I have! I saw it randomly at a bar in Chicago on a slow night. That movie is fucking hilarious.

2014 and people still don't get punk. ****, it barely gets any mainstream coverage anymore. And at this point the whole pseudo philosophical angle has pretty much been squeezed out anyways. Why the hell would anyone make music out of jealousy over their supposed inability to make music? What planet is this guy living on?

He probably said that because he saw this.

If he wants to talk about "enormous Performance art" he has to look no further than "Eddie."

Metal was much more "established" especially in the 80s, at a time when Hardcore Punk was only college radio and released on independent labels.
Heavy Metal was very mainstream, bands were on major record labels, they were played on commercial radio and on MTV. Well of course not every single Metal band but at least they were represented on those mediums, much more than Punk ever was.

i know I sure wish I could play like Bruce and be idolized by junior high school kids

If you want to call embracing Poison as embracing metal in the eighties, then you might as well call embracing The Offspring as embracing punk in the nineties. Aside from a select few groups that had any real presence like Priest and Maiden and eventually Metallica metal was only really on college radio and independent labels too.

What I got from Bruce Dickinson was that Punk was popular and Heavy Metal was totally underground and "pure" i.e. free from performance artistry. But that isn't really true, didn't matter if you embraced Poison or not. Thrash was on college radio - yeah, but Heavy Metal was on commercial radio and MTV. He's complaining about Punk being embraced by the "art establishment" - cry me a river Bruce.http://www.sherv.net/cm/emo/sad/crying-into-tissue.gif
But he forgets that Metal was embraced by mainstream media, so what's his point?

First of all, he had like four sentences published in that article. So, maybe he's being a prick, maybe he's being railroaded, maybe it's a bit of both. I don't know. But I don't think it's fair to assume you know exactly what he was saying.

Secondly, again, aside from a very few bands metal was by and large completely under the radar. You can't just say "heavy metal was on commercial radio and MTV", cause you're talking about a genre of heavy metal that was divorced, in its fans, in its artists, in its sound, from just about any other part of metal.

I knew this was going to pop up on music banter It is from an interview he did for the Guardian newspaper in England. Here is the original link.

Iron Maiden: 'Fame is the excrement of creativity' | Music | The Guardian

This comment by him completely baffles me. The Sex Pistols were perceived as a far greater threat than Iron maiden ever was, its far easier to control a scene based on Maiden's dungeon and dragons fantasy, than disenchanted youth that have politicized music, and want to see the destruction of the establishment.

For all intents and purposes metal had become much more established in the mainstream. If you were a NWOHM, thrash or glam metal band you got signed to a major label. If you were the Dead Kennedys, the Circle Jerks, Conflict or Discharge singing about politics, your music career was doomed to the indie labels.

Surrounded by porn stars...really? That's a comment I would expect to here from Gene Simmons. Yes punk rock kids are just losers who can't play their instruments. They wouldn't be singing about animal rights, nuclear proliferation and all that BS, is they had real talent because then they'd get to hang out with PORN stars! Wow, really? What a class act, does being a heavy metal superstar come with free herpies medication?

Obviously in Dickinson's world punk rock must boil down to the Damned & bands like Peter & the Test Tube Babies, because to my knowledge Joe Strummer's wasn't musically motivated by snorting coke and shagging birds.

What this boils down as it often does with the NWOHM artists is that they resented having their music sidelined in the late 70's by the punk explosion in England. I've heard other bands like Def Leppard make similar comments on punk.

The thrash bands and glam bands like Motley Crue who would have their sound directly influenced by punk normally praise the scene, so not surprisingly I would rather listen these bands than Iron Maiden any day

Between your blog, the 80's survivor thread, and posts like this you've become one of my favorite posters. Super cereal.