Awesome.
I remember a band called "Television" or "TV" in the mid-70's. Never heard their music, but I remember noticing that they had short hair and I found that so weird back then. That's all I remember, they didn't have long hair. And you're right, V.U., the Stooges,etc....were around way before anything was actually called "punk". I was a pretty mainstream rocker as a teenager and I remember that we all thought punk was about purple mohawks and hating hippies. But we laughed at the music because it was so un-hard rock-ish. There were no guitar solos.
I always saw the 90's grunge thing as America's punk movement 20 years after the British did it. But I can totally see why it had to happen. The 80's was the absolute most horrible decade of music....ever. Whether it's the spandex hair bands, or the Duran Duran type bands, it all sucked really bad.
I was born in 72, so I grew up with 80s music. I think I started playing guitar right after
1984 came out, so it was all hair metal for my first 4 or 5 years on the instrument. Guys like Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, and Eric Johnson helped me get into more jazzy/fusion guys like Holdsworth, Jean Luc Ponty, and Pat Metheny.
But then, in my freshman year of college, when I
really discovered the Beatles for the first time after listening to my roommate's
Abbey Road LP, everything quickly changed for me. I got off the guitar shredder thing and got more into the songwriting thing. And by the time I'd left college (I was studying music), I'd pretty much opened up to being able to appreciate many different styles, although I still fall predominantly under the very large "rock" umbrella. But I like some jazz, classical, blues, etc. now as well.
I still get nostalgic for some of the stuff from the 80s because of where I was in my musical development at the time, and I don't think all hair metal was
total crap, but I agree that most of it was for sure. Van Halen had some fine songwriting moments, IMHO, as did Def Leppard and several other bands. You have to get past the hairspray and lipstick.
But now I'm starting to go back and get an appreciation for some of the stuff I didn't like back then, such as Devo, for instance. Now that I'm out of the decade and can look at it more objectively, I can start to appreciate the writing and production more, and I find a lot of it pretty cool. (Although I still hate the reverb-drenched hair metal drum sound almost 100% of the time.)