Sometimes, you just gotta rock!

Rock Show airs every night at 12:30 a.m. EST on VH1.

Nowadays, when you turn to your music television channel of choice, chances are pretty good you're not going to find any actual music. Not only will you not find music, but you'll probably tune into something you would rather not see altogether. Obnoxious twenty-somethings playing "Rock 'em, Sock 'em Egos" on The Real World and Road Rules, a group of pretentious celebrities spouting their worthless two-cents on The List, or in the rare occasion they do play a video or two, we either get watered-down alterna-rock, generic "Smooth Jazz," or worst yet, the latest effort from the current Boy Band of the Week.

How am I supposed to take a hard rock icon seriously with a name like "Cone?"

Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with these particular genres of music; but sometimes, you just have to dust off your spiked dog collar, don your leopard skin tights, tease your hair into a geometric anomaly - and then proceed to ROCK! And that, for the most part, is what Rock Show is all about.

Arguably one of their most popular videos, "Too Young to Fall in Love" was later surpassed by Tommy Lee's "solo project."

Hosted by Cane (whose real name, I'm willing to bet, is probably something along the lines of Stanley or Wilbur), Rock Show takes you through a half-hour of videos by artists who seemed to have lost a majority of their audience after the grunge craze of the 90's: Megadeth, Motley Crue, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, Great White - the list goes on and on. You know the type of bands I'm referring to - the ones you hide toward the back of your CD collection, and when inadvertently discovered by someone browsing through your music, you're quick to conjure up some ridiculous lie like, "Oh, haha! Uh, that's not mine. My..um..cousin must've left it here last time he visited. Yeah..yeah..he was one of those silly metalheads back in the 80's. I think the John Tesh album you're looking for is towards the front of the rack." Nonsense! Embrace those care-free Hair Band days! And with Rock Show, you can do just that.

A pig playing a cello and a contortionist. Need I say more?

Though they do play a good deal of Glam, there are the occasional selections by some of the more popular artists of today - Creed, Rage Against the Machine, The Foo Fighters; but to me, the highlights of the show are the blasts from the past. Today's contemporary videos just don't have the pinache of, say, Motley Crue's "Too Young to Fall in Love," in which the Crue (decked out in leather, fishnet, and eye-liner), take on an Asian prostitution ring! The finale involves our Motley heroes battling it out with various samurai! That, my friends, is what video making is all about. Today it's all about bouncing cars, political awareness and social messages (usually performed by artists with questionable moral standards themselves). Now, what would you rather have? Someone beating a dead horse about your right to vote? Or Vince Neil taking out a ninja with some of the worst martial arts action this side of Dolemite?

"Emergo" proves to be just as ineffective in a Megadeth video as it was in earlier Castle productions.

Though thoroughly entertaining, Rock Show is not without problems. The first, and perhaps most grievous, of these drawbacks is the show's brevity. A half-hour is cutting it close, especially when intermixed with two or three sets of commercials, and lengthy commentary by Cane in between. Which leads us directly to our second dilemma - Cane. Again, he just talks too much, and worst yet, he apparently has nothing particularly interesting to say (not unlike most VJs of today, might I add). If you're going to waste my time with your babbling, at least say something pertinent to the videos being aired. I don't need to hear your lame jokes; I have plenty of my own.

So, in short, Rock Show is definitely worth checking out. It's not as good as MTV's old Headbangers Ball, but it's eons better than webRIOT. And what's the deal with Ahmet Zappa anyway? Oh well, like Dweezil and Moon Unit, I guess he's entitled to his fifteen minutes of fame as well.

Copyright © 2000 by Joe Bannerman