Category Archives: music

Dimebag

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As is usually the case with me, I am the last in the world to chime in with my two cents on the death of Darrel Abbott. His murder, mind you, kicked me right square in the nuts.

Growing up in Oregon, I didn’t have a lot of opportunity to listen to all this ‘heavy shit’, except for the copy, of a copy, of a copy that someone from California brought with them when they moved up.

My introduction to truly “heavy” Metal (bands like ‘Motley crue’ and ‘Dokken’ don’t really qualify for that distinction) was an old tape, which I found on the road, that had no label at all. That tape happened to be a copy, of a copy, and so forth, of Metallica’s first album, “No life Til Leather”. At exactly that moment in time, my eyes opened, my ears opened, and I realized that there was way more to music than the whining, country guys that dad always listened to. Which left me wanting more.

As luck would have it, Metallica’s first ‘studio release’, Kill ‘Em All, hit a few select stores very shortly after my new found love for this type of music. Of course, there was not one of those stores anywhere near me. Which led to more listening to copies, of copies, of copies, which didn’t lend itself to making it sound all that great in the first place. Thus was my experience with really ‘Heavy’ Metal, at least for the first half of the eighties (here I simply must note that I was only 11 in 1985, and one of the biggest fans of the genre).

About that time Metallica fired Dave Mustaine, who went on to found Megadeth, and still remains the only person that I have ever really idolized…Yet, the really heavy music still flowed through my speakers. Usually in the form of copied tapes from someone who copied them from the original, which someone had illegally recorded at the show (makes me wonder what they worry so much about piracy for. It was a copy, of a copy, of a really bad recording, I bought the studio release the second I had the opportunity).

Anyhow, to try to get to Pantera at some point during this history lesson, I must mention my first experience with the band.

I know that the studio release of Pantera’s “Cowboys From Hell” didn’t happen until 1990, and that does fit with my scenario pretty well. One of the songs that was on that ‘studio release’ was Heresy. That happened to be a song that was on one of the copies of copies, of the previously stated bands. Part of it was taped over, of course, it always was. But that song told me to just sit down and take it. After a few minutes, it was over. Then I had to add Pantera to my ‘must own list’.

By the time I finished listening to (what I heard of) that first song, I was hooked. Pantera had turned into one of the four. The ‘four’, to the layman, are Megadeth, Metallica, Slayer and Pantera. Were it not for those bands, Marilyn Manson might not be able to shock and amaze as he does today. It took the testimony of some of the biggest rockers in the world to get the P.M.R.C. to back down and just require labels on the albums, as opppsed to banning it all.

Elderly folks just don’t seem to understand that battling for the freedom to use drug references in their music (in the late ’60’s or early ’70’s), is exactly the same as the battle to use profanity for the sake of song. Mind you, I don’t approve of the method. If you are trying to be a rapper (‘dark poet’, as I have heard them callled), you really should have a few words in your vocabulary that don’t end in a hard ‘k’ sound. I.E., if you are able to make a controversial video without saying the word ‘fuck’, you might be onto something.

The rest of us are left to live by rules. Rules that we might not like, and might rise against. But one man can only do so much.

Mad Cow inaction, Survivor, CD’s

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The day/days since the last survivor have gone horribly bad. The best player got voted out tonight (which is likely open to discussion on a ton of sites.) I will say, instead, that ‘my guy’ got voted right out of there. Strongest player in the game, to be sure, most loyal guy, absolutely, just the next guy in the pecking order of the women. The absolution of what began all of those days ago.

I normally follow one or more of them through the whole endeavor, yet, when they voted out ‘Sarge’ tonight, I lost a lot of interest. Voting out the stronger players is just self-preservation, voting out the only guy who has helped/can help your game is just plain silly.

• This story, with a rather innocuous headline, Trade to Dominate Bush’s Farm Agenda , has me somewhere between angry and dumbfounded. The story is about the import/export of agricultural products, embargoes and other such dribble. One of the key things contained within it, though, is Mad Cow Disease.

I am not sure why this problem didn’t surface at all during the presidential elections, it certainly should have. I, as you likely know, am a butcher, and probably a bit more sensitive to the beef market than most people. I think it is pretty much common knowledge that there are over 20 countries that have banned the import of U.S. beef. It should be common knowledge that not only has the USDA not done anything to try to remedy the problem, but has in fact ordered at least one company to stop testing their own cattle for the disease. How this can possibly get us back into the international beef industry really escapes me. The only two possible reasons that I can see for this action is that either the USDA is afraid that really poor health standards over the last couple of decades have left a lot of the U.S. cattle with the disease, and they don’t want to make matters worse. The other option is that the USDA simply doesn’t give a fuck.

Now a fact that I didn’t know prior to reading the article is that the US imported more agricultural products last year than they exported. Not only that, the projected reports for 2004 are going to show that the defecit of export to import is likely to be in the billions. Knowing that fact, I am inclined to believe that the USDA is terrified to actually test the current cattle supply in the U.S.; knowing that sloppy standards have likely resulted in far more contamination than they let on to. The only reason that I assume that is that there is simply no way any agency would voluntarily let their product be banned, unless they had reason to believe that the truth is far worse than speculated.

Following on that same logic, and with the popularity of the Atkins Diet, I really believe that the standards of raising cattle in the U.S. have been altered enough to get rid of the disease in new cattle. However, the possibly infected supply of cattle must be exhausted before they dare to start testing them properly. In this scenario, this means that the USDA is knowingly feeding infected beef to the American people. In another couple of years they will start to test the cattle properly. Anyone who happens to die along the way will likely be swept under the rug so as not to cause another rush of fear in other countries. I know it sounds like a really bad conspiracy theory, but what other reason would there be for not allowing companies to test their own cattle, with their own money?

• Now for a random musing about the cost of cd’s.

This is a subject that I have been into a bunch of times before. While I am not going to try to find the pages where I went into it, I will just give you the basic idea of my previous arguments in a quick sentence or two. In 2002, I was able to buy 100 blank cd’s, jewel cases, labels and a program to print out the inserts for each cd. Net cost for each cd? Just under fifty cents, not counting the ink, which might have bumped it up to fifty-two cents. Now if that is how much I can do it for by myself, only buying 100 of everything, how much could it cost a company that buys their supplies by the millions? The second point was that you can buy a video game for the pc that has 5 discs in it, all with artwork on them, for about ten bucks once they are a couple of years old, note that the ten dollar price also has to pay the people who create/program the game, cover artists, etc. Also, it costs just as much to buy the latest music cd as it does to buy the latest hollywood blockbuster on dvd.

Today I found something, for the millionth time, that finally slapped me in the face about this whole issue. When is the last time that you were going through your mail to find that an old ‘LP’ fell out of it? How about an ‘8-track’? What about a ‘cassette tape’? That never happened, did it? The cd, however, is everywhere. It was falling out of one of the little pamphlets that I got in the mail today, there was a huge stand of them in the corner of the post office, even though the post office was closed, they were not stolen/missing/vandalized, no just sitting there. Of course these are all AOL cd’s so I guess it would be a bit tough to do anything with them, unless, of course, you were thirteen and really liked to watch what happens when you put one into the microwave (which is not all that spectacular, don’t try it). Is it really cheaper to send out cd’s (for AOL) than to pay for newspaper advertising, or just more effective?

The answers are all lost somewhere in time…Or at least in AOL Time/Warner…

][V][ EGADETH ][-][

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The thing that really irritates me about Saturday is the fact that my employers never listen to me. Megadeth was going to be playing a concert last night, you see, and I really wanted to be in attendance. So much so, in fact, that the tickets for said event were acquired within fifteen minutes of them going on sale to the public (which was on October 2nd). Now, knowing that I always have to work on Saturday nights, I made sure to let the boss know that I was going to be needing to get off early on that day. I told them about this on October 4th, also marked it on the calendar to make sure that they wouldn’t forget. Even if I round the numbers in their favor, they still had over three weeks to plan for me to not be at work for the last three hours on a Saturday. Yet, somehow, it was as if I had never mentioned it at all.

It isn’t like I frequently request days off at work, nor even specific hours off. The only days that I can remember having requested off were my brother’s wedding and my own wedding. I have requested to be off a bit early a couple of times, due to other events that I wanted to go to, without a problem, yet this one really seemed to piss them off. When I called work in the morning, inquiring as to whether they wanted me to work additional hours in the A.M. to make up for missed hours in the P.M., it was like they truly believed that I had never mentioned it, nor written it on the calendar. What do I need to do, drag them to a notary to sign a document stating that I am requesting three hours off in a month26 days? Hmm. Perhaps I should suggest that the next time I make plans and let them know well in advance, there would be no denying it then.

Enough about that, on to MEGADETH!

If I were to use a single word to describe the show, that word would be “Awesome”. I don’t mean that in the slang form of the word that the stoners picked up in the late eighties, I mean it in the literal sense. When I stood at the edge of the Grand Canyon, the view was awesome; When I saw Dave Mustaine play last night, having come back after a debilitating nerve injury to his left arm and hand, I was in awe. -Much on a side note, I saw a few speculations on the internet that his injury was not as bad as he made it sound, but if you had been following the Megadeth.com website, it shows the strange device that he had to put his arm/hand into, and he details some of the progress during the ordeal. I really doubt it was meant as a publicity stunt, especially since he is the only remaining member of the original band.- Anyway, back to random musings.

The band that opened for them was Exodus. For the majority of the world the only claim that Exodus has to fame is being the launchpad for Kirk Hammett of Metallica fame. Of course, if you are old enough, you might remember the one song that Exodus put out in the late eighties that got a lot of airplay, come on you remember the Toxic Waltz don’t you? -Or maybe, as my wife says, only I do.-

That last paragraph would have been deleted and only revisited in some later edition of Trivial Pursuit had I not found a really strong sense of irony in it. You see, Dave Mustaine was the original lead guitarist of Metallica. He was fired from the band just as they got signed and was replaced by Kirk Hammett, who was currently in the band Exodus. Now Exodus is opening for Megadeth on their tour for The System Has Failed. The only way that this could have gone more full circle is if Mustaine joined Exodus, then Metallica opened for them.

On to the show!

I was simply amazed by how much old-school stuff they did. They opened with the song “No Survivors”, which only myself and about eight other people in the crowd seemed to recognize. They played most of the songs that are still in cirulation on the radio, “Symphony of Destruction”, “A Tout Le Monde”, “Train of Consequences”, “Sweating Bullets”, come on, you know the regulars. Aside from starting the show with “No Survirors”, I was really blown away when they started to do “In My Darkest Hour”, I really didn’t think they were gonna play that one. Both “Hangar 18” and “Eye of the Tornado” also hit me a bit by surprise. Amazing songs all, and well appreciated, but it really seemed like I was the only one in my little section that knew the songs. Yet the same could be said for “Die Dead Enough”, “Kick the Chair”, “Back in the Day” and “Something That I’m Not”, which were all from the latest album, yet no one seemed to recognize them.

Megadeth (or what remains of it) certainly hit it on the head with both this album and this tour. There is no way that you can watch this show and imagine that anything has been sold out, except possibly the venue in the next town.

I may be the only one left in the entire world that wants to hear loud, heavy, ear-splitting music for the sake of entertainment, but I tell you Megadeth delivers that. As far as the (obligatory) encores, you know what they were… come on, think about it. That’s right! They were, first, “Peace Sells…But who’s Buying”, and second, after about five minutes, “Holy Wars…The Punishment Due”.

If you have ever been a fan of Megadeth, even in passing, you really need to see them live. There is no stage show, just guys playing…and playing well. I grew up with them, idolized them, and still follow them even though only Mustaine still remains. They will rock your world. You might find yourself banging your head even though you have never done it before. It is not that you don’t like to bang your head, it is that you haven’t yet been to this show.

Also, vote on Tuesday, it may be important.

][V][ EGADET ][-][ concert preparation

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There are only eight days now until I am going to be seeing Megadeth in concert. While I am as giddy as a school-girl on the one hand, I am also a bit apprehensive. The previous bands that my wife and I saw, including, but not limited to (no way I am gonna link them all): Dokken, Dio, Korn, Motorhead, Scorpions, Ozzy, WhiteSnake, Iron Maiden, Korn, Marilyn Manson, Disturbed, Chevelle, hell there were a few others (many more if you count the bands that didn’t play the main stage). They were all viewed from a VIP area in an arena that has security posted to keep the homocidal lunatics away from us. Don’t get me wrong, I can throw my fist in the air and bang my head with the best of them, used to even engage in smashing my body against the bodies of other people while listening to really loud music. The thing is that I am not sixteen anymore, no matter how much I try to pretend that I am.

The thing, the one thing, is that I am still a bit nervous about everyone around me. True, there is a ‘pit section’ in damn near every venue that a band plays; That is the place that I would have owned a decade ago. Now, for better or worse, I just want to go and hear it all live, throw my fist in the air and be a part of the the experience. What I don’t want is the guy next to me to get a bit too drunk and start picking fights. Of course the adrenaline rush that comes with seeing your idols play live might just make me immune to the drunken (more so than me) idiots that would try to fight anything that wiggled. Yet, those idiots will be on the same rush. Bleh. All I really have to say is, thank the random fluctuations of time and space for structured seating, without it I might have to re-live my youth by beating someone to death (Not that I actually beat anyone to their death in my youth; at least not that you can prove it).

The interesting thing about Megadeth, and my desire to see them live, is that there is only one guy left in the band that was there at the beginning. That guy is, of course, Dave Mustaine. For whatever reasons, a guitarist named ‘Chris Poland’ played the lead on their first album, as well as playing the lead on their latest album, yet he won’t be on tour with them. David Ellefson has been the bassist since the band’s beginning, but he is not going to be playing with them either. The original drummer is also gone, though I can not place his name. I think Nick Menza is going to be playing with them, while I am thinking that their original drummer had a name like ‘Gar Samuelson’. So, in essence, I am watching the Dave Mustaine show when I go to see Megadeth, but, you know what, that is what I want to see.

-All of the musicians mentioned can be found by going to Artist Direct.com and entering their names. I just happen to remember all of their names since I grew up with/worshipped this band.-

My fascination with Dave Mustaine goes way back. He was, of course, one of the original members of Metallica. He still has writing credits on many of the songs on Metallica’s first two albums. He can play a guitar like no one should ever be able to, but, he does it with a unique (totally untrained) approach. To hell with the musical scales! If it sounds weird/cool to play an A-sharp, followed by an E-flat, he will do it (at least in the glory days of Megadeth). He just doesn’t give a damn for conforming to anything (though it is pretty obvious that he has taken a class or two in musical theory at this point).

The one thing that really stands out about Mustaine, though, is his voice. He seems to be on the edge of sanity when he is singing the lyrics, yet he seems so approachable when you hear him do an interview. I don’t know if you can actually teach someone how to sound insane, but if it is possible, Mustaine should open a school. His voice is, very obviously, not meant to be a singing voice. It is more a satirical rendition of the ‘we hate you, you must die’ voices of the late ’90’s. I am not sure if that is what he was aiming for, but that was what I took it as. Yet, were it not for that unique voice, and some hammering riffs, Megadeth might just be a foot-note in the history of music. Of course the fact that I am going to watch them live in 2004, when they haven’t put out a decent album in more than a decade, might say more about me than it does about them. In my defense I would like to say that going to this concert is not going to slow down my graying hair, nor do I think that it will cure baldness. It is just a ‘must see’ show. It very well could be the last time that anyone is able to see what is left of Megadeth in a show.

As far as the rapidly graying hair, I will be the only ‘distinguished gentleman’ at the Megadeth show. Unless, of course, no one else has listened to them in the last decade. Yes, brethren in the graying/baldness category, that is what I want to get out of a concert. ( <—Sarcasm ).

Strange dream; Team America: World Police; The System Has Failed

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I took a few days off around the website in case you haven’t noticed. Again the problem was just an utter lack of anything to say, I won’t let that little fact stop me today!

If anyone out there is into dream analysis, here’s one for you. In this dream I am standing in front of a shopping center in the town where I grew up. There is an ambulance parked nearby. Next to me (in the same general area anyway) are two paramedics and a young kid that I don’t recognize. After a few moments a black Chevelle with blacked out windows comes around the corner, the passenger window comes down, a rifle comes out and fires three shots, about a half a second apart. The Chevelle speeds away.

The three shots seem to have hit their intended targets. The two paramedics are both very obviously dead; each having been hit in the head and missing a great deal of the skull. The kid that I don’t recognize is hit also, but in the chest. He is breathing but barely. I can’t be certain what the bullet actually hit, but in my best estimation it looks like it probably missed his heart, I think he had a collapsed lung though, as he was coughing up blood.

My shouts for help go unanswered, the shopping center is deserted. In fact I don’t think there is a single car in the lot with the exception of the ambulance. I remove the stretcher from the back of the ambulance and put the kid onto it. I manage to get the stretcher into the back of the ambulance but I can not figure out how to secure the kid to the stretcher, or how to keep the stretcher from rolling/sliding. After a minute or so of trying to figure it out I decide it is better to bang him up a bit on the way to the hospital than to let him die while I am fucking with the straps.

I have never seen the driver’s seat of an ambulance but in my dream there are so many switches that it puts me in mind of a jet. All I want to do is start it and go, which I figure out quickly enough. The second I am on the road in front of the shopping center though there are cars backed up going both ways with no way to get around them. I start messing with the switches hoping to find the siren or the lights, and eventually find the one for the lights, yet the cars don’t seem to see them, as they don’t make way for me to pass. I do eventually find the siren (bear with me I know this is weird), it is a hand crank on passenger side of the cabin. In order to use the siren I have to put the ambulance in park, move to the passenger seat and crank it. I do this and the cars immediately all make their way to the side of the road, but by the time I am back in the driver’s seat the noise has faded and the cars are all back in front of me.

Through experimentation I am able to figure out that if I give the thing a good crank, five revolutions or so, I am able to get back to the driver’s seat and make it a couple of car lengths before I am boxed in again. A couple of dozen times of doing that and I make it to a cross street that I take towards the hospital (in my dream the location of the hospital is actually the location of the court, but that is another story). The four streets that surround the hospital are all one way, I was of course on the wrong street and had to make my way all the way around the thing to reach the entrance. When I come to a stop at the emergency entrance I crank the siren once more and a bunch of people rush out of the hospital. When I open the back of the ambulance to get the kid out, he is just sitting there on the stretcher with no sign of an injury at all. As I stare around confused, looking back and forth between the kid and the doctors, the black Chevelle pulls up behind the ambulance. I duck to the ground instinctively, but when the doors open the two paramedics from the shopping center get out. Suddenly a police car appears, I am in handcuffs, the hospital (which is in the location of the courthouse in the actual town layout) has turned into the police station and I am in a room being questioned about stealing the ambulance when the dream ends.

So what does that all mean?

•With the Megadeth concert being only two weeks away, I finally decided I had better go ahead and buy the new cd. The System Has Failed is the latest release, which I have just listened to twice. I have a couple of comments about it. First, they sure did go back to their roots as far as speed and power. I am not sure if it could hold a candle to ‘Rust in Piece’, but it is certainly on par with ‘Countdown to Extinction’. The second thing of note is that a lot of the lyrics are pretty sub par for Megadeth. The songs make sense (as much as a song can) but they just don’t seem to be of the same caliber as most of the older stuff. I suppose one can only write about so many great poems beforing running out of brilliant stories to tell.

One other thing that I took away from listening to it, I don’t think that Dave Mustaine thinks much of George W. Bush, or the situation in Iraq. That much is never actually said, but it is kind of implied. Even the albums cover art depicts someone, who looks an awful lot like dubya, paying off Vic the judge. The first song on the album, ‘Blackmail the Universe’, starts with air force one getting shot down and the president being detained by terrorists. One of the quotes in the song is, “I red, white and blew it.” That is a great line…

• The wife and I went out to take in a movie today. It was the first movie that I have seen on opening weekend since the original theatrical release of E.T. So what movie was so compelling as to make me see it on opening weekend, a movie so powerful to break a 22 year run of never seeing a movie on opening weekend? Well Team America: World Police, of course.

This is one of those movies that is certainly not for everyone. If you like it, you really like it, if you don’t like it, you actively hate it. A quick look at the reviews on RottenTomatoes will certainly evidence that. I am of the camp that really, really liked the movie. If you have yet to see it, I have only this to ask, “Jesus titty-fucking Christ!”, why not?

Now I am going to talk a little bit about the movie, not a review, more a list of things that I did/didn’t like about it. That means that there will be some spoilers. Of course this movie is pretty hard to spoil, I could likely read the entire script to you verbatim and you would still be blown away by it. That all being said, away I go.

First off, the movie took me completely by surprise. I had seen only one trailer for it ever. I mean there was only one t.v. commercial that I ever saw advertising the film, and that was a couple of months ago. All that I was able to gather from that was that it was done with marionettes, and that the minds that created ‘South Park’ were behind it. That was not a lot to go on. That was all that I knew about the movie when my butt hit the seat at the theatre (where we arrived a half an hour in advance, only to find that even at show start there were only about 20 people there).

To start with a few very specific examples of what I didn’t like about the movie. 1) There is a puking scene that goes on WAY longer than it needs to. The guy threw up, we get it, move on. It was not all that funny to just watch a marionette spit out pea soup for a minute and a half. 2) There is a quite unnecessary little song that the evil mastermind (Kim Jong Il?) sings, should have been on the cutting room floor, and likely would have been were it not for the childish humor in stereotyping the speech of all Asians by making all the ‘L’s sound like ‘R’s. The movie would have been better off without it. 3) There is just a lot of profanity for the sake of profanity. I know that they are Lampooning other movies and the such, but no one really ever says Fuck that often…Not even me and I am a potty-mouth. 4) The ‘running joke’ about the main character sucking ‘Spotswoods’ dick had lost most of its steam by the time that it actually happened. While I did find it a bit humorous, I don’t think it was actually necessary. I am sure that there are a few issues that I am overlooking, but I want to get on to the good stuff, so I will leave that all for a later date.

What I liked about the movie, now that is a tough one. I would probably have to list at least half of the movie to get all of that across. I will try to just list a few extreme laugh out loud (xlol) moments.

Xlol moment 1: This one is covering two scenes, the destruction in both Paris and Cairo. I was laughing so hard because that is just the way the rest of the world seems to look at the U.S.A., Destroying every precious, ageless monument, yet declaring victory after leaving the country in ruin.

Xlol moment 2: The twangy, country-western style song that Trey is singing while the main character makes up his mind about going to fight for his freedom. The song ends with something close to “Freedom isn’t free, it costs a buck-o-five”. I may have been the only one in the theatre laughing, but that one really tickled me. Take that all you country-western artsists that write songs about freedom, yet would never ‘slip on your boots’ to fight for it!

Xlol moment 3: The first time the team started to roll out of Mt. Rushmore, when they first started to sing “America, America” in a pretty dignified tone, then followed that with the hammering, “America, Fuck Yeah!” on our way to save the mother-fucking world, Fuck Yeah! Or however it actually goes, I damn near pissed myself with laughter. I think that was mostly because it reminded me a lot of the song from the old G.I. Joe cartoon themesong at least I thought it did right until I just listened to the g.i.joe theme again, not even close. Still, that was really, really funny when they broke that song out.

Xlol moment 4: There were a lot of times during this film that I laughed out loud, that is quite unusual for me as I try to never be noticed, ever. After the first half hour or so of the movie I was able to contain my laughter for the most part, and as such the fourth xlol moment was in the credits. There are the two separate sets of credits, the ‘team america’ credits (which appear to be in steel with rivets) and after that the actual, normal credits roll. During the first credits, while the ‘America, Fuck yeah!’ song is playing, they start throwing out random terms. Like, “the internet, Fuck Yeah!”. There are a lot of them that I didn’t actually hear, but one of the last ones was, “Slavery, Fuck Yeah!”. I nearly split my gut with laughter, while I guess my wife didn’t hear it at all.

Jesus titty-fucking Christ, that is the funniest movie of all time. Well the funniest movie in this century. Then again, this century is only four years old…The funniest movie counting the last two centuries then…But, I guess they didn’t have movies before then, so I guess it really must be the funniest movie of all time.

As far as the fact that the characters are just marionettes, it really only comes up when they really want you to see it. The first ‘fight scene’ illustrates that, but I am pretty sure that it is done on purpose. In the latter part of the movie, the marionettes do some hand to hand fighting that looks, at the very least, as realistic as most of the crap that Hollywood has to offer. Also, and unlike Hollywood prodcutions, with one exception, when the people are dead, they are dead. Having no head, splitting your torso in half, these things will keep you down for a while. No one in this movie gets slapped and then ignored for the duration.

I guess I better stop now, if I don’t I will likely go on forever. Just go watch the damn movie!

Song Remakes

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I had absolutely no intention of putting anything up here today. Nothing on my mind, just thought I would go ahead and take care of a couple of Pogo.com challenges. Not a lot on my plate for bitching tonight, or so I thought.

I have previously bitched (at some length) about the fact that I really hate it when bands remake (cover) songs, yet I never really thought that I would get as angry about it as I am right now.

Some of the songs that get remade later, ‘Smokin in the Boy’s Room’ for instance, stayed true to the song, while beefing it up a bit for the ears of the people who would listen to it a couple of decades later. Sure, Motley Crue took a few liberties and changed little things about the song, but the song remained the same, though the names had changed. That is the same thing that has happened with every fifties classic that I can even think of. It is almost like there are only four actual songs (I mean only four songs that have ever existed, and everyone is ripping them off) and everyone tries to spin them in their own way…

I truly believe that most of the remakes are coming from a band trying to pay homage to their roots; It is what they grew up on, it is what they played while they were alone in the garage, it is a kind of a ‘thank you’ to whatever band made the song that made them, in turn, go ahead and form a band. If that is the way that it happens/happened, they should really try to pay a bit of respect to the source material itself. I will mention Metallica’a cover of the old song ‘turn the page’, Metallica nailed that one right on the head (even though I don’t really care for what metallica has become), and brought an old song back to life. There are times when a remake can introduce new fans to old music, but, not only are they few and far between, they also require a bit of talent. Unfortunately, I seem to be more talented (at the guitar anyway) than about 80% of the hacks (I mean bands) that do their best to totally destroy the song that they are trying to ‘cover’.

I suppose that I am being a little bit more bitter than usual (at least I hope I am being more bitter than usual) because of the remake/cover of just one song. The band Nonpoint tried to do the old Phil Collins classic; “in the air tonight”, and they tried to make it a power-chord-laden, Old Metallica song. The thing is that the song was not written that way. The silence that follows all of the verses was done intentionally to set the mood. The original song is powerful for its silence, for its lyrics, for the fact that you don’t want to listen to it without someone next to you, or at least someone else in the house. The song is very dark, very morose, and impossible to listen to without someone holding you… Unless, of course, you have listened to that horrible cover of the song. Trying to turn this particular song into some sort of a speedy, punk-rock type of song is just so, so wrong. The song was what it was, and it is still played on classic radio stations all over the country. If you really want to try to make a name for yourself, why not try to remake some old ‘Beatles’ or ‘Zepplin’ songs?

Concerts

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The wife came through with the Megadeth Tickets I mentioned last time. We will be in the 16th row to the left of center stage. These tickets are not going to put us in quite the prime location that we got when we attened all of the concerts that she got tickets from at her work, but honestly being a bit away from center stage might just make it so that the high-frequency noises don’t hit me straight on and deafen me. Sixteen rows is also not that far back to be, I think that the little caged VIP area that we had at the other venue was just behind the 13th or 15th row, from that vantage point you can see (and certainly hear) everything perfectly.

This is, of course, all academic anyway. You can hear these type of concerts from a couple of blocks away (probably better on your ears that way also), and it is not like a band like Megadeth really has much of a stage show. The only reason that I can think of for going to see a concert is just for the energy of it. It may sound foolish, especially as I am now in my thirties, but you just can not mimic the energy of a live concert regardless of how loud your stereo happens to be.

One of the concerts that we saw, which really illustrates that fact was at the Cricket Pavilion (in the aforementioned VIP seating), with the bands Motorhead, Dio and Iron Maiden. While the concert was pretty lackluster until Iron Maiden hit the stage, after that it was pretty much chaos. There was one point during the concert where a guy jumped the rail from the upper level, charged into our little box (which was dead-center stage) and was trying to make it over the front rail to rush the stage. Security tackled him, knocked over our table and took him away. I am not entirely sure 1) Why they actually bother to put a table in these little boxes in the first place. 2) Why the security guy, one guards the entrance to each of the VIP boxes, didn’t catch him before he made it in. 3) Why they don’t stop selling you beer when you are as drunk as this guy was. What I am absolutely sure of is that there was an energy there, something that you felt, and while it might not make it through in your description of the event the next day, you still told everyone about it. It is certainly something that you really have to experience to understand.

Much on the same topic, you only have one life to live. Sure you could spend that life living inside a little box, eating healthy, excercising daily, not doing anything that is truly fun. When it comes down to it, though, do you really want to live forever? Go to the concerts, blow out your eardrums, you aren’t going to have a chance to do it again.

In yet more really loud, angry music talk, the local radio station 98KUPD, who were the first to offer tickets for the Megadeth show, have another show on the books as well. The radio station is billing it as the “Big Red Night of the Dead”, though that makes no sense, and neither of the artists are performing on the same night. The artist, the one that is not Megadeth, is playing the day before Megadeth at the same venue. There must be some sort of a bi-lateral partnership between the artist and the station though, as the station is being allowed to bill the show as such and is giving away cd’s all month to that end. If you are only going to see one show in your life, it should definitely be the that band.

The band in question is Marilyn Manson (the link is to tour dates). I really don’t like Marilyn Manson at all, yet I have to say that he is a great as a theatrical showman. I mentioned that in my May 23, 2004 post. I will just quote myself from that post to save myself from writing any more about it, and save you from reading it:

I was absolutely blown away by Marilyn Manson. I do not care for their music, but won’t turn it off if it is on the radio, it is just the kind of thing that I don’t actively hate, or like. His (their) theatrics really stole the show. To the point that I was a bit disappointed when I finally got to see Ozzy (for the first time in my life). Manson certainly took care to stage a show that would shock and entertain you for his full set. The rest of the bands, Ozzy included, just did their songs. I will give ozzy a bit of lee-way on this one, since he is no spring chicken, but the other bands, like Korn, couldn’t they have done something other than just play their songs?
Manson had choreographed marionettes (they were actually people behaving as such) that did things for his entire set. He had a little tiered stage kind of thing that they would climb. It is difficult to describe, but it was an experience. The other bands just played their songs. If you want to hear the song, you have the cd, the sound quality is going to be a lot better, just listen to the damn cd. Marilyn Manson, on the other hand, really sold me the experience. Even though I do not like Marilyn Manson, I would be more likely to buy tickets to his next concert than I would be to buy tickets for the next, say, Korn concert…Even though I like Korn a lot more than I like Manson.

That is why you have to buy a ticket and see the show. It is just that, a show, it is never going to be the same twice. While I can remember most of the songs that I have listened to repeatedly over the years, most of them don’t bring up images of a guy trying to stick a microphone into a marionette’s vagina. I doubt you will ever relate trying to stick a microphone into a marionette’s vagina to Marilyn Manson if you never watch the show. Hell that was also over a year ago so I am sure that the stage set has changed as much as the music has. Manson seems to be out to shock you, and it works. Much like a car wreck, you don’t really want to look, but at the same time you can’t look away. I wonder if P.T. Barnum might be a relative of Brian Hugh Warner (aka Marilyn Manson) I apologize for that link, but it was the best I could come up with.

That will be about all for today. I still don’t understand why I continue to defend people like Marilyn Manson and Howard Stern when I really don’t like them. I guess it all comes down to the belief that you are free to say/do what you want, and that liberty can not be bought or sold. I suppose that is why the politicians spend so much time and money trying to get into an office that really doesn’t pay all that well (in their eyes). This land is supposed to be about freedom, and if you are not free to let your children play in the streets then we need some gun laws. If you are not free to speak your mind in opposition of the idiot in office, then we need freedom of speech (without repercussion). If the press won’t talk about the idiocy of the actions of the current administration, then we need to do it ourselves and get rid of the riff-raff. A democracy is not run by one idiot with more money than brains, it is run by the power of the people…Now if the people would just vote…

Christmas lights; John Kerry, Concert tickets

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Yes, as the date clearly states, we are now officially in October. All site-related musings aside, time still seems to be moving at rather a rapid pace. The decorative Christmas lights that I put up on the house last year, and have been thinking of taking down every weekend, now seem to be less of a nuisance, as it now seems that I am just horribly well prepared, as opposed to horribly lazy, as they seemed just yesterday. The local radio stations are already talking about ‘shopping days before Christmas’, completely disreagarding the fact that it is still so unbearably hot that no one really ever leaves the house, unless forced. Of course that is sort of a trade off that one must make to live where I do; We have unusually warm winters, extremely hot summers, and the other two seasons seem to last about three days each. That is not an exaggeration either, last year there was one day that we were running the cooler (in the store) and the next morning it was the heater. So I am going to go ahead and blame the rapid passage of time on having only two seasons, regardless of the fact that winter goes about two months, while summer lasts the other ten.

Attempting to use the weather where you live as an excuse (like I just did) is a pretty poor argument. Everyone, everywhere, has different atmospheric conditions that they have to tolerate. While I really wish I would have made it to take care of the weeds in front of the house (and I mean once and for all, as opposed to using a weedeater every third weekend), at least I have the house, with the weeds in front of it, to bitch about. Practically half of the state of Florida is in ruins, and I am bitching about it being to hot to shoot a bit of RoundUp on them. I suppose that is why there are benfits and drawbacks to living in any environment. And those weeds had better watch out, I may just get off my lazy duff and take care of them next year!

• Now that the small talk about the weather is out of the way… I want to mention briefly that I may have completely underestimated John Kerry’s performance in the first presidential debate. All of the surveys that have been released so far show Kerry winning the debate handily. I would agree with that point, Kerry did win the thing, hands down, in my eyes, but I was actually disappointed in both his, and President Bush’s, handling of the questions. The entire debate seemed to be more of a press conference, each man responded to the question that they were given, but neither were ever allowed to actually ask direct questions of the other.

I may not be much of a pundit on politics, but I do know how to debate. When you do not allow the persons in the debate to ask each other specific questions related to the subject, the persons are not debating -they are ranting- much as I am now. The key to finding out someone’s stance on anything is to not listen to the stuff that they have prepared and memorized over time, you need to see what they say when they don’t have any more notes. While neither candidiate came in with notes, they surely knew the points that they wanted to make, and had likely practiced saying them in front of a mirror. I am not even sure that what I witnessed last night could be called a debate, at least not in the literal term of the word. Bush did his best to spin everything into his (obviously pre-rehearsed) ‘War on Terror’ shtick, while Kerry did his best to have good hair and answer questions that were never asked.

Am I the only person in the whole of the ‘United States of America’ that wants to see what the actual people, the ones that we are actually going to vote for on the second of November, actually think? I sure hope that there are a lot more people like me, people who are disappointed by the fact that the debate was no more than a staged media circus. Even though I really want Kerry to win this election (or even Nader, hell anyone but Bush) I still think that the people are getting the short end of the stick when the debate is all but staged. What the American people need is factual information, not rhetoric. Yet, It seems that facts are no longer the driving factor when we are letting the ‘Leader of the free world’ send our children to war.

• Now to really make you all drool.

It is hard to have a bad day, even though mine was horrible, when you come home to find the following email:

If I bought tickets to this would you be able to work early on Saturday or get the day off so you could go??

The link is now dead, but the concert in question is Megadeth at the Dodge Theatre (in the Phoenix area). If you know anything about me at all, hell, even you know nothing about me at all, you should know that I kind of Worship Megadeth. There is no force in the world strong enough to keep me from making it to see a new Megadeth show, well, I guess death would qualify, but I don’t think that death is really a force. You should all now just bow before me and hope/pray that your wife will ever be so cool as to offer you treats to such an event. Of course not all wives are built the same, so when I am watching Megadeth, you might be trimming hedges…which I would do, that is I would do it if I actually had a hedge to trim.
Not all wives are built the same, choose accordingly.

Job frustrations; Megadeth

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Another day has come and passed. I am certainly in much better spirits today than I was yesterday, what that amounts to really isn’t much. I did receive yet another bitching session at work, but this time it was in a much more tolerable way. It was in a calm, firm voice that I was bitched at. This makes it more of a conversation than a bitching, which meant that I was able to get a few words in, in the same calm, firm voice. No one died, no one was injured, and I think we both were able to understand each others position when it was spoken about instead of being shouted about. I guess I am probably still a useless piece of shit, but I at least got to get in a word or two, and even surprise the boss when he found that I had not actually been wandering aimlessly the day before, but completing a task that he had assigned me earlier in the week. Of course none of that means that I am any less useless, but it was a day of relative calm that I absolutely needed.

The strange thing about what happened yesterday is that I got too angry to drink. Not really, I did imbibe a few of the frothy nectars, but not as much as normal; I was too angry to get drunk. This was certainly an unprecedented event around here. This fact was evidenced by my wife’s statement that she was pretty sure I was going to quit my job, which she told someone that she works with. She based that assumption on the fact that I said that I was going to quit, and I said it when I was sober and in a very matter-of-fact tone. This didn’t actually happen today, and with luck it won’t happen for a while. As for yesterday, that was exactly what I felt and I guess it was pretty obvious.

If I can make it through tomorrow without actually walking away from the job I will have all of Sunday to take care of things around the house and kind of cool down. I do hope that happens. I haven’t actually had to look for a job in about a decade and do not look forward to the thought of it. There have been dozens of people who have come into the store over the years and told me to look them up if I ever need a job, I am not sure how sincere they were, and hopefully I won’t have to find out in the immediate future. Enough about that.
• Megadeth’s new song “Die Dead Enough” hit the air in Phoenix a few days ago. I have been reluctant to make any mention of the single since I had only been able to hear it over really crappy radio reception. I heard the song today, in my car -which has way better reception than the pseudo radio I have in the room with my pc- and all I have to say about it is that it kicks unholy ass! The drummer is going ballistic with the triplets and quintuplets on the bass drums, the guitar is rocking in a way that Megadeth has not matched since their “Rust In Peace” album, it is fast, hard and in your face. It is, in a word, MEGADETH.

I guess that when Mustaine got injured he started to realize that he threw a few albums out there just to get the money. Then he had the time to listen to what Metallica is calling music these days, added to the fact that he is listening to the same radio station that I do, Phoenix-based and it never plays anything off of Metallica’s last few albums, or any of Megadeth’s for that matter. I guess it hit him that he needed to really hit hard with his next album. I do hope that it is as heavy as the first single would indicate, it has been a long time since I have had a cervical injury and it would be way cooler if it happened when I saw MEGADETH returning to their former glory.

When I used to visit Megadeth’s website frequently the address was www.megadethcyberarmy.com, which is no longer an address at all. The site that was called “Megadeth.com” was nothing more than a fansite. I guess the buzz about Megadeth kind of died when Mustaine got his injury, also Megadeth either sued the guy who was running Megadeth.com (which seems really unlikely since it was the best fan site I have ever seen, even to this day), or just gave him a job (the webmaster of Megadeth.com, I mean). Whatever happened, Megadeth.com seems to be the official Megadeth site. Which sucks for me.

It was just one little thing that I had in my life, but it was important to me. I was the first ever moderator of the “Official Megadeth Chat”, which was through the now dead megadethcyberarmy website. For a simple man, like me, that was power. I suppose that I should be happy with the fact that I was the first, but with the old site gone, as well as the java chat that I was in charge of, how would I even go about trying to prove it? I suppose that I just kind of gave up hope at some point. That point would have been long after I wasted a lot of time to create This. I had no idea how to make the images pre-load at the time, I also had to crop the sound from cds that I actually had and save them in some weird ass format to work with java-enabled browsers at the time. I bet you can download the whole thing and see all thirty different images being displayed in less than thirty seconds on a current broadband connection.

I guess I am a bit less into Megadeth than I was in the past, but when Megadeth is making actual songs that kick ass, while Metallica is making drippy folk songs, I guess I have to hope/choose that Megadeth is going to lay something heavy on us. Right?

Nirvana

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I have nothing slated to write about today. There are a couple of subjects that I would certainly love to get into, yet I am inhibited by the fact that I do not want to name any names (or even imply them through description). If you are reading this post and wondering if one of the inhibited stories was about you, I can assure you that it was not. The inhibited stories were regarding people other than you, and stories other than the ones that you spoke to me. I am aware that the previous does not make for a spectacular opening statement, yet, I also know that someone, somewhere may continue to read.

• This is going to be a very unpopular post, I am sure. I am going to talk a bit about the band Nirvana. I can not find a definite link to an “official site” for the band so you don’t get one here.

I have absolutely nothing against the band Nirvana, I was one of the many millions of people that bought their album NeverMind when it was first released. My purchase of the CD was likely fueled by the constant airplay on MTV. They certainly did smash the Hair-Band type stuff that I was listening to into the ground. Nirvana was fresh, crass and angry. They were trying to piss people off with their music, and they did a good job of it. The more the parents got pissed off, the more the kids listened to it. Nirvana was like a drug that you would do in your basement when your parents weren’t home, just to get the fix.

I am the type of person that thinks that your name should only appear in the paper/local news at three times; Birth, Marriage and then Death. When Nirvana ‘hit’, it made me think that maybe there was a bit more to teen aggression than anyone had ever told me about. I followed Nirvana faithfully for the first few albums, I was paying to see shows as well as paying for albums and t-shirts, I was totally into the message that they spoke (whether that was intention or not).

The thing about it is that my infatuation with Nirvana only lasted for a couple of months.

Metallica, who had been releasing albums since about 1982, and who I had also followed pretty religiously, released the “Black Album” later in 1991. I was pretty damn sure (even at that time) that there were going to be no more glam/hair bands, but I was not sure which tangent of music to follow. I tried to get behind Metallica, since they had been keeping me in a cervical collar for the better part of a decade, yet the grungy sound of Nirvana stuck in my head. I do not mean to imply that the one was better than the other, just that I had been listening to the one while I was damn near in diapers and, as such, unlikely to change my musical views.

I went the way of the grunge only until everyone that I was hanging out with started to smell really bad. No offense to the whole ‘grunge scene’, but you can buy a bar of soap for like fifty cents, and in most cases you really should.

What happened next is that both Nirvana and Metallica started to release a bunch of crap that even my fireplace would not have. Is there something about success that makes you think that you can do anything you want, or do they just get so high that they think they are releasing stuff as powerful as their earlier stuff? The world will never know. The reason that the world will never know is that Cobain killed himself, if you can believe What you see here.

At least Cobain can fall back on the excuse that he is dead, Hetfield continues to write lyrics that are increasingly annoying, and less and less important to anyone. When Hetfield can no longer think of new lyrics, he rips off old songs like ‘whiskey in the jar’ or ‘turn the page’. Metallica then contiues to do horrible re-makes of the songs.

It is kind of funny, to me, that I started this whole thing with the intention of bitching about Cobain’s band Nirvana. Yet, as I write it I am talking myself into bitching about the later releases of Metallica.

At least Cobain had the good sense to get out while he was still a superstar, Metallica has gone the polar opposite direction from there. I will not be surprised to see Metallica playing show-tunes the next time I visit Vegas.

I know that I am no one to be bitching, I own only a piece of digital real-estate that is rarely visited, but, truth be told, if the Macarena had been released in 1991 it would have broken the country’s grip on glam rock. We didn’t need a Super-Star, we just needed an alternative. That is why, I think, we labeled all of the Seattle bands as alternative. They were the alternative to the crap that was on the radio.