BY MIKEY MIGO
There was one common television show that mostly all metal enthusiasts, casual fans, and curious bystanders knew of. It wasn't a TRL or 106 and Park type of show that you can see any day of the week. Oh no. This show was dirty, gritty, and offensive to your parent's ears. It was on late and on the weekends. This show single handily ruined sleeping schedules across the country with its late nights. This show was loud, brass, and balls out. You'd bang your head for two, sometimes three straight hours only to leave your soul rattled and brain on overload. I'm talking about MTV's Headbangers Ball.
I can't even fathom how many bands, songs, and music videos this writer was exposed to specifically thanks to this show. Before the internet we basically had three things to give us the 411 on hard rock, metal, and the "understream". We had the magazines to give us a glimpse of what shows and bands we were missing out on, we had word of mouth, and we had The Ball. The difference is that the Headbangers Ball actually exposed us to this carnage instead of teasing us with folklore. It was the news story about the deadly car crash, but with brightly colored pictures. No longer would we be in left in the dark silence.
In 1987, we were hit hard with the show and it carried on heavily until 95. During that time period of time, it seems the world went completely bat shit. So many bands, so many albums, and so much history was written during this eight year run that it would take a month worth of columns to cover it. From hair metal to grunge is where the mainstream was at, but we could still get our Slayer, Megadeth, and Pantera in healthy doses on The Ball. Metal fans knew that Kevin Seal and Adam Curry were fans of the music, but they really didn't give off the "I just destroyed my hotel room and puked on a groupie" feel that Riki Rachtman would go onto try really hard for us to believe.
Abruptly in early 95, MTV canned the show without any proper "Goodbye" or finale. This was such a big topic among the genre that VH1 listed the cancellation at #4 on the "40 Least Metal Moments". I think we've all watched those 4 hour "Best of" list blocks on VH1 before it basically became TMZ TV/Comedy Central Jr. and that "Least Metal Moments" series had some pretty bad shit on it. So for this to be #4, it says a lot. At least to VH1.
There was grumblings for years about how the show should come back, but we were in a Brit and Christina and a Limp Bizkit and NSync world. MTV's bread was grossly buttered by the rise of bubble gum pop to the point that the "understream" of the channel was pretty much anything with a guitarist, bassist, drummer, and singer. We weren't going to get our metal from MTV and thankfully the internet blew up and made things a little more bearable.
Once things were safe again for metal to peek its gnarly head from the curtains, MTV2, not the normal MTV, gave in. In the spring of 2003, MTV2 redebuted Headbangers Ball. And the metal heads rejoiced! It would be the same mixture of the main and "understream" of all that is metal we once had. We'd get to see our favorites and be exposed to the future all within one show. MTV2 was also sponsoring tours, putting out compilation discs, and really just trying to help/capitalize on the rabidly die hard metal community.
They initially passed the hosting duties around to artists like Metallica, Deftones, Dave Mustaine of Megadeth, Phil Anselmo of Pantera fame, and Wayne Static of Static X before sticking with Hatebreed's Jamey Jasta as the official host of the new show. Under Jasta, the show changed a lot. The focus would no longer be a divided "mainstream" and "understream", but mainly just the growl-growl tshirt and jeans metal. It would be death, trash, and grind and really nothing else. We'd see Lamb of God, In Flames, and a few others pretty much every week.
The show was already a genre specific show, but then to go on and isolate a good portion of the fan base could have been what destroyed the show. I love metal, but I don't necessarily want to watch 2 hours of the same trashing and growling. Metal isn't JUST that. There are other subgenres, styles, and types. We didn't get that under the Jasta helm. On top of that the interviews sucked. They were boring. It's like they all got high on weed, pain killers, and opium before speaking. I was a fairly consistent watcher and I can't recall ANY interview that was as memorable as the Rachtman, Seals, or Curry eras.
Sadly the show was "revamped" in January of this past year. It's become a gloried "music video block" time slot. It does focus on metal and the "unmainstream", but there is no official VJ to move the show along and the interviews and special segments are pretty much gone. When we DO get a new interview they play it out by showing it on the show for sometimes a few weeks in a row. It's been condensed to a one hour show this summer, but even that is shaky now because it sometimes doesn't even come on at all.
So with a one hour shaky time slot and a blog, the show is still hanging on. The acceptance of metal has declined. Is it because the channel is neglecting an entire fanbase or is the entire fanbase neglecting this flagship genre show? We all hate American Idol, but it's on because the mindless masses watch like sheep. Wouldn't MTV be happy to supply more metal friendly programming if the viewer ship was up? I mean, really, who IS to blame here? We could say this show is merely a victim of the evolution of technology. We had no other outlet for metal before this show, but now we have the internet where we have the entire music world at our finger tips.
It's a sad situation because this show is very iconic to many metal fans. I guess all we can do is watch it when we can and respect the memory and point of the show. Go to shows, buy CDs, and do what you can to support metal. It might not be on top of the billboard charts right now outside of the small handful of acts to "break through", but the metal genre is far from dead and I'm sure it'll have another up rise before you know it. Maybe Headbanger's Ball will be part of that.
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