Yarlers, date-rapers and doob-fried noodlers

Don’t you love those TV shows about music history? Especially shows expanded into series, the kind that attempt a grand and sweeping overview of all that has come before. But it’s also interesting what doesn’t pass muster. Think of it: For every Ken Burns’ Jazz, there’s a Ken Burns’ Smooth Jazz languishing on a cutting-room floor somewhere, just waiting to garner accolades.

Knowing this, when VH1 began airing the BBC Two-produced series Seven Ages of Rock, we feverishly worked our contact list and snooped around. Apparently, the cable-music network neglected to pick up Seven Other Ages of Rock, which fills in some important chapters the original series omitted. After perusing the episode list, we’re not sure why.

For instance, the series begins with “The Birth of Media Rock: How the Monkees Started it All.” This episode neglects the early contributions of small-screen idol Ricky Nelson and big-screen idol Elvis, but rightly captures the casting-call genesis of future rock icons Backstreet Boys, ’NSync and other giants, along with stressing the importance of telegenic appeal that drove the successes of Kajagoogoo, A Flock of Seagulls and Wham!, not to mention assorted post-Mouseketeers.

“Future Schlock: How Blood, Sweat & Tears Frontman David Clayton-Thomas Put the ‘Yarl’ in Pearl Jam” explains the development of the seminal (or semen-stained) vocal style, which sends some listeners into ecstasy while making others consider an immediate transformation from form into non-form. A continuum is traced from early film-and-TV figure Walter Brennan through Thomas to Eddie Vedder, the assclown from Bush, Stone Temple Pilots’ Scott Weiland and a bunch of other yarling yahoos.

Perhaps the related episode “Parinirvana: Radio Grunge Clones Drive Rock Fans to Suicide, 1992-Present” goes too far in its delineation of the bands, too numerous to mention (and too forgettable to contemplate), that major labels signed to cash in on Cobain & Co., but the episode’s denouement is interesting. After far-north Dr. Frankensteins have developed a Canadian-content hybrid combining Nirvana with Bachman-Turner Overdrive, one laboratory naysayer exults, “Ooh, and I bet you a wooden nickel you wouldn’t pull it off, eh?” It’s almost thrilling to hear his colleague reply: “Take off, eh, and you can have your nickel back!”

The flip-side of grunge is portrayed in the episode “Dude, I Totally Need a Miracle: Jam Band Ramblings From the Dead Until Now,” in which the genre that would not die keeps crawling back again and again, from Phish and Blues Traveler to String Cheese Incident, New Potato Caboose and a litany of other doob-fried noodlers. The episode loses steam when it attempts to rope in such acts as the Dave Matthews Band and Jack Johnson, whose lack of musical ambition may locate them in jam-band territory but whose corporate-friendly demeanor suggests an altogether different category.

“Touch My Ass and My Balls: Freddie Redcap, Limp Bizkit and Date-Rape Rock” begins with influential Los Angeles punk-funk combo Red Hot Chili Peppers establishing the conditions for the frat-boy-friendly “date rape” genre, then touches briefly on Phoenix band Phunk Junkeez, before crashing and burning with the Bizkit—rock music’s equivalent of the Mike Judge film Idiocracy—and its dumbass frontman Fred Durst. Caucasian rapper Kevin Federline narrates.

In contrast, “Our Logo on Everything: The Rise and Fall of Generic Punk Rock” examines the breakthrough of Green Day and the many Hot Topic T-shirt logos that followed: Blink-182, Sum 41, Good Charlotte, the Offspring, Simple Plan, Linkin Park and enough other three-chord excuses for massive merch receipts to fuel a shopping-mall specialty chain’s business plan.

The superiority of all things British is driven home in the final episode, “Rule Britannia, and Suck on This: We’re More Smashing Than You and More Smashed Than You, Too.” After beginning with an onstage drunken punch-up at an Oasis show between Gallagher brothers Noel and Liam, some live and very scribbled performances featuring British luminaries Amy Winehouse and Pete Doherty are contextualized with ultra-sloshed commentary from Irish contrarian Shane MacGowan. It provides a fitting end to an altogether brilliant series. Too brilliant, perhaps, for public consumption.