Give Music back to the Musicians

I wish record companies would let bands be who they are instead of trying to change them. There are many examples of this but I ran into one recently that reminded me that creating music and the music business are two separate entities that should probably never interact.

I am a fan of a fairly obscure heavy metal band from the 80s called Raven. I wore out my cassette tape of their album All For One. Recently I was at a flea market and found this vinyl copy of their The Pack is Back album. I wasn’t familiar with this one and the cover is . . . disturbing, but it was the 80s and metal bands were wearing . . . well let’s forget what they wore in the 80s. Being a fan of the band and still having a vinyl collection I bought this for a few dollars. I was excited to get home and put it on my turntable. Yes, I’m old. I still like hearing the needle drop onto the grooves of a record.

The first song played while I cleaned up a bit and I wasn’t thrilled with it. It wasn’t horrible but there was something wrong. It didn’t sound like Raven. Second song, not much better. It was a cover of Gimme Some Lovin’ by the Spencer Davis Group. By the time side one was over I had heard a horn section and way too many catchy melodies for this to be a heavy metal record.

After using Google to dig up some information I discovered that the record company wanted the band to make their sound more “commercial”. The result? A bad record followed by bad reviews and bad sales. Good job Atlantic Records.

Raven was not a pop band so why did you try to make them into one?  If you worked for Vertigo in the 70s would you have said to Black Sabbath, “You know lads, your records aren’t selling as well as they used to. We’d like you to do a cover of the Partridge Family’s I Think I Love You. You know, be a bit more commercial.” What if Columbia had said to Judas Priest, “Could you write a song about falling in love under a waterfall while holding a puppy? Three puppies would be even better.”

Let musicians be who they are. If they progress naturally into different genres they can make it work, but forcing them to play songs that aren’t their style never works. In this case, the pack was not back and Atlantic Records should refund my $4. Betty at customer relations said that’s not going to happen.

Shakespeare’s Lost Song Lyrics

I bought a box of junk at a yard sale and at the bottom I found a batch of parchment being held together by paper clips and rubber bands. When I unfolded them I discovered they were song lyrics written by the bard himself, William Shakespeare. It turns out Shakespeare was ahead of his time musically as well as with the written word. He wrote songs in many different genres. Check these lyrics out:

Heavy Metal

Devil, Steal My Life

Death, thy sting produces mortal wounds

upon my flesh.

Off this blackened coil I must flee,

a rose in my hand for you.

Where art thou, devil, a hoof for my soul,

and horn for my all-seeing eye.

Dost thou allow thyself humor at my expense,

for there is my might.

By another name blood still flows in ribbons.

Any other name bespoke is still blood.

Beyond my countenance, devil, steal my life.

Rap

What Dost Thou Say?

What dost thou say, woman of low quality?

What dost thou say?

What dost thou say, man of uncoupled birth?

What dost thou say?

These are my words arranged in a rhyme

I am a troubadour lost out of time

Say what name is thou low-formed female

I am a ram of power, bull of spirit, a high born he-male

Hear me, see me, allow me room to move

My especial dreams bring you to hove

Feel me, lest all the world break me down

My name is a taste on your tongue that I own

Blues

The Baying of the Hounds

I dost lost my hound today,

yea, and a woman too.

I dost lost my best hound today,

verily my woman has gone as well.

I rue this day and the sun that rose because of it.

Where have mine coins gone?

I am bereft.

Where, oh where, didst mine coins go?

I am lost.

I wish to return to whence I had value.

Keep these dogs of violent refrain.

I shout to the abraded heavens to

keep thou dogs for work of the devil’s hand

and leave me to mine own council.

Now if I could just get Patrick Stewart to record these songs . . .

No Comment

I make the mistake of reading the comments section sometimes of articles I read online or of videos I watch on YouTube. I say it’s a mistake because it always makes me sad for the amount of ignorance that is displayed in these statements. Also defensiveness and vitriol. Comments sections sometimes resemble cesspools of nuclear waste.

At lunchtime at work I sometimes peruse a web site called Deadspin. It is in itself its own pond of sewage. Ostensibly a sports site, they run mostly stories that other sites don’t and then proceed to slag off the people involved. They also print rumors and conjecture. They admit up front of no proof for their post but write about it anyway as though their admission absolves them of guilt when the proverbial shit splatters the fan blades.

My favorite articles are the re-telling of supposedly bad behavior by sports commentators or journalists. Again, no fact checking is done, the stories could be true or complete fabrications, Deadspin doesn’t care. Usually in the comment section this will prompt people to write about their own supposed encounters with semi-famous people behaving badly. This will always be followed by someone commenting “I totally believe so-and-so would do something like that.” Really? Someone with a screen name that contains 3 expletives and has an avatar with a scene from a movie no one saw because that makes him ultra-cool and hip, writes a story and presents no proof beyond the phrase “I swear this is true” and you totally believe it? Of course, the next question is why I continue to read this kind of shit and I don’t have a good answer.

I like to watch videos on You Tube of heavy metal bands I’m not familiar with to see if I like their music. Reading the comments sections is an exercise in pedantry and juvenile behavior. There is always the inevitable argument over what sub-genre of metal the band is performing:

Metalhead #1: I love black metal!

Metalhead #2: This isn’t black metal. This is death metal.

Metalhead #3: No way. These guys aren’t metal enough to be death metal. This is pansy power metal.

Metalhead #4: You’re all idiots. This is funeral doom metal at its finest.

Metalhead #1: Funeral Doom?????? Are you out of your mind?????

Metalhead #3: Doom!!!!??? Justin Bieber is closer to doom metal than this band!!!!!!!!!

Metalhead #2: It’s DEATH METAL you $%%#$%

Metalhead #4: It’s clearly funeral doom. Maybe you could classify it as drone metal, but it’s not power, progressive, thrash, speed, dark, gothic, hardcore, emo, noise, nu, hair, punk, deathcore, Christian, emocore, powercore, screamo, symphonic, grindcore, experimental, stoner, industrial, sludge, melodic, technical, Viking, extreme, deathgrind, goregrind, neo-thrash, or post-thrash.

This conversation goes on for 8 pages worth of comments with the expletives flying fast and furious. Everyone is an idiot or a moron for having an opinion that differs from say, FatSam34 or IChokeOnMetal666. I’m an idiot for wasting my time reading the thread, but it makes me laugh.

If you decide to comment on this post about commenting on other people’s posts, be sure to call me an appropriate name, make up a new and colorful swear word and act like your opinion is superior to mine, even though that is pedantically not possible.

By the way, that video was totally German power pop glam metal. Morons.