What You Wanna Do With Your Life?
That’s what The Eeveel Teacher Father Figure demands in his opening line of Twister Sister’s flagship song. To which the roomful of hormonal teenagers reply “I WANNA ROCK!” And then it’s all about hair.
Ever noticed how rock fashion has always been about The Hair? Some other genres, it’s all designer clothes, fancy cars, hot babes (mix and match with the first two, enjoy). But Rock, it’s all about the hair. How long it grows, how low it hangs, how obscuring it can be.
There’s also the infamous mullet. God save us from the mullet. Some men seemed to have been trying to grow a cape. Of hair. As much as I enjoyed (and still do) Billy Ray, his hair back then, well, it never did anything for me. Goes to show you can be as cute and studly as you want, the mullet, it won’t help you get cool points.
But I digress.
Rock and hair go together much better than rock and roll. Think about it. You can go back the last thirty or so years, and just looking at rock music albums, you can guess about the state of mind of popular culture. Want proof? Let me present to you...
The Hussy Hairnet, courtesy of moi, because on Saturdays, the blog belongs to me. TO ME!! Mwa ha haa!
Sorry.
The 1970s. Period of emancipation and rebellion against authority. Rock was getting hard near the end of the 1970s, with no nonsense bands like Black Sabbath who got onstage, melted your face off then slinked back into the shadows clad in acrid smoke and black leather jackets.
The 1980s, a bit softer, a tad (okay, a LOT) flashier. Big hair, you hear? As big as you can make. You tease it, you iron it, you tease it again. Then you destroy the ozone layer with a good 30-second dose of hairspray. You finish with another bit of teasing. Hey, it has to withstand The Hair Song, favorite pastime of rock music fans in which the audience is invited to shake their head front and back until they pass out of knock someone out. Bands like Motley Crue are perfect examples of the teased hair.
Enter 1990 and its grunge movement. Now the rock hair, it goes down in both volume and length, but gets even messier. You wash it then don’t touch it. No comb, ever, ever, ever, you hear? You come out of the house with your hood over your head anyway, so there. If your bangs is long enough to hide behind, even better.
The 2000s. Now this is an interesting decade! As much as there’s a revival for anything 80s (check out the platform shoes, dude!) they’re not going back to the Big Metal Hair. Instead, they go for a bit of a mix. The rock band today has the length without the volume, the bangs without overdoing it, with an array of styles from straight to pouffy to tousled-just-so. Rock bands like My Chemical Romance embody this mix of styles and approaches. There’s everything: the typical rocker, the coolish geek, the high-maintenance one, etc.
For those who were too young to understand the strange allure of the following video, you have to remember this was very, very cool in a crazy kind of way. It aged relatively well considering. Here’s a blast from the past. Literally. A blast of aquanet, baby!
Rock on.
That’s what The Eeveel Teacher Father Figure demands in his opening line of Twister Sister’s flagship song. To which the roomful of hormonal teenagers reply “I WANNA ROCK!” And then it’s all about hair.
Ever noticed how rock fashion has always been about The Hair? Some other genres, it’s all designer clothes, fancy cars, hot babes (mix and match with the first two, enjoy). But Rock, it’s all about the hair. How long it grows, how low it hangs, how obscuring it can be.
There’s also the infamous mullet. God save us from the mullet. Some men seemed to have been trying to grow a cape. Of hair. As much as I enjoyed (and still do) Billy Ray, his hair back then, well, it never did anything for me. Goes to show you can be as cute and studly as you want, the mullet, it won’t help you get cool points.But I digress.
Rock and hair go together much better than rock and roll. Think about it. You can go back the last thirty or so years, and just looking at rock music albums, you can guess about the state of mind of popular culture. Want proof? Let me present to you...
The Hussy Hairnet, courtesy of moi, because on Saturdays, the blog belongs to me. TO ME!! Mwa ha haa!
Sorry.
The 1970s. Period of emancipation and rebellion against authority. Rock was getting hard near the end of the 1970s, with no nonsense bands like Black Sabbath who got onstage, melted your face off then slinked back into the shadows clad in acrid smoke and black leather jackets.
The 1980s, a bit softer, a tad (okay, a LOT) flashier. Big hair, you hear? As big as you can make. You tease it, you iron it, you tease it again. Then you destroy the ozone layer with a good 30-second dose of hairspray. You finish with another bit of teasing. Hey, it has to withstand The Hair Song, favorite pastime of rock music fans in which the audience is invited to shake their head front and back until they pass out of knock someone out. Bands like Motley Crue are perfect examples of the teased hair.
Enter 1990 and its grunge movement. Now the rock hair, it goes down in both volume and length, but gets even messier. You wash it then don’t touch it. No comb, ever, ever, ever, you hear? You come out of the house with your hood over your head anyway, so there. If your bangs is long enough to hide behind, even better.The 2000s. Now this is an interesting decade! As much as there’s a revival for anything 80s (check out the platform shoes, dude!) they’re not going back to the Big Metal Hair. Instead, they go for a bit of a mix. The rock band today has the length without the volume, the bangs without overdoing it, with an array of styles from straight to pouffy to tousled-just-so. Rock bands like My Chemical Romance embody this mix of styles and approaches. There’s everything: the typical rocker, the coolish geek, the high-maintenance one, etc.
For those who were too young to understand the strange allure of the following video, you have to remember this was very, very cool in a crazy kind of way. It aged relatively well considering. Here’s a blast from the past. Literally. A blast of aquanet, baby!
Rock on.
2 comments:
Ah, big hair, long hair, crazy hair. It's all about the hair. *g*
I remember when my hubby had a bit of a mullet. I thought it was very cool. Of course, it was the eighties after all. LOL
Twisted Sister! OMG, that was a trip down memory lane. :)
Rock On!
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