The Decline of Western Civilization

Today I revisited an old favorite documentary - The Decline of Western Civilization Part II - The Metal Years - yes, kids, I love rock docs, and I especially love rock docs about that magical time of music when hair, androgyny, cheese-laden power ballads, and sex, drugs, and rock and roll ruled the sunset strip.  I was not alive to witness the debauchery that came with the unhinging of the left coast metal scene, but I can't get enough of the retrospective flash and trash.
Penelope Spheeris, the director of both "Decline of Western Civ" documentaries is one of my idols because she always captured "the scene" in a way that everyone else outside of "the scene" didn't quite grasp.

 
Although, I could go on forever about Spheeris' cinema-graphic achievements - I will cut to the chase - that being the way that music, rock, "the scene" (used as a wide reaching euphemism for any music scene), the fans, the ideology, the raison d'etre behind it all - at least in my small world, and my small scene - is so different than that of the once rock-tastic sunset strip..
The eighties rock and metal scene was the epitome of sex, drugs and rock and roll - and shit, besides the OD's and STD's it looked like a damn good time - and the excess and reckless abandon that the sunset strip exuded is awe inspiring -

Yet as i look at the scenes that i have subscribed to, especially the scene that I currently subscribe to - where brooklyn is the new los angeles and bedford avenue is the new sunset strip - except instead of aqua-net and strippers, there's PBR and hipsters - it seems that the (idiotic and) innocent insanity has been replaced with a sense of (jaded and) ironic apathy. and it really makes me wonder - has music lost it's wild side?

With the dwindling need for the big wigs at the labels in hollywood to back the albums, these artists in brooklyn (and elsewhere) have assumed responsibility for the rights to their music, and with that added (and deserved entitlement) the hi-jinks have seemingly faded.

Paul Stanley of KISS, in the first ten minutes of The Decline of Western Civ Part II (while flanked by four ladies in lingerie)
says that, "rock and roll is made by people who were thinking with their crotches" and I wonder if that is the case anymore. Maybe the indie scene can't be filed under the "rock and roll" tab - perhaps it is more like punk scene, or grunge - where the fuel to rock was less about partying hard and banging a bevy of ho's and more about, um.........
 well, shit, i can't really speak to that right now - but it's something i definitely will think about
in the meanwhile - if you haven't watched the (in)famous Decline of Western Civ II - The Metal Years, I highly recommend you tease your hair, mix a stiff drink, and indulge in the awesomeness and idiocy of it all....

The Decline of Western Civilization Part II - The Metal Years

Also, some choice hair metal songs:
Poison Unskinny Bop

Alice Cooper - Poison

Motley Crue - Kickstart My Heart

Vixen Edge of a Broken Heart