Admit it: this picture makes you SO FUCKING HAPPY.

Recently, my friend sent me a YouTube link to a Bee Gees cover group. Excuse me, tribute band. That is the proper way of addressing them, as Mark Wahlberg taught us in Rock Star. I don’t like the Bee Gees. I don’t like disco. Disco is kind of terrible. Disco blows dogs for quarters. Disco is never amazing, especially not when KISS attempt it. To say I was a little confused would be an understatement. But my friends aren’t totally clueless to what I listen to, so I gave it a shot. It turned out it was a heavy metal Bee Gees tribute band. Okay, it was a little bit awesome. Weirdly enough, it worked. I only like thin-voiced men screeching when accompanied by equally high-pitched guitars, and that’s basically what heavy metal “Stayin’ Alive,” was. I turned it off about halfway through because, well, I still have my limits, but it kind of makes you stop and go, “Huh!” Metal just makes everything sound better.

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Usually when a fad fizzles, its casual fans disperse and its faithful just hang tough. But no trend, including the macarena and Jewel, has been subjected to the hostility and convenient disgust that follows Glam Metal and its fans. Perhaps the extra-harsh reaction is proportionate to its success as an inescapable, nearly decade-long craze that dominated radio and TV. Perhaps a lot of macho dickheads and party-haters are defensive about what they consider a shameful episode of rock transvestism. Perhaps the haters just seem louder because Glam Metal’s fanbase has failed, unlike those of hip hop and classic rock, to perpetuate itself via self-righteous documentaries, a half-assed hall of fame, and/or positions of power within critical music media. Perhaps it’s all three.

But there’s no changing the fact that Glam Metal’s great moments are great. And millions of people paid cash to enjoy those great moments. How could it not have been fun?

To help us relive those hair metal moments, we welcome Bring Back Glam! scribe Allyson B. Crawford, America’s foremost Glam Metal scholar. Today, Allyson and MS hair rock apologist Anso DF assemble the essential Glam Metal library for beginners and veterans. An oral history, a time capsule, a how-to kit, a party starter, a cheat sheet to win the heart of hair rockers, whatever you want to call it — it’s all about the loudest, dirtiest, beer-chuggingest, drugs-snortingest records in music history. And you don’t even have to be glam to read it. But it doesn’t hurt.

Forget the hype. Forget the history. Forget the backlash. This is the real shit.

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There are very few things in this world I would willingly own up to enjoying even if it meant enduring endless grief — but hair metal is one of those things. That being said, I always involuntarily cringe when someone asks me to recommend a band in the genre, because, well, a lot of the names are total crap. I completely believe you have to judge a book by it’s cover — how else will you know if it’s any good? — and a band’s name has always served me as the first clue in their “cover,” so to speak.

Hair metal band names require a few certain things; references to animals or power or danger are a plus. If there can be allusions to sleaze and/or sexual prowess, maybe juxtaposed with virginal innocence, you’re headed in the right direction. And if they can do all that and throw in some umlauts and misspellings, then it’s gold. But there is such a thing as too much, and those monikers are the ones that just make you wonder exactly how coked out the band members were when they decided that it would be a good name for band.

And so, I give you the ten worst.

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