Vigilans wrote:
Hair metal is directly responsible for the over simplification of modern music, IMO. Almost all Hair Metal guitarists were simply ripping Eddie Van Halen off in some way, to the point that people got tired of hearing guitar solos and riffing (I always found Hair Metal guitarists pretty lame though. Mick Mars, C.C. Deville... sigh) of the patented Van Halen hard-rock style. Grunge was sort of a natural course of music in the sense that it is quite opposed to hair metal in many ways; stylistically it is very masculine, which is quite a departure from many of the bands of the 80's with their heavy glam influence. The chord structures are very simple and leads are even simpler. "Everyman" music in a sense. That being said, I don't care for Grunge any more then I care for Hair Metal, which I see as the emo of the 80's. Grunge, though, I must say, I am glad it came around, because I think I speak for many people when I say the time of the perm, the mullet, tight leopard print or leather pants, hot pink and green clothing, arm socks, or any combination of these, was definitely over, and I'm quite glad that we don't have to turn on MTV to see some fashion nightmare of a man playing a bright orange Gibson Explorer and playing mindless finger-tapping solos.
I would just like to say, even though the guitarists and their work in the grunge era wasn't that good, there was some awesome grunge singers and drummers. Matt Cameron and Dave Grohl were both epic drummers, and Chris Cornell and Layne Staley were both epic singers. The grunge music era lacked good guitar work, but that doesn't mean there weren't some other talented musicians to come out of the era.