Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Remembrance of Videos Past #30: Skid Row, "Holidays in the Sun (live at the Moscow Peace Festival)"

In my second installment of hair metal week I will take a look at political metal.

Hair metal never had a clear-cut political agenda. Too homophobic to fit in with campus liberals, too decadent for the Christian right, hair metal was too anarchic to be contained into any one philosophy. Skid Row's cover of the Sex Pistols' classic is especially ambiguous. This version, like the original, is a nihilistic romp. Yet Sebastian Bach saying "I was waiting for the communist call" in Russia during the Cold War was rather bold. Ostensibly the festival was meant to promote the US, but Bach's banshee wails wished to unite drug-addled ruskies and a gang of also-ran pop-metal proteges of Bon Jovi under a banner of bone crushing, no-bullshit rock and roll that would always stick the metal finger at whoever was in charge.

Yes I know, you're looking for the ironic angle. Fiiine. Check out the lead singer's piercing hair metal yelps, which even a silver spoon-fed MTV-loving mallpunk would scoff at.

1 comment:

sammyray said...

Man I miss Sebastian Bach. One of the great rock singers...too bad he never had a band worthy of him.