Hating the Band Except For That One Guy #1: Sebastian Bach

Usually I gush or I mock (this website is, afterall, www.gushmockorganization.com). Today, it’s a bunch of gushing inside of and in addition to the mocking. Gocking? Mushing? Emotionally conflicted hand-wringing? Yeah, that’ll do.

This is about bands those bands that I think or awful or that I loathe, almost universally recognized as such due to changing musical trends, or because of the loathsome public personas of the group members. But in spite of that, many times these groups boast one person that you just can’t help but like and root for, and wish them the courage to leave the band and to succeed in their future endeavors.


It’s basically this.

The band to dislike: Skid Row. They came around at the peak of the ’80s L.A.-centered hair meal/pop metal phenomenon that dominated music until grunge. It seemed like Skid Row’s audience was predominantly adolescent girls, what with the impressive wail and handsome boy features of the band’s lead singer, Sebastian Bach, who wailed plaintively, if not convincingly metallically on power ballads like “I Remember You” and “18 and Life.” His Teen Beat looks and not quite Metal Edge material were a bad fit for quality and credibility, and Skid Row disappeared quicker than every other hair band, with the exception of Pretty Boy Floyd.


But then Bach went and became a celebrity and a personality. He likes to sing and be on TV, and has a pretty good sense of humor about himself. He was even on Broadway! But he’s been on close to 300 VH1 reality shows, from the Making the Classic Rock Band thing with Ted Nugent and Jason Bonham to Celebrity Fit Club to all those I Nostalgize the ’80s things. But I think I like him best for playing a thinly-veiled less successful version of himself on Gilmore Girls, as a married, past-his-prime but happy to be playing singer and guitarist for Hep Alien, a band of teenagers. Here he is on Gilmore Girls singing “Hollaback Girl.”


This shit? Is bananas.