We sold our souls for..ummm..a new guitar…

Because I am a sadcase, I recently found myself watching ‘Bill&Ted’s Excellent Adventure‘ which is, to be honest, one of the best movies ever made. By the end credits I was in the mood and watched ‘Bogus Journey’ as well, which was also awesome, and I suddenly realised that the rock movie is a form sadly lacking from todays cinemascape (I also realised that B&T is 20 years old this year-surely good timing for the long awaited 3rd movie?or at leat an anniversary DVD-I mean ‘Trailer’ and ‘gallery’ don’t really count as ’special features’ do they? Also, screw The Matrix-this is still Canoe’s greatest performance by far). Now, I’m not talking about nostalgia trips like ‘Almost Famous’ or ‘Rock Star’,  I’m talking about the really gnarly flicks that vere off into weird fantasy and horror, films like ‘Trick or Treat‘, ‘Shock ‘em Dead‘ or whatever that one where Charlie Sheen turns into a car is-you know the one, with Ron Howard’s rat-faced brother in it? Even a spoof like ‘Wayne’s World’ or ‘Bad News‘ would be welcome around now. I think the main problem is that horror and fantasy have become either too kid-centric, or just too far up their own asses of late (I’m talking to you, Chronicles of Narnia…). How can you argue with a movie where the protagonist sells his soul to become a rock star, or indeed, where Billy the Kid hits on Joan of Arc? I think it might be to do with rock being fashionable at the moment, in the old days the metalhead was usually the weird outsider/nerd who got to defeat monster/put on concert in order to get girl/defeat jocks. The trouble is in this day and age we’re supposed to love nerds and underground culture, so jocks aren’t allowed to shout the ever-amusing classic ‘get your hair cut‘ at kids at school anymore, these kids then, deprived of bullying, never have the chance to retreat into a fantasy world and practice guitar for 18 hours a day, before emerging with a multi-platinum album at the end of it-check out the awesome rock facial expressions in the clip below-these can only be acheived by sitting in a dark bedroom for 4 years, squinting at TAB books (and masturbating yourself silly whenever your mom goes to the store)-believe me, I know!. This is obviously a problem, because these kids were generally pretty nice people who just couldn’t be bothered to wear fashionable clothes, and didn’t like pop music (at this point I should add, if you’re old enough, look at a picture of yourself in the 80s, if you have a bubble perm/mullet and are wearing a skinny tie, and you own any Nik Kershaw albums, you’re probably pretty embarrased about it right? If you have long hair and jeans, and own ‘Powerslave‘ then you probably look pretty much the same and are off to see Maiden this summer right?), and this has left a vacuum where real nerds have moved in and don’t get it, and pretend to be goths or emo instead-this is the reason why goth is so very, very bad. Anyway, if Alex Winter is reading this-dude, only you can save rock n’ roll-hop to it, otherwise, gentlemen-we’re history.