I have a slightly different read on musical trends as a reflection of politics over the last generation.  Big hair metal seems to have been like all other genres totally of the spirit of the 80s, a decade which oddly enough is only even remembered nowadays because of loony-liberal Family Guy.  I don’t take Alternative too seriously, particularly after watching the VH1 Classic Ages of Rock special which took such pains to portray it as having been much edgier than it really was – as many of its leading personalities were openly, it reflected trendy 90s libertarianism of style over substance.

I’ll never forget the epiphany represented when at my usual Wednesday night out a couple years back, I yelled at the cheerful folkie on stage asking for requests “play something corny from the 90s!”, with Green Day Time Of Your Life in the back of my mind.

Which brings us to the late 90s and all that truly wussy stuff George mentioned, when even the posture of libertarianism was gone and the stage was set for contemporary loony liberalism.  Also crucial to note is the incredible evolution of punk from its 80s hardcore excesses to the pathetic teenybopping left-anarchists of the last decade.  The unadulterated political absurdity reached by this set was well represented by Rage Against The Machine in its loyalty to the uber-Maoist sectarian Bob Avakian.

The Ron Paul campaign held out the distinct promise of alternative rockers and the alternative right together at last, and who knows what cultural terrain awaits any genuine right that emerges out of the smoldering remains of the current angry mob.   Ron Paul and Johnny Rotten may yet one day be as iconic an image as Nixon and Elvis.

No discussion of all this can be complete without mention of the odyssey of hip-hop, whose story arc has blatantly obvious political implications: what better metaphor could there be for how we got from Spike Lee’s black America to Barack Obama’s in less than a generation than, as just one example, Ice-T’s journey from I’m Your Pusher to Special Victims Unit, to say nothing of the truly Dickensian journey of Flavor Flav?

So in short, I think limiting the question to metal misses the forest for the trees.  Just to conclude with some food for thought, I think a much more interesting pop culture phenomenon has been the death of 60s nostalgia after it soared in the 90s – the recent hoopla for the 40th anniversary of Woodstock notwithstanding, though if anything it has only served to emphasize that Jimi Hendrix and Buffalo Springfield were the voice of a vastly different America than Tom Hayden or Mark Rudd.