Blast from the Past: The Beavis and Butt-Head Experience

If you grew up in the 90's you were probably greatly influenced by a number of cartoons. Whether they were the Saturday morning type or the dirtier prime time series version they had a great weight on our lives. The Simpsons, Ren & Stimpy, South Park, The Head, and of course Beavis and Butt-Head. The draw of Beavis and Butt-Head is a bit difficult to describe if you weren't a fan of the show or if you happened to be too young or too old for it. It was a show that followed to moronic metal heads, had us watch music videos with them, and had us all chuckling like either Beavis or Butt-Head (I did a pretty stellar Beavis myself). That was pretty much the draw of it, they liked the same music we did, loved videos with hot chicks in it, and hated crappy pop tunes. What could have been better to a 14 or 15-year old kid then that? Nothing that's what.

Musically Beavis and Butt-Head had very defined taste. It had to rock and it had to rock hard. Most of the time they rocked the same t-shirts all the time, Metallica (earlier episodes had Beavis in a Slayer shirt) and AC/DC, and they really hated the pop shit. I mean vehementally hated that shit. I can't say I blame them, do you remember early and mid-90's pop? I shudder at the thought. But each episode they would rock out to music videos, most of which MTV wouldn't regularly play, and we would laugh along with all of their commentary.

At the height of their careers Beavis and Butt-Head released a compilation of some of their favorite artists on Geffen Records. It had huge acts for the times like Nirvana, Anthrax, Run DMC, White Zombie, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and it also featured a few humorous spoken bits in there with Beavis and Butt-Head interacting with some of the artists found on the album. I remember picking up the album and loving it, it was so hard and kick ass and I honestly didn't have much of the metal stuff from those days (remember, I was a full fledged punk kid). Some of these songs are truly awesome, some aren't as great, but overall this is a really cool album.

I know we are probably a little past the time of Beavis and Butt-Head, but every once in a while I'll feel the need to toss on this album just to hear the tunes and some of the funny shit this animated duo used to represent. I'm sure some of you will enjoy the trip down memory lane and some of you will remember hating everything about Beavis and Butt-Head, but for my money it was one of the best cartoons in the history of TV and I think you'll have a tough time convincing many 20-somethings anything to the contrary.
Nirvana - "I Hate Myself and I Want To Die"
Anthrax - "Looking Down the Barrel Of A Gun"
Megadeath - "99 Ways to Die"
Primus - "Poetry and Prose"
Cher (feat. Beavis & Butt-Head) - "I Got You Babe"