Tuesday, September 8, 2020
1987, Still Better Than 2020
TCM has been airing a number of "rockumentaries" and concert films these last few days, including both of Penelope Spheeris' excellent "Decline Of The Western Civilization" films. I hadn't seen either in years and as films, both have aged really well.
My new takeaways from the recent viewings: the punks were smarter than they appear and in many cases, were better musicians than their music allows. Dial up some Circle Jerks and keep an eye on drummer Lucky Lehrer, for starters. He isn't just banging away aimlessly at the kit. The metal heads, on the other hand, were morons to the core and I wonder if Penelope Spheeris purposely focused on some of the very worst of the genre, or if the L.A. metal scene in 1987 just happened to be horrible. Dial up some cringemaking Odin, if you're up for it.
The first film includes some truly exciting performances from Black Flag, the Circle Jerks, Fear, whose debut "The Record" remains one of the greatest of its kind and X, whose version of "We're Desperate" was a highlight.
I recall sitting in the theatre with my late great pal Tim Vega, and laughing hysterically through most of the Metal Years film, but watching it again over 30 years later, made me ill. I love heavy metal, but the L.A. scene depicted in Spheeris' film was appallingly bad. You know things are askew when the most lucid talking heads are the Toxic Twins themselves, Steven Tyler & Joe Perry. Just about every member of every band, one worse than the other, was convinced they were the greatest and were going to make it. Only one band did, Megadeth.
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5 comments:
the guys in Cinderella seemed to realize that they were morons and were happy with it. I could have used a newer version of Aerosmith at that time (Faster Pussycat), but that crown is still held by 1994.
makes one feel old having this stuff on classic movie station. (TCM). never a metal head. could only watch a few minutes of II. first one brought back memories. I think most of the stuff from that era of bands was and is pretty bad.
“Decline 1” was an excellent doc, great performances, intelligent people. “Decline 2” was just sad. Bad bands, most of them were wasted drunken dopes going nowhere. I also wondered if the entire scene was that bad, and apparently it was, considering how few of them did anything notable.
I saw the both movies recently on a streaming channel called “Tubi” that’s included with my cable package. They also have the third. Their website claims that’s it’s free to subscribe online. Consumer advisory- at least half of their movies look like total crap, but there are some gems.
1979-81, I was living in LA and going to clubs when Decline 1 was filmed. I narrowly missed some of the filming. I saw most of the bands often enough that they seemed like friends.
I talked to Lux Interior about joining the Cramps as bass player. I made the same pitch to Darby Crash about a week before he Od'd. Keith Morris, Circle Jerk, joined my band, King James and The Bible Burners, onstage for our rendition of Jayne County's, "Fuck Off", until the sound man cut us off.
It was a fun time to be alive in LA.
I'm not a hair metal fan, so I never saw Decline 2, or any of the bands in it.
I did buy beer from Nikki Sixx, when he worked at Gil Turner's Liquor, across the street from The Whiskey.
Haven't seen the second, because even at the time I recognized the schlockfest that was L.A. hair metal. In a nutshell, the difference between the two tribes was the earlier punk one had artistic ambition, even if ill-aimed at times. The metal one had getting famous and laid as ambition, and that's it. Nothing wrong with that, if that's your cup o' meat, but it doesn't tend to produce top product if there's no artistry involved.
Billy Zoom still smiles as he plays, tho he's on a stool these days for the shows. I always liked seeing him, and fellow Angeleno Eddie Van Halen, smiling as they kicked out their sounds, as if they were....having fun.
C in California
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