Big turkey award 2011

Normally I give this out closer to Thanksgiving, but I knew it wouldn't before then so I'll give this one out now. Every year for the last few years I pick someone or some even in the hard rock/metal award that has proved themselvesto be a real turkey during the year. A couple years ago I picked the Rocklahoma festival as the big turkey of the year because it was a celebration of hasbeens trying to cash in on a last payday and a bunch of old fans trying to relive their youth. The M3 festival is essentially the same thing only slightly worse. Why is it slightly worse? Because Rocklahoma was/is held in Oklahoma (hence the oh so clever name). I don't live in Oklahoma. The M3 festival on the other hand is held in Maryland. I live in Maryland. So I hear even more of the hype and promotion of this celebration of over the hill, never all that good in their prime rock bands. Actually I like a few of these bands back in the day, but that was a long time ago. You want to listen to these bands in their prime then play the CD. You want to have festival that celebrates hard rock then do a mix of younger and older bands. You wish it was still 1989 and you have more money then sense then go to the M3 festival next year.

***Don't worry because the much happier top five things I am thankful in metal is coming soon.

Hair Metal Hell and the 2011 M3 Rock festival

Like any genre of music has both good and bad, but I think that hair metal is definitely a style with far more bad acts than good. Back in the 80's/early 90's it was like for every stand out band like Motley Crue or G-n-R you had 6 or 7 awful bands like London, Trixter or Tuff. This past weekend's M3 festival had me thinking more about how many bad hair bands there were and still are. The Rocklahoma festival was a joke a few years ago and I am sure it's nothing great even now though the bands booked have shifted from all hair bands to more of a combination of bad hair bands and bad bands from more recent styles. However now the aging hair bands have picked up what few original members they have left and moved their creaky sideshow east to not far from where I live in Maryland. That's fine if they want to have a festival and if people want to relive their past and hear these bands play their "hits". However it gets a bit sad when fans of this style try to act like these bands still or ever did matter. Don't get me wrong I like some of these bands or did twenty years ago, but it's fluff music. There are some good up and coming hard rock bands around, but so many fans of this style seem to choose to throw their money and time into reliving the past. Granted some bands at this last M3 festival like Tesla and Whitesnake probably put on decent shows while others like Kix had to be relieved to play in Maryland because it's not like anyone outside of this state cares about them anymore if indeed they ever did in the first place.

Anyways this long grouchy, but spot on rant leads to a new feature that Andy and I will start next week. It's Hair Metal Hell and we'll pick a hair metal stinker and give it what it deserves and do a checklist on it to see if it has certain attributes that many albums of this style had. So stop by next week and praise us, chew us out or do whatever you want.