Last night I caught the second half of "Behind the Music : 1987" and felt somewhere between annoyed and appalled at the musical revisionism it contained. All of VH1's similarly structured mini-docs have this flaw. They have been made recently (2001 in this case), and therefore are made with many years of perspective. The interviewees are all too often aware of this, and try to retell the tale with the benefit of the obvious 20/20 hindsight, often with the intention of making themselves look more important. Poison's C.C. Deville claiming that "Talk Dirty to Me" is "one of the greatest garage punk songs ever written" was the most ludicrous example from last night's program.

In the VH1 era, with music being regurgitated on such a regular basis, the time is perfect for a book on 21st century musical revisionism. If anyone is reading this and wishes to take up the gauntlet, please do and make sure to put my name in the acknowledgements. Otherwise, I just may do it myself someday (right after my book on vinyl culture, I suppose). Hint: the TV special commemorating Elvis and his #1's collection would make a fine introductory chapter.

If you were to believe BTM:1987, you would accept the following arguments:

1. The successes of REM and U2 were cases of the underground finally peeking overground. 2. Hair metal was on the decline. 3. Bruce Springsteen and Michael Jackson followed up their mid-decade uber-successes with disappointing albums.

Let's start with #3. If not for "Thriller", "Bad" may well have been considered the biggest album ever to that point. It sold about 25 million copies worldwide, spawned six hit singles, was nominated for loads of Grammys, the videos were talked about everywhere and were in equally heavy rotation as the "Thriller" ones, and entrenched Michael as the most successful popstar in the world for another three years. That's hardly a disappointment, nor is it fair to characterize these successes as an artist treading water. Compared to "Thriller", almost anything would be viewed a monumental failure. That comparison just isn't fair.

Bruce's "Tunnel of Love" was never meant to be "Born in the USA II". It was a conscious attempt to shift gears in his career, symbolized by the abscence of the E Street Band from his records for the first time. This latter point was completely ignored by BTM. It sold less than "BitUSA", but again, that's not really a fair comparison. How many artists make more than one epoch-defining record? It still sold millions, and the follow-ups, 1992's "Lucky Town" and "Human Touch", debuted at numbers 1 and 2. I don't think Bruce disappointed anybody.

Now for the major malfeasances. It's all well and good to put fourteen years of hindsight to good use, but let's not use it to make patently false statements. First, let's get the following things straight.

1. Kurt was the single biggest force behind bringing the underground into the overground.

2. Kurt was the single biggest force behind the death of hair metal.

With all due respect to Dave and Krist, I said "Kurt" rather than "Nirvana" because Kurt, like it or not (and he certainly didn't during his lifetime), was the icon of the band and the times. Similarly, we now speak of Hendrix as the icon and forget about The Experience. Anyhow, neither of these points, IMO, can be intelligently disputed.

It's arguable whether U2 were underground in any way come 1987. "The Unforgettable Fire" and "War" had already been big hits. Not superstar sized hits, but hits nonetheless. Hell, if Samantha Micelli went to a U2 concert on a 1984 episode of "Who's the Boss?" then they couldn't have been too unknown. REM were certainly a cult phenomenon in 1987, but the main point is that the breakthroughs of both bands were singular and isolated. They did almost nothing to spur an upward movement of the underground. Stated differently, I can't think of a single band that made it on the backs of either U2 or REM's success. On the other hand, Nirvana dragged countless bands into the charts with them, so much so that the Billboard 200 before and after "Nevermind" were notedly different.

Furthermore, it's stupid to suggest that people were tiring of hair metal in 1987 because they'd realised how shallow it was and that you couldn't tell the bands apart with a magnifying glass. Or that consumers were bored of the string of dumbass songs about chicks and cars and girls and parties and babes. Hair metal stayed huge through the end of the decade. Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, Motley Crue, Poison, Tesla, and Extreme's biggest successes were still to come. The pop charts of 1988-9 were stuffed full of hair metal bands and their indistinguishable power ballads, the same way the charts of the early and mid 90's were stuffed full of R&B vocal groups and their indistinguishable soul ballads. The truth is that post-Kurt, serious music was in and hedonist music was not. Bands who cut their hair and modified their message were able to continue their career. Those that didn't, mercifully vanished and are now appearing on a reunion tour triple bill at an amphitheatre near you.