Little Moments I Love: "Degenerated" from Airheads

Today I break down a great moment from a forgotten 90s comedy: Airheads.

Scott's Self-Indulgent Movie Podcast · Episode 922: Little Moments I Love: "Degenerated" from Airheads

I have a strange affection for 1994's Airheads. While the movie was a box office bomb it's also one of the few movies about grunge culture that isn't a cynical attempt to capture "the moment," the cast features unproblematic millennial fave Brendan Fraser, Steve Buscemi, Adam Sandler, Joe Mantegna, Michael McKean, Ernie Hudson, Chris Farley, David Arquette, Judd Nelson, Michael Richards and Harold Ramis. Just a slew of talented people messing around in a highly problematic premise for 1.5 hours of silliness that was perfect when I was home sick and watching Comedy Central. It also features a better than it has any right to be soundtrack of grunge and hard rock tracks including "Born to Raise Hell" by Motorhead (oh right Lemmy has a cameo in this f***ing movie) and our fictional band's hit track "Degenerated" that's played over the end credits by the band in prison. Now final musical performance in music centric movies in prison isn't anything new, hell it's the same way The Blue Brothers ends, but there's some things about this particular track that I love.

The Scene

The lead in for the scene is the end of the movie's hostage situation where Brendan Fraser and company get a record deal, but refuse to lip sync, much to Judd Nelson sleazy record company executives wishes, and instead defiantly trash the stage before diving into the crowd. Quick cut to the band actually performing the song live for their multi-platinum selling "Live From Prison" album.

Why I Love It

I have an affection for musical endings. Done right they put a pep in your step, have the same emotional impact of riding into the sunset (i.e. a nice celebratory tone), and can give you a couple more character beats/moments to enjoy. In this case we get all of that along with some added jokes and wrap-up moments.

We get bits like Steve Buscemi trying to be sexy with his bass before realizing "oh right, I'm doing this in front of an all male prison crowd," and trying to play it off like nothing is happening, the popular DJ played by Joe Mantegna is now the band's manager, and the band girlfriends are there to be sexy cage-dance girls. Fun rock n' roll energy all over this.

But the real reason I love this scene is the song being played "Degenerated."

The soundtrack for Airheads is an interesting blend of re-recorded songs, original tracks from bands like White Zombie, and covers of 80s songs done by 90s bands (see Anthrax doing a Smiths cover). But these are all real bands playing, including the "Sons of Thunder" who are actually Galactic Cowboys.

The only song by a fake band in the whole soundtrack is the Lone Rangers single.

Which is also a cover of an eighties track by the Reagan Youth.

Now the ironically named Reagan Youth are a hardcore punk band whose heyday was in the underground hardcore scene in New York City who are best known for an album called "A Collection of Pop Classics," with cover art that features a cartoon version of the band in Klan robes (in case you didn't get it already). This album features "Degenerated," and it how I stumbled across this in the first place but the song was actually first released in 1984 on the band's original EP "Youth Anthems for the New Order."

I'm highlighting this because it might seem strange that a ten year old song became instrumental to this grunge-centric movie...unless you know a bit about the origins of grunge.

Where Grunge Came From

Without doing a deep dive into Pacific Northwest Rock scene that came to define rock music in the early 90s, grunge is the label given to the majority of hard/alternative rock that came out in the early nineties that was influenced by the punk and metal scenes that rose came to light in the eighties.

And, in my opinion, the thing that grunge did so well was take the aggressiveness of these subgenres and make it digestible to the masses.

As much as I enjoy plenty of hardcore and metal acts from that era, a lot of them were trying to spit out lyrics and notes as quickly and ugly as they possible could, that's the point, which also made them inherently less appealing to larger/commercial audiences. For hardcore punk in particular, the sound on their recordings was usually very bare bones "we made this in a basement with a tape deck" vibes. 

This is definitely the vibe on the original version of "Degenerated." Ugly sound. Ugly vocals. So much distortion on the guitar. It sounds...oh hey degenerated.

So I think it's so fitting, and nice nod to the genres origins, that the movie's version of "Degenerated" has been grunged up. The production is crisp. The levels are fantastic. Brendan Fraser's vocals have a lot of nuance from line to line versus being spit out, and we've even got the classic grunge "low volume final verse." And the guitar sound is giant clearly inspired by metal both in the style of solos, the distortion level and the big power chords.

And they didn't change a single word. Because the words still capture that 90s malaise and angst that grunge was known for, despite being about growing up in the Reagan Era. 

The end result is...a song that you can absolutely imagine eating up the alt-rock charts in the mid-90s before the band fell into obscurity. 

So much thought went into this 4 minute track that would play over the credits and I both love the song and that effort.