Metal wrap-up

The one thing I found most interesting about doing research for the paper for Denver Public Schools were the studies that showed that gifted and talented children lean towards metal as a release for their stress and the pressure of being a teenager.  I can totally identify with that mentality because I started to listen to metal during my teenage years.  I mentioned in a previous posting that I often feel a sense of euphoria after listening to a certain piece of music.  I also have my bad day play-list which will always make me feel better after a rough day.  After reading all those studies I can see that, in a way, it is self-medicating to listen to something that I know will make me feel better.  

I really did enjoy this class.  I liked reading about the genre that I enjoy and listening to other people’s opinions and experiences on the matter.  I also really enjoyed all the documentaries we watched.  I found myself going all over the internet following string after string on various subjects.  I learned a lot about the things that I never even thought that I wanted to know.  Gaahl, Norwegian death metal, and even Manowar.

I was also especially taken with how intelligent so many of the heavy metal artists were.  I knew that Alice Cooper and Ronnie James Dio were really good interviewers but I never imagined how intelligent and funny Tom Araya is or even how interesting and well-spoken Gaahl is.  Whether by design or not, most of the interviews on the documentaries were very intelligent and interesting (except for the ICP movie).  

I enjoyed the books as well.  They brought up a lot of ideas that I never even considered in the context of metal.  While I thought that studying something that I like might ruin it or taint it (disenchant it in the context of this class) it did the exact opposite.  I found out more about the artists that I liked and encountered and discovered more bands that I would like to discover more about.  Aspects of this class made me understand myself and others more and where some of my tastes may stem from.  I also enjoyed the papers we had to write, I found so much interesting stuff on the internets. Thanks for teaching the class

And just because its cheesy :)

Genesis: of a new gender.

The term “industrial” music can be traced back to the band Throbbing Gristle.  They founded the record label Industrial Records and said it was “industrial music for industrial people”.  It was spearheaded by such acts as Skinny Puppy, Clock DVA, and SPK.  While industrial music has veered into metal with Nine Inch Nails and Ministry, it has remained separate in their fan base yet connected by the early foundations of metal.  This paved the way for a divergent branch off the metal backbone.

You had mentioned in class that transgression can only go so far.  In discussing the hair metal bands of the 1980’s, where men could dress like women, for all intents and purposes, and still get women but that if  man were to go to the extreme of a sex change that that would be going too far.  However, Genesis P-orridge, who founded Throbbing Gristle in the 1970’s, has become an icon of strangeness.  The music of Throbbing Gristle was raw and powerful, often dealing with the occult and themes of death, prostitution, and serial killers.  He also founded the avant garde band Psychic TV.  However, over the years Genesis has slowly transformed from a man to a being of “pandrogynous” sexuality.  Genesis states on his website www.genesisbreyerporridge.com “From this perspective, for example, rebellious and gender specific images become aspects of identity that have been relentlessly appropriated and commodified to emasculate and sterilize the artist’s strategic fertility to give birth to radical change.”  

With breast implants and genderless pronoun use, he and his late wife were able to modify their bodies such that “…this attempt of unifying themselves in an “OTHER” ID/entity the two artists have agreed to use various modern medical techniques to resemble one another as much as is usefully possible. They are not interested in becoming twins. Far from it, their ultimate wish would be to shed all separateness. As they state, “…Pandrogeny is not about defining differences, but about creating similarities. Not about separation but about unification and resolution.”  Yet despite the body modification and partial sex-changing surgeries, s/he still remains one of the most influential avant garde and industrial artists, still touring to this day to sell out audiences and playing at major music festivals such as Coachella.

Obviously, there is some allowance for extreme transgression if one’s life work is influential and respected enough, much like Rob Halford being generally accepted because he was such an important figure in heavy metal.  While Genesis is viewed as bizarre beyond imagining, he is still respected and sought after for various industrial and rock projects, including Download and Hawkwind.  I thought it would be an interesting phenomenon to point out, since it is even more extreme than homosexuality or androgyny.

Throbbing Gristle: Discipline circa 1982

Throbbing Gristle: Discipline Coachella 2009

It is noisy but often considered groundbreaking proto-industrial

“Gaahl is gay… and still scary as shit”

After hearing someone in class saying that Gaahl from Gorgoroth was gay, I was intrigued.  I knew of a few gay heavy metal musicians.  Rob Halford came to mind.  I was curious to their reception by the metal community, especially in extreme metal.  Now, the Rob Halford show about a month ago at the Ogden theatre was well attended with the usual spread of metal fans and people still love Judas Priest, despite Halford’s open homosexuality.  “Halford's a metal god, even if he loves men” was one post from blacklabelsociety.net.

I went trolling the metal forums looking for any discussion about homosexuality and found plenty.  On UltimateMetal.com I found numerous threads about homosexuality.  I was surprised that it was commonly known but more so accepted that Gaahl was gay, with some people stating that it was the ultimate insult to Christians to be homosexual and therefore, it was more metal.  Aside from the usual juvenile gay comments, there did seem to be some amount of support for the gay musicians: “Good for him! It takes courage to come out like this, and respect for him to do it” said one poster on blacklabelsociety.net about Gaahl.  But what I found most interesting is that after the initial discussion of homosexuality, the fans inevitably turn it into a discourse on the quality of music.  They still think Judas Priest is one the best metal bands ever and they don’t seem to care if he is gay, as long as his music is still metal enough for the fans. 

On the thread “How many prominent black metal musicians are gay” on UltimateMetal.com, one poster even shared his experience of being molested as a child and another poster sympathized that the same happened to his little brother.  I was amazed at the trust and support that was offered on the forum.  Not to mention that it is commonly held that Satyr and Frost of Satyricon are gay.  But even despite the juvenile remarks that will be gathered off of any forum, I was impressed and surprised at the lack of interest in the subject and the support offered to other members and the musicians.

While the short documentary “True Norwegian Black Metal” was interesting it did not touch on the subject of Gaahl’s sexuality. Then Gaahl was awarded the gay person of the year award in Bergen, Norway in 2010 and he accepted the award.  Gaahl did an interview about his homosexuality and he ended with an interesting quote “Mankind is known to be narrow-minded, so... maybe some [will have a negative reaction]. But I guess it will even out the score in a way. I think it will be positive for some and negative for some. It's always good to have some negative as well.”

But I think that there has been less negative reaction overall than he might have suggested, at least there is little evidence of it on the fan run on-line forums.

The Beat Makes the Band

I heard a very interesting piece on NPR a few months ago about what makes a song popular or a hit.  They interviewed several producers and writers that write some of today’s biggest hits for artists such as Beyoncé, One Republic etc…  The majority of writers of current commercial hits said that they listened to music from the 1940s and 1950s.  They did point out that hits are only hits because of their moment in time.  Songs that were hits in 1980s like “Tainted Love” or “Thriller” would not be hits if they were released today but a lot of the big hits are using samples from older songs.  They were asking why.  They interviewed Quincy Jones, who has been in the music industry for 6 decades.  He remembered Count Basie’s hits and the hits of Disco to Katy Perry today.  The one thing that he pointed out was that all the hit songs had a “four to the floor” beat. 

 http://www.npr.org/templates/archives/archive.php?thingId=131680219

The point they were making was that there was something fundamental about that steady 4/4 beat that resonated within people, no matter their musical tastes.  This is relevant to our recent class discussion of how to listen to heavy metal and why is it popular.  The autonomy of a song can be broken down into its beats and melodies.  Almost all typical heavy metal (and most other genres) is based on that four to the floor beat, which I think is universally recognized by people as enjoyable.  I recognize this in my own music listening.  When I listen to Pandora and a certain song comes on and I just smile stupidly like a giddy school girl.  I can see that there is some kind of happy chemical release in my brain, even though the song may not be all that chipper.  I often relate it to the beat and the melody of the song.  An EBM song will have the same effect on me as an Iron Maiden song: they both have good beat and good melodic vocals.  This is why many people I know secretly like pop songs that they would be mortified to admit, but something just resonates within them.

It is all the other stuff in a song like distortion, solos, tempo, or imagery that defines genre (in my opinion).  Underneath it all, most music is just basic beat and melody.  My mother is from Spain, and I would spend summers there with my family.  I had a few cousins who loved Blind Guardian and other Epic metal fantasy bands.  They loved the sound and the beat, but the moment they had me translate the lyrics about dragons and elves and things to them, they looked like I had kicked a bunch of puppies.  They didn’t know what their music was saying but since it had beat and melody, it didn’t matter to them.  

We have been talking about how to listen to music in class and what makes a song good or bad.  Motorhead has a straightforward beat the whole way through their songs; it is a beat that everyone can like. Iron Maiden also has a great beat and Bruce Dickinson’s vocals are very melodic. While very few metal songs become top ten hits, it is a very popular genre and I think that it is in part due to this allure of people to want to listen to straightforward beats.

...

And because I am sick of listening to Grand Funk Railroad and have reached my quota of Led Zeppelin and am not afraid to admit my liking of cheesy synthpop songs, I will share the song that was playing that  prompted me to wonder why I like what I like... Caution: it is a change of genre and pace but has its long-ago roots in the proto-metal bands we are discussing.  And while they may not have traditional instruments, they have taken the imagery of metal and run with it, and they always put on a great show.  Had it not been for metal, bands like this would not exist. I am a goth kid at heart and metal is a part of that identity. So here is what fans of metal can evolve into...

The origin of metal

I find learning about the roots of heavy metal incredibly interesting.  As a music lover, I came into the genre after all the conflict between punks and metal fans occurred.  Waksman’s book, “This ain’t the summer of love”, illustrates this conflict in the introduction, going into detail about the exchanges in Creem magazine in the late 1970’s.  That revelation came as a surprise to me.  I had no idea that a conflict ever existed between the two fan bases.  Growing up, I always went to punk shows (the Sex Pistols, Iggy Pop, and The Damned) and metal shows (Anthrax, Slayer, and Judas Priest).  My friends were also into both genres of music, even though a few leaned heavier in on direction or the other.  I always thought that punk and metal were related and blended together well.  One can see a distinct overlap in the two music scenes, and the influence they have upon each other. 

A prime example of this can be seen in the band the Misfits.  Started in the late 1970’s, they were considered “horror” punk.  They created a unique style for themselves and are very well known, as is their logo.  The lead singer of the band was Glenn Danzig, who left to form a well-known heavy metal band called Danzig.  Whenever I go to a Danzig show, there is always a mix of punks and heavy metal kids, rocking out together.  I believe that the rift between the two cultures is not as wide as it once was.  

I would also like to commend Waksman on some of his seminal music choices.  Iggy Pop would never have crossed my mind as being a progenitor  of punk rock, even though, upon reflection, he is quintessentially punk.  However, the use of Grand Funk Railroad, I believe is a bit of a stretch.  Maybe it is because I don’t like them, but I just don’t feel that they are really a proto-metal type group.  The sound is all wrong and they just have the metal “aura” about them that other earlier bands had.  That is not to say that they didn’t influence the music at all, but so did Mozart, in a way.  

My opinion of Grand Funk Railroad may be influenced by the concept of order versus disorder.  In my view, Grand Funk is not chaotic enough, at least not in the ways that I need for them to be, to be cool enough to listen to.  While they remind me of the noodling, jam band music, they do not evoke any feelings of rebellion or euphoria in me. Therefore, they do not satisfy my need for the disorder, the escapism which is the reason why I listen to that kind of music.

Day 1: Test Blog

This is just a test. Really.