p e n g u i n d e v i l

Oh, take me back… So we watched the infamous Heavy Metal Parking Lot. A great little film (about 15 minutes long) that a couple of guys made interviewing people in the parking lot of a Judas Priest and Dokken concert in 1986. Though this was the period where I began to move away from metal (thanks primarily to the horror I felt upon hearing “turbo lover” and seeing Priest’s “fruit striped leather” look), watching this really rings true with me and brought me back to those folks I hung out with back in the early 1980’s (“it’s ’cause he’s evil, man, evil” Dave Murphy on King Diamond circa 1984) and, of course, seeing Judas Priest at the Memorial Coliseum in 1982. Though I didn’t spend any time in the parking lot. A good thing too, as the parking lot here is filled with lots of drinking, cursing, feathered hair, cool t-shirts (though I wondered about the Rolling Stones), shirtless guys and all of that good stuff.

The folks who populate Heavy Metal Parking Lot are all pretty drunk and excited, and nice and friendly (though “zebraman” (shown above) does have some harsh words for punk rock and Madonna). The trouble with this film is that most youngen’s now think of it as a comedy, when for some of us it is more a slice of our youth being offered up for display. Though I guess that all teen scenes seems pretty funny in retrospect… And the movie can be pretty funny.

There are a lot of special features, most of which aren’t that great… Neil Diamond Parking Lot is somewhat entertaining, but Harry Potter Parking Lot is pretty dull. One of the features that is somewhat interesting is the HMPL reunions. They find and interview 4 folks who were in the movie, none of whom had seen it (or even known about it) until recently, if at all. So it’s somewhat fun to see these folks 20ish years later. But they were more fun in the feature.

The best part though is one of the special features, Heavy Metal Basement. Some 40-something guy (Jim Powell of Metal Grind Records?) walks us down into his basement, which is an slice of 1980’s metal heaven… Thousand of LP’s, posters, bits of memorabilia, a wall covered with interesting beers cars, a kiss pinball machine… And more. But the high point is that he has a stack of records on the floor, and he goes through them one by one. There are about 65 records in all and they are all Judas Priest records. They actually let him spend 28 minutes guiding us through the history of Priest, record by record. I thought it was pretty neat, lots of bootlegs and all… But I wanted him to move on to the rest of his records. One of these days, I’ll put all my crap in a room like this too…

Black and Blue. Well, it’s been nearly 30 years since I’ve seen this movie (then was in a double feature at the still awesome Cinema 21 with AC/DC’s Let There Be Rock, of all things… The best rock movie double bill of all time, both of these NEED real DVD releases!). My awareness of both Black Sabbath and Blue Öyster Cult has grown from next to nothing then to a point where I can really appreciate the content of this classic concert movie, Black and Blue. Yes, the colors are washed out and the picture isn’t good even other than that. But those two bands, in 1980, in a coliseum? Can you get any better? No, I don’t think so. And the sound is pretty good. BÖC in general don’t show much stage presence, but Sabbath? Well Ronnie James Dio dishes out generous handfuls of his trademark La Mano Cornuda, as does Tony. And surrounded by their crosses? It’s funny if you look at those things and then actually listen to their lyrics, you realize that they are actually a christian rock band, or at least they sing songs with a positive on “god” message, while surrounding themselves with crucifix’s and making hand signs intended to protect you from evil.. But boy, what a christian rock band. And no, you don’t have to flame me for saying that… But it’s true, I swear!

Obviously, Sabbath are one of the best and most important bands to ever walk the face of the earth and while I am generally an ozzy fan (I mean, in Sabbath, not his solo swill), but watching this I realize how his lame lackluster showmanship is easily (and entertainingly) replaced by Dio’s big grins and assertive blouses and presence, always moving around, gesturing, point those two fingers at everyone. He’s quite good. But, of course, I’ve only seen ozzy strut his stuff when he was already an old geezer, at the lame ozzfest, the only high point of which was Sepultura, who ruled that night.

Unlike Gorgoroth’s Black Mass, there is nothing here but the band, some lights and a couple of big sabbath crosses (strangely reminding me of Spinal Tap’s Stonehenge, had it been built to “feet”). But they don’t need anything else. because they are an amazing band with an arsenal of amazing songs.

The deal itself? Well, the movie starts out with a really lame video for BÖC’s The Marshall Plan, but then moves right into some awesome Sabbath… Starting their show off with War Pigs, Neon Nights and N.I.B., they really take the stage. It’s great but it is almost too great. Because when BÖC come out (who I like quite a bit) and start of with some crappy song I’ve never heard before, Dr. Music, it sure seems a let down. They then perk it one with one of their best, Cities on Flame with Rock N Roll, but then drop the ball again with a boring (anti-Iran version) of Divine Wind (replete with an Ayatollah guitar player)…

Luckily, Sabbath retake the stage with Iron Man and the show goes on! If you have any interest in 1970’s hard rock or either of these bands, this rare little gem is certainly worth tracking down. The Cult are a great band, but as stage mates to Iommi and Sabbath, they really do pale. Sabbath is so good here, the movie is a must see.

Well, that was rad. While yes, the audio/visual doesn’t compare with the production on Emperor’s Emperial Live Ceremony DVD (the only other black metal concert dvd that I’ve seen and… Dear Amazon, that’s Emperial, with an E), Gorgoroth is more to my taste and this concert is astounding in its setup and nerve. While the families bounded around in the backyard, The Sewer and I (see here for a real review) stayed inside and got our blackness on by soaking up Gorgoroth’s infamous Black Mass Krakow 2004 concert DVD on his much more wonderful viewing device.

I must say, this is a great DVD! Yes, the sound could be mixed better, but I imagine that if you turn it up loud enough, you’ll survive. But the image quality is fine, though it would have been sharper with the red toned down a smidgen, but that’s my only complaint… I liked the green lighting the best. The wealth of cameras bounding around filming this give it a real professional feel (though the drum cameras don’t seem to have the same image quality, or any real point)… But the high point is the show itself!

Gorgoroth obviously wanted to make quite a statement with this… Bloodied, hooded and naked people “crucified” on-stage, sheep heads all around and generous splashings of blood surround the band as they do their best to look menacing. And menacing they do. It’s one time that you can feel quite sure that most of the blood splashed around this show isn’t stage blood, and those dozens and dozens of sheep heads that I kept thinking someone might jump on stage and steal are the real deal. And the band, well, they’ve got a pretty good look going, but Gaahl is so wonderfully menacing here that while watching him, I began to feel like this was the moment he began hatching the plot to usurp the band from Infernus.

Gorgoroth are one of the great classic original True Norwegian Black Metal bands, with a sound unique from all the masses that came afterwards. It shows as they blast through “hits” such as: Bergtrollets Hevn, Destroyer, Procreating Satan and The Rite of Infernal Invocation. They really have their thing down tight and this show is like watching them promenade into the dance in their finest garb, looking to impress those of their ilk and intimidate all others.

Song selection wise, it leans heavily on Twilight of the Idols (which makes sense), and I would have preferred more songs from Antichrist and Destroyer, but there are some great songs here… I enjoyed the bloodied crucified folks, what should be a normal touch for a Black Metal show. Of course, I could have done without the sheep head’s, but they certainly added a special something aesthetically. It was one of those must see concerts… If only it hadn’t been in Krakow.

Oh yes, and be sure to check out Peter Beste’s newest version of his Norwegian Black Metal photo project, True Norwegian Black Metal. As the cashier at Powell’s said, it’s about the best coffee table book ever, and one of the best books buys you’ll make (for $37 at Amazon). And for the ladies out there, it’s got plenty of pictures of Gaahl…

Sometimes, even if you’re at work, on a walk, or sitting around the house at 8am drinking coffee and reading Little Golden Books to the baby, you get that feeling. I know, we all have it, where you just have to listen to a whole lot of AC/DC. Well, it was one of those days today.

AC/DC at their best line-up

So it got me thinking about that nutty band. 35 years, 15ish (depending on how you count, but I don’t tend to count the Australian editions as that makes things too convoluted) studio albums, the worldwide 2nd highest selling album of all time (Back in Black, damn that Michael and his Thriller!) and something in the area of 200 millions albums sold, make them one of the biggest, highest selling and longest lasting rock bands ever. And, of course, they are the best and greatest band ever to walk the face of the Earth. Sometimes the most popular bands really are the best.

Though the last 20ish years have been pretty weak in terms of their material, their first 9 albums more than make up for it. Honestly, I wasn’t hooked at first listen. I remember when Back in Black came out, I was 12 and quite indifferent. I also had a friend who loved Dirty Deeds (the album), which I thought it was an annoying wall of indistinguishable noise, except for the title track which I though was cute (though I had no idea what they were talking about). That all changed in 1981 when I saw the video for “Let’s Get it Up” on Casey Kasem’s top ten.

I came around completely and loved all of their music (except for Dirty Deeds) and they’ve been my favorite band since. From their great blues rock of the early Bon Scott years filled with Bon’s personal, wonderfully humorous and suggestive (yet generally good natured) lyrics and Angus’s brilliant and crazy guitar solos, to the hard rock of the early Johnson years (lacking the personal edge and humor in the lyrics, and moving the suggestiveness straight to downright dirty) I like it all… Though, in the switch of frontmen, I miss the humor in the songs and I’m always bothered by the move from the “songs written around Angus playing guitar” of the Bon Scott era to the “wall of noise with Angus in there somewhere” of the Johnson years… But the Johnson band still put out some great albums. Here is my little summation from 27 years of continual listening.

Best Songs (in chronological order):

The Jack (High Voltage)
Rocker (Dirty Deeds)
Ride On (Dirty Deeds)
Bad Boy Boogie (Let There Be Rock)
Whole Lotta Rosie (Let There Be Rock)
Riff Raff (Powerage)
Up to My Neck In You (Powerage)
Kicked In The Teeth (Powerage)
Down Payment Blues (Powerage)
Gimme a Bullet (Powerage)
Touch Too Much (Highway to Hell)
Shot Down In Flames (Highway to Hell)
Beating Around the Bush (Highway to Hell)
Shoot to Thrill (Back in Black)
Let Me Put My Love Into You (Back in Black)
What Do You Do For Money Honey (Back in Black)
Rising Power (Flick of the Switch)
Back in Business (Fly on the Wall)

Best Albums:

Powerage (1978)
Highway to Hell (1979)
Back in Black (1980)

Best Line-up:

Young, Young, Scott, Rudd, Williams (1977-1980: Powerage, Highway to Hell)

Best Lyric:

“I’ve got patches, on the patches, on my old blue jeans
well they used to be blue
when they used to be new
when they used to be clean”
From “Ain’t No Fun (Waiting Round to Be a Millionaire)”

Best Album Covers:

High Voltage (1976)

Let There Be Rock (1977)

Powerage (1978)

Though it’s lame that their newest CD (when it comes out) will only be available in the US at Wal-Mart (I wonder if that means not even Amazon?), most of their records are sold outside of this country anyway, and most of the CD’s inside this country are sold at Wal-Mart (as completely fucked up as that is, what’s wrong with people?), so I guess it makes some kind of sick sense. But all of their old albums have be re-mastered and re-released as great digi-packs with fun bonus material and the Family Jewels DVD set is fantastic (at least the first disc is), so there’s is plenty of stuff around outside of Wal-Mart. And speaking of sick sense, here’s a final look…

Angus… What? Why?

Well, what do I know. Idly relaxing around the home, in my first weekend at the new apartment… I came up with the perfect kind of dull task that I enjoy with my morning coffee… What are the most popular bands, according to plays registered on that favorite site of mine, last.fm? It seems to scarily give away the “average” last.fm user. While this is far from scientific, as I just guessed which bands to look up and sometimes followed those band’s “similar artists” links if I’d heard of who was on it and I ended up listing the bands with over 40 million plays. I imagine that unless I am even more disconnected than I thought, this should be somewhat accurate…

1. The Beatles: 107m plays. This is no surprise, but being a “Stones man” it was a bit shocking to see The B’s with 4 times the action of the Stones.

2. Radiohead: 103m plays. What? I still don’t get this. Yeah, I bought their first album when Creep came out, and I remember some video with someone on fire in the street, but I haven’t heard much else and it just doesn’t seem too interesting to me.

3. Red Hot Chili Peppers: 73m plays. These guys? Still? I was into them up until Mother’s Milk, but I never would have imagined they would be the third most played band anywhere.

4. Pink Floyd: 58m plays. Some may think it’s played out, but I thought that finding them up here was a welcome surprise. While I don’t listen to them much, I think very highly of their “Dark Side of the Moon” to “The Wall” era, having heard little else by them.

5. Linkin Park: 56m plays. I just don’t know. Are they Nu-Metal? I’ve never actually heard them, but I’m still a bit surprised as to their ranking.

6. Coldplay: 56m plays. Same as above, except I’m pretty sure that Coldplay aren’t nu-metal, and I did suspect they were pretty popular.

7. Death Cab for Cutie: 54m plays. Exactly the same as above. Never heard them, their name is irritating, and somehow my pal Jon has logged some 4,800 songs plays for these guys on his last.fm account.

8. Metallica: 53m plays. No surprise here. I like their cover of “I am Evil”, I liked “Ride the Lightning” and I used to listen to “Master of Puppets” a lot, but they really lost me when that boring ass “One” song from “… and Justice For All” came out. And recently I saw their movie and realized just how lost they were.

9. Nirvana: 42m plays. I’m halfway surprised about this, I know they got pretty big (and Bleach and their unplugged album are both quite good), but I would have thought that they would be a bit more forgotten by now.

10. Green Day: 42m plays. Whatever.

12. Fall Out Boy: 42m plays. Huh? Who?

13. My Chemical Romance: 40m plays. I don’t know, but the name scares me… I picture boring “industrial”/punk/ballads for teens and some really bad fashions.

There is always something new out there, isn’t there? Even when it’s old. Now I’ve been a Judas Priest fan for quite some time having seen them live in 1982 and I’ve been pretty consistently listening to the 6 albums that they put out from 1978 to 1984; from Killing Machine (aka Hell Bent for Leather) through Defenders of the Faith, though in the last twenty years it has primarily been Point of Entry (of course), British Steel and Unleashed in the East. But I’ve rarely heard anything past that. Turbo makes me vomit, but Painkiller is good… I’ve never heard so much as a minute from their 4 other later albums. Oddly, I’ve never made an attempt to hear their first 4 albums. I think I’ve long owned a copy of Stained Class, but I don’t recall ever listening to it. I certainly have seen them in the stores enough over the years and thinking of all the crap I’ve bought in that time, I really don’t know why I never picked them up. Anyway, why all this? Well, I finally decided to give their second album a try, 1976’s Sad Wings of Destiny.

I think I did because I’ve loved Unleashed in the East for so long (thinking it one of the best live albums out there) and 4 of my favorite songs on it (especially Tyrant), I’d never heard any other way, since they reside on this record. Finally I thought, I wonder what the non-live versions sound like. Well, colour me bad. The album is great! A greater discovery for me then the Scorpion’s Speedy’s Coming was 30 years after it’s release.

Sad Wings of Destiny is easily my second favorite priest album now, right up there with Point of Entry… Why are my favorite Priest albums their least metal? I don’t know, but this certainly isn’t metal by any modern definition. And it’s much different from their later music. The music itself sounds quite sparse with Rob’s vocal very much in the foreground. To some extent it seems somewhat proggie, with some odd choruses (check out Victim of Changes and the “even greater than the live version”, Tyrant for some great vocal stylings) and there is even an instrumental piano piece, which is one of the two tracks that I can do without. Anyway, it’s hands down a great album, and it’s a weird album. One that I have to listen to a good deal to make up for all these years. Maybe I don’t need to bother with Unleashed anymore, since I don’t particularly care for live music anyway…

In a similar vein, I recently made another discovery from the vaults. While I was never as big an Iron Maiden fan, I still spent more than my share of life listening to The Number of the Beast. And I also had selected tracks from the two following albums that I give a lot of airplay to, but I’d never given their preceding album a shot. A lot of people have always recommended it suggesting that DiAnno is a better vocalist that Dickinson and that it’s less poppy. So now, Iron Maiden’s Killers.

One reason I’d always avoided was because it doesn’t have Bruce Dickinson singing on it, but man, it’s good. As above, Killers is now right up there as my second favorite Maiden album, with nary a bad song on it. Its music is quite a bit rougher than Beast, and much more so than their dramatic balladeering. It features some great instrumental and the fantastic track Wrathchild, which is the crazy old school metal high point of the album. though I could do without the bonus tracks on the CD…

I don’t know why I’d avoided these so long, but it’s nice to discover music from a loved band that is better than anything they’ve put out in decades.

Oh, I know it’s not January and time for top ten lists, but today marks one year since I joined Last.fm so I thought I’d do a “year” end list for that, and take a look at the site and what constitutes the 10,200 song plays that I have enjoyed over the last year. For those who don’t know, Last.fm is a website that tracks the songs in your “recently played” playlist in iTunes (including what you play on your iPod). But since I tend to go on and on, I’m going to post this with a Read More Here… Read more »

The trouble with music blogs is that once I start looking at them, their blogrolls look too tempting, and once I tread that way, I get lost in a maze of twisty little passages, just like in 1980 when I would stare at my endless Adventure games on the big rolls of teletype paper, trying to figure out how to get free of that darned maze and avoid that darned dwarf w/ axe.

Even the blogs filled with music I don’t like I am still fond of. I love to see all this stuff about all this music, especially things I’ve never heard of! I especially like blogs like (the sadly inactive) Something I Learned Today where he posted mp3’s of rare punk 7″ records. But what is the most interesting is anything about vinyl. Not that I listen to vinyl much, as I have lately been looking for interesting and new (to me) Death Metal, in non-vinyl format (such as: Abominattion, Mithras, Necrophagist and Spawn of Possession)… But my heart will always belong to LP’s. I are currently in a bad state in that regards, not only is 75% of my vinyl in storage, but the motor on my Rega Planar 2 died a slow death a year or two ago. While I’ve been waiting to feel like we have the money to fix it, I’ve been stuck with the Thorens TD-165 (I think), that was an irresistible yard sale buy for me a good number of years ago. While it is a fine and fun device (and more user friendly than the bare-bones Planar), I don’t really have a home environment that is appropriate for a deck with any kind of suspension. So keeping still while in the vicinity of the Thorens, when it is playing, is a must… And a bit of an inconvenience, with a dog and a toddler running around.

Regardless, it seems to have died as well, losing all desire to spin-round. Sigh. I am certainly still not in a spot where we feel like dropping three figures to get one of these (well, it would be the Rega, certainly) fixed… Means even more reliance on digital media, and no more converting LP’s to MP3’s for a while. Luckily, there is an endless stream of blogs where I can live the vinyl life vicariously.

No, this isn’t a post about Mike Huckabee (enough of politics for the moment), instead it’s just some musings on music… I was into trying out some “new” stuff this week and what really jumped out at me was something that I’ve had for a number of years, which I got from a co-worker. I recall that I listened to it back then and liked it, but the few songs that I had got lost in the morass of music I have floating around here… The band is Anaal Nathrakh and while I only have a couple of songs, I’m going to have to get some more! The songs I have are all from the album “Codex Necro” and they are all really good, though I especially liked When Humanity is Cancer. The songs have elements of black metal, death metal, Ministry-style industrial and some great demonic and undead voices. Highly recommended.

Codex Necro

Then another high point, as I tend to like what Black Metal I can find from Central/South America, I gave a try to Columbia’s Inquisition (though sadly it seems that they may live in Washington now…). Great stuff! Creepy, evil and slow. I really like the laid back vocal style, it is sinister and evil, but more like evil talking than growling or screaming. A little odd, but nice. So far I would highly recommend “Invoking the Majestic Throne of Satan” and, especially, “Magnificent Glorification of Lucifer” which contains certainly the funnest song that I’ve heard today, Crush the Jewish Prophet! Really great vocals, listen to it here:

Invoking the Majestic Throne of Satan

Magnificent Glorification of Lucifer

On a less excellent note, I don’t normally listen to USBM and I have again been reminded why. I got some Kult ov Azazel and I’ve had mixed impressions. While they are American, they are from Florida, which seems to be the place to be from if you are going to be a good American metal band, and their music is pretty good (I especially like the album “Triumph of Fire”) but the vocals… I just can’t abide. Now don’t get me wrong they have some good growling, but their main vocals have that good ol’ USA “hardcore” style screaming… And I just can’t do it. It’s one of the “metal” things that really doesn’t interest me. So that’s too bad. I’ll try some more to see if it grows on me, but Anaal and Inquisition may be enough finds for one day.

A music scene where there are thousands and thousand of bands from scores of countries, no major labels involved and a fairly small fan-base who tend to share a distaste towards anything that gets too popular, leads to a deafening variety of music… Styles, bands, languages… There is so much going on in that genre that it’ almost too much. I think about it after spending too much time browsing around at last-fm. One thing that I like to do is look at the different Groups that one can join to see what bands the group members are listening to. What always strikes me is that I seem to come across three types of groups. The biggest one is where the band listened to by the most members in the last week is always “Radiohead”. This seems to be regardless of the attempted musical focus of the group. It just seems that everyone out there listens to Radiohead. But then there are the second group, sadly the common style for people interested in Vinyl collecting, where the top two bands listened to always seem to be Bob Dylan and The Beatles. I am always relieved to check out the Black Metal Groups where, when you go to their playlists, it seems that no one there listens to any of those bands. Frequently, there is such a wide range of bands listened to on those groups that I haven’t even heard of more than half of them. The whole notion of Pop music, especially national or international, seems so dull. I mean sure, there are bands that are good enough with a widely appealing sound who have worked hard enough to deserve widespread listening and recognition, but it seems like most music listener’s never seem to even look beyond top-40 or what their friends are listening to, and with the vast variety of music out there in the world, it just seems sad.

Since we’re on the subject of music, I happened to glimpse a bit of the Grammy’s tonight. Something that I haven’t done for many, many years. It seems very odd that they spend so little time actually televising the awards. It’s one crappy overblown “music” production after another. Then the occasional award being given to a bunch of dull music. And while I have to give props to Aretha Franklin, they needn’t have played her gospel piece, or they at least could have made it a bit shorter… But the whole concept is lost on me. I mean, what does it really mean to call one album “the best rock album of the year”? Is it the one that the people who voted listened to the most? The one that will have the most influence on future music? The one that had the most ground-breaking style? The most pleasant sounding one? The one with the songs that will get stuck in your head the most? The one that the most work went into? It’s all very strange.