Glam rock/punk is fun. New York Dolls, Queen, The Darkness (modern day), etc.

Can't get into black/death metal. It's like the opposite of melody for me.

Hair metal? Eh, music industry packaging of the day that served to hide some KILLER musicians.

EXAMPLES:
-Mr. Big (Paul Gilbert)
-Extreme (Nuno)
-Winger (Reb Beach)

There is melodic hard metal (or whatever you want to call it) that tends to be more accessible. If you can't get into it and maybe want to, try some melodic death metal bands.

I'm not sure how you can say Winger "hid" Reb Beach. As big as Winger was, I think it showcased his talents to a larger audience than anything else at the time may have.

I think the same could be said about Extreme and Nuno.

Mr. Big never really got that big, though. Billy Sheehan was the best musician in that band (IMO).

This is interesting since Poison and Warrant (the group generally blamed for metal/hair/glam's demise) HAD really blues based stuff on their later albums.

In the case of Poison, "Unskinny Bop" (about the only Poison song I will turn OFF) was given a video and promoted by the record label while "Poor Boy Blues" and other better material was never even given radio play.

In the case of Warrant, they were told to make a song that they didn't want to make at all for the album "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and then that song, "Cherry Pie" became the new title for the album.

I just heard the blues base song "Uncle Tom's Cabin" get radio play for the first time in my experience last week on Dee Snyder's House of Hair.

By "hide" I mean that they got lumped into the overall aesthetic/movement and were (largely) shunted aside when it died out.

Here are a couple of my favorite Melvins ditties:

Queen

Bar X the Rocking M

A History of Bad Men

I just don't get the appeal of the hyper-dissonant, growling, almost mud-sounding (to me) metal. I'd be interested to hear about the appeal from a fan.

Uncle Tom's Cabin is the ONLY song that I like by Warrant. edit edit edit. I read the wikipedia page. Now I'm caught up.

Points for mentioning Queen. 2x points for mentioning The Darkness.

Have you tried any Steel Panther? (NSFW)

THIS. Wow. I've never seen it stated so well for me. Ever since Metallica, I just couldn't get into that stuff.

Indeed.

Add that guy from White Lion. Vito Bratta. Too bad he messed up his hand.

Saw them in concert a year ago, and it was one of the most fun shows I've ever seen.

Nah, though I've heard good things.

Right now I'm kind of into this Southern rock throwback band named Blackberry Smoke. They look and sound like they stepped off of an old Molly Hatchet album cover.

Caught up on what?

I friggin' LOVE "Down Boys". DRFSR is a fairly good album in my opinion.

But I think one of the reasons that I like Warrant when other people don't is that I left for Basic Training on 6 June '89. I was hidden away from any music except the stuff I could cue up in my head for two months.

I was getting driven back from the hospital and heard "Down Boys" before we entered the training area and the corporal driving us was told to turn it off. I didn't spend a summer getting assaulted by the song on Top 40 radio and that may have something to do with it.

Can you name some specific bands or songs that you're defining as such?

As someone who consumes probably 20 hours of non-music audio to every one hour of music I'm not the best person to try to explain music theory. That said, "hard" music sounds good to me, and most other music does not. It's just the way my ears work or something. Other people can probably actually articulate this.

Edit: That said, I do not like most black metal or death metal. Much of it strikes me as probably a lot more fun to play than to listen to. I like some of it quite a lot, but I am picky.

I have a pretty eclectic mix of musical taste but I do listen to a lot of hard rock/punk/metal. For me, a lot of what I listen to depends on mood. Hard music is generally very energetic, it gets me pumped, and sometimes I just want to listen to something that sounds bad-ass. I'm also pretty picky about the metal I listen to.

That's its own can of worms that I don't have the energy to open right now.
Did you just call Haven an antipaladin?
That was one of the few ads that stuck out to me, mostly because I wondered if they had their #### in order legally this time.
I never knew that was a cover song. Interesting.
I like that expression. Might have to steal it sometime.
The timing of this comment in a discussion about covering a cover song makes it even funnier.
Hurray for links! I'll check them out later.
At the talent show in my junior year of college, a band one of my friends was in did a Darkness song, and it was pretty great. Seeing the actual group live seems like it would be spectacular, even with me not being much of a live music enthusiast.