A tiny sidebar to the story of the catastrophic death of nearly 100 people in the Rhode Island club disaster, was the fact that the great majority of the population had no idea that Great White was still a band. Big, chunky, '80s hair metal refuses to go away:

Bands such as Poison, Def Leppard and Great White may not be heard on the radio or seen on MTV the way they used to be, but that doesn't mean the musicians or their fans packed it in when their beloved era faded.

A widespread circuit of metal-friendly nightclubs, supported by loyal fans across the USA, keeps the genre going more than a decade after it lost media prominence.

....In the mid- to late-'80s, bands such as Van Halen, Ratt, Motley Crue and Quiet Riot not only launched new trends in clothing and hair but also came to define irresponsible, hands-in-the-air fun. By the early '90s, however, the party was over, done in by the gloomy and angry stylings of grunge bands such as Nirvana, who were more about angst than girls-girls-girls.

....The venues may be smaller for many bands on the circuit, but that produces a new intimacy with fans, whose loyalty is rewarded by the gratitude of the musicians.

''In the old days we'd drive off in the bus after the show. Now we do more one-on-one, slapping backs and shaking hands,'' [singer Phil] Lewis [of L.A. Guns] says.

....''Record sales are dramatically lower than the peak years. Bands survive because of touring, merchandise and licensing,'' says Tom Lipsky, president of Sanctuary Records Group North America. Sanctuary recently bought CMC International, a label that has released albums by such '80s mainstays as Dokken, L.A. Guns and Warrant.

Collections of metal hits sell quite well, however. Monsters of Rock and Monster Ballads, two '80s compilations released by Razor & Tie Entertainment that feature the likes of Ratt, Warrant, Cinderella and Europe, went platinum.

....But David Konow, author of Bang Your Head: The Rise and Fall of Heavy Metal, has a simpler explanation for the perpetuation of the scene. ''A lot of the musicians don't have job skills or work regular jobs. A lot were hoping that at this stage in their lives they could just rest and enjoy their money, but for many, touring is how they make their money. They got stuck." [USA Today]

For the bands the motivation is simple: what else are they going to do? For the fans it's a combination of nostalgia for those who were there at the time, and for the broader audience, melodic, stomping hard rock never goes completely out of style - it's too elemental, and combined with the appeal to head banging hedonism, the pull is pretty strong.

The reason the compilations do so well is that a hundred bands had at least one killer riff and a sing-along chorus - after that, most of the bands' material drops off precipitously. Skim off the cream and you have a romp for the whole family.