When the film Anvil!: The True Story of Anvil debuted at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, it was instantly acclaimed as the true-life version of This is Spinal Tap. Sacha Gervasi's documentary detailed the story of 50-something rockers from Canada who were still plugging away and trying to get their big break after all these years. The resonance that such an effort had on the audience was obvious: so many of them had once pursued similar dreams only to watch them slip away when "real life" beckoned. more ›

In 2003, writer Bill Tuomala offerred a career overview of Van Halen from an alternate universe in which The Stooges, The Ramones and the Clash had become stadium rockers and knocked heavy metal bands deep into the underground. “If you were lucky and knew someone in the know or if you hung out in the right record store, you might have gotten turned on to some metal during the seventies. Like there was underground favorites Led Zeppelin…” Tuomala describes Halen as dogged explorers who pursued their own path in the face of total commercial failure, but who finally got some belated respect when Nirvana became famous in 1991 (“The Year Metal Broke”) and had Eddie and Dave join them on their MTV Unplugged special. more ›