30 years ago this month, some long-haired 20-somethings rose up from the DIY underground to take on corporate titans and won.
No, not those guys.
I write, of course, about Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar, stars of the (fictional) public-access TV program Wayne’s World. Released on Valentine’s Day, 1992, Wayne’s World, based on a Saturday Night Live sketch starring Mike Myers and Dana Carvey, chronicled the epic David(s) vs. Goliath struggle of two wise-beyond-their years headbangers.
It was the first movie I ever saw in a theatre without a parent, a fact that I’m pretty sure boiled down to my mom seeing the trailer and saying to herself “There’s no way I’m sitting through two hours of this crap.” So my friend Michael Frost and I were dutifully dropped off at the Esplanade movie theatre in North Vancouver and had our minds blown (well at least I did. I can’t speak for Michael who moved to Washington state a few years later). Not a week has gone by since where I don’t think about this movie.
You can make chicken vs. egg arguments but I’d say that even if Wayne’s World isn’t solely responsible for my sense of humour, it certainly brought it into sharper focus. Breaking the fourth wall, obscure pop-culture references, non-sequiturs, a very 90s willingness to mock big corporations - it’s like the urtext for what I consider funny to this day.
Then, of course, there’s the music.
When I saw Wayne’s World, my musical world view barely stretched beyond the AM adult contemporary station my parents would listen to in the car. I loved the Beach Boys and 50s and 60s pop and rock in general. But hard rock was something that was only beginning to emerge on my radar. Wayne’s World managed to both celebrate and skewer these bands and the culture around them. I can thank the film for introducing me to The Sweet, Jimi Hendrix, and “Stairway to Heaven.” I already knew about Alice Cooper thanks to an appearance on The Muppet Show. But the reverence with which Wayne and Garth treat Cooper really hammered home his importance to a certain type of music fan. It was a great and friendly introduction for an 11-year old just starting to find their footing in this world.
The deftness with which the film walks this line comes from director Penelope Spheeris. Fresh off The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years, which chronicled the L.A. hair metal scene, Spheeris was not of the culture that was being sent up, but she certainly understood it. Like her doc, Wayne’s World was about the fans, not the bands. The film comes across as a love letter to that culture, even if Wayne and Garth’s DIY cable-access show has more in common with the punk and indie scene from which Spheeris did emerge.
Of course, it’s impossible to talk about Wayne’s World without talking about Queen. The English quartet had briefly captured the attention of mainstream America at the beginning of the 80s, but by the end of the decade their 70s work had become more of a cult phenomenon among the LA metal scene while the band morphed into more of a pop group, scoring big hits everywhere but America. Wayne’s World changed that.
Film placements have boosted lots of artists’ careers over the years. But it’s hard to think of a group whose legacy was as affected by a sync as Queen’s was after Wayne, Garth and their crew lipsynced their way through “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Buoyed by the film and singer Freddie Mercury’s tragic death, the song re-entered the Billboard charts, placing higher than when it was originally released back in 1975. 40 years later while waiting for a headliner to hit the stage, I’ve seen full stadium’s singing and headbanging along to the song. I don’t think that would be a thing if it wasn’t for the song’s inclusion in the film.
There’s a great oral history of the scene from Rolling Stone a few years back, so I won’t bore you with the details. But it shouldn’t come as a surprise that it’s very closely based around Mike Myers own experience driving around the GTA with his buddies. It’s a great song, but the weird communal understanding that surrounds “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and it’s because of this one epic scene.
Wayne’s World hit theatres at a funny time. While the hoser/hesher culture the film taps into was still the dominant strain of rock (Airheads, another SNL adjacent comedy, was still leaning into it two years later, to diminishing effects) a sea change was afoot. As I hinted above, Nirvana’s Nevermind had hit number one on the Billboard 200 the month before the film’s release and the transition from the “nothin’ but a good time” vibe of 80s hair metal to grunge’s self-seriousness was well underway.
I think that transition comes across in the film. There’s a sense of detached irony to the whole thing that was desperately lacking in the entire hair metal scene at the time. Juxtapose that with Decline Part II where every one, from the fans to the superstars, comes across as overwhelming earnest with a (mostly) shocking lack of self-awareness. After a decade of this you can see how irony and sarcasm became the prevailing tone of the 90s. So as much as Myers, Carvey and Spheeris may have intended Wayne’s World to be a love letter to headbanger culture, the timing makes it a bit of a requiem too.
Kool Kids Music Reccomendation Club
Madi Diaz has been putting her feelings on tape for most of her adult life. So when the L.A.-based singer-songwriter makes a record called Histoy of a Feeling, she knows what she’s talking about (even if the title sounds like something Justin Theroux’s character from Wanderlust would say). Diaz is currently rolling out a new EP of reworked versions of tracks from the LP called Same History, New Feelings which includes a great team-up with Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield. But I love the raw emotion of History’s “Think of Me” and the sad/savage line “I hope you fuck her with your eyes close and think of me.”
Connecticut quintet Anxious make music with a lot less existential dread than their name would suggest. Like a lot of bands these days they walk a fine line between emo, indie and pop-punk. But there are some lovey pop flourishes to their debut album Little Green House, like the vocal harmonies that end opener “Your One Way Street” that suggest there is far more at work in this band than their surface noise would suggest.
TBH, when I first read about Pile of Love, a new supergroup featuring Drug Church members Nick Cogan and Chris Villeneuve, the Story So Far's Kevin Geyer, Ryan Graham from State Champs and Morgan Foster from Mobins Child, I assumed it would sound more like Anxious. Not so! Their debut, which they surprise released at the end of last year, mines the sounds of 90s alt rock and power pop groups like the Posies, Velvet Crush, Pluto and Super Deluxe, injecting their tunes with the requisite amount of 70s sleeze.
Canada really lacks second cities like Philadelphia. Places with big city amenities with out the big city rent are hotbeds for artists and the City of Brotherly Love has certainly been that for the past decade, especially if you’re into DIY guitar bands. Church Girls have been around for a while now, but last year’s Still Blooms was a bit of a breakthrough, balancing a sense of urgency with some sweet, sweet pop hooks. The whole thing is worth your time, but “Separated” is an early standout.
British singer Bakar has been bubbling under since dropping a mixtape back in 2018. He finally released his debut album, Nobody Home last week. I like how he uses hip-hop rhythms in his melodies, mixing them with warped indie rock guitars. Coupled with his atonal vocal in “NW3,” which chronicles his upwardly mobile arrival in a posh Hamptstead neighbourhood, his music really brings to mind King Krule, in this case covering MXPX’s “Move to Bremerton,” something that will definteily never happen outide of my imagination.
Ian Gormely is a freelance music journalist based in Toronto.
Hit up koolkidsmusicclub@gmail.com for questions, criticisms and submissions.