Time-Out From Grading Essays

This is good news for all two of us who remember and really liked Riot's Thundersteel album. Mark Reale's reuniting that band line-up for a new album. It will be interesting to see what they sound like twenty years later, but I'm guessing the Zombie is still a killer on drums*.

Here's the title song from that recording: \m/ .

* Wow. I had no idea.

Scorpions are Pretty Amazing

When I was about thirteen years old I figured I'd start listening to the radio. I'd been corrupted years ago by George Goodfield's KISS albums, but I needed something contemporary (I'd been teased about my KISS record--it couldn't be danced to). So I latched onto the first few songs I heard on the radio when I finally got it working. Here are my first efforts:

The Cars - You Might Think

Huey Lewis and the News - I Want a New Drug

Styx - Mr. Roboto

Scorpions - Rock You Like a Hurricane

But this was about 1983, and the coolest song--the Scorpions-- wasn't matched for years. Eventually they became the soundtrack for the collapse of the Iron Curtain. And that's how I left them in my memory. A killer band who flattened out to become pop chaff.

Then I started hearing older Scorpions (they aren't "The Scorpions"--just "Scorpions"). Anyway--those songs kick ass. Where Klaus Meine's voice had always been great, and where their musical inventiveness was unexpected, all of a sudden they became elements of art--something more than elements of a commercial vehicle. This is most evident in the song "Sails of Charon," from the 1970s. Great stuff.

Daniel MacMaster: Dead

I just read on Sleaze Roxx that Daniel MacMaster died the other day from a simple strep virus. For those of you who don't know who he was (read: everyone but me, I'm guessing), here's the long and the short of it:

In the late 1980s Jason Bonham--son of the late John Bonham, deceased drummer for Led Zeppelin--put a band together and immediately earned national attention. I think this attention came for four reasons. 1) The Bonham name, 2) Jason Bonham is actually a hell of a drummer, 3) the singer sounded a lot like Robert Plant (also of Led Zep), and 4) The music was pretty good--catchy and inventive. Where does Mr. MacMaster fit into all of this, you ask? He was the singer I mentioned, I answer. Sounded like Plant v 2.0. Listen for yourself here. The band did fairly well for a little while, but then grunge came along and anything resembling classic rock or heavy metal (and these guys had both elements) was buried. Daniel MacMaster faded to obscurity, to live a life like most of us.

It jarred me a little to read this death report, because I hadn't thought of the band in years, but I remember them well and fondly. They got me through eight miserable months stationed in Norfolk, Virginia in 1989 and 1990. What was more disturbing, though, was to read that he was 39 years old.

Huh?

While I was sitting in my little room in the barracks, eating Cap'n Crunch and Ramen noodles out of a plastic bowl I kept in a desk drawer, this guy, who was only a year and a half older than me, was living the rock-star life. I've felt once again the sting of envy brought on by the early achievements of others*. Bleargh.

Still--the news could have been worse. It could have been Jason McMaster of Dangerous Toys who died. No offense to Daniel, but "Scared" is still one of the coolest songs ever. (And if you want to see more Robert Plant influence, check out JM's pose at the end of that video.)

So, yeah. It's sad. Another memory drawn up just because its source is squelched.

* I think Andy Galeon was the first to hit me with this kind of envy. He was the drummer for Death Angel. I was seventeen when their first album was released--he was twelve.

Reissues of Crimson Glory Albums

Just a quick note for those few who might be interested. Apparently the first two Crimson Glory albums are being reissued by Metal Mind Productions. I've never heard the first album, but Transcendence, the second, is a classic. The only song that made it to MTV was "Lonely," the requisite ballad. But even that one shows off some serious musicianship--especially Midnight's voice (yes, the singer was called "Midnight," and the band wore silver "Phantom of the Opera" masks, but they could play).

I've linked the video for "Lonely" on the sidebar.

This Is Forbidden

Another sign that I'm a product of my time: thrash metal.

Seriously. How can anyone take the phrase "heavy metal" seriously anymore? Grunge killed it, and its resurrection by way of metalcore and heavy alternative and nu-metal bands has been slapdash. But I do. And the single word "metal" can provoke me to debate (not that much can't these days).

But here's where metal was undeniably metal. Not the cheesy Halford-worship or bastardized Kornesque crap--the real thing. San Fransisco Bay Area thrash, unadulterated by popular acclaim.

Forbidden.


and they're good live, too:

I could go on for hours about music, but I shouldn't. Not right now. I have too much nothing in my head.

More Eighties Dorkitude

Here's another of the Greatest Songs Ever: Future World, by Pretty Maids--a Danish rock band who strayed occasionally into heavy metal territory.



Raaaarrrrr!

Sure, they have cheesy hair and a too-dramatic video, but the song makes me want to run through a wall.

Raaaaarrrrrr!!! !

Some Random Thoughts

1. Other than a barbecue sandwich I had two and a half weeks ago, I haven’t eaten meat (other than fish or shrimp) in twenty-one days. In those three weeks I’ve lost fifteen pounds.
2. Football is huge in Norman. Saturday was the first home game of the season (first game overall, too), and traffic was clogged up for a mile around campus three hours before kickoff. We’ll be staying home on game day from here on out. (And whoever created that website needs to review the spelling of "memorial.")
3. Pandora has been educational, at least in that it teaches me about me. What I’ve found is that “pretty” music bores me more often than not. While I can admire piano ballads and folk tunes, I need some dynamic element to keep my interest, whether that’s Tom Waits’s growly voice and quirky lyrics or the backbeat tension of a John Lee Hooker. Most often I’ll settle for a driving drum beat and rampaging bank of distorted guitars, but Tori Amos makes me want to drown myself.
4. If you can stand the heat, Oklahoma’s weather is almost uniformly beautiful. Except for the odd flash flood that washes out roads and kills half a dozen people. But they have that in Minnesota, too.
5. Whenever I read John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction I am both elated and despondent. Elated because I become convinced I’ve just discovered what my current (novel/short story/essay/ screenplay) is lacking, and despondent because my discovery means that all of my work to that point is preparation.

My Ears! My Ears!

My mentor at OCCC turned me on to Pandora radio. It's friggin awesome. Songs I haven't thought about in years are coming up on my playlist. Right now? Megadeth's "Hangar 18."

I recommend this.

In other news, I have a mentor at OCCC.

I'm Too Old For This Shit

Monday we got a call from my brother: he had a pair of tickets to the Tool concert the following night--did we want them? The answer, of course, was "yes." I've been a fan of Tool since the mid-nineties, and Michele is a recent convert, having come to them through singer Maynard James Keenan's other band, A Perfect Circle. Given the opportunity we had to go.

Tool (for those of you unfamiliar) is a progressive rock/metal band led more by the bass player than by the more traditional lead guitar. The instrumental quality of the band is amazing and the band is a quirky animal. The lyrics are strange, the videos are really strange, and the band shuns publicity like everyone might hope Paris Hilton would.

The concert was amazing. The band blasted for two hours, had a great light show, and never let up. Maynard stayed true to his weirdness--in order to emphasize the music over the musicians, he sings from the back, next to the drums, and sometimes faces away from the audience. It was hypnotizing and energizing and even inspiring.

The problem was that there were other people there.

I expected a certain amount of 93X-type idiocy at this concert. After all, the band's only marketable angle is their relation to heavy music. We saw the mouth-breathers early and often, including one troglodyte in the men's room who walked in talking on his cell phone, talked while he relieved himself, and kept on talking as he neglected to wash his hands on the way out. His contribution to his conversation, at least as much of it as I could bear to hear, consisted of phrases like, "Like, fuck, dude," and, "Dude--like, fuck." I couldn't count the crooked hats and ill-considered facial piercings. Thankfully, there were no flip-flops.

The big pain was the smoke. As soon as the lights went out, the fires started burning. I think Michele and I were the only two in the building not smoking. I learned last night what pot smoke smells like. That's some horrible shit. About a third of the smoke was conventional cigarettes--the rest was chiba.

The opening band was interesting. They're called Big Business [link: http://www.myspace.com/bigbigbusiness (sorry, blogger won't let me edit my HTML)], and live their songs only sound a bit like the MySpace versions. I prefer the MySpace versions. Live, they sound like screaming mud. Oddly, they reminded me of when Sly and I went to the KISS reunion tour in 1996 and the Melvins opened. Imagine my surprise to find out that the two guys in Big Business are also members of the Melvins.

So I guess here's my assessment:
Tool is an amazing band live. If you have any inclination toward this kind of music, see them. Big Business is a little more hit-or-miss, but I liked them.

Tool's fans--for the most part--are worthless. I imagined last night that if someone dropped a bomb on the arena the state's median IQ would have risen about 50 points (and that's with my brilliant wife inside). I couldn't believe the number of mouth-breathing, pot-smoking, beer-spilling, cell-phone-addicted, loud-talking morons I saw.

I might not be able to go to any more concerts--no matter how much I admire the music. I wanted the whole audience dead. Not violently dead. Just dead-in-their-sleep dead. Peaceful, but final.

I'm too old for that shit.

Not That I Think of This Kind of Thing a Lot, But . . .

Yes, I know. I've been neglecting the blog. I could claim any number of excuses, but I won't. I've had a few minutes here and there, but not many. Enough to write, but not enough to figure out what to write.

But here's something I thought you should see. Another musical love child. See this guy?

His name's Gerard Way, and he's the lead singer for pop-punk band My Chemical Romance. But to me he looks like these are his parents:

Just in case you're not up on your pop-punk history, that's Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins on the left and Kurt "Feed Me Some of That Buckshot" Cobain of Nirvana on the right.

Okay, so there's something wrong with me. Obviously, that union could not have produced a child. Nor would we have wanted it to.

But, really--look at him. Then look at them.

His name should be Kurbly Corborgain.

Now that's funny.

The Guilt That Keeps on Giving

Michael Jackson and Prince should still be slaves!

Shocked? Yeah, me too. When I heard the skinny white kid say that on the school bus one morning in 1981, my mouth fell open. I was surprised, and embarrassed, and angry. I was surprised because it was a horrible thing to say. I was angry because the black girl two seats away, the only black kid in the neighborhood, sat silent and looked him in the eye, her face completely blank. And I was embarrassed because the skinny white kid who said that was me.

A couple of weeks ago my mom picked up copies of Barack Obama’s books. After she finished reading Dreams from my Father she told me I had to read it. Said it was interesting and compelling, and that once I started reading I wouldn’t want to stop. So I started to read it and found that she was right. The memoir is well-written, thoughtful, insightful, and teaches me things. I liked Obama before I started reading this book, but now I realize he’s the antithesis of the current administration. A thoughtful human being who wants to help others, reminiscent of the late Paul Wellstone, who was one of only a handful of politicians I’ve been able to respect.

One of the reasons I admire this book is Obama’s willingness to explore—even expose—unflattering events from his past, actions he took that reflect poorly on him at that time in his life. He discloses drug use, pettiness, and selfishness. What redeems him are his responses to these events, his willingness to admit fault and learn from them.

He talks about being the new kid in his school, how he had no friends and a funny name. He describes his isolation. There was another black kid in class, a quiet, isolated girl named Coretta. They didn’t talk until one day on the playground, when they spontaneously started chasing each other around the yard, which led to tackling, which led to wrestling.

Which led to taunts of “Coretta’s got a boyfriend!”

Obama’s reaction was cruel. He not only denied Coretta as a girlfriend (what ten-year-old wouldn’t?), but (literally) pushed her away and yelled at her, told her to stay away from him. She ran, and they never talked again. Obama admits to the cruelty, and its inclusion in his memoir twenty-five years later speaks to how it haunts him. I like to think that this awareness makes him a better person, but I fear selfishness might motivate my belief.

Reading this anecdote reminded me of that bus ride in 1981. I was in much the same position then as Obama had been. We’d moved back to Minnesota two years earlier, and the friends I made right away had recently cast me out. As a group, they decided I was no longer one of them, and they embarrassed me whenever they could, they spread rumors about me. In a couple more years I’d find more friends, better friends. The friends I made in 1983 are the guys I still consider my best friends, but for those two lonely years in between I was on my own. None of that should be taken as attempted justification for the events of that day on the bus—there is no way to justify that—but to identify one of the reasons why it happened.

I never had the guts to sit in the back of the bus, but I wanted to be a part of that rowdiness, the easy bickering, the early attempts at pack dominance that characterize boys finding adolescence. I didn’t have any friends, but I also didn’t get in fights, didn’t hate anyone. I was a complete neutral. One day, that day, I decided to inject myself in the banter. I didn’t want to be anonymous anymore. I wanted to have friends and a reputation.

Music was a constant subject of loud debate, and in our middle-class white neighborhood hard rock and heavy metal were what most kids listened to. Debates about whether Led Zeppelin was better than Judas Priest, or AC/DC better than Van Halen were common. Pop music was scorned, especially “femmy” artists like Michael Jackson and Prince, with their high voices and mincing dance moves. (That heavy metal would move in a “femmy” direction we couldn’t predict at the time, and wouldn’t realize even while it was happening.)

So that morning, while the back of the bus burbled with another inane debate the subject turned to how bad pop music was, and I saw my chance.

“Michael Jackson and Prince should still be slaves!”

My talent for saying outrageous things didn’t really develop until my early adulthood, but it must have started with this outburst. It came without forethought, its only object to ingratiate me to those who had expressed similar (though not reprehensible) opinions.

I don’t even know if anyone laughed, or if the intended audience heard it. As soon as my mouth closed on that last syllable I saw “Coretta,” her caramel-colored face without expression, her dark eyes setting the image, branding me dismissed. Blood pounded in my neck and my face felt heavy. For the next few minutes, after Coretta turned her back to me, I made a number of connections. Slavery wasn’t just a concept we learned about in history class—actual people had been slaves. People like Coretta. Michael Jackson and Prince weren’t just celebrities and images—they were also people. I suddenly understood the horror of what I’d said—that just because I didn’t like their music—no, that just because I wanted to proclaim a dislike of their music in order to impress a bunch of preteens—Michael Jackson and Prince, and by extension Coretta, should be property instead of people.

Holy shit. Had I really said that? I went through a number of mental exercises then. I didn’t really mean all black people should be slaves, just those two. I certainly didn’t mean Coretta should be a slave. I liked her. And I didn’t really think Michael Jackson and Prince should be slaves. I was just trying to be funny. But none of that was true. It wasn’t false, either, but I couldn’t claim any intention toward what I said. I just didn’t think.

If either of my parents had heard me say that they would have killed me. And in those minutes, as the bus jounced along toward school, I would have rather been dead than sitting there facing my stupidity.

The thing is, while we weren’t friends, Coretta and I got along fine. I even felt a sort of affinity with her because two years earlier we had both been new students in the school, and we sat at the same table in Mrs. Borken’s class. She was quiet and seemed more mature than the rest of us. She never got squirrelly or obnoxious. She was probably the most decent human being on the bus. And she never even looked at me after that day.

I think of this every once in a while. The Obama book was almost a direct hit on the disgust I still feel for myself twenty-five years later. And that’s why I don’t entirely trust my admiration for Obama’s memoir. It’s possible that my inclination to see his reflections as a sign he is a better human being than he was that day, that he’s better precisely because of that day, is a subconscious attempt to elevate myself. I want to be better than what I presented in 1981. I hope I am.

Guilty Pleasures

Michele and I ate dinner tonight at Granite City Brewery because we thought they'd have their Irish Red out for the spring. Turns out that won't be available for another week or so, so we were disappointed. Not too bad, mind you, as their other brews are pretty good, and we're Mug Club members, so we get comestibles cheap there.

For some reason GCB likes to play eighties music. If I didn't know better I'd guess it's because they see me coming and imagine it will be a subliminal hook, that I'll hallucinate about having a mullet and wearing ridiculous Hawaiian shorts, and I'll order more something.

I could barely hear the music tonight (and not because I'm going deef). We got stuck in the party room with a table full of cackling women. There were men at the table, too, but the women were unreal in their ability to produce sounds unavailable to nature. You might hear these sounds if you're on a roller coaster with a bad wheel. Or if a cricket in your vicinity gets the hiccups in front of a microphone.

Anyway, while I was hearing portions of familiar songs I thought I heard one of my guilty pleasures. From the beginning I liked this artist, but I knew I better not make that public. I was a metalhead. What I liked required crunchy guitars, thumping bass, and mechanically-oriented drums. This guy didn't satisfy any of the "cool" criteria, so I kept it under wraps. Until now.

I've always liked the music of . . .
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Wait for it . . .
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Yes. Billy Ocean.

I don't know why. I think it's his voice. He has a strong, clear voice. And let's face it--in the eighties we weren't being barraged with Carribbean singers*. Bob Marley. Eddie Grant. Those Dutchie kids. He was different.

Anyway, I had to confess. I like "Carribbean Queen," and I always have. In fact, I have it waiting in my Musicmatch playlist, right between Tom Waits and Disneyland After Dark.

What's your guilty pleasure music?

*Yes, I realize he's English and not Carribbean. But I didn't know that in the 80s. I didn't know anything in the 80s.