Tag Archives: GFC

My Stories, Stupidity

Money, Money, Money

I have been listening to Machine Head’s “Bloodstone and Diamond” and “Unto The Locusts” albums a fair bit lately along with Serj Tankian’s solo albums “Elect The Dead” and “Harakiri”.

To me, Robb Flynn and Serj Tankian are great writers that take a stance on an issue and put their viewpoints out there. The music business is lacking heroes like these. A lot of musicians just seem to be sitting on the fence. Jon Bon Jovi is singing about moving mountains while Serj Tankian is singing about drum fish and blackbirds committing hara-kiri.

Serj Tankian’s “Elect The Dead” album came out in 2007 before the GFC. It has the same themes on that album that “The Circle” and “Wrecking Ball” from Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen that came after the GFC.

What a great inequality divide we live in. The mega wealthy artists need to hear and read about financial corruption after the fact to write about it. It just goes to show how much they are wrapped up in their own bubble to see how the real battler is really doing. While the wealthy got bailed out by the government and went on speaking tours, the working class lost their houses and their livelihoods.

Even though Serj Tankian is known and recognisable  his lifestyle is nowhere near that of the blockbuster duo from Jersey. But his reach and impact might not be far off.

Artists have the power to spread the truth in world where misinformation rules, however a lot of them choose to not do so. They conform so that they don’t upset the powerful ones just in case they are excluded from the social circle.

“Money isn’t everything” is a common catch-cry but the truth is we live in a money economy.

It’s the number one aspiration. My sons third class play from last year was about what they would like to be when they grow up. Some wanted to be famous at a sport they liked and some just wanted to play video games. But, the majority of the kids, especially the girls, all wanted to be rich. It looks like that’s the new norm now.

The belief is that if you’ve got money, you’ve won and no one can say a bad thing about you. The dirty little secret is that it actually costs money to save/make money. If you don’t have any money, how can you save money. The simple math is $0 in money equals $0 saved.

Now if you earn a wage and have $10 a week lying around, you  might put that into a savings account. By the end of the year you would have saved $520. Over the course of 20 years, you would have saved $10,400, Sounds great. However, I am pretty sure that something will come up that will need you to dip into these savings. Dental care for your children, costs around vehicles maintenance or some other urgent event. You could get sick, take extended leave without pay and then there goes that $10 a week saving plan.

Seriously if you work for a company with a lot of employees with different ethnicities, how many conversations do you overhear or are involved in when people just say the words “we can’t afford to do [something]”. And it confuses the fuck out of me when they say that they have created a budget, crunched the numbers and made a decision that something they want to do is not affordable.

So what’s the point of the budget?

Isn’t a budget put in place so that you can AFFORD to do something that you like?

To me it looks like we are all putting budgets in place to live within our means. That is why the rich get richer and the working class remain poor.

Isn’t that sad that we have come to this situation in life. Crunching numbers over our quality of life and then purchasing a lottery ticket when the jackpot is astronomical, hoping that the rays of luck will shine down on us.

I for one am terrible with managing money and saving money. I am sure I am not the only one in the world, but we all hide it and pretend that we are better off than what we really are.

While we see losing in sport as acceptable, we don’t have that same viewpoint when it comes to money. In the money game we see winning as the only acceptable outcome.

But money alone doesn’t give you a reach that art/music can provide and that is where I will leave you today, with some words from Robb Flynn, heard in the song “Darkness Within”.

Fill your heart with every note, Cherish it and cast afloat, ‘Cause god is in these clef and tone, Salvation is found alone, Haunted by its melody

Music it will set you free
Let it set you free

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Classic Songs to Be Discovered, Derivative Works, Influenced, Music, My Stories

Semi Obscure Queensryche Songs

Queensryche appealed to me for a few reasons.
1. Insightful lyrics
2. Great messages and themes in the songs
3. Brilliant arrangements
4. Each album that they released with Chris DeGarmo followed my own musical taste changes.

Revolution Calling
With all the other great material on Operation Mindcrime, it was easy for Revolution Calling to slip under the radar. It is a dead set classic and it is the first real song that you hear when you press play on the Operation Mindcrime album. It’s lyrical take on money, power and corruption is brilliant. It is written by Michael Wilton and Geoff Tate.

In relation to the Operation Mindcrime concept, Revolution Calling is a flashback for the main character Nikki who realises how he has been indoctrinated by Dr X through his speeches.

Got no love for politicians
Or that crazy scene in D.C.
It’s just a power mad town
But the time is ripe for changes
There’s a growing feeling
That taking a chance on a new kind of vision is due

Operation Mindcrime came out in 1988. Fast forward to when the financial meltdown happened in 2008. Did anything really change in the corridors of power?

I used to trust the media
To tell me the truth, tell us the truth
But now I’ve seen the payoffs
Everywhere I look
Who do you trust when everyone’s a crook?

The media was once a beacon of honesty, keeping politicians honest. Now the media is just another corporation, that needs to make profits for investors and shareholders. When making money is the name of the game, the stories change. Apart from reporting on real tragic events, like a natural disaster or a shooting or a bombing, the media’s news items are all sourced from newspapers and social media.

I guess Warhol wasn’t wrong
Fame fifteen minutes long
Everyone’s using everybody, making the sale

Geoff Tate really went to town on this song. The way the lyrics flow to tell the story of American life is just brilliant. It’s like he looked into a crystal ball and saw into the future. Has anything changed from 1988? People are still using each other and still trying to make the sale in the name of wealth.

But now the holy dollar rules everybody’s lives
Gotta make a million doesn’t matter who dies

Another take on this, is “Now the holy dollar rules everybody’s lives, gotta keep my millions it doesn’t matter who dies”. When the GFC hit, did the One Percenters take the hit. Nope they sure didn’t, they even got bailed out by the Government. It was the poor and the middle class that took the hit. They are the ones that lost their jobs, their homes and their savings.

I still need to kick myself to remember that this was released in 1988. This was a time when hard rock was ruled by glam bands intent on living the Guns N Roses and Motley Crue lifestyle. For Queensryche to even go down a concept album path with Operation Mindcrime is a risk that paid off. Geoff Tate summed up his feelings on the state of American capitalism and corruption in Spreading the Disease;

Religion and sex are power plays,
Manipulate the people for the money they pay.
Selling skin, selling God
The numbers look the same on their credit cards
Politicians say no to drugs
While we pay for wars in South America
Fighting fire with empty words
While the banks get fat and the poor stay poor
And the rich get rich and the cops get paid to look away
As the one percent rules America

Again fast forward to 2008 and the whole Occupy Wall Street movement was against the one percent of people that rule America.

Resistance
It is written by Geoff Tate and Michael Wilton. In a Guitar World interview, Chris DeGarmo had the following to say about the song;

“Resistance (the song) didn’t even exist before we went into the studio. Michael had a real, cool, aggressive piece of music. He played this thing for me and I helped arrange it so that it seemed like we had something of a cohesive musical arrangement. We tracked it and had a melody together. It took only a second for [drummer] Scott “One Take” Rockenfield to blaze off his track. In the end, we came out with a really powerful song which wouldn’t have made it on the record had we not risked it. And we’d never written a song from scratch in the studio before. We thought it was the complete reverse of the way we work, because we communicate very thoroughly on song ideas before we actually record them.”

In my view Chris DeGarmo should also be getting a writing credit for this song. Arranging musical pieces into a song, is an active contribution to the final product, regardless if he came up with the music or not. I am sure that Lars Ulrich doesn’t come up with any music, however his name is on every Metallica song. That is because, he is an active contributor to the arrangement.

So what is the song about?

Queensryche always touched on themes far removed from the typical hard rock themes. For Resistance, Geoff Tate is singing about the environment and the world in general. The common theme of this is our world, we all share it, we need to stop abusing it, we need to stop neglecting it and we need to co-operate in trying to save it.

Protests in New York
Listen to the call of the wild
Brother, sisters carrying signs
Breathe deep before it’s too late
The sky is falling, burning your eyes

I believe that the actual lyric relates to the Anti-Nuclear Protests that happened in New York City in 1979 and 1982. The lyric of “Breathe deep, before it’s too late, the sky is falling, burning your eyes” supports this viewpoint.

Hearing Resistance today, these first five lines bring back memories of the Occupy Wall Street Protests post GFC. Isn’t it funny how nuclear weapons don’t bother us anymore, however the zeroes in our bank accounts do.

Thank the Lord, daddy’s working 8-5
Paying the doctor, baby’s got cancer

This what so many of us do. We do what it takes so that we can take care of our families. Like the lyric in Revolution Calling, “the holy dollar rules everybody’s lives.”

Look around at what we’ve been given
Maybe we’ve taken too long

Anyone seen the movie Soylent Green. Eventually our resources will end. What comes next?

Promised Land
It is written by the whole band. That’s right, Chris DeGarmo, Geoff Tate, Michael Wilton, Eddie Jackson and Scott Rockenfield.

Everyone has to consider what the promised land is for them. Society is quick to define success as having houses, cars and money. Is that everyone’s definition of success? It’s not mine. Our own promised land is there for each of us to discover.

Standing neck deep in life
My ring of brass lay rusting on the floor, is this all?
‘Cause it’s not what I expected

What a way to define the accumulation of money. It’s laying all over the floor and it’s rusting away. Success is all about how much money you have accumulated. It’s a very shallow definition for what success is. Making it isn’t about having houses and cars and money.

People and artists that get caught up focusing on that aspect, will end up obsessed with it. Me personally I would rather appreciate being alive each day. I may not have a lot of money however I am content with my life and who I am inside.

Somewhere along the way
Friends I once held close fled in the fast lane
I didn’t notice, I just had to make it

This is the part that refers to making it. I see this as, in the quest to “make it”, the past relationships they had, disappeared. The sad thing is, they didn’t even notice it, which leads me back to my previous point, that if you are caught up focusing on accumulating houses, cars and money, you become obsessed with it and end up missing out on life in general.

Where did it all go wrong?
I feel like I’m dying.
Here’s to love, to hate, to promises and Promised Land lies.

Does success equal happiness? This is what Geoff Tate had to say about it in an interview with Raw Magazine in November 1994.

“Everything about our society is based upon consumerism and selling. Having that as the main reason to exist seems so shallow.”

Geoff Tate further expanded on the song with the remastered CD linear notes in 2003.

“Reaching the Promised Land is a metaphor for obtaining the American Dream of prosperity, materialism and the happiness one derives from the ownership of things. The manufactured image constantly sold to us that materialism will make us happy is, I suppose, the only real thing in our society of stimulation and consumption.”

My father used the term Broken Promised Land a lot. After the GFC crisis, I thought of this song from Queensryche, and wrote a song called Broken Promised Land.

Bridge

It is a song written by Chris DeGarmo. This is what Chris DeGarmo had to say on the subject in an AOL interview;

“He passed away while we were recording “Promised Land” but prior to that he had seen what had happened with the band up through “Empire.” I loved my father. I just didn’t know him and I think he got to a point in his life where he started realizing the things that were really important to him. Recognizing some mistakes and some regrets, but also experiencing a bit of denial, almost like nothing happened and that’s what spawned the ideas in “Bridge.” How relationships need to be built particularly the parent/child relationship. All the best relationships have a real foundation to them of love, trust and respect. Without those building blocks they really don’t reach the area of the very, very special relationship.”

Chris DeGarmo, Dave Mustaine, Robb Flynn, Nikki Sixx and Corey Taylor. All of them wounded and abandoned by a father. All of them turning to music and seen as heroes to a generation.

Time has made you finally realize
your loneliness and your guilt inside.
You’re reaching for something you never had,
turning around now you’re looking back,
and you know… I’m not there.

You say, “Son, let’s forget the past.
I want another chance, gonna make it last.”
You’re begging me for a brand new start,
trying to mend a bridge that’s been blown apart,
but you know… you never built it dad.

You can feel the anger, the disappointment. It’s like Cats in The Cradle, however this is rawer. On the silver screen it eventually ends on a happy note, well, real life is not the movies. This saga didn’t end on a “lets ride into the sunset moment.” Hearing this song, back in 1994, I felt sorry for Chris DeGarmo. Hearing this song today, there is a different feeling. There is anger at the father for walking away, as I am a father to three boys, and I cannot imagine doing that.

Secondly, as a father, you sort of expect that if you reach out to your own children, that they would welcome you back with open arms, regardless of what transpired before. You sort of believe that by saying SORRY, everything will be forgiven and life will go on as normal.

Imagine the shock that Chris DeGarmo’s dad would have felt when his son said, sorry, I’m not interested in reconciling. It is a total different song to Things My Father Said by Black Stone Cherry.

Someone Else (with full band version)
It is written by Chris DeGarmo and Geoff Tate. I don’t know who pulled the plug on this version, however it is a big mistake. This is Operation Mindcrime/Empire era right here. The connection to the old Queensrcyhe while still forging ahead with a new Nineties version of Queensryche.

This is what Chris DeGarmo had to say on the song in a Kerrang interview from September 1994.

“That’s Geoff looking at a part of him which he’s re-evaluated. He’s got to grips with a certain part of his life that’s now focused in a new direction. I think he’s recognised that when he was younger his career, himself, and what he was going to do was of sole importance, and that he didn’t spend as much time thinking about his family and the relationships around him. I think he’s had another look at that and has realised it was another person and that he can’t relate to that way of thinking anymore.”

Here I stand at the crossroad’s edge
Afraid to reach out for eternity
One step when I look down
I see someone else, not me

The whole song has the lyric “someone else, not me” and right at the end it says that someone else is me.

All my life they said I was going down
But I’m still standing stronger proud
And today I know, there’s so much more I can be
I think I finally understand

One More Time
It is written by Chris DeGarmo and Geoff Tate.

Behind my eyes I keep my truth from you
No one enters this secret place,
The barrier only I embrace

Life will get too complicated if we shared our problems and fears with others. Dave Mustaine even sang about A Secret Place on Cryptic Writings. Even Tesla sang about sharing secrets on the song In A Hole Again from their 2008 album, Forever More.

When I am driving home from work and I have the music cranked, that is my secret place. How good are the stereo systems in cars these days. Actually how good is the insulation in cars. You can’t even hear the outside traffic when you are in the car.

Work hard in life boy,
There’s paradise in the end
Year after year we struggle to gain
The happiness our parents never claimed
They told us all we had to do
Was do what we’re told, buy what was sold,
“Invest in gold, and never get old”

Remember this is 1994. So what did we do? We kept on investing and we kept on falling more and more into debt until it all exploded in 2008. If we had ONE MORE TIME AROUND, would we do the same mistakes?

Reach
It is written by Geoff Tate and Michael Wilton. It is the only writing credit for Michael Wilton and it is probably the best song on Hear In The Now Frontier. Chris DeGarmo said that the song is about finding one’s self.

Geoff Tate said in a recent 2013 interview with DigBoston.com that Hear In The Now Frontier was a record that was very difficult to work on. From the Chris DeGarmo era, this is the only one he listed as difficult. The other albums he listed The Tribe and Operation Mindcrime II are post DeGarmo.

I know where I’m going,
and I’ve got all my cards showing

Intentionally showing your move, letting others into your world. Is this Tate saying to DeGarmo, I am not into Queensryche at this point in time. I need another break.

Armed with time on my side
and a field of vision miles wide
I’ll keep searching for some meaning
whatever makes me feel alive

Aren’t we all searching for something to make us feel alive. Just because Queensryche had made it, it doesn’t mean that behind closed doors it was all high fives and smiles. In the end a band is made up of people, who have lives. I know that if my private life is all messed up, my work life is off. You need to feel good in both mediums to excel, otherwise it is miserable. That is why so many heroes turn to different vices, just to numb the mental pain they are in.

Today I felt something so strong
It took my breath away
Now I long to live like this every day
I’ll find it some way

You know that moment in time when you see something and it destroys everything that you have known until then. It shatters the walls around you, awakening some suppressed primal emotion.

Right Side Of My Mind
After Chris DeGarmo left, the next album had the motto that all songs are written and composed by Queensryche. So in this case it’s Geoff Tate, Michael Wilton, Eddie Jackson, Kelly Gray and Scott Rockenfield. It is a great Queensryche song, on a very poor album called Q2K released in 1999.

If you take time and look for clues
Scrape the shit off your shoes,
You’ll feel the real today

I’d love to take you to see what I see there, on the right side of my mind

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Classic Songs to Be Discovered, Music

Brokenpromisedland – A classic Bon Jovi song waiting to be discovered

Brokenpromisedland

The best song on the 2009 album The Circle is Brokenpromisedland.  This song was written by Bon Jovi, Sambora, John Shanks and Desmond Child.  Actually John Shanks also had a co-write with Bon Jovi and Sambora for This Is Love, This is Life. 

Angels falling from the sky
Imagine that imagine that
Nobody getting out of here alive
No turning back no turning back
Who’s going to bail out all our shattered dreams
And scrape some truth off of these city streets
No time for praying get up off your knees

The GFC left a lot of people shattered and broken.  As an artist, there was plenty of subject matter there for songs.  What was done by the corrupt powers that be, has been done.  We the people need to scrape ourselves back off the floor and start again.

Most of the songs on The Circle album sounded forced to me, except for this song.  It was the only one that felt natural.  The other songs could have been hits if they were sung by a band that lived through the GFC from the other side of the tracks.  Songs like Work for The Working Man and We Weren’t Born To Follow are good songs but it didn’t sound right coming from Jon Bon Jovi, who charges a really high premium to be a JBJBackstage member, who charges really high prices on meet and greets and section A concert tickets and does anyone remember that whole debacle with Skid Row back in the late eighties.   This is the one where Skid Row signed with Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora back when the Skid’s were just starting out.  Essentially, Bon Jovi and Sambora ended up owning Skid Row’s publishing rights.  This was no biggie at the time of the contract being signed, but then when the Skid Row album went five times platinum, it was.  Sambora eventually gave his share of the deal back to Skid Row but Bon Jovi, didn’t.

Basically if mp3’s and Napster didn’t change the way music is consumed, Bon Jovi wouldn’t have done these large scale world tours ever again.  During a 10 year period between 1994 and 2004, Bon Jovi didn’t even do a proper tour of Australia at all.  Australian Bon Jovi fans are one of the largest and most loyal fan bases the band has and they ignored Australia during this period, playing special one off shows for certain festivals and just in one state.  It’s like playing one show in New York and expecting LA people to attend it.

They were content on the income coming in from record / CD sales, publishing and radio royalties.  Well that income has dried up and they need to earn their money the old fashion way, which means they have to hit the road.  Anyway I digress.    Back to Brokenpromisedland.

No one bailed us out during this period.  The working man got nothing except pain.  A whole lotta pain.

There’s hope I know
Out on that lonely road
Cause home is where you are and where I am
Breathe in breathe out
There’s only now
And all I got I’m holding in my hands
We’re breaking out of brokenpromisedland

We live, we work, we get paid, we have large houses on a poor man’s wage.  When all that goes to hell, all that we have left is what we hold in our hands.  It could be our kids, a suitcase, a loved one or some memories of what we could salvage.  It becomes our most cherished possession.

Let’s close our eyes and just disappear
Slip through the cracks no looking back
We’ll get a million miles away from here
And let the past just fade to black
So what you learn to live with your regrets
No need to fear what hasn’t happened yet
Life will get you but you can’t forget

Australia wasn’t that bad during the GFC.  Our banks remained stable and our jobs remained.  But what it did do was make us realise that we need to change.  We needed to re-evaluate what is important to us.  If we couldn’t afford the large house, down size it.  It’s okay to do so.  It made us realise that we are not beholden to people’s judgements.  We needed to do what we needed to do and what benefited us so that we don’t end up on our arse.

How many nights between 2008 and 2009 I just wished I was at any other place except the place I was at.  I always wanted to live my life with no ‘what if’s’ however a lot of what if’s came into my life during this period.  It is not something I regret, I have learned to live with the choices I made based on the information I had at that time.

Every time I hear Brokenpromisedland, all those emotions from 2008 to 2009 come back to me and I smile.  I made it through to the other side and I can still smile.  During that time I had a wife, a 4 year old, a 3 year old and a shell of a home.  I still have my wife, my 4 year old is now turning 8, my 3 year old is now turning 7, my 1 year old will be turning 2 and the shell of a home is my family home.  I broke out of the broken promised land and made my own promised land, so far removed from what the establishments want.

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