Skid Row

Bombastic princes of the hair-metal era, Skid Row found enormous fame and fortune with their first two releases, and then were all but vaporized by Nirvana's spotlight. Hits like "18 and Life" and "Youth Gone Wild" still meet with cheers at parties, their lasting appeal due mostly to vocalist Sebastian Bach's fierce, overheated delivery. Probably tying with Motley Crue's Tommy Lee as being the genre's least tactful star, his off-stage exploits -- like the infamous "AIDS Kills Fags Dead" t-shirt debacle -- have become legends. Admittedly, it's difficult to avoid thinking of Skid Row as a tragic cartoon, but the band's output was some of the most entertaining (and hardest) that popular music tolerated at the time.