VH-1 is the New Black

I don't know exactly when VH-1 became my favorite cable network, but it was probably during the Behind the Music episode featuring Styx, where white man's afrotacular group leader Dennis DeYoung (the man who came up with the disastrous and cereer-ending rock opera Kilroy Was Here) interviewed that he was hurt when kickin' guitarist Tommy Shaw later dissed him as a member of the Darn Yankees. DeYoung was all emotional about it, and clearly still hadn't realized that Kilroy was probably the most embarassing album to perform in the history of rock music. I realized at that moment the power that VH-1 had to make human beings out of the artists of my musical youth -- to "de-iconize" them. It was so fascinating to hear about these artists, and it didn't matter that all the episodes told exactly the same story. It never got old, and next year I want to see them do Rush, dang it. I mean, how many members of Neil Peart's family have to die to get that done?

(another great moment in a show chock full of great moments was when creepily calm-voiced Motley Crue bassist Nikki Sixx told of the time he OD'd on heroin, flatlined, was revived by doctors, and then went home and proceeded to take more heroin that same night. That story combined with TLC having to declare bankruptcy after the multi-platinum "Waterfalls" could serve as a microcosm of the whole series. And then there was the time Left-Eye burned down Andre Rison's house. And the time Vince Neil's drunk driving killed his longtime spare rock buddy. If you can only see two Behind the Music episodes in your life, please make it the Motley Crue and TLC ones.)

And this was before they came up with all new and interesting bits like the 100 Greatest Series, where they count down the 100 Greatest of whatever musical (and these days, non-musical) category they can think of, judged by predictable music critics into an arbitrary order that always seems to end with either...

Ok, I'm mad. Blogger seems to have misplaced the rest of this post, and I never type things twice -- that's how they lose their power. We'll see if this fully posts. If not, someone may die.

One last thing -- my wife wisely suggested that one-hit-wonders are such because they had one and only one good idea, and then their subsequent bad ideas failed. Of course, she also bought two A-HA albums in high school, neither of which featured "Take On Me", so take that with a grain of salt.

Matrix Revolutions recap is coming soon. I had more stuff written, but evil destroyed it like Keanu destroys acting.