Saturday, December 22, 2007

Hair metal and poetry, together at last


I'd like to say that I always knew that my love for hair metal and my love for poetry would cross paths at some point. But I would be lying. Thank you to Rob Sheffield for combining the two in his article in the Dec.27-Jan. 10 issue of Rolling Stone about hair metal festival Rocklahoma.

"It's a fantasy that artists should have long, productive careers. William Wordsworth invented modern poetry in one ten-year bang, 1797 to 1807, but then he was cashed out, although he lived to write utter crap for another forty-three years. Walt Whitman wrote all his great works from 1855 to 1865, and then sucked for the next twenty years. T.S. Eliot? Spent the twentieth century dining out on poems from his 1915-25 hot spell. ... That's the way showbiz works, whether you're Walt Whitman or Skid Row - you grab hold of a hit or two, then you milk it forever."

Bonus feature: Rolling Stone's Hair Metal Fashion 101.

No comments: