Horror-inducing metal

Mis-read your comment on Rogue Male/DT. Forgive that last bit above.

[quote="UNCLE SAXON'S KICKASS CDS"]]

Wow - I was pretty much joking. But if you don't think BS and JP did some freaky, stupid [in retrospect] stuff - Go back to the Chuck Klosterman School of Rock.

But they never ponced about with a rubber hammer!!!!!

BTW Who the heck is Chuck Klosterman

Boris2008 wrote:

BTW Who the heck is Chuck Klosterman

haha. If ya don't know? You are already living better than most of us! It was a sideways slam. Please, do not Google him. An embarrassment to all Americans...

Hopefully we can all agree that this is a right load of old tut!

That Thor song is actually pretty good. Simplistic but catchy 80s metal. Yeah, the hammer is ridiculous, but its just a stage prop, i dont hear anyone complaining about Dio's dragon.

I'm not going to win this one am I?

I am actually am going to complain about Dio's dragon, inflatable Eddies, Ozzy's bizarre drag act and all of the the other kitchy crap that occurred in the eighties. It made some great music look plain silly. Even the mighty Celtic Frost make me cringe when I see how they looked back then. I guess I was always waiting for thrash to happen.

The only ones that really got away with it was Mercyful Fate/ King Diamond and that was on account of extreme awesomeness!

Edit : Twisted Sister were also awesome, somehow their kitsch was so deliberate that it seemed almost subversive.

A lot of the stuff (Thor & Nitro) the image and video is what makes it horrifying to me. The music I have no problem with. I'm actually a big fan of those two Nitro albums. I think they're just big-dumb-fun. Sometimes thats all I need for musical enjoyment.

Always found the re-constitued Runaways to be an exercise in horror. Saw this disc one time for dirt cheap and just couldn't bring myself to buy it.

Actually, Chuck Klosterman's "Fargo Rock City" is a classic. Its neat to see what it was like to be a metal fan in the 80s, though i'll admit he goes off on tangents (like the entire chapter about bank fraud), but for the most part its enjoyable. Never read his other books though.

Hadley wrote:

Actually, Chuck Klosterman's "Fargo Rock City" is a classic. Its neat to see what it was like to be a metal fan in the 80s, though i'll admit he goes off on tangents (like the entire chapter about bank fraud), but for the most part its enjoyable. Never read his other books though.

I'm reading Fargo Rock City right now. I'm enjoying it, but Klosterman seems to be giving off a vibe that he's ashamed of his hair-metal formative years now that he's a "serious" writer 'n' stuff. (though I did laugh like hell at this bit: "In 1990, I reviewed Warrant's Cherry Pie for my college newspaper and called it 'stellar.' They didn't let me review another record for two years."

Granted I'm only a few chapters in but so far it seems very much like he's saying "Yeah, I loved that stuff when I was a kid, but then I grew up."

Chuck is an intelligent and witty guy who wastes his potential (and robs his audience) by riffing ad nauseum on musical references that have already been riffed to death by the mainstream music media, and barely going any deeper.

Boris2008 wrote:

But they never ponced about with a rubber hammer!!!!!

Instead Black Sabbath jumped around between oversized Stonehenge Bricks, which was later rightfully parodied by Spinal Tap.

Heavy Metal always had some silly elements, things people will call cheesy, being their hairstyles, costumes, stage props or whatever. I say: Don't take everything so serious, sometimes cheesy stuff is more entertaining than a bunch of musicians just standing around on the stage playing their instruments.

ShadowAngel wrote:

Boris2008 wrote:

But they never ponced about with a rubber hammer!!!!!

Instead Black Sabbath jumped around between oversized Stonehenge Bricks, which was later rightfully parodied by Spinal Tap.

Heavy Metal always had some silly elements, things people will call cheesy, being their hairstyles, costumes, stage props or whatever. I say: Don't take everything so serious, sometimes cheesy stuff is more entertaining than a bunch of musicians just standing around on the stage playing their instruments.

Like when Don Henley almost kicked Joe Walsh out of the Eagles because he would not stand still on stage and just play?

Fargo Rock City? That has to be a joke right??? Fargo is farthest thing ever from being a rock city!

ShadowAngel wrote:

Boris2008 wrote:

But they never ponced about with a rubber hammer!!!!!

Instead Black Sabbath jumped around between oversized Stonehenge Bricks, which was later rightfully parodied by Spinal Tap.

If you've ever seem video clips from that tour there was no "jumping around", they have always been a stand in one place and jam kinda band. That was really the only "over the top" staging they had ever done. During the Dio years the only real stage prop they used was the big lighting rig cross that came down from the back of the stage. Prior to that they just used backdrops and that was about it. They were never a big pyro/spectacle kind of group.

When Dio went solo he added in all that stuff (dragons, spiders, etc).
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Lurideath wrote:

Fargo Rock City? That has to be a joke right??? Fargo is farthest thing ever from being a rock city!

And Shannon would know!

Just a personal opinion on my previous rip on Klosterman: He [and Lurideath] are from my region. It makes me sad that people purchased Fargo Rock City and came to a premature conclusion that the Upper Midwest is nothing more than Guns n Roses fans. That was his entire point of that book, right?

So, if you wanna read that piece of crap for yourself, send me the media-rate postage at unclesaxon at gmail dot com and I will ship it to you for free. It is hardcover, since I also got sucked into his BS when it came first came out.

Still better than Chuck Eddy's Stairway to Hell (supposedly the top 500 metal albums in the universe, but really a few metal and hard rock bands mixed in with a bunch of punk, indie, garage rock, and even stuff NOBODY would ever consider metal (prince, miles davis, funkadelic, teena marie, and THE OSMONDS!).

I like Klosterman even if I don't agree with a lot of his tastes and dislikes (and his intense hatred of all things LA). And hell he scores points with me for at least admitting to being a metal fan. Never read Confessions Of A Heavy Metal Addict. That guy makes Klosterman the flag-bearer for metal love. Klosterman has another book I like a lot better called Killing Yourself To Live. He goes around to all the sites of music death. The Station Fire visit probably pushes the bounds of respect (he's with victims relatives) but I thought it was a good read and an interesting idea.

I always love in any music biography when they talk about having to get rid of band members because either A) they jump around too much and are too much of a spectacle or B) they just stand there and play. The different approaches to live performing I find fascinating.