How to Make it Big!

“Crazy people are not crazy if one accepts their reasoning” – Gabriel Garcia Márquez, Of Love and Other Demons

Telling my teachers and career advisor that I wanted to be a Rock Star didn’t, on the whole, go down well… the most frequent warning I had repeated to me was; “For every thousand bands that form, only one ‘makes it’”… Like they knew what they were talking about or something…

But despite the fact that this opinion was delivered by rote, never coming from someone with any experience in the field, the statement does have some truth to it. Having done a little work in bands, I feel able to offer some thoughts…

Firstly, and most simply, for every thousand bands that form, only one tends to actually take the prospect seriously, and have the stamina to take the challenge on properly – both artistically and practically; gotta have songs… (remember I am talking about rock bands, who tend to use actual instruments… things get simpler if you start talking about boy/girl bands and all that…)

The second, and much more significant, point is more subtle…

The person who starts being in bands, and is of the mindset to be part of that ‘one in a thousand’ band, very rarely realises, at the beginning, that they are, in fact, utterly deluded… in most cases, the majority I would argue, the person thinks that being a rock star is an attainable career goal, which is clearly delusional… but for a very plain reason, having little to do with ‘odds’ and absolutely nothing to do with ‘talent’… In the majority of cases the neophyte adopts the delusion of a Rock Star as a care-free, free-willed artist and explorer, assuming this to be the required qualifications of a full-fledged Metal Lord…

Just like I did…

The true nature of a successful Rock Star is quite different… the person who will become Iconic, a legend of the Genre, is the person who sees the implicit financial and commercial aspects of the nature of modern popular music… their basic operating principles are not progressive in anyway, but are grounded in business entrepreneurship. The successful band, the ‘one in a thousand’ that ‘makes it big’ will have members who embody the profit-making agenda…

Not that this means that the music itself will be trite and worthless… but when it isn’t, it’ just an accident a fluke… look at Tool, specifically ‘Hooker with a Penis’[1]… great band… under no illusions…

…the primary idea of any ‘successful’ band, like all modern businesses, is not to produce goods, but to produce a brand that sells stuff… sells anything…

…and that’s why Metallica Guitar Hero exists…

Things, of course, don’t have to be like that… you could actually take Music seriously… actually explore the limits of your own musical imagination, as limited or as expansive as they may be… nowhere near as glamorous as the ‘dreams’ that are handed down to you, but you will be in the dubious situation of thinking for yourself…

Bing!x – www.bing-em-all.blogpot.com

[1] Aenima, ‘Hooker with a Penis’ http://www.toolband.com/album/index.html

Metal Means... (Pt2)

*Disclaimer – more people into Metal is cool… people younger than me, who are into Metal do have brains. Metal bands, record companies, merchandisers etc are entitled to make money from whatever they do, if they want to. There has never been and there never will be a Golden Age of Metal... ta!*

This is how I remember it. Early nineties, big f**ked up hair; big, daft glasses, band t-shirts with skulls and angular band names, going to gigs and seeing the few other such atrocities and knowing – just knowing – that you were amongst your own people. Seeing a Metallica song once a year on TV and going berserk cos Metal was right up in peoples face.

The first time I heard Sepultura, I did believe that the Devil actually existed and had a band. I heard that awfulsome dirge of loosed anger and wanted to know if he actually thought in the same way I did; I wanted to know what the f**k Satan Cavalera was so pissed about. Sure enough, a few Machine Head and Fear Factory songs later – amongst many others, I realized that there was indeed a sort of shared Metal credo, a sort of unspoken, informal understanding that Metal was a combination of outrage, independence and pro-activity like; ‘stuff is s**t, I don’t like it so I best do something about it…’

Yeah… you just weren’t into metal unless you meant it. I think that things are a bit different today, no doubt, those a little longer in the tooth would have had similar things to say to my age-group. But the point is that Metal has gradually been absorbed into the mainstream, becoming an Establishment form of business, I mean, Iron Maiden T-Shirts being sold in Top Shop… you what?

When something becomes ‘mainstreamed’, and becomes part of the Establishment scenery of society, then it necessarily has it’s fangs pulled out. See, if something like Metal, is seen to be encouraging dissent amongst rational people, it is perceived as a threat to the way things are – the Establishment. Obviously this just will not do, and the threat has to be eliminated.

But it is not effective to smash dissent in the face with truncheons and smother it with overt repression. Martyrs are made thus, instead it is much more effective to absorb the cultural force (whatever it maybe – Metal, Punk, Hip Hop, Blues, R&B, Film, whatever) into business; make it a new, novel way for people to spend money. Impose some ideas of hierarchy; make it about big heroes and unattainable levels of celebrity; about the piercing, clothing and tattoos, about an image and crucially, maintain the rhetoric of ‘self-expression’, ‘individualism’ and dissent, to show what diversity your culture allows. Make it so when people say that ‘nobody tells me what to think’ or ‘I do what I want’ they are telling the truth, because they don’t need telling, they just adopt and internalize – then repeat - the mantras given to them.

Metal isn’t anything special in itself. The ideas that give Metal teeth are things shared by all manner of people; the bits of Metal that tell you to give the finger to anyone who tries to tread on you and to tell them to f**k off should be like friends you will never lose if you treat them with the honesty and respect they deserve. The same honesty and respect you and all people expect and demand.

Otherwise metal will go the way of Ernesto Guevara’s face, a sad relic of resistance turned into a exotic and risqué money-maker.

Peace,

Bing!x - http://www.bing-em-all.blogspot.com/

Metal means... (Pt1)

I spent last Saturday walking around Leeds city centre with a friend who I had known for about 4 years. I can’t remember what we were talking about, but all of a sudden she told me that at the age of 17 she used to listen to Metal, wear ripped tights and loads of Mascara; that kind of thing. I had no idea that she had ever been into ‘The Word’ but she replied; “Oh yeah; my mum used to hate it!”

While I was sad that my friend had long left the ranks of believers, I did take a lot of heart from the fact that it was to Metal that she had turned when she felt the need to protest against the incumbent power structure in her life.

When I think about why I got into Metal, I can now articulate what I couldn’t have at the time; Metal appealed to my innate sense of independence and disobedience. It was the idea that the world was not full of people with the same attitudes and modes of existence, it reflected the heterogeneity of society; that which is vital in society, and of course that which cannot be allowed to flourish in a society with as much potential freedom as ours.

Also Metal did not just spring up out of nowhere, it was developed and made into something which nowadays cannot be recognized from people at the different ends of the Metal spectrum. I remember a Def Leppard versus Metallica argument that went on, literally, for months, within this art-form itself then, we see this idea of heterogeny.

While as Metal-beasts and beastesses we can bare witness that Metal is for life not just for puberty, we can also, I think admit that Metal does indeed have strong associations to ideas of youth and rebellion… at the same time I think that it is often implicit in these associations that both youth and rebellion are equally childish, transient and idealistic.

My old man even says to my face that it is embarrassing to be seen with me in my leather jacket… (for full disclosure – I am 28).

But the point is that in my youth I believed certain things, not because I was taught them explicitly, but because I felt they were right – and they were my right; things like freedom of expression, the right to challenge authority, the right to use my own wits to solve problems (and so on) and the education system was there to make sure that these rights were smothered, belittled and eventually abandoned.

And my education would indeed have succeeded in cutting me loose from my innate sense of me, but was thwarted by Metal. This, to me, proves that Music is MORE than “just entertainment folks”[1], more than just dancing and having a good time.

Democracynow.org, on Monday May 4th had a special programme dedicated to Pete Seger’s 90th (!) birthday. Turns out, this is a man who has used his form of music to fight power for, well, all his life, by the sounds of things. He wrote once on his banjo “THIS MACHINE SURROUNDS HATE AND FORCES IT TO SURRENDER!”, you can’t call him childish or idealistic; he hates power with all his heart.

I mean, How Metal can you get!?

Now it’s your turn, use the Metal that has been bestowed upon you.

Peace,

BING!x - http://www.bing-em-all.blogspot.com/

[1] Dev Townsend, “Earth Day” Terria, 2001

New Metallica Single Posted!

The first real preview of Metallica's highly anticipated new album Death Magnetic, has been posted on the band's myspace page. The song is, as previously reported by many sources, in keeping with songs like Sanitarium and One and has been greeted with many superlatives by a lot of fans. A quick look at the comments blabbermouth.net, for example, shows far more words relating to "awesome" and "they're back", than to "posers" and "sellouts."

The song starts of with clean guitars and a guitar harmony not far from To Live is To Die, then proceeds into the verse. After two rounds of verse/chorus, where the verse is clean and the chours rahter heavy, it takes of into a riff that sounds much like a more complex version of the "double bass drum part" in One. It then rolls on in a fast paced tempo, with solos (no wahwah!) from time to time, until the end, also a lot like the mentioned Justice classic. In other words, it's a classic 80's Metallica "ballad" made 2008...

The question is, will this song be the song that proves Metallica is back? Or will it be forgotten and taken out of the live setlist just as fast as the St.Anger songs? Time will tell...

New Metallica Song Premièred

On Saturday August 12th Metallica performed a new song at Ozzfest entitled "Cyanide"which is due to be included on their first new album in 5 years, "Death Magnetic". Footage of the song can be viewed here..



The band have also recently recorded a music video for the upcoming single, "The Day That Never Comes". The video "should be ready to share with all of you at the end of the month, give or take.." according to the band themselves. Photo's from the video shoot can be viewed below..

Shhh!! It's not a Metallica Review!!

Okay, I saw that everyone was being told to keep quiet about the new Metallica record after the Listening party. After a few days of searching I found a review that was lifted word for word by guys at Antiquiet....Here is that review in full, by Bob Mullhouse @ The Quiet Us

METALLICA: New Album Preview
by Bob Mulhouse

Being a fan of the Danish-Californian heavy metal quartet Metallica is hard work. They’re the quintessential band of two halves, pulling in millions of fans from 1983 to 1995 with five mostly excellent albums, which ranged in approach from youthful violence to radio-friendly hummability. In 1996, however, Metallica released the first of a shockingly poor string of alternative-rock, covers and live records, finishing up with 2003’s terrible St. Anger, the most disappointing metal CD ever released. Staying loyal to them after this many years isn’t easy, frankly.

So what, you might be thinking– all bands have their creative peaks and troughs, surely? Well, you’re not getting it. Metallica aren’t just a metal act: they are the Led Zeppelin of their generation, a band which your kids will revere 30 years from now to the same degree as we do the Beatles and the Stones today. To love them is to really love them. Their work ethic (which other band spends three years on the road at stadium level?) and their damnable songwriting ability (leading to songs of visceral power which you can still sing in the bath) has made them bigger, heavier and more essentially here than anyone else. That’s why we still pay attention to them after more than a decade of recorded dross. That’s why even their drummer Lars Ulrich’s petulant sparring with Napster in 2001 and the painful-to-watch Some Kind Of Monster documentary (made during their group-therapy sessions) don’t outweigh the hope we all felt when it was announced in 2007 that none other than Rick Rubin would be helming their new studio album, the first in five years.

Rick Rubin, as any fule kno, is responsible for launching the careers of many a fine band (including Slayer, Metallica’s sometime contemporaries), but– more relevantly in this case– has also revived the fortunes of creatively ossified artists whose moment in the sun has passed, such as Johnny Cash and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Could The Beastie Beard breathe life into Metallica? God, we hoped so, simultaneously aware that Ulrich et al have raised and dashed our hopes before.

It was with some trepidation, therefore, that I attended the playback of Metallica’s new album at the HQ of Universal, their UK record company, on 3 June. We were permitted to hear six of the 10 tracks which will ultimately appear on the album– which, a rep from the Q-Prime management company informed us, is referred to colloquially by Metallica as ‘Nine epics and one song’. The sense of occasion was reinforced by the presence of almost the entire editorial teams of the UK’s two biggest metal magazines, glaring at each other over the tea urn. [What? Metal Hammer and Terrorizer? -Antiquiet.]

Right from the off, it’s a relief to hear that the utterly awful production of St. Anger is no more. Ulrich has replaced the old dustbin lid from that album with an actual snare drum, and the sound is fresh, clean and resonant (even though the songs are still only rough mixes at this stage). The first song, like the rest of the ‘epics’, is between six and eight minutes long and begins with a bass intro from low-ender extraordinaire Robert Trujillo. Moving rapidly from riff to riff, the song bursts with energy and ideas: singer and rhythm guitarist James Hetfield barks “Luck runs out!” repeatedly and throws in some twisty, semi-progressive riffs which could have been lifted directly from, their last truly good album, 1988’s …And Justice For All. Guitarist Kirk Hammett, who was banned from soloing on St. Anguish for no adequately explored reason, is on fire, whipping out the melodic, rapid-fire shreds for which he is famous over an extended solo section – almost as if he’s making up for lost time. This is Metallica’s best song in ages, perhaps since the 1980s.

The next cut has a working title of Flamingo and is going to be the first single. Now, Metallica’s lead singles have been breathtakingly crap since 1995, so it was a relief to hear that Flamingo (as it almost definitely will not be called) is a modernised take on their amazing 1988 song One, all balladry at its front end before a speeded-up metalstorm at the back. Hetfield delivers a clean-picked intro which reminded me of the Beach Boys (I know… but I only got to hear it once, all right?) before the body of the song, which is basically like The Unforgiven from 1991’s Black Album. If you’re familiar with the chord progression behind the solo in Am I Evil?, the ancient Diamond Head song which Metallica made their own, you’ll be able to picture the under-solo riffage in this song– all simple, effective major-interval jumps.

However, let us not forget that this is modern Metallica– and the next two songs are much less fun. The first, which may be called We Die Hard judging by the frequency with which Hetfield barks the phrase, starts boringly but accelerates halfway through and enters slightly proggy territory, all stop-start riff stabs and a clever time signature. The next song is very …And Justice, a lengthy, unhurried workout which revolves around the line “Bow down / Sell your soul to me / I will set you free”, itself
a 1988 line if I ever heard one. Apart from dexterous soloing from Hammett, it’s
not great.

So far, we’ve had two good songs and two dull ones– not a bad track record for new ’Tallica, believe me. However, track five is tedious, a combination of the aimless riffery of St. Anger and the pointless rock chorusing of Load, the album which almost finished Metallica in 1996. “Crying, weeping, shedding strife!” sings Hetfield in that slick Enter Sandman manner, over an unthreatening clean midsection which would (and no doubt will) suit VH1 down to the ground.

At this point the Q-Prime geezer asks us if we want to hear more, and fortunately we say yes– because the final song (and indeed, it is ‘The Song’, the little guy among the nine epics) is great, a genuine slice of thrash metal that starts fast and stays that way. Like a slower, less precise Battery (the opening track of 1986’s flawless Master Of Puppets album), the song nips in and out, not outstaying its welcome and proving that on some level, Metallica still have the necessary vitriol to impress their older fans. OK, it reminded me a bit of Dyer’s Eve, the last song on Justice, which had a kind of “I suppose we’d better do a fast one for the fans” feel about it– but in 2008, Hetfield and Ulrich delivering any form of thrash metal is not to be sneered at.

We file out of the listening room, not saying much. This album could be good, or it could be mediocre– too much depends on the other four songs to make a call at this point. I try not to agonise about it, but this matters, damn it. It really does.

I said it wasn’t easy being a Metallica fan in 2008, didn’t I?

Reading/Leeds Festival 2008

Disgruntled by the lack of metal at Download this year? Then perhaps Leeds/Reading has the answer. As you can see from the above "poster" this years line up is looking alright for those of you wanting an alternative to the disgrace that is polluting the holy grounds of Donington Park.

Sure there are some indie bands playing the weekend too (that's when you go to the loos, have a well earned kip, or get a few extra beers into you (unless you don't drink)), but Metallica, Rage Against The Machine, Tenacious D and co has got to be better than the emo/Kerrang! fueled rubbish at Download 2008!

Those of you who agree, say "I"!

Metallica Album News!

Metallica have announced that the follow up to 2003's 'St Anger' will be released this September.

The band have been recording the as-yet-untitled record in Los Angeles with producer Rick Rubin.

Speaking to BBC 6 Music, drummer Lars Ulrich said: "We're just finishing up a record, we've got six weeks left and it should be out in September, that's the idea right now."The band are expected to tour this summer, though UK dates are yet to be confirmed.

source: http://www.nme.com/news/metallica/35019

The loyal fan?

For my first ‘blog’, or should that be ‘rant’, I want to touch on something HugeRockStar touched on in his piece ‘In Flames: Stop Beating A Dead Horse!’ which I have to say was a great piece. Seriously go read it.

So lets get down to it.

I have a real problem with some fans of bands out there. There I’ve said it, now let me clarify why.

The problem is all the haters and doom merchants who call themselves loyal fans, but every time a band tries something different, or tries to progress musically a group of these so called fans pops up and tries to crush them for it.

If you want proof, look at the METALLICA situation. How many message boards out there have at least one thread dedicated to slagging of this band? Almost every metal board you care to mention has one.

Now it is everyone’s given right to an opinion, that’s not my problem. My problem begins when people go onto the bands personal boards to do nothing but slag them off and the people who actually enjoy what the are doing. I don’t like the new Metallica stuff, in fact, I’d go as far to say I hate it, but I will defend them to the end of time for producing the stuff they want to.

Yes I do agree that at times we feel so aggrieved that we feel we have to say something, so say it and let that be an end of it.

I watched for months on the ANTHRAX board as people daily posted messages about how bad they felt about how they were betraying the fans by ‘ditching’ one singer to go on a reunion with another. This led to quite a few people leaving the board or stopping posting altogether and the board becoming mostly a new vs. old fight with people just slagging off people.

A band, like a person, evolves through time and the things they experience. Are you the same person you were 10/15/20 years ago?

I’ll answer for you, and I’m guaranteed to be right. NO YOUR NOT!

As our lives change so do our opinions and the way we look at things, so why can’t bands be the same. If you don’t like what a bands doing, instead of wasting their time and yours slagging them off, don’t buy their stuff and don’t clog up there message boards spouting about how you feel they have personally s**t in your cornflakes.