Imagine these albums if they kept their working title.
Metallica, “Kill Em All” but could have been “Metal Up Your Ass”.
REM, “Monster” but could have been “Exploding Head”.
The Beatles, “The White Album” but could have been “A Dolls House”.
Motley Crue, “Dr Feelgood” but could have been “Monsterous” or “Sex, Sex and Rock N Roll”.
Pink Floyd, “The Dark Side Of The Moon” but could have been “Eclipse”.
Radiohead, “OK Computer” but could have been called “Ones And Zeroes”.
Anyway Merry Xmas.
Twisted Sister – Love Is For Suckers
Whitesnake – Whitesnake
This was my favorite cassette for a long time.
The Whitesnake album is so ear pleasing with its guitar heaviness and as much as “Love Is For Suckers” gets ignored by Jay Jay French and Mark “The Animal” Mendoza, as no songs appeared in a live setting after Twisted Sister reformed, the opening track, Wake Up (The Sleeping Giant) is as good as all of the big songs from the previous albums.
Tesla – The Great Radio Controversy
Stryper Mix to fill up B side
This tape got played to death because I had so much fun learning the Tesla album, especially songs like “Hang Tough”, “Lady Luck”, “Makin Magic”, “Love Song”, “Paradise” and “Flight To Nowhere”.
Bon Jovi – Live On Tour plus Roxus and Paula Abdul
Babylon AD – Babylon AD
Side A had many re-tapes and I can’t even remember what I dubbed over.
And I don’t know why I thought I needed the “Live On Tour” EP on a cassette, “Stand Back” from Roxus was copied from a single I had to fill out the side and the Paula Abdul tracks were copied because a band I was in, wanted to rockify the songs and cover em. But they sounded lame so they never went past the first rehearsal.
And the debut Babylon AD album is a great album, full of riffs, melodic leads and great melodies which lift with the arena rock choruses. It’s commercial performance didn’t match the performances on the tape.
Mix Tape With No Name
I always enjoyed doing these kind of mix tapes.
Side A
Aimee – Ozzy Osbourne (B side)
The Ozmosis album had so many writers and false starts, it was no surprise that Ozzy had a lot of songs left over. This is one of them.
Love Will Keep Us Alive – The Eagles
This from the “Hell Freezes Over” CD. Timothy B Schmidt nails the vocal.
Mother Mary – Heydey
Ross The Boss left Manowar and formed a hard rock band with heaps of melody, but it was too late as the marketing teams and labels abandoned the genre.
Can’t Stop Loving You – Van Halen
Yeah I know it’s pop rock all the way, but it’s EVH which makes the difference and his unique take on simple progressions.
Until It Sleeps – Metallica
The power in this song is undeniable. You don’t need super distorted guitars to sound heavy. The melancholy verses with the abrasive choruses blend perfectly, a reversal of what they did for “The Unforgiven”.
Under A Mourning Star – Conception
From Norway, I got into them because the record store guy told me they are similar to Dream Theater.,
Eve – Dream Theater (B side)
An instrumental full of moods and melancholy which never gets boring.
Deliver Me – Def Leppard
“Slang” gets no love, it’s like it doesn’t exist. But it’s a good album.
Disarm – Smashing Pumpkins
I love this song in its simplicity and delivery.
Side B
While Side A was more 90s releases, side B is more in line with the 80s and 70s.
The Final Countdown – Europe
That keyboard riff.
Out In The Fields – Gary Moore
A duet with Phil Lynott and the guitar lead during the Chorus.
Limelight – Rush
The guitar solo from Lifeson is worthy.
Speak For Yourself – Gary Moore
The speed of the riffs and the lyrical references to being true to yourself.
Carry On My Wayward Son – Kansas
This song will never get old. And those riffs in the intro make me pick up the guitar to play along.
Holy Diver – Dio
Ronnie James Dio. Enough said.
In The Beginning – Emerson, Lake, Palmer
For all of their intricate and progressive songs, their fan base was built on the backs of their simple songs.
Manhattan Project – Rush
A song about the US building the atomic bomb getting the Rush treatment.
Wishing Well – Free
So many bands covered it, but no one got the swingy R&B vibe of the original. Paul Kossoff died way too young and the world lost an unbelievable guitar talent.
Angra – Holy Land
Angra – Angels Cry
A band from Brazil that featured the future Megadeth guitarist Kiko Loureiro, who also co-founded the band.
And their music is more Dream Theater like the “When Dream and Day Unite” album, focusing on progressive time signatures in a power metal setting.
King Diamond – The Dark Sides
Metallica – Creeping Death (EP)
Ratt – Detonator
I really like “Detonator” from Ratt. It’s such a good album and a perfect evolutionary step for the band. But like all things in the 90s, too little too late.
And King Diamond just kept on appearing in my collection because of the guitar playing of Andy LaRocque.
Metallica – ReLoad
My neighbor purchased it and copied it for me. It’s his writing you see here.
And I didn’t know if I liked it but I kept on playing it because it’s Metallica and suddenly songs like “Prince Charming” And “Fixxer” hooked me.
The band was broke before they even started recording “Kill Em All” but coming into the making of this album, the band was really broke. Hetfield and Ulrich were 20 years old and Hammet was 21 years old and Cliff Burton was 22. For such young ages, they showed such great maturity in their song writing.
Hammet apparently came up with the “Ride The Lightning” title after reading “The Stand” by Stephen King, where a person on death row said he was waiting to “ride the lightning” and Hetfield takes the viewpoint of a man condemned.
But the song is written by Dave Mustaine, along with Cliff Burton, James Hetfield And Lars Ulrich. So the song would have had a different title and lyric while Mustaine was in the band.
And let’s not forget that Mustaine had a good grasp of melody and intricate technical songwriting as evidenced by the songs he wrote with Metallica, and while James took these ideals further after Mustaine was booted, Mustaine’s vision and influence still exists.
A tom hit and two guitar notes in harmony.
Another tom hit and another two guitar notes in harmony, descending in a minor scale.
Another tom hit and another two guitar notes in harmony,
Another tom hit and another two guitar notes in harmony.
This repeats.
Then it changes to a tom hit with a kick drum hit after it, while the harmony guitars keep playing.
And I’m hooked.
Then the chugging riffs start and the chainsaw vocals of James.
Who made you God to say
I’ll take your life from you
Humans love to play God towards each other. It’s how we live. And we refer to this God to decide what is right and wrong and swear on this God in the court of law to tell the whole truth and then go ahead and lie.
Religion uses a God.
Democratic governments are beholden to greedy corporations, the Gods who pay.
Read the book “American Gods” from Neil Gaiman and you will see how our beliefs in God gets complex as life progresses and evolves.
And while Hetfield crushes all the rhythm guitars and harmony leads, Hammet really shines on the leads, courtesy of his Satriani lessons.
It’s a Star Wars movie and I’ll always devote time to the franchise, plus my money.
But in the end, it’s more of a stand alone fantasy flick which will be forgotten because Disney kept changing the vision and the end game of the story. And they didn’t have the guts to take risks.
I still came away with the same viewpoint after watching it. There is a crop of writers and directors being used in big movies who just don’t know how to write and rewrite scripts.
George Lucas rewrote the Star Wars script so many times over so many years that there is even a special edition book available of the original script/story, because it is so different.
Christopher Nolan should have been tasked with these films. Just think of his Batman trilogy and how he showcased the battle between good and evil.
And Disney destroyed the expanded universe from Star Wars canon but then delivered movies based on fan fiction.
However, all the scrips needed was some serious editing on some scenes and a little bit of extra context and explanations added to important scenes. But this means that the writers had to think and people don’t like to think these days, it’s too hard for them, so we get awe inspiring visuals without any meaning.
Then again, JJ Abrams and even George Lucas have both said that people want to see a new Star Wars movie and then yell at you when it’s not to their liking.
Watch it and make your own mind up.
I was listening to a few podcasts on Spotify and they were talking about “how to stop caring about others opinions” and to “figure out what exactly do we want to do with our lives”.
And I’m thinking, seriously, this shit needs a podcast.
Aren’t the lyrics to heavy metal music about the same thing, especially the heavy metal music I grew up with in the 80’s before it morphed into screaming and growling.
But hey, what would us long haired metal heads know. As far as the world was/is concerned, we were just drug taking anarchists who worshiped the devil.
Fast forward 30 plus years later and suddenly we are living in a world created by techies.
Think about it.
The biggest social tool is Facebook and the way people communicate is by sending messages to each other or posting about their great lifestyles or their relationship status. So we communicate the way these techies want us to communicate because they have no social skills.
Seriously, if someone tells you face to face to never contact them again, why would you send them a friend request. But that’s what happens in Facebook.
Hell, the movie “The Social Network” ends with Zuckerberg, all alone in his apartment, sending a friend request to his ex, who told him earlier in the film, she never wants to see or hear from him again.
Get it, he’s alone and hiding behind his blue screen and sending friend requests to a person who would ignore him if he tries to contact her or speak to her, the way we always did up until social media.
And in order to live and operate in the new world, we are told that we need all of these mindset coaches and college grads to write books for the billion dollar self-development industry and make money from what heavy metal and rock lyricists wrote about for a long time.
Like how we need to give more than we take, we need to stand up and shout for our rights, we need to make mistakes to grow, we need to experience things in order to come up with unique ideas.
And I get it.
It’s common scientific knowledge that our brains don’t evolve as quickly as life, society and technology evolves. So our brains are still back in our hunter and gatherers days, when we actually cared about what people thought of us, because it kept us in the tribe and we had a chance of survival within the group.
Because, hey it was very hard for a single human to survive back then. The unfortunate part is that our brains still need that comfort, to know that people think good of us.
But we don’t need the opinions of others to survive these days. So why do we seek them.
Y&T always started off with a strong cut.
This was even more important in the CD era as there was only one side and a lot of people never made it to the end of the album.
The AC/DC style groove kicks it off, first in clean tone, and then with no holds barred distortion rock and roll.
Kings and queens and presidents
Are tryin’ to take the world in hand
Jokers and freaks and Arab sheiks
Are fightin’ over chunks of sand
The same problems that exist today never really went away. We have people in charge who only have their own self-interest at heart, and they are more than capable of spinning and selling a story.
A journalist was beheaded and decapitated in the Saudi embassy, the Middle East is in flames because one outside government backs one side and another outside government backs another side. And once you throw religion into the mix, you get a tar baby, a difficult problem that is only aggravated by attempts to solve it.
So does everyone retreat back into their borders and allow people of their own nations to sort themselves out?
It makes sense that they do.
But corporations from democratic countries have vested interests in these poorer countries. So money talks, freedom walks and the fighting continues forever and a day.
Rock & Roll’s gonna save the world
Don’t you know that’s the way we’re gonna change it?
Rock & Roll’s gonna save the world
Rock & Roll
We believed we could change the world.
Then we got jobs and got loans and became exactly what the institutions wanted us to be. Slaves by choice, because we believed that if we worked hard enough, we would be debt free.
And when life got too much, we would turn the lights off, drop the needle and let the music soothe the soul. That’s how rock and roll will save the world. By giving each person their own unique listening and connecting experience to survive and grow.
Tin soldiers march around the world
No matter what the people say
One man makes all the policies
While the rest of us get blown away
It’s exactly what our leaders are fighting about right now.
Who should make the policies?
Who should tell others what to do?
And democratically elected leaders want to dictate to others how people should live and then take up arms against dictators. Ironic isn’t it. Especially when you take into account the amount of surveillance which happens in democracy, which dwarves the surveillance network and files from the communist era states.
Also as much as the media and the news outlets detest the ones in power, all they do is solidify the support for these leaders, for not everyone comes from the same backgrounds and cultural classes as the newspapers. But what everyone can agree on is money.
If you are in government or the opposition and you tell the person to vote for you because you are going to take away a tax loophole you see as not fair, well, expect to lose, because no one wants to lose their money or access to get money back.
Now’s the time to lift our voices from a whisper to a scream.
My ears were conditioned to enjoy the Tom Werman, Keith Olsen, Bruce Fairbairn produced albums, so when I heard the chainsaw sounding guitars I wasn’t sure what I was hearing or if I liked it.
But liked it I did and I still contend that “Ride The Lightning” is the album that should define Metallica. It’s original, progressive and it set the track list template for the albums which followed.
A bell tolls, like “Hells Bells”.
And there is a pause.
A bell tolls again.
And there is a brief pause.
Then the staccato F#5 power chord comes crashing down, before it goes to the E5 power chord to ring out.
Then the bass solo.
Then the descending chromatic riff which mimics the bass solo.
And when you think the first verse is about to come in, a harmony guitar lead happens, which is repeated over and over again, until the riff which underpins the Chorus comes in.
But there is no singing. Just bone crushing music. And after 2 minutes, we are finally rolling with the first verse.
And we are marching to the hills to make our fight, running through the endless grey to kill for a hill and we don’t even know why.
After the first chorus, there is another little lead break, which is a variation of the harmony lead in the intro.
And now we are looking at the crumbling sky before we die, as all is gone, except the will to be.
Suddenly it’s over, with the whammy guitar mimicking the screams of those poor dying soldiers.
For the “fans” who criticised the “Black” album, they should not forget tracks like “For Whom The Bells Toll”, “Escape” and “Leper Messiah” from “Master Of Puppets”. Slower tempo songs that would not be out of place on the “Black” Album. Even a song like “Jump In The Fire” is a slower tempo song.
Time marches on and Metallica marched on to take over the world.
I’m seeing news articles that Spotify’s payment rate is declining.
But there never was a set payment rate per stream. It was always based on your streams in a pool of streams and what percentage you take in the pool of streams based on countries and the pool of money of available to be paid out and your percentage stake in those monies.
Yep it sounds simple, but it’s creative accounting at its best and the music industry is well known for it.
However there is an argument that with Spotify’s subscribers growing, the payments to artists for the same amount of streams they had in previous years is lower. A normal person would assume that a growing membership, would mean more money in the pool and that would mean a higher payment for the same amount of streams.
As much as I am a fan of Spotify and streaming services in general, all of these organizations also deal in the murky world of creative accounting like the labels.
And Spotify should be worried.
Their business model is based on licensing agreements. Like Netflix’s original business model. But Netflix started doing original content over 10 years ago. Spotify hasn’t.
Because Netflix knew that the companies they license content from, will form their own streaming service one day. In this case, Disney created Disney TV. And I reckon the labels are watching this with interest. If it works out okay for Disney TV, and the costs are low to host a steaming service, then the labels will consider their own streaming service. It’s just a matter of time.
So imagine a world with Universal deciding to do the same as Disney.
Because the labels never cared that people accessed the music of their artists illegally. They used that as part of their PR, to show that they cared about their artists and to get politicians to pass laws to protect their businesses.
What the labels really cared about was losing control of the distribution and the gatekeeper monopoly they had for so long.
So if the labels go into their own streaming offering, they will get back control of the distribution and a sort of monopoly again. And the only way for Spotify to exist if this happens, is to become a label themselves and pay people to generate content instead of paying organizations to access content.
Spotify might not pay artists what they think they should be paid but at least they are getting paid because Spotify has to pay based on the agreements they have with the labels and the legislation in place around royalty rates. If the label and the publishers keep the monies, then the artist has to negotiate a better deal when they sign up for that initial advance payment.
But once the distribution goes back under the labels control, good luck in getting paid because the labels will get all creative and will work out that the artist owes them money instead. And if the labels do work out that there are payments due to the artists, then those payments are based on the contract artists sign with the label.
I forgot about this song in the 90’s and the 2000’s. It’s like it didn’t exist. Then I purchased the deluxe edition of “Unto The Locust” by Machine Head, and it was a bonus track. And I immediately ripped the CD and copied the song/album to my iPhone and added it to my playlists. The song was back in my life after a long hiatus.
And that is how our relationship with music works. We fall in and out of love with the songs.
Due to blowing away all of the mp3 tracks I had on my iPhone when I switched to streaming, I lost my mp3 rip of the Machine Head version. And it is not on Machine Head’s Spotify account, which irks me, but a Rock Covers album list.
And “The Sentinel” is my favourite track on the “Defenders Of The Faith” album. I could listen to it over and over again.
It’s music made for the sound system and not the earbuds/headphones, however in this day and age, the headphones will do.
A power chord crashes in.
As it buzzes out for a bar, a single note melodic riff is played.
Then another power chord is played, and another single note melodic riff. It repeats, until it gets into the speed metal riff of the verses.
And Halford sets the scene along deserted avenues with figures primed and ready for a quick surprise.
Then we are into the Chorus.
Sworn to avenge
Condemn to hell
Tempt not the blade
All fear the sentinel
It’s an arena rock chorus but it’s lyrical message is so far removed from the pop charts and the “We’re Not Gonna Take It” and “Cum On Feel The Noize” type of messages. “The Sentinel” is like an avenger for the down trodden and forgotten, or just a no bullshit bounty hunter.
The guitar solo has tapping, pentatonic lines, arpeggio pull off licks, natural minor scalar runs and a whole damn of legato.
And there is silence at the end of the solo, as they move into a melancholic and subdued verse, slowly building it up as the vicar stands expressionless, unmoved by his victory.
And how good are the riffs underneath the Chorus vocal melody.
Sworn to avenge.
The artists have the power. They always had. They are the ones that create the works, the songs.
But there used to be a gatekeeper society when it came to music, and this society said to the artists, “if you want to play this game of fame, sign your life away on the dotted line.” And to make it worth your while, here is an advance payment. But the devil doesn’t tell you that they will recoup this advance payment for your whole life plus 70 years after your dead.
And this gives the rights holders of the artist’s work (otherwise known as the Copyright Holders, aka, Record Labels) the power to negotiate with ISP’s, the Courts and the Government. The artists sold away their power and the record labels make billions in streaming revenue. And because of this power the record labels amassed, they can influence law makers in passing laws to protect the record labels business models and on occasions the labels via their lobby groups, get the law enforcement arms to act as a piracy surveillance force.
Now if an artist was “out there” and didn’t fit the norm, that’s when new record labels would be formed, like Metal Blade Records by Brian Slagel (a record store employee) so he could promote the local metal bands from LA.
Or Megaforce Records, by Jon and Marsha Zazula, so they could release Metallica’s first album. Or Sanctuary Records by Rod Smallwood and Andy Taylor, who discovered Iron Maiden and named their label after Maiden’s song, “Sanctuary”.
And the gatekeeper society rules would transfer over to these new labels and suddenly we have gatekeepers here deciding which bands would get signed and which bands wouldn’t and which bands they would manufacture, amassing a large catalogue of copyrighted songs in the process.
But today, the artists themselves can write, record and release, without the need for a label (however they need a digital distributor/aggregator) to get their music on digital platforms, and of course, they will need to source their own supply of organisations who deal with physical products like vinyl, CD’s and clothing.
And it might sound daunting for some, but it’s focused work. So if anyone should be organising deals it should be the ARTISTS/PERFORMERS with the USERS/CONSUMERS.
And if the artists have their music on legitimate channels with fair and just price structures for people to access content, well the problem of piracy goes away. Then it’s up to the artist to decide what is next and how to further monetise their fan base.
