Less than a month after running an Oasis sketch that was greeted with near-universal derision, long-running US comedy show Saturday Night Live has upped the ante with a segment about 80s metal.
As anyone who's seen Spinal Tap or Penelope Spheeris's great documentary The Decline Of Western Civilization: Part II - The Metal Years can happily attest, the era lends itself to brilliant comedy – whether it's fictional or otherwise – so it's something of a surprise that the SNL skit is so witless.
In the sketch, SNL cast members Bill Burr and Emil Wakim stumble their way through a segment related to the band "Snake Skin", both mangling their autocue prompts as the film cuts to a series of performances from the band and a repertoire of songs so slight they make Steel Panther look like Van der Graaf Generator.
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- "It's like Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown but with less generation-defining genius and far more people dressed as bees": The SNL movie Saturday Night is fast and funny
"This is real music, from when I was growing up," says Burr’s character. "No auto-tune, no mumble rap, just musicians."
"What was it called?" asks his son.
"80s sex rock!” responds Burr, a look on his face suggesting he knows exactly how slight the material is.
Of course, comedy is subjective, but this is subjectively the worst thing we've seen since, well, that Oasis sketch. Snake Skin's "songs" include Havin’ Sex on an Escalator (Sex-Scalator) – presumably named after Aerosmith's much wittier Love On An Elevator, and Nah-Nah Train, which contains the line "Your nah-nah is a train/ And I am the passenger/ Gonna ride your nah-nah/ It’s a bumpy ride/ Aboard your nah-nah," and was presumably composed by the 12-year-old son of one of the writers.
Having said that, the Colorado Springs mailing address at the end is a nice touch.
