A viewing 30 years in the making, part two.
So watched the second Decline of Western Civilization movie – Part II, ‘the metal years’ Sat. afternoon. Fairly mixed-to-negative reactions, however.
Unlike the first (punk) one, this one is about metal. But also unlike the first one – most of it is completely LAME BANDS! The saving grace of of this movie is Ozzy and arguably, Megadeth (last band you see perform, at the very end). Ozzy is quite funny, pretty much the same type of interview as seen with the Germs guy in the first one – he’s at his house, making breakfast – not sure if it was staged or not but he can’t hit a glass with the orange juice to save his life – but he’s a complete realist about his lifestyle, and says it’s pretty hard work, in addition to thanking his wife (was Sharon his wife even back then?) for handling all the business stuff.
Most of the bands in this movie I (thankfully then or since) have never heard of, save for Poison, who were pretty much a flash in the pan – but far more than the rest of these lameass bands. First, WHY did they devote at least half an hour to a stupid faux-striptease contest from some lame ‘rock club‘ on the hollywood strip? That was even stupider than the lame bands?
Second, i’ve heard more than enough (to last several thousand lifetimes) of how much Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons get laid. WFC? I sure don’t. I can’t *completely* slam them, based on Geddy Lee’s commentary from the Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage DVD I watched some months ago – but still – KISS are the cheesiest, most cynical and best-marketed band of all time – too bad about the music.
It’s interesting because by the end of the movie, on the one hand you’ve seen plenty of lame stuff (which hasn’t aged well at all, given the 30 years in between) but on the other hand, when they are asking all these different people what they want to do, whether they’ll make it, etc. – they all answer the same thing – this is what I want to do, I’m ‘going’ to make it, etc. – and that’s not necessarily a bad thing – maybe their motivations for doing so (chicks, money, etc.) you can slam, but the naive belief in their own abilities isn’t up for criticism – this is something to admire in its own way. When they concentrated on that aspect, it was quite cool.
But to me, the movie implies that Megadeth are essentially the ‘purists’ (and to some degree, Lemmy from Motorhead, although his interview bits are extremely short clips and you wouldn’t really know who the heck he was if you didn’t know of him from outside the movie) – Megadeth seem to disavow all the stupid motivations of the earlier bands, and while they certainly have demons of their own, they seem to be the ‘purest’ type of band shown here. Maybe the filmmakers were trying to show that not ALL metal bands are lame, cynical and complete cheese – not sure.
Finally – not sure whether it was a factor of other, bigger metal bands not actually living in Los Angeles or not, but where were some of the OTHER real bands of the era? E.g. Iron Maiden, Judas Priest – heck even Van Halen (who *do* still live in L.A. to this day)? Even the sequences with Ozzy were too short by comparison. They could have done more with him and Lemmy and left out half the other crap – why they didn’t show performances from either of them? Dunno.
In the end, this movie is *far* too much about ‘the 3 b’s‘ and not near enough about the music. The punk one was much more about the music and far more real to me than this one. On balance – watch the punk one, don’t bother with this.
candybowl.