Maajo

I understand your point I think - grunge is bad, 80s 90s rock is good and have musicians worth a damn - I agree but if you can find value in them you can most likely find some value in grunge. If you like GnR, Alice In Chains isn't that far off since their singer and lead guitarist were huge fans of Axl and Slash respectively, and it shows in their songwriting.

Nick1976

In the broadest possible sense there are two "schools" of heavy metal pre-1980s (kind of like how there are two schools of jazz tenor playing, you're either a Hawkins disciple or a Lester Young disciple).

Theres the European school: Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Uriah Heep, Budgie, Rainbow, Judas Priest, etc.
There's the US school: Van Halen, Aerosmith, Ted Nugent, Kiss, Alice Cooper, etc.

In the 80s the stuff generally considered to be "heavy metal" was bands influenced by the European school and the slightly later NWOBHM offshoot. This extended into newer genres like thrash, doom, power metal (the 80s definition of the term, not the modern definition of the term), etc. Thrash then later begat further offshoots like death metal.

The "hair metal" stuff was generally bands influenced by the US school...and mostly Van Halen to be honest. The US school to me has always been right on that cusp of hard rock/heavy metal, generally being more focused on upbeat party rock and stuff that "chicks dig".

The influence of Led Zeppelin kind of falls somewhere in between the two schools as Plant's stage presence was a popular influential thing for hair metal vocalists to emulate...if you could mix Plant and Steven Tyler together you basically have every frontman for every commercial metal act during the entire decade.

This is of course an over-simplification, but I think it works from a cursory standpoint. If you read interviews with Motley Crue or Ratt during the 80s they always listed bands like Kiss and Aerosmith as primary influences. If you read interviews with bands like Metallica or Slayer they usually mentioned Sabbath, Deep Purple and all the NWOBHM bands. Anybody who thinks hair metal bands didn't care about the music is just ignorant. They cared no more or less than musicians in any other rock genre. Not saying it was all gold, but the implication that because of their appearance they didn't care about the songs is just asinine. Any thought that musicians in thrash or speed metal or just rock bands didn't care about the way they looked is also completely misguided. FWIW, as someone who grew up as a metal kid in the 80s/early 90s the genres weren't nearly as defined as they are now. We'd listen to Metallica or Iron Maiden or Megadeth and then something on the poppier end of the scale - Crue, Warrant, Slaughter, Cinderella, whatever. Yeah some people weren't into the extremes on either end (Firehouse or King Diamond, for example), but for the most part metal was metal and it was all rock.

The Batlord

The ****? Paragraphs? An actual point worth reading? Keep doing that.

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Lilja

Actually, I always thought it was a fun type of music on the whole. It was actually quite progressive in terms of being more gender-bending and willing to make fun of itself (such as in the song "Dude looks like a lady").
I actually thought it was going to make a comeback with "I believe in a thing called love"..but that was just a short sputter.

Grunge was just that. Grunge. Completely unappolegetic and willing to bring up issues that glam did not (on the whole xcept for a few notable exceptions). Suicide, depression, teenage angst, parental nonchalance. If you look at it from a longterm persepctive, it had been going on in bits and pieces throughout the eighties but didn't really blast onto the scene until the 90s. And those suburbanite teens lapped it up. I think it actually might have continued longer if not for be being associated with suicide/school shootings (remember that there was a kid who shot some of his classmates and his lawyer blamed the video for "Jeremys spoken" for giveing him the idea). Suddenly it wasn't cool anymore to listen to it, major bands didn't seem comfortable that their music was in the spotlight (or at least claiming that), and it began to dissapear. But then came the alternative to grunge starring No Doubt, Smashing Pumpkins, Beck etc. Older bands began having more of a message in their music (more like "Right Now" by Van Halen kind of message not "Macarena"...I don't know what the heck that was but jees was it fun to dance to). And the world was happy again and all was good.

Do I have a point? I don't know. I was a 90s kid but I preferred Industrial Goth/swing music/Eurodance at that time. But every type of music adds to the collective time of a period so I can't fault any type of music. Although I do
pity the boy bands of the 90s. There was an interview that Howard Stern did with the lead singer of LFO that shows that the whole genre was a bit of a horror show back then. Probably still is. You can find it on youtube.

The Batlord

There was that time in the mid-00s when I swear Motley Crue was arbitrarily the biggest band in America again for no apparent reason. "Saints of Los Angeles" was somewhere high on the charts, as was that version of "Home Sweet Home" with Chester Bennington, half their singles were getting rediscovered on the radio along with glam in general, and they just started selling out arenas. And then Nikki Sixx had that solo album that people cared about for whatever reason.

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MicShazam

It must be an American thing to a high degree. I swear I've never met a person who (as far as I know) likes any glam bands.

Unless Aerosmith and G&R count. They were both huge here as well, but Motley Crue, Warrant, Poison, Twisted Sister and all those other bands... Never met anyone who cared one bit about them.

grindy

I know one guy who likes Mötley Crüe and he's the slimiest douchebag in existence.

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A smell of petroleum prevails throughout.

The Sane Psycho

I love glam bands... AND grunge bands. I am an Ameri**** tho.

Trollheart

You need to get away from the fjords.
Ah don't talk about Batty like that.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

MicShazam

I was gonna tell you to drop your stereotyped idea of Scandinavian life, but then I remembered that I live literally 300-400 meters away from a fjord.