Great Balls Of Fire - Television Tropes & Idioms

A huge rubber Satan has started inflatin',
He towers up over the drums.
Then pyrotechnics and stuff give a blast loud enough,
To rattle your teeth from your gums.
This incredible set is the best vision yet,
Of our stage designer's craft.
And it helps to distract the crowd from the fact,
That the music is really quite daft.

Mitch Benn, Never Mind The Song (Look At The Stage Set)

Hard rock bands, and especially "Hair Metal" bands, with their aura of "Greek gods walking the earth," sometimes have a rather unfortunate tendency to rely heavily upon special effects such as fog, lasers or, more commonly, Impressive Pyrotechnics in their videos and stage shows. It's as much about the visual BANG as it is the music, sometimes more so — anything to perpetuate the notion that these beings are so far above and beyond us mere mortal music consumers that they actually alter the very nature of the universe.

This attention to visual detail can be partly blamed on MTV, which transmogrified music from an audio medium to a visual one in the 1980s. Suddenly everything bright and flashy was in, anything simple and straightforward was right out; and as MTV grew in influence, music video budgets rose accordingly, allowing bands to afford more spectacular effects. That meant more explosions. Woo-hooo!!!

Of course, nowadays we look back on those days long gone, and remember only the teased hairdos and the flashing lights and Roman candles. The music? Not so much.

Oh, but don't misunderstand. Special effects in hard rock videos are very much here to stay. Now with 100% more Bullet Time and less 80s-style spark factories!

Of course, not everything is about fire and bombs. Some bands, in an attempt to make a memorable video or concert experience, might take a trip into the outre with weird stage shows, odd props, or bizarre dramatizations with members of the band, roadies or even the audience. When it comes down to making sure you come back next year to see what they'll do, nothing is off limits.

Note: It should be emphasized that the presence or absence of theatrics or special effects does not necessarily equate with the absence or presence of musical ability, nor vice-versa; the two can co-exist quite comfortably. This article is intended to have a light tone; let's keep it that way, shan't we?

Examples:

Pyrotechnics became so ubiquitous in the mid- to late-80s that at the 1987 MTV Music Video Awards, a bomb blast was used during the performance of Los Lobos' "La Bamba." "La frickin' Bamba," people!
A similar effect in Whitesnake's Dress Rehearsal Video for "Here I Go Again." Interestingly, lead singer David Coverdale gave an interview shortly thereafter in which he forswore the use of pyrotechnics altogether, saying he didn't want an explosion to get a bigger cheer than his own peformance.
Def Leppard's 1983 tour featured more fireworks than a Fourth Of July celebration in Washington D.C. Understandable, though, as the album was titled Pyromania.
- Their subsequent tours have replaced pyrotechnics with a laser light show.
Badlands' "Winter's Call" video features the band performing in the midst of a forest fire. Oh yes, and random explosions. In the forest.
How can we forget Ace Frehley of Kiss playing a guitar while it was on fire?
- A move he most likely aped from Jimi Hendrix.
Pretty much anything by Quiet Riot and Iron Maiden.
- Unlike most of the other bands listed here, however, Iron Maiden is highly respected for their musical ability, and still has a hardcore fanbase and a successful continued career. Their most recent album release was in 2006 and received very strong reviews.
Poison videos utilized not only pyro, but also glitter and confetti.
Bon Jovi's video for "Livin' On A Prayer" featured singer Jon flying on wires over the audience. Like we'd never seen that before.
- "You Give Love a Bad Name" has GBOF all the way through.
Korn's "Coming Undone" video comes to mind, in which they rock so hard the sky actually collapses.
Queensryche's "Building Empires" tour featured wall-sized twin projection screens on which relevant imagery could be displayed. These screens were a hold-over from the videos for their previous album, Operation Mindcrime, and were utilized in a presentation of Mindcrime in its entirety (this formed the basis of the Operation:Livecrime video and album set).
Most of Alice Cooper's repertoire is more about theatrics than the music. Take it from someone who has actually seen him in concert.
- The main difference between an Alice Cooper gig and a Motorhead gig is that the blood your clothes get covered in at the former washes off in warm water...
- By the way, Alice invented this stuff. He's vaudeville. Which is why Groucho was such a fan.
- Alice invented it, but G.W.A.R. cranked it up to 11.
Somewhere between the monster masks and explosions, Gwar and Lordi apparently play music as well.
- From Questionable Content:
  "[Drumming is like] counting with your whole body."
  "Yeah... well, not your whole body. Unless you want to, I don't know, fart on a gong every sixteenth measure... I think Gwar do something like that."
David Lee Roth's tour to support A Lil Ain't Enough featured plastic moulded Pans (little half-man half-goats) on a Lazy Susan-type carousel; these Pans squirted booze out into the audience. I don't think I need to tell you where the booze squirted out from.
And don't forget Pink Floyd's "flying pig."
- Variations have included a flying hospital bed and an actual (model) airplane, which — yes — crashed into the stage and exploded.
And then there was Motley Crue, with Tommy Lee's "flying drum solo."
Even Elvis wasn't immune, and he died four years (almost to the day) before MTV.
The pervasiveness of psychedelic imagery in the 1960s makes this trope Older Than They Think.
Rammstein (ab)uses this one so much that lead singer Till Lindemann is a licensed pyrotechnician.
- Fans of the band have coined the motto "Other bands play, Rammstein BURNS!"
  - The band have also added that they also do it because almost all of their songs are in German, and they have to hold the attention of the non-German speaking fans.
Parodied rather fiercely in the Discworld novel Soul Music, where most of the bands that spring up in the wake of The Band With Rocks In are absolutely dreadful, because they think Music With Rocks In is about the image rather than actually being able to play music. This is especially true of a quartet of teenagers known as Crash, Jimbo, Scum, and Noddy, who can't even decide on a name for their band for more than a day or two at most and don't even have the talent to be So Bad Its Good.
- Hell, they didn't even have the talent to rate as So Bad Its Horrible. Horrible music would at least have been music.
In one of the smaller tragedies to strike Metallica on tour (i.e. no bandmates died) James Hetfield stepped too close to the pyro effects during a performance, and was burned on his arm and hand. He recovered eventually, but had to have a roadie sub in for his guitar playing for any remaining dates. The moral? According to the roadie, "Learn all the band's songs, because you never know!"
- During a later Metallica tour, they would stage a fake-catastrophe where the stage would collapse on itself and a stuntman would run across the stage on fire. Then they'd come out onto the "wreckage" of the stage and keep playing. It can be seen near the end of the "Cunning Stunts" DVD.
The Made For TV Movie KISS Meets The Phantom Of The Park actually did cast the band as hard rockin', god-like superheroes.
In The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, the band Disaster Area's concerts are so loud and overblown that they typically end up killing everything within forty miles. Especially anybody unfortunate enough to be aboard the ship that crashes into the sun. In at least one case, a concert of theirs even turns a desert planet into a lush paradise.
All live McCartney vs. of "Live and Let Die" include explosions. What sort depends on the show: the pyrotechnics have ranged from smoke pots to huge rocket firecrackers. On occasion, the huge rockets had been placed dangerously close to the piano Paul was using—though clearly nothing's gone wrong on that front yet.
In the mid-70s, there was a band called 'Thor', where the planned emphasis would be almost ENTIRELY on pyro and other stagecraft- to the point that the tour was to come before any album release. The touring company went bankrupt developing new special effects and stocking up on things like fireworks- the tour was scrapped and Thor disbanded without ever performing one of the shows, or releasing anything larger than an EP.
Indian singer Dahler Mehndi uses this in his "Tunak Tunak Tun" video. At one point, he even picks up a CGI fireball and throws it at the camera.
- Conversely, some of his other videos (such as "Shaa Ra Ra") consist entirely of a still picture of him with the music playing in the background, and no movement at all.
E Nomine´s Die Prophezeiung video is a huge dramatization of the entire disc's lyrics, which range from satanist cults to cursed souls walking the earth.
A central tendency of Metalocalypse is for Dethklok's concerts to typically wind up causing impressive body counts. In one episode, for example, the band's unnamed adopted child plays with the controls to the laser light show and winds up murdering a good part of the audience and the entire London Philharmonic orchestra. Other concerts included Dethklok's attempt at a blues concert (so depressing that it could be likened to the ending of Raiders of the Lost Ark), and the episode where Dethklok accidentally summons a troll (which proceeds, of course, to go on a bloody rampage.) One wonders how Dethklok has a fanbase considering that anyone becoming involved with them, in any way, has a tendency to die in an exceptionally brutal fashion.
- Because they are so very metal. No really.
- "Accidentally" summons a troll? I'm pretty sure they were trying to summon it.
"Now, we've never tried to summon a lake troll from the Finnish Necronomicon, so please bear with us. Here goes..."
All of this is parodied, of course, by the titular band in This Is Spinal Tap.
Trans-Siberian Orchestra has one of the most impressive light and pyrotechnic shows know to man
JAM Project has a habit of spicing up their songs' instrumental introductions with fire and lasers when in concert. During the song, they prefer to rely on stage presence, Hot Bloodedness, and raw energy. The combination is a working formula.
Muse. And it is awesome.
- Uh, Kay...
  - Knights Of Cydonia.
  - They are indeed awesome.
A Finnish band named Lordi. First of all every member of the band has an elaborate monster costume. When they participated in the Eurovision Song Contest in 2006 (Which they won, by the way.), there was some discussion about would their pyrotechnics be safe to use. They got to use them in the end. Videos of their song 'Hard Rock Hallelujah' are easy to find in Youtube, if someone wants to actually see them.
Perhaps the grand-pappy of this would be the 1812 overture where outside performances sometimes use real artillery pieces for the bit with the cannon fire. (Da-dadadada-da-da-BOOM!)
- Well, the piece was *written* to have Cannonfire included. None of this "lets add the theatrics afterwards" pandering.
Famous aversion: Dire Straits deliberately avoided on-stage theatrics during their shows. When they played small venues, they often turned the volume down so people could talk to each other.
- Not to mention every folk singer ever, but special mention must go to José Gonzalez, whose performances tend to be so quiet and unobtrusive that a journalist once described them as "anti-gig"s.
Nine Inch Nails. The Lights in the Sky tour. Full stop. Killer performance. Stunning light show. Need more be said?
In an early example, a 1967 performance by The Who on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour was capped off by Keith Moon igniting a pyrotechnic charge he'd smuggled inside his bass drum. The charge, which Moon had made himself, proved so powerful that it temporarily blacked out the studio cameras and singed Pete Townshend's hair, and the sudden explosion caused Bette Davis to faint backstage.
The Butthole Surfers love using these kind of effects in shows for serious Squick. Naked dancer, drum with a strobe light in it, films of such things as penis reconstruction surgery and gory driver's education films... apparently, Gibby Haynes and Paul Leary even had sex on stage once.
The video game Brutal Legend combines this with Magic Music: Guitar solos cause cataclysmic events, stage lights burn people and pyrotechnics do damage in combat.