Musings after Watching VH1 Classic’s Metal Mania

Occasionally on weekends, my spouse and I like to stay up late and watch worthless crap on the TeeVee. And occasionally, that worthless crap is Vh1’s Metal Mania, a four-hour block of mostly moldy cheese that was on in my viewing market from midnight to four a.m. But as I’m not as young as I used to be, I only made it until two a.m. before I just couldn’t take it anymore.

The great thing about watching Metal Mania is that approximately every three minutes or so, you get a good giggle because some video comes on that you’d totally forgotten about, but with that opening chord and first scene, you realize that not only are this song and video pretty funny now, but they were also pretty damn funny twenty years ago.

So here’s what occurred to me over two hours of Metal Mania:

1. Def Leppard, Bon Jovi, and Poison are not, and never were, metal bands. Metal bands are composed of the kinds of guys who look like they’re going to break into your house and eat your kids. The only reason Def Leppard, Bon Jovi, and Poison would break into your house would be to steal your hairspray and mousse.

2. Closely related to #1, between videos we saw a commercial for Poison lead singer Bret Michaels’ “highly anticipated” solo album, which I’m assuming is only “highly anticipated” by women waiting to try out for the third season of Rock of Love.

3. Also related to #1: We were treated to the video for Def Leppard’s “Love Bites,” a song that actually bites every bit as much now as it did twenty-one years ago, but it’s always nice to be reminded. This video was followed up by what Vh1 Classic terms a “Classic Current”–an oxymoron that also turned out to be moronic as the video was for “Nine Lives,” Def Leppard’s unholy alliance with country star Tim McGraw. This song is totally unworthy of either Def Leppard or McGraw which, considering I’m not a fan of either, is really an accomplishment. “Nine Lives” may, in fact, be one of the shittiest songs ever recorded, right up there with “Escape (The Pina Colada Song),” except I’m going to go out on a limb and boldly predict that no one will ever be doing Karaoke to “Nine Lives.”

“Nine Lives” is available on the album Songs from the Sparkle Lounge, which may be the most un-metal name for an album in the history of album titles. My guess is that they thought about titling the disc Cabaret until they remembered that was already taken.

4. Despite all the hair and makeup and leather pants, guys in heavy metal bands are not a good-looking lot. If most heavy metal band members had done something else with their lives–like, say, getting a nice job at a bank or something–none of them would have ever gotten laid.

5. Geoff Tate of Queensryche (which is more of a prog-metal band than a heavy metal band per se) had without question one of the most incredible mullets of the ’80s. From the front, he sort of looked like he had some kind of 1950s ducktail action going on, but then he turns around and–surprise!–he’s got his long hair pulled back into a ponytail.

Queensryche also has a completely illogical and unnecessary umlaut over the “y,” which I can’t figure out how to represent with the word processing tools available to me here. But as we all know umlauts = metal, so it’s all good.

6. I think Ronnie James Dio and Klaus Meine of Scorpions may have been separated at birth. Seriously–same hair, they look about the same height…or maybe they’re the same person. If anyone’s ever seen them together in the same room at the same time and can disprove my theory, let me know.

7. While I got a good chuckle watching everything else on this list, I have to say that Pantera is not, nor was ever, funny. Pantera does not have time to be funny because they are too busy kicking your ass. Every band out right now that plays their instruments really fast and sings songs that consist of lyrics that sound like “RAAAAAAWWWWWWWWRRRR” owes a serious debt to Pantera.

Although, on second thought, “Cowboys from Hell,” as song titles go, is pretty damn funny.

8. And my final musing, one I so often have whenever I watch anything on Vh1 Classic, is that I’m really freakin’ old. Almost every memory I have attached to these songs/videos dates from my junior year of high school or earlier. My hubby and I were trying to remember when “Rock You Like a Hurricane” came out, and the only memory I could conjure up was singing the song outside my church with a few other kids before we went inside to confirmation class (which is just the kind of reception the band was aiming for, I’m sure), which would have grounded the song firmly in 1984.

1984 was twenty-eight years ago, for those of you keeping score. And so on that note, I decided to go to bed, because at my age, I really need to be sure I’m getting plenty of sleep. But I didn’t have to worry about missing anything because thanks to Vh1 Classic, the metal will always be there when I wake up.