The Week In Destroyer Of Harmony History – June 21 to June 27

4 Years Ago (2017)

How many times do you hear the record label/RIAA people talk about the “music industry” suffering or hurting or getting back on its feet after piracy decimated it?

How many times do you hear the Publishing Rights Organisations talk about the “music industry” suffering or hurting or getting back on its feet after piracy decimated it?

What these “industry people” fail to understand is there is no industry, no economy, no market if there isn’t people who consume music. People obtaining content without purchasing is nothing new. People going to the rock and roll show and not owning a legitimate copy of an album is old news.

I still reckon streaming is priced too high. If it is priced lower, more people will convert to paying. It’s better to have 100 million people paying $5 a month than 50 million people paying $10 a month.

And as a consumer, don’t you love how 30 entertainment companies joined together in The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE).

Its business model is working with law enforcement to shut down pirate sites and services, file civil litigation, and forge new relationships with other content protection groups.

Funny how there is nothing about providing the people/consumers with what they want.

Funny how an alliance for Creativity is all about suppression and control.

The internet liberated the people and rich organizations want to censor it, control it, regulate it and suppress it.

All this Alliance wants to do is bring the internet under their control. And then, they would go back to delivering what once worked decades ago in a world that’s moved to on demand.

Want to get eradicate piracy?

Give the people what they want, how they want it and when they want it. Guess that’s too creative for the Alliance to tackle.

8 Years Ago (2013)

It was all Dee Snider this week.

I saw Dee Snider as the spokesperson for Metal music in the Eighties’. Apart from writing generational anthems, he could also string sentences together like no one else could, and this led him all the way to Washington.

“Reason To Kill” is from the excellent Widowmaker debut, “Blood and Bullets”, released in 1992.

So you used me
Then threw me away

This is an angry Dee Snider, and that anger is directed at Bob Krasnow, the head of Elektra Records and the person responsible for killing off the Desperado project.

Widowmaker didn’t have the same commercial success as Twisted Sister, however as a Dee Snider and Al Pitrelli fan, I loved the project and the combination of two talents.

After Widowmaker released Stand By For Pain in 1994, I was at a loss as to what was happening with Dee Snider. Information was hard to get. All of the music magazines wrote about Grunge, Alternative Rock and the rise of bands like Korn, White Zombie and so forth. Hard rock, heavy rock and heavy metal news was hard to come across, especially in Australia.

So imagine my surprise when I walked into an independent record store and came across “Never Let The Bastards Wear You Down”. This was in November, 2000 and the album had been out for about six months by then.

I really liked the whole CD package, the booklet and the back stories provided by Dee for each of the songs. It is those connections that fans look for.

“You Can’t Stop Rock N Roll” preceded “Stay Hungry” and it was this album that started to give the Twisted Sister machine some momentum.

So “Stay Hungry” comes out and it’s huge.

“We’re Not Gonna Take It” became the anthem for the teenagers of 1984.

We’ll fight the powers that be just
Don’t pick our destiny cause
You don’t know us, you don’t belong

Rising up against the life that our parents, our teachers, our employers want from us..

I really like “Come Out And Play”. I remember lying in bed, staring at the back album art, reading the lyrics and singing the songs as they played on the turntable.

“Come Out And Play” was released in 1985. By now Twisted Sister was on an album per year cycle since 1981.

Join our cavalcade
Enter the world you made

Joined em we did. But “The Fire Still Burns” is by far the best song on “Come Out and Play”.

“Wake Up (The Sleeping Giant)” is from “Love Is For Suckers” released in 1987. It was supposed to be the opening track on Dee Snider’s first solo album. Instead it was the opening track of the final Twisted Sister album.

Who the hell are they to say
What we can do and how we can play

Dee was always good at writing the anthem of the SMF’s vs the world.

It’s our rights they’re abusing,
It’s our right to fight back
So rally the troops and
Let’s start the attack

It’s the war cry against the censorship that was taking place against heavy metal music.

“Love Is For Suckers” had “Slippery When Wet” from Bon Jovi, “Girls Girls Girls” from Motley Crue, and Whitesnake 1987 to compete against. All of those albums were in the Billboard Top 10. “Look What the Cat Dragged In” from Poison was just outside the Top 10 at number 13.

Finally, bands are dysfunctional. They always have been and always will be.

Read “The Dirt” or “The Heroin Diaries” for how it was to be in Mötley Crüe.

Watch “The History of the Eagles” to hear the comment from Don Henley on the break up. He called it a “horrible relief”.

Dokken is the poster child for dysfunction.

The Week In Destroyer Of Harmony History – June 14 to June 20

4 Years Ago (2017)

I reckon Copyright is a Ponzi scheme and they are using the law to protect it.

All of the songs from “Hardwired To Self Destruct” will be in the public domain by 2120 (approx. based on the current terms of life of the creator plus an additional 70 years after death).

Led Zeppelin’s “IV” will be in the public domain by 2110 (approx.).

The crazy thing is the 10 year difference of the estimated public domain date between Metallica and Led Zeppelin, however the albums have a 40 years difference between release dates.

Proof of how much Copyright was hijacked by corporations during the 70s. And while the executives take it in, the artists are left with nothing.

Because the music business has a payment problem.

Artists are constantly fighting to get paid properly.

Promoters don’t pay on time or they don’t pay what is promised. The labels get creative with their accounting and underpay the artists. Then trusted people like managers skim too much and people who didn’t create anything of value are flying private while the artists who created something of value are traveling by road or flying second class.

I was listening to some thrash music and wrote about my fandom of Megadeth and the the year 1986.

In Australia, we have a lobbyist for the MPAA called Graham Burke, who is so good at spinning the piracy argument that politicians believe him.

Burke and his organization “Village Roadshow” are meant to lead the movie business into the new age. But they think by denying that the new age exists they will get back to the old age.

And I was pissed at the broadband rollout in my area because I lost internet access for my whole family for three plus months. But according to Burke, we are all filthy pirates.

8 Years Ago (2013)

I was listening to a lot of Motley Crue and Sixx AM so a Nikki Sixx “What Do Ya Mean I Don’t Write Good Lyrics” appreciation post was written.

I’m no puppet
I engrave my veins with style ….from Dancing On Glass

I was on Team Sambora when Jon Bon Jovi said that if Sambora was The Edge he would be harder to replace. It was a cheap shot from Jon. And since 2013 was the year I experimented with some douchebag posts, you can read one here about Jon. I did others as well.

And the anemic sales figures of artists kept getting publicity, but no one cared about sales anymore except the ones who wanted bragging rights.

I compared 1993 and 2013. From long haired stoner boy to short hair corporate guy. A slave to the grind I had become. And here is its sequel.

Music has been my companion my whole life. And I thought about that while I was watching Australia qualify for a World Cup.

At the end of a football game, music is always played. On the trip home, music is played again via the radio or a playlist or a CD mix. It’s always in my life.

I was surprised that people haven’t heard of Kim Dotcom or MegaUpload.

Kim Dotcom has been painted as a money laundering criminal by the FBI on evidence gathered by the MPAA and somehow he was that dangerous that his arrest needed SWAT teams to break down his door and arrest him in the early hours.

All because he ran a cyber locker that people used to share songs and albums through.

We are exposed to news 24/7. If any musician/artist wants to survive the times, they need to be creating news every day. Because what’s trending today is over tomorrow.

Nintendo designer Shigeru Miyamoto said that Nintendo wants “to create a game that people will want to keep and keep playing for a long time.”

Sort of like our favorite artists and their best works.

I like hard rock. I cannot escape it. And I came across a band called Angeline and their “Life: Volume 1”, EP. They are from Sweden and formed in 1987.

Initially the band was influenced by Bon Jovi, Europe, Iron Maiden and Queensryche.

When the music scene changed in the 90s they reverted to being a cover band. It’s not all about the glamour and the fame. There are highs and lows. Artists do what they need to do to survive.

Influenced, Music, My Stories, Unsung Heroes

The Week In Destroyer Of Harmony History – June 7 to June 13

4 Years Ago (2017)

I was writing about streaming services and how all of those little streams add up.

Remember when Taylor Swift and Neil Young removed their music from Spotify. The narrative was very strong about poor artists vs big bad faceless tech giving the masses inferior sound quality and not paying enough. Then their music returned to Spotify and there was crickets.

In the end streaming is king. The sales charts had to amend their formula to include streaming and suddenly an artist can controlling the whole Top 10. And artists from the past have now returned to the Charts.

The old certification awards now include streaming in their formula and guess what, artists are getting platinum awards on streams alone. That’s right, no sales. Just listens. What a brilliant concept.

“Good artists copy, great artists steal” is the saying. We can paraphrase it to “Good artists try to sound original by hiding their influences”, while “great artists let their influences show”. It’s how the language of music is learned. We imitate our influences.

If you don’t believe me, what is the first thing a person does when they are learning an instrument?

They start by learning songs created by other artists.

Inspiration is not theft. Theft is taking something and the person who has it, does not have it to use anymore,

So I showed a few examples of artists being inspired.

8 Years Ago (2013)

A new release called “Evolution” from an Australian band called “Burnside” had my attention.

I just checked Spotify and they released an EP called “Rise Pt.1” in 2016, which I haven’t heard yet and a post on Twitter from 2018 had them writing new music, which still hasn’t seen a release.

The lyrics from Brent Smith (Shinedown) had me inspired so I wrote about em. At the time was doing these kind of appreciation series called “What Do Ya Mean I Don’t Write Good Lyrics?”

The title was inspired by the verses from “Peace Sells” from Megadeth.

And I was coming across so much good music at this point in time, like Burnside, Tesseract, The Night Flight Orchestra, Polution and Vaudeville. I was thinking what could these bands do differently to get their brand and music out there.

Well in the case of TesseracT and The Night Flight Orchestra, they kept writing and releasing frequently and for TNFO it certainly helped that the band members had other successful projects.

Anyway I put my thoughts out there in a post called “The New Artist Lesson”.

“13” from Black Sabbath was out. The problem that I have with it, is that it tries too hard to recreate the first four Black Sabbath albums.

Which isn’t a bad thing if that’s how you defined your career. Like AC/DC.

But Sabbath was more progressive minded and pushed boundaries. For an act that was considered “extreme” in the 70s, they played it really “safe”.

However, one thing I do like is that they have stayed away from the Verse – Chorus – Verse – Chorus – Bridge – Solo – Chorus structure.

Which led me to write a post called “Risk Management”. The message of the post was basically this;

If you are not on the bleeding edge of society, you are just part of the fabric of society. You want to be a rock star, you cant do it working a nine to five job. You cant do it if you are beholden to your employer. You cant do it if you are beholden to the family.

The only way you can do it is if you throw all thoughts of risk management out the window.

Prime Circle from South Africa had my attention as I had just heard the 2012 album, “Evidence” and I felt the need to write about them.

And they are still pretty active, releasing studio and live albums.

Check em out as their brand of modern rock is anthemic and infectious.

That’s another wrap of DoH history.

Music, My Stories

The Week In Destroyer Of Harmony History – May 31 to June 6

4 Years Ago (2017)

“Ready An’ Willing” came out on 31 May in 1980. In 2017 it was its 37 year anniversary. Just recently it had it’s 41st birthday.

Like many others, my Whitesnake fandom started with the 1987 album. I went forward with them and the “Slip Of The Tongue” period and backwards after that.

But I had heard “Fool For Your Loving” as the B-side track to the 7 inch single of “Give Me All Your Love”. And eventually I got the album it was on.

I believe that most metal and hard rock fans have relatively wide musical tastes. A lot of times we come across music that doesn’t necessarily form part of our normal listening habits, but we are still happy with it and enjoy it. The saying normally goes; meet a person rooted in metal and you will find other non-metal music that form their listening habits.

And I wrote about my rambles and thoughts here.

Which lead to the “One Riff To Rule Em All” post.

The “One Riff To Rule Them All” is a perfect example of how a lot of songs can have the same riff conceptually and still be able to stand on their own.

The riff is heard in “Hell Bent For Leather” by Judas Priest released in 1978, in “Power And The Glory” from Saxon released in 1983, in “Stand Up And Shout” from Dio released in 1983, the intro and main riff in “Two Minutes To Midnight” from Iron Maiden released in 1984 and the main riff to “Skin O My Teeth” by Megadeth released in 1992.

A small variation of “the riff to rule them all” morphed into “Welcome To Hell” from Venom released in 1981.

And this morphed into “Looks That Kill” from Motley Crue released in 1983 and became known as the Sunset Riff. So it was no surprise that other Sunset guitarists started using it.

“Young Girls” from Dokken in 1983 and “Tell The World” from Ratt, also have it.

Fans of Kiss smiled when they heard “Sex Type Thing” from Stone Temple Pilots. The main riff is influenced by “War Machine”.

Music is and always will be derivative. Enjoy.

8 Years Ago (2013)

I was appreciating the lyrics of Ivan Moody from Five Finger Death Punch.

Did you hear the one about me giving a shit?Cause if I ever did I don’t remember it.

I shared a photo of my Dream Theater collection. The soundtrack to my life.

And I was putting out Nostradamus like predictions about what would happen with certain bands and I was terrible with all of em.

I watched “The Great Gatsby” which got me googling about it and I was surprised to read that author Scott Fitzgerald, started planning the novel in 1923 and when the book is released in 1925, it sells poorly.

In 1940, Fitzgerald died, seeing himself as a failure and believing his work is forgotten. And at the time of his death, “The Great Gatsby” had sold only 25,000 copies. By 2013, “The Great Gatsby” had sold over 25 million copies worldwide and it still sells 500,000 copies annually.

And I wrote about “The Pirate Bay” and how it was still operating after so many raids and web blockades. And I imagined an alternative history if the music and movie labels purchased the technology in 2003 when it started operating.

I was listening to Dave Nadolski who has a voice similar to Chris Daughtry.

For those who don’t know, Dave Nadolski is the lead singer of the band Under The Flood.

Under The Flood have been doing the hard roads since forming in 2005 by brother’s Matt (guitars) and Dave (vocals) Nadolski.

The first album, “The Witness” was released in May 2008. “Alive In The Fire” was released in June 2010 and “A Different Light” in February 2012.

And I felt they would break through like Shinedown and Chris Daughtry did but they didn’t and I haven’t heard anything new from em since 2013.

“Revenge” made Kiss relevant again so I wrote my thoughts on it.

And I reminisced how I felt every time “Lick it Up” came on TV. It made me stop and watch. This was all about the music. The band had removed their make-up and they needed to make a statement. That crunchy and distorted guitar from Vinnie Vincent is what makes the song roll.

And I did another douche blog post on Mike Portnoy because he did nothing wrong except change bands from Adrenaline Mob to Winery Dogs but I knew it would be clickbait.

Douchebag posts are not what I would want the site to be so I stopped doing em. But then I blasted “Supercollider” from Megadeth. Lol.

Apart from the opener, “Kingmaker” and the cover, “Cold Sweat” from Thin Lizzy, I didn’t like it. For me to say that, it’s a big thing. If anything, I’m a Mustaine Fanboy. But the post then went on a tangent as to why are creators still following the old rules.

Since I was listening to a lot of a Five Finger Death Punch, I wanted to show my appreciation to Kevin Churko, the unsung hero behind the band.

And from Five Finger Death Punch to Imagine Dragons.

How good is “It’s Time”?

“It’s Time” and “Demons” are two songs that are just stuck in my head. They are catchy and they have enough rock in them to get my attention and keep it. But they haven’t done anything remotely close to those songs.

And that’s another wrap for another week.

The Week In Destroyer Of Harmony History – May 24 to May 30

4 Years Ago (2017)

There are a lot of stories of how the recording industry has been transformed since Napster and most of those stories centered around the losses of income to the record labels. They blamed the technology as its never the fault of the record labels.

Then came iTunes and the purchase of mp3’s became legal, putting money into the labels balance sheets. But the labels still complained.

Then YouTube appeared, then streaming came on the scene in Pandora, Grooveshark, Deezer and Spotify and the conversation shifted to the pennies paid per listen. The labels blamed the technology for the low payments because it’s never the labels fault.

In the end if you are signed to a label, creating music which is being listened too and are not getting paid, your issue is with your employer, the record label.

But it’s never the record labels fault.

“We sound like cocaine” said Bjorn Strid, the singer from The Night Flight Orchestra.

If you read this blog, you will know of my appreciation for The Night Flight Orchestra.

It all started in 2012 with the excellent debut. “Internal Affairs” and it continued in 2015, with “Skyline Whispers” and in 2017, we have “Amber Galactic”, which you can read my review here.

Artist Don Brautigam passed away and I wrote about him here and here.

If you’ve seen the Metallica “Master Of Puppets” or the Motley Crue “Dr Feelgood” covers, then you’ve seen his work.

The album cover is a forgotten art form, but man, it’s an important one. Once upon a time, the look of an album cover would be the deciding vote if a person outlaid their money.

It carried the brand of the band.

It was the first thing that spoke to the music buyer. And as time has gone on, the artists who created some of the iconic covers are never mentioned.

8 Years Ago (2013)

I was listening to Vaudeville. They merge the styles from Muse, Deftones and Radiohead with Hard Rock. It sounds beautiful and original.
And if you want an entry point into the band, check out the song “Restless Souls”.

Will you stand up
And fight against their wrath
Or will you run
Until there’s nothing left

Their first album “Dismantle The Sky” came out in 2009. The next album “Vendetta” came out in 2012, and this is the album with “Restless Souls”. In March 2013, they released an EP called “House of The Rising Sun”.

And after I wrote this post they released “Masquerade Part 1” in 2014 and “Masquerade Part 2” in 2015.

Which I didn’t know about. So I have some listening to do.

Daft Punk entered the charts this week in 2013 at Number 1, moving 339,000 copies of their “Random Access Memories”.

And streaming/digital was king as 65% of Daft Punk’s sales came from digital sources. And I was thinking, why couldn’t metal and rock artists get these kind of numbers.

And Victory Records were in the news again about shitting on artists.

It first began in August 2006, when Hawthorne Heights filed a lawsuit against Victory Records, accusing the label of creative accounting practices, unpaid royalties and for damaging the band’s reputation and relationship with their fans.

In 2011, A Day To Remember also filed a suit against Victory Records for unpaid royalties.

And in 2013, Streetlight Manifesto is telling their fans to not purchase the album from any physical and online retailers and to only purchase merchandise from the band’s website because of their dispute with Victory.

After this post, in 2017, another band called “Darkest Hour” said that they never received a penny from their Victory contract.

And to slap the artists in the face even more, it sold for more than $30 million in 2019 and the artists didn’t get a cent from the sale.

TesseracT is one band that really got my attention and you can read my review of their excellent “Altered State” album here.

Dream Theater announced a “Live At Luna Park” DVD/CD release in February 2013 for a May 2013 release. May was almost at its end and no news had been forthcoming.

Well the release finally came out in November/December of that year.

And people were getting arrested and locked away for copyright offenses. Their jail terms for non violent crimes were longer than violent crimes.

And Police Departments were not doing any investigation of their own. They simple took the evidence of the movie studios and record labels as being true and correct.

“Draw The Line” from Disciple was doing the rounds.

This is where I draw the line
This is where the old me dies
Light a match, let it burn, kiss it goodbye
Give it up, what I was, this is where I draw the line

I always like to write posts that highlight how certain songs are inspired by other songs. You can read my post called “The Kashmir Effect”.

And I started a new series called “Classic Album Closing Songs”, thinking it will be a monthly post. And I’ve only done one.

Which actually covered a few albums.

Like “Diary Of A Madman” (1981), “Hallowed Be Thy Name” (1982), “Who We Are” (2011), “S.M.F” (1984), “Shogun” (2008), “Aerials” (2001) and “The Count Of Tuscany” (2009)

And “What About Now” disappeared from the charts and the sales.

Bon Jovi (the band) spent over 5 months recording and writing this album, a few more months promoting it, only to have it do a run of 10 weeks before it disappeared.

From Bon Jovi I went to Megadeth and the lyrics of Dave Mustaine.

And my iPod shuffle was on fire with its selection so I wrote about “Chainsaw Charlie (Murders In The New Morgue)”, “California Morning”, “Crazy Train”, “Caught In The Middle”, “Caustic Are The Ties That Bind” and “Cardiff”.

Well that’s another wrap for another week.

Influenced, Music, My Stories

The Week In Destroyer Of Harmony History – May 17 to May 23

4 Years Ago (2017)

The thing with blogs and posts is that you try and write something different and creative. Like this post, titled “Dollars And Cents”. At the time I was reading a book on innovations and Charles Goodyear inspired me.

Everyone today knows “Charles Goodyear” as the inventor of vulcanised rubber. But what they don’t know is that he spent his whole life on struggle street, in and out of prison because of his money problems and six of his twelve children died because he couldn’t support them.

And when he perfected his vulcanised rubber, he couldn’t take out a patent because another scientist called Thomas Hancock took out a patent eight weeks earlier. You see, Hancock had gotten a hold of a sample of Goodyear’s final product and reverse engineered it.

Goodyear tried the courts, however the judge couldn’t understand how Hancock could have reverse engineered the invention and awarded all rights and royalties to Hancock.

It wasn’t until his journals were read by others that the following was found: “Life should not be estimated exclusively by the standard of dollars and cents.”

The Goodyear name would be recognised many years later. His achievements are world-changing but he never got paid for it while he was alive.

And the post combined F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ken Kesey, Dream Theater, Metallica and others.

These days, every town has thousands of bands who are recording themselves and releasing their music. And there are artists who have “made it” who are also releasing music. And they all want to be paid for it. Because their hard work and time spent is worth something. It’s all dollars and cents until you have that iconic hit. Only then you will be paid. When the music listening public decides it’s worthy.

Once upon a time my Release Radar playlist was pretty spot. Check out my love for The Night Flight Orchestra, Rise Against, Hell Or Highwater, Adrenaline Mob and Harem Scarem.

And when I was thinking about innovations, I thought about the cassette.

The Cassette tape allowed me to make demo after demo, mix tape after mix tape and it allowed me to copy a lot of albums from people who either had the original album or had a copy of the album from someone else who either had the original or had a copy.

For me it is was a game changer.

The record labels screamed loud and hard to their politician friends to pass new laws and stop this new sharing culture. Remember their headline, “Home taping is killing music.” A more accurate and truthful headline would be, “Home Taping is Spreading Music to the Masses” or “Home Taping Is Spreading Music And This Leads To Increased Sales Later On”.

Progressive Music always fascinated me.

In the Year 2000, the mainstream was ruled by Nu-Metal bands and progressive music was really at opposite ends of the spectrum.

On one side, you had the Dream Theater style of progressive music. This involved a lot of time changes, with the focus on high-octane technical musical workouts and each song exhibited a smorgasbord of riffs.

On the other side of the progressive music spectrum, you had the Tool style of progressive music. This involved time changes, but the focus was on groove and atmospherics, with each song building on a unique riff or bass line or drum pattern. Tool always stood by their brand and never wavered from it.

In between you had Porcupine Tree, merging Tool like aggression with Pink Floyd like atmospherics and on the extreme end you had Meshuggah with their focus on groovy, technical polyrhythms.

The missing link is Fates Warning. Fates Warning released an album called “Disconnected” which merged the Tool and Porcupine Tree progressive elements with the Dream Theater progressive elements and put them through the Fates Warning blender. It’s a fusion of all the best progressive elements at the time into a cohesive piece of work that can be listened to over and over again from start to finish.

Making something technical sound simple to the ear is progressive music to me.

Metallica did it with each album up to “…And Justice For All”.

Rush did it with each album until they reset their career with “Signals”.

Dream Theater nailed it with “Images And Words”.

Fates Warning nailed it with “Disconnected”.

And back in 2013, I was writing that if an artist wants to make money from streaming music, then they should stay independent and don’t sign to a label.

Or if they sign to make sure they own their copyrights. Streaming pays pretty good, provided people are listening. And the more people who embrace streaming, the greater the pool of money to divide.

Remember when AC/DC refused to have their music on iTunes and even streaming services? Now they’re on all of them.

And remember that each release is competing with the history of music

8 Years Ago (2013)

I was watching Eurovision and I came across Eythor Ingi from Iceland. He sang a ballad called “I Am Alive”. The song is average, however his voice, his look and his name stuck in my head.

So I went to YouTube. He was in a Deep Purple cover band and he covers “Child In Time”. If you want to separate the vocalists from the wannabe’s, “Child In Time” is the song.

I just rechecked on him and he’s still doing music in his native language. I would like to hear an English speaking album as well.

And did anyone hear the new (at the time) Five Finger Death Punch song, “Lift Me Up” and how similar the vocal line in the verse is to “The Ultimate Sin” from Ozzy. A perfect example of taking something from the past to make something new.

And I wrote an appreciation post on the lyrics of Jesse Leach.

We are overloaded with people creating something. The Internet has removed the entry barriers to promote creative works have diminished greatly. Artists are writing books, comics or creating art via paintings or photography.

And they create because they want to create. And at the time System Of A Down had three quarters of the band ready to do another album. But vocalist Serj Tankian was not interested.

“Kingmaker” from Megadeth was just released. The first thing that grabbed my attention was the “Children of The Grave” influence in the verses.

Finally, the Richie Sambora saga was ongoing and some serious scalping was happening in Australia, as tickets to the first Jovi shows in Australia were still available to be purchased but the shows are marketed as sold out and second shows are up for sale.

The Week In Destroyer Of Harmony History – May 10 to May 16

4 Years Ago (2017)

Barry McKay was at war with Steve Harris over “Hallowed Be Thy Name” and “The Nomad”.

I posted my viewpoint and McKay posted his replies and we had a bit of a back and forth.

I did my 7th post on the the year 1983. It included the bands Slayer, Queensryche, UFO, Motörhead, Heavy Pettin, Saxon and Choirboys.

And I was questioning how many of the social media followers artists have are actually fans or invested in what the artists has to say.

And it’s okay to be influenced. For example, Poison – “Unskinny Bop” (1991).

The song has over 7 million streams on Spotify. The guitar riff is influenced by the intro guitar riff in Billy Squier – “Powerhouse” from 1986.

The bass lines are very similar to the bass line from 45 seconds onwards in Great White – “Mista Bone” from 1989. Then again, that running bass line is pretty common in most songs. You hear it in “Disturb The Priest” from Black Gillian’s album “Born Again”.

And “Unskinny Bop” still sounds original.

8 Years Ago (2013)

I was discussing the prices of tickets for Bon Jovi’s Australian tour.

If a Bon Jovi fan wanted to sit in Row 1 and purchase a Diamond VIP package, the price of one ticket is $1975 + $10 booking fee.

If a Bon Jovi fan wanted to sit in Rows 2 to 5 and purchase an Emerald VIP package, the price of one ticket is $1475 + $10 booking fee.

If a Bon Jovi fan wanted to sit in Rows 6 to 13 and purchase a Sapphire VIP package, the price of one ticket is $975 + $10 booking fee.

And for the Sydney show, these VIP tickets had been sold out. And after the JBJ website sale, the next stage of the sales was the Telstra pre-sales, the Showbiz pre-sales, then the Ticketek VISA pre-sales and the general pre-sales and finally the public release.

What a collusive, exploitive and unregulated process.

And the Telstra presales were a disaster. The website went down and people couldn’t get tickets but eBay had tickets on sale for triple the price.

In other words the band was scalping its own tickets.

And the “What About Now” album continued its free fall, sitting at 133.

And I was always trying to tie together various threads from different artists. This post was called “The Crazy Lifestyles of the Rockers and Metallers”.

All our heroes are flawed and far from normal.

I was spinning the “Operation Mindcrime” album and wrote about the title track, “I Don’t Believe In Love” and “Eyes Of A Stranger”.

Continuing my Queensryche kick, I wrote about “Bridge”.

And “Silent Lucidity”.

And how good is the Vince Neil – Exposed album?

Music, My Stories

The Week In Destroyer Of Harmony History – May 3 to May 9

4 Years Ago (2017)

There is a lot of hate for the Public Domain from the corporations that hold the Copyrights to a lot of culture and the hate will get even bigger now that other corporations like hedge funds and investment funds are buying up the rights to valuable works.

A lot of artists hate streaming, but streaming has really shown how valuable music can be, which has brought in a new player to the Copyright table.

I was also comparing what I thought was hot and not not.

The Night Flight Orchestra got some love as being hot as well as the Sweden’s music scene. Adrenaline Mob was also back after the death of AJ Pero and the previous departure of Mike Portnoy. But a much larger tragedy was on the horizon.

8 Years Ago (2013)

Jeff Hanneman passed away.

All from a spider bite. First it was the flesh eating disease and then the final act, he suffered liver failure during his recovery.

Part 2 of the Angus Young, Guitar World interview from 1986 was posted.

“It’s a cheap tag (on being called Heavy metal) and its been stamped on us mainly from a media point of view. It’s an insult to be slapped in with hundreds of other bands. We look at it this way, we’re a rock and roll band. Calling AC/DC heavy metal is like saying The Police is a reggae band, even though they may have a bit of that style.”

AC/DC is still found in the Metal section of the record stores.

“You should give someone a chance to develop their own technique. If someone tells you how to play something it could easily mess up your talent and corrupt you for life. Everything you play should be done how you feel like doing it—very naturally. Playing guitar is like doing anything else—you’ve got to be able to think for yourself.”

So I wasn’t surprised when by 1990 so many guitarists sounded the same and had very similar techniques.

Motley Crue announced another tour and no new material.

Vito Bratta’s guitar playing was still coming through the speakers. He spent so many years to make it, only to walk away, a few years after making it.

Jerry Cantrell from Alice In Chains was pissed because “something you’ve worked on and poured your soul into, and invested your money in, somehow it’s no longer deemed valuable. That’s fucked up, to me.”

But I disagreed. His art is valuable to the people who find it valuable. Just because someone spent two to three years creating art, it doesn’t mean that people will find it valuable to pay you for it. The ones that want to pay, will pay.

https://destroyerofharmony.com/2013/05/05/west-ruth-ave-the-night-flight-orchestra/

I was overdosing on “West Ruth Avenue” from The Night Flight Orcheatra. It’s the Kiss – “I Was Made For Lovin You” guitar like riff that grabbed my attention. It’s from their 2012 album “Internal Affairs” released via Coroner Records.

The NFO captures the magic of classic rock and they make it sound so authentic.

Nikki Sixx was pissed at fans rushing the stage and Black Sabbath debuted new songs live prior to the release of “13”. Meanwhile Stone Sour was covering Sabbath with “Children Of The Grave”.

“Children of The Grave” is my best Sabbath song. I still prefer the blistering Randy Rhoads version on “Tribute”. It’s got more of a metal feel to it and the lead break that Randy unleashes is another one of his songs within a song lead break.

Thirty Seconds To Mars dropped “Conquistador” and I was/still am a fan of its massive blues rock riff.

Apart from White Lion, I was also cranking Saraya. Guitarist Tony Bruno Rey is an underrated Guitar Hero. Here is a post on “Timeless Love” from the “Shocker” soundtrack. And here is a post on “Love Has Taken It’s Toll” and “Runnin Out Of Time”.

I was on the Queensryche is nothing without Chris DeGarmo and posted about it. And i was still following the trajectory of “What About Now’ from Bon Jovi. This week it slipped from 76 to 96.

Music, My Stories

The Week In Destroyer Of Harmony History – April 26 to May 2

4 Years Ago (2017)

I was reading a paper that Steve Albini wrote back in the early nineties called “The Problem With Music” and was inspired to write.

While change is a constant in life, the recording business and the contracts they use haven’t changed much.

8 Years Ago (2013)

The debacle that was the Stone Music Festival was still getting some news.

Basically you had amateurs involved in organizing a festival and the blowback was huge.

I shared my enthusiasm for “BULLY” – Shinedown, “BLACK” – Trivium, “BECOME” – Mutiny Within, “BE STILL and KNOW” – Machine Head and “BELIEVE IN ME” – Corroded.

If these five songs appeared on one side of a LP, the album for me would be called a classic.

I watched Black Sabbath live and posted my review here.

Then I was questioning if Sabbath was still relevant.

Black Sabbath was the early 70’s.

Towards the end of that era, the band was bleeding and Ozzy was fired. The beginning of the 80’s, saw Black Sabbath in the “Heaven and Hell” period, with Ronnie James Dio on vocals. After that, you can say the band didn’t really set the world of fire, however I do have a soft spot for the “Eternal Idol” and “Headless Cross” albums with Tony Martin on vocals.

The “Dehumanizer” album in 1992 with Dio was an attempt to make both Dio and Sabbath relevant in the 90’s, however it didn’t really hit the mark.

Black Sabbath of the 70’s questioned authority, challenged institutions and preyed on people’s fears of heaven and hell. The 2013 Sabbath didn’t do that lyrically, it was just the same old run of the mill cliches.

It looked like my playlist shuffle was stuck in the song titles that begin with B.

So I posted my appreciation of “Breakin Free” – Tesla, “Be Somebody” – Thousand Foot Krutch, “Beautiful” – Since October, “Back Again” – Daughtry, “Believer” – Three Doors Down, “Black Rose” – Trapt and “Beautiful Mourning” – Machine Head.

I thought I would do a follow-up to how One Less Reason treat their fans. Which was still shit.

Comments taken from their Facebook page at the time had a lot of things like “Ordered your CD from your website a while ago and still have yet to receive it, what does it take to get your cd? several attempts to contact you and no response yet.”

And I still hadn’t received my CDs as well.

“What About Now” from Bon Jovi went from number 1 to 76 in six weeks, so I thought I’ll write about it.

Finally Jovi also released dates for a December 2014 tour of Australia.

And they did so many pre sales deals with different organizations, with tickets ranging in prices from $200 to $2000 and of course if you paid the premium membership for their own backstage fan club you had access to the first presale.

Regardless of the deals and the band scalping their own tickets, the tour was still a massive event with Sambora or not.

Music, My Stories

The Week In Destroyer Of Harmony History – April 19 to April 25

4 Years Ago (2017)

You can have riffs in songs that sound similar and the song can still be original. Case in point; “Woman From Tokyo,” from Deep Purple which curiously has the same riff as Joe Walsh’s “Meadows,” from “The Smoker You Drink…” album.

Both songs were released the very same year, and no plagiarism lawsuits occurred. And guess what. Both artists had very successful careers.

So it’s a sad state of affairs when it comes to music and copyright these days. The metal and hard rock community has been sensible about it, but I am pretty sure that if another metal or rock artists broke through to the mainstream, there would be a long list of plagiarism cases filed.

The fact that “plagiarism” is used in music is pretty sad.

8 Years Ago (2013)

I found an old issue or Metal Edge in which Gerri Miller (RIP) did a track by track breakdown of the Motley Corabi album.

I did three separate posts on it. You can read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

People focus on sales a lot. If something sold a lot of times, it’s seen as successful.

However, sale numbers mean nothing these days. What is important here, is the length of time the music has been out and are people still listening to it.

A Guitar World, March 1986 article of Angus Young got posted with some commentary by me.

For any guitarist starting off, AC/DC wrote the book on beginners Rock guitar. In the process, they also created songs that are timeless and a soundtrack to a whole generation of people in the seventies, eighties and nineties.

And Angus always spoke his mind.

On EVH:

“Malcolm’s still a better guitarist than Eddie Van Halen. Van Halen certainly knows his scales, but I don’t enjoy listening to very technical guitarists who cram all the notes they know into one song. I mean, Van Halen can do what he does very well, but he’s really just doing finger exercises. If a guitarist wants to practice all the notes he can play, he should do it at home. There’s definitely a place for that type of playing, but it’s not in front of me.”

On Clapton:

“Clapton just sticks licks together that he has taken from other people – like B B King and the other old blues players—and puts them together in some mish-mashed fashion. The only great album he ever made was the “Blues Breaker” album he did with John Mayal and maybe a couple of good songs he did with Cream. The guy more or less built his reputation on that. I never saw what the big fuss was about Clapton to begin with.”

On Jeff Beck:

“There are guys out there who can play real good without boring people. Jeff Beck is one of them. He’s more of a technical guy, but when he wants to rock and roll he sure knows how to do it with guts. I really like the early albums he did with Rod Stewart.”

I did a douche Blabbermouth like post on Mike Portnoy as an experiment to see if traffic increased on the site. It did, but it’s not the kind of site I want to run or be involved in.

The post is all over the place in writing, and not very good from my point of view. And man, I got a lot of hate direct messages to me. Especially around my comments on Richie Kotzen. I basically said he can’t sing. And yes, Kotzen was also part of the douchebag experiment on this post.

For the record, I do like Mike Portnoy. His work ethic is unbelievable and as a musician all he wants to do is play, so he does that and he keeps getting involved in multiple projects, which for some reason, piss people off.

And people who do read the blog, know I have a lot of love for Kotzen. Plus his work on the Poison album, “Native Tongue” is outstanding.

In Sydney, a music festival was happening called “Stone Music Festival” which was getting news for the wrong reasons. Here are some other stories.

And while the organizers said it would be back in 2014, it never was. Because the 2013 one was a mess.

And a cover band called “Kings Of Chaos” stole the show at the festival. The band featured Matt Sorum on drums, Duff McKagan on bass, Gilby Clarke on rhythm guitar, Steve Stevens on lead guitar and vocals provided by Glenn Hughes, Joe Elliot and Sebastian Bach.

And UMG took down an official version of “God Is Dead”.

Take down requests are meant to take down content that is infringing. So how did the Official Black Sabbath YouTube page fall into that category is beyond me.

And here is my view on the song. It’s not a bad song, nor is it a great song.

Kingdom Come was still getting a lot of listens from me. Here is a post on “Stargazer”.

It’s the keyboard synth intro that grabs ya from the outset.

Within three months from when “In Your Face” came out, the band that we had come to know had called it a day.

Rudolf Schenker had an interview in Guitar World, March 1986, which I posted here.

By March 1986, Rudolf had been in the game for over 26 years by now. Winners never quit. They persist. They persevere.

Finally Storm Thorgerson passed away and I did a post on some of his iconic album covers for rock bands.

Dream Theater used him, Pink Floyd used him, Megadeth used him, Europe used him, Muse used him, Led Zeppelin used him and so many more.

	Henrik on The Place Matters
	2loud2oldmusic on The Place Matters
	destroyerofharmony on Megadeth
	deKe on Megadeth
	Rob Marshall on Sydney’s Biggest Live Secret (…