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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 '''<small>BANG</small>''' 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 [[The Power of Rock|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 [[Spectacle|bright and flashy]] was in, anything [[Three Chords and
Of course, nowadays we look back on those days long gone, and remember only the [[Flanderization|teased]] [[Eighties Hair|hairdos]] and the [[Distracted By the Shiny|flashing lights and Roman candles]]. The music? [[Nothing but Hits|Not so much]].
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== Christian Rock ==
* If you want to see this trope embodied [[Up to Eleven|to the fullest]] in music video form, watch the one for [[
== Classical ==
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** If anything, he's far more famous for the "swirly sparks" on his machine head.
** The [[Made for TV Movie]] ''KISS Meets The Phantom Of The Park'' actually did cast the band as [[The Power of Rock|hard rockin', god-like superheroes]].
* Pretty much anything by Quiet Riot and [[
* Poison videos utilized not only pyro, but also [[Everything's Better
* [[Bon Jovi]]'s video for "You Give Love a Bad Name" has GBOF all the way through.
* [[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 [[
** 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 [[The Marx Brothers|Groucho]] was such a fan.
* [[
* Somewhere between the monster masks, blood/semen splatter and explosions, [[GWAR]] apparently plays music as well.
** From ''[[Questionable Content]]'':
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* David Lee Roth's tour to support ''A Little 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 then there was [[Motley Crue]], with Tommy Lee's "flying drum solo."
* [[
* In one of the smaller tragedies to strike [[
** 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.
* 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.
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* In 2003, a band called Great White playing at a not particularly large nightclub called The Station decided to use a fair amount of pyrotechnics on the very first song. Soundproofing foam around the stage ignited. 100 people were killed and over 200 were injured. Kind of puts in perspective the comedic fictional use of people dying....
** We should be fair - the band were exonerated, their management and the venue management were at fault for the tragedy.
* [[
* J-rockers Guitar Wolf had a ''flaming microphone'' in their in-movie concert in ''[[Wild Zero]]''.
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* Even [[Elvis Presley]] wasn't immune, and he died four years (almost to the day) before MTV.
* All live [[Paul McCartney]] versions 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.
* [[Muse (
* 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.
* 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.
* [[OK Go]] '''[[Trope Maker|are]]''' the geeky subtrope. Pyrotechnics, no. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w Spectacular] setpieces, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTAAsCNK7RA oh yes].
* While [[
* Just take one look at the "Famous Last Words" music video by [[My Chemical Romance]]. Wow.
== Fictional Examples ==
* Parodied rather fiercely in the [[Discworld]] novel ''[[Discworld
** Hell, they didn't even have the talent to rate as the other reaction. Horrible music would at least have ''been'' music.
* ''[[The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy (
* All of this is parodied, of course, by the titular band in ''[[This Is Spinal Tap]]''.
* 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.
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* The Midnight Riders from [[Left 4 Dead 2]] are said to have the best pyrotechnics in the business. The survivors use the fireworks to signal a rescue chopper.
* In ''[[Alan Wake]]'', the band The Old Gods of Asgard were apparently quite fond of pyrotechnics, which turns out to come in handy for fighting creatures that are weak to light.
* Classical example: in [[Mr.
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