporate commercial interests meet. But we all know Poison and Jovi killed MTV. heh heh

[Mr. Vengeance]

RJD is partially correct, in that all of a sudden bands with not much talent were on MTV, but MTV didn't really play a ton of metal to begin with. It was pretty slim pickings unless it was Headbangers Ball. The bands like Poison, say what you will about them, probably kept metal alive for several years on TV.

Metal never really needed TV at all. It was there before MTV, it's still there now....You just have to find it, mostly on the internet. Hair Metal died. Personally I enjoyed a lot of those bands. Then record execs started signing every band they could find, based on their look, and you would up with the Pretty Boy Floyds and D'Molls and Firehouses of the music world. Oversaturated, and the lousy bands started to outnumber the good ones to the point where the good bands faded into the background. Then the whole grunge thing started and kids tastes changed...end of Hair Metal.

[DLR Bridge]

Enter the issue of mislabeling bands. You had hair metal being labeled as heavy metal and vice versa. You had amazing hard rock acts (V mother fuckin' H) being called both which kinda drove me nuts. The more things were miscategorized, the more everything started being called heavy metal as a means of simplifying the whole mess. Headbangers Ball covered all of the above, so it all must be heavy metal was the mentality. That too contributed to the over-saturation. It all got too big not to fail.

[Kristy]

Not this pussy 80's metal shit again.

Look, what killed metal was metal not admitting it was homosexual enough to its core audience. Where else did grown sweaty men "mosh" with other sweaty men while sweaty men in leather played crap music about their small dicks and Satan all together in a "club." Metal is about as homosexual as it gets. MTV feigned homosexuality and mocked it by having metal acts wear spandex and hairspray. Just how much teabagging went on backstage at a DIO show?

[Mr. Vengeance]

Just how much teabagging went on backstage at a DIO show?

Get a life, seriously.

[Terry]

I'd agree that a lot of what was called "metal" in the 1980s (Poison, Warrant, Bon Jovi, etc.) wasn't really metal. At least not how I define it.

Plus, there were still plenty of actual metal bands who broke big in the 1980s that didn't really owe much in the way of anything to MTV. Iron Maiden comes to mind for a start. Maiden were making platinum albums throughout the 1980s, and had a vastly successful release with Powerslave and sold out arenas across the US. Yet how often were the Aces High or Two Minutes To Midnight videos played? Barely at all. And radio wouldn't play any Maiden, either. Metallica doesn't owe MTV shit far as establishing an initial audience goes. DIO got some MTV play, but not a helluva lot.

Bands that owe their careers to MTV are pretty much the usual posers one would suspect.

[Kristy]

Get a life, seriously.

I have a life. Now ask yourself if you have a closet and if it's time to step out of it.

[jhale667]

Metal is about as homosexual as it gets. MTV feigned homosexuality and mocked it by having metal acts wear spandex and hairspray.

Funny, girls sure seemed to like it at the time...

[Kristy]

Nope, nothing gay going on here.


Or here

[Coyote]

Never got into any band because of an image...

[jhale667]

Never got into any band because of an image...

Ah, if only you could've tagged along on some auditions I went on when I first got to L.A. ... you would've heard this kinda stuff:

"Image is VERY important to us."
"If you get the gig, the first thing you have to do is give our seamstress $1200 for your (matching pleather) stage costume."
"Will you get hair extensions?"
"What's your opinion on stage choreography?"
"We notice you don't have any tattoos - how fast can you get sleeved?"

Actual quotes. THAT shit had to die.

[Coyote]

Ah, if only you could've tagged along on some auditions I went on when I first got to L.A. ... you would've heard this kinda stuff:

"Image is VERY important to us."
"If you get the gig, the first thing you have to do is give our seamstress $1200 for your (matching pleather) stage costume."
"Will you get hair extensions?"
"What's your opinion on stage choreography?"
"We notice you don't have any tattoos - how fast can you get sleeved?"

Actual quotes. THAT shit had to die.

Given some the bands I've seen over here, I'd say some of that's still alive...
Albeit, on a very lesser (and boringly mediocre) scale.

[Mr. Vengeance]

I honestly don't know what Krusty's obsession with bands being gay is? Every band she doesn't like (95% of the bands out there) she calls gay. If you like a certain band, you must also be gay.

Who gives a fuck? Last thing I'm doing at a concert is worrying about gay-ness......

[Mr. Vengeance]

In terms of metal, there's a huge difference between what began the new wave of metal, and even so-called hair metal, and what it became. Mainly because at the beginning, bands were signed on having talent. Then as hair metal took off, that first tier of bands were already signed, and every shitty band that had teased hair and makeup was being signed. Even the bands that were decent, like Poison, were a step down in terms of talent, but they had a look and they made MTV-friendly music. Look at Motley Crue. They had the whole studs, hair, makeup thing, but they also rocked quite hard. Compare the album Shout at the Devil to Poison's Look What the Cat Dragged In...Crue's album is 100% heavier.

[Seshmeister]

I remember buying Shout at the Devil a few years after it came out and being surprised at just how many fillers are on it.

Crue were always a very lazy band.