Tag Archives: history

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.

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Influenced, Music, My Stories

The Week In Destroyer Of Harmony History – April 12 to April 18

4 Years Ago (2017)

There wasn’t much of anything during this period.

8 Years Ago (2013)

It was a busy week.

I found an old issue of 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. Parts 1 and 2 you can read here and here and Part 3 will be in next weeks post.

They should have called the band something else but that massive Elektra contract they signed when Vince was still in the band, demanded that the release be labeled as Motley Crue.

Gerri Miller is Metal Edge to me. Miller was on every story or on every interview that mattered.

For “POWER TO THE MUSIC”, Miller said that
this album opener started out as a repetitive detuned riff dreamed up by Nikki.

Who said the music’s dead in the streets?

Don’t know what they talk about.

Rock music was alive and well. Just because the labels abandoned it, it didn’t mean that the audience abandoned it. For the labels to kill rock and metal, they had to put a bullet in the head of every fan.

For “HOOLIGAN’S HOLIDAY”, it inItially started off as like a “Highway Star” cut recorded by Nikki and John at Nikki’s house. Tommy and Mick weren’t too keen it it. They then totally rewrote it—only the chorus and title are the same.

“POISON APPLES” was originally called “Hangin’ by a Thread.” Meanwhile Nikki was working on a possibility for his solo song with the title of “Poison Apples”.

“TILL DEATH DO US PART” is about pride and standing up for what you believe in. Nikki said it reminds him of “Danger” from the second album.

And I was still on a Bon Jovi listening kick, doing various posts to bring attention to certain songs or deep album cuts.

Check out the post as I discuss “Next 100 Years”, “I Could Make A Living Out Of Lovin’ You” and “Ain’t No Cure For Love” which is the best ZZ Top song not written by ZZ Top. It’s written by Richie Supa, Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora. Supa is known for his contributions to Aerosmith, plus Sambora used him for a lot of the “Undiscovered Soul” songs.

An interview that Danny Stag did in Guitar World was posted.

He talks about the Led Zep comparisons being blown out of proportion.

“Maybe some of the bad blood started when a journalist misquoted me.

This guy told Page that I claimed to never having heard Led Zeppelin. That’s obviously absurd and Jimmy would have a right to feel ticked off.”

The successful version of Kingdom Come called it quits in August 1989, so by the time the interview appeared in the September 1989 Guitar World issue, Kingdom Come was no more.

A selected transcript of Vito Bratta’s interview with Eddie Trunk was posted.

Here are a few selected quotes.

VITO BRATTA – so the record company’s saying we need another “Pride”.

I say, Ok, so what exactly does that mean?

The label goes we need the hit singles…

I go, “listen man, the songs we gave you on “Pride” weren’t hit singles written purposely to be hit singles. They were just songs that became hit singles and they were just songs we wrote. Now you’re telling me that I have to purposely write a hit single.

How do you do that?

How do you purposely write a hit single, I mean there are people out there that do that…

“Big Game” was a setback for the Label. It didn’t sell as many. The Label said wouldn’t it be great if we played at Wembley with Motley Crue and Skid Row.

Skid Row went on and they were just killing the place. And Motley Crue had a great show and here we are sandwiched in between. We realized, that night, on stage at Wembley that these songs from the “Big Game” album aren’t translating well in the live show.

Then we went back to the States and we told the record label, no more tours on this album. We are going to do the album that we want to do.

And they said well considering how the last album went, they said “go ahead”. They gave us unlimited funds. “Mane Attraction” was a half a million dollar record. They just said go and do everything that you want. Now the problem was that by the time it came out, that whole scene was over with.

C.C DeVille also featured with an old September 1989 interview.

When I go to bed at night I’m very hurt that people consider us a joke band. We concentrate on writing good pop songs.

John Sykes “Black Hearted Woman” got some musical analysis.

And “Cold Sweat” from Thin Lizzy which featured John Sykes was doing the rounds.

I did a post called “Persistence” and used Tommy Thayer as an example of persistence.

Nuno Bettencourt was also doing the rounds during this time. You can read about it here.

You can see a very heavy bias towards guitarists on this site.

And I was reading a lot of self development books so I wrote some posts on some of the concepts here and here.

Finally I was sharing my view that the album concept is gone and it needs a rethink to properly meet today’s expectations.

As long as people buy albums, the labels will still order their artists to create and release them. This is where the labels make most of their money. Even if the sales are anemic for some.

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A to Z of Making It, Classic Songs to Be Discovered, Music, My Stories, Unsung Heroes

The Week In Destroyer Of Harmony History – April 5 to April 11

4 Years Ago (2017)

I was writing about the labels and streaming services.

Spotify is a service, that provides music to users. It was created by techies because the record labels didn’t have the clout to do what was required for their artists and the vast copyrights they hold. But for Spotify to work, it needed access to the vast libraries of copyrights the record labels hold. And in the process the three major labels got a stake in Spotify.

And the labels still control the narrative. They have done such a great job with their fake news stories about streaming rates killing music, but at the same time their revenue goes up due to streaming payments.

8 Years Ago (2013)

It was a Bon Jovi week. I tracked how “What About Now” dropped from #7 to #34 in a week.

Sales had dropped from 101,000 to 29,000 to 16,000. And news happened about Richie Sambora dropping off the tour due to personal issues.

In comparison to sales with other acts, “Babel” from Mumford and Sons was still moving 37,000 units, and “Night Visions” from Imagine Dragons was moving 47,000 units. Both albums had been on the charts for 27 and 30 weeks respectively at the time.

Then I did another post which had “What About Now” dropping from #34 to #50 at week 4.

It only moved 2,383 units for the week but the tour was selling out. I wrote that the album is the worst Jovi album ever. It debuted at number 1, then went to number 7 and then it went to number 34 and then at 50.

I even got creative and asked the question what could have Bon Jovi done differently.

But reading back now, I went on a misguided rant which is embarrassing to read but still part of this blogs history.

“Last Man Standing” from Bon Jovi is a classic song waiting to be rediscovered.

Everyone knows the hits. However, there are a lot of songs that deserve more attention than what they have received. 

“Last Man Standing” is written by Jon Bon Jovi and Billy Falcon. The studio version was meant to be on 2003’s “This Left Feels Right” greatest hits package, however, it ended up on the “100,000,000 Fans Can’t Be Wrong” box set released in 2004.  It was a laid back acoustic style ballad with slide guitar and all the country twang you can get into a song.  An acoustic live version of the song was added to the “This Left Feels Right” DVD.

It was then re-worked into a great rock song for the 2005 “Have A Nice Day” album.  The intro grabs you and makes you want to pay attention and the theme of the song is about kids turning up to a circus/freak show act to see the last real performer of live music.

I also wrote about “Undivided” which is another classic Jovi song waiting to be rediscovered.

“Undivided” was written by Bon Jovi, Sambora and Billy Falcon and it’s probably the heaviest song Bon Jovi has recorded. The producer was Luke Ebbin (who was introduced to JBJ by A&R legend John Kalodner) and the song was originally called “One”.

I wrote about how Black Sabbath was employing the same scorched earth marketing that Bon Jovi employed to promote their new album “13” and their first with Ozzy since 1978.

I got into Black Sabbath via Randy Rhoads and the “Tribute” album. The “Blizzard” and “Diary” albums became my bibles in relation to guitar playing. I needed to learn every riff, every lick, every bass line and every vocal melody line. It was an obsession.

On “Tribute”, I heard three songs that where not written by the usual Ozzy, Randy and Bob Daisley combination. I actually feel sorry for Bob Daisley. The Osbourne’s have tried hard to write Daisley out of the Ozzy history. 

It was “Children of The Grave” that got my attention. The way it’s done on “Tribute”, with faster tempo and the wonderful Randy Rhoads Guitar Hero solo.

I was listening to a lot of Periphery at the time as well. And I wrote a post about their song “Ragnarok”.

I saw Periphery live at the Annandale Hotel in Feb 2013, as a sideshow they did from the Soundwave tour. 

They were good. Very good. Technical and melodic. Technical and aggressive. Technical and progressive. Technical and rocking. Technical and serene. Technical and mechanical. 

Ragnarok. The end of the world in Norse mythology by submersion of the world in water. Afterward, the world will resurface anew and be repopulated by two human survivors. Does this sound familiar to all? 

This song explodes from the 2.20 minute mark to about 4.30. Check it out.

Andy Johns also passed away. He was a pretty big deal in my life as he was involved in quite a few influential albums for me.

Cinderella and the “Night Songs” and “Long Cold Winter” albums. Then came “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge” by Van Halen. Ted Templeman was on board to record Sammy Hagar, as Andy Johns was too demanding for Sammy.

Majority of music lovers will remember the artists and the songs attached they wrote and the producers become forgotten.

I discovered a Swiss band called Polution that played a brand a rock I like, so I wrote about em.

I checked em out on Spotify to see if anything else has come out since and nothing has. So I guess another one bites the dust.

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Music, My Stories, Piracy

The Week In Destroyer Of Harmony History – March 29 to April 4

4 Years Ago (2017)

I was writing about the recording industry trying to rebrand/sell itself as the “music” industry.

The Recording Industry is a section of the “music industry.”

But the Recording Industry likes to sell and market itself as the Music Industry.

The Music Industry is everything.

There is the recording industry who are involved in getting artists to recording and releasing music. The release can be via vinyl, CD’s and mp3’s and streaming.

But there is also licensing, touring (and people involved with touring like drivers, road crew), merchandise, publishing, musical instruments (sellers, manufacturers and buyers), music hardware, music software, video production and many more.

And a lot of movement was happening within governments around internet privacy. So I was asking the question, where is the outrage from artists.

There is a lot of press about outraged artists due to streaming and piracy but when it came to their internet privacy being sold to a corporation, there was nothing. Not even a word.

Governments deny that climate change exists and people scream in protest. Governments take away more of our privacy and there is silence.

8 Years Ago (2013)

I wrote about how DRM in games was hindering the real paying customers and how it really doesn’t stop people from copying the game. But the game makers want stronger DRM and enforcement as they believe they are losing money due to pirated copies.

Circa 2011, the MPAA stated that piracy losses amounted to $58 billion.  

How did they quantify the amount?

They didn’t, but they used it over and over again when they spoke to politicians about getting new laws written up.

I remember seeing that Transformers 1 (T1) and (T2) where the most pirated movies over Bit Torrent. T1 made $710M and T2 made $840M. T3 wasn’t on any torrent list and it made $1.3 Billion.

Maybe because the people that downloaded a torrent of T1 and T2 became fans and paid to watch T3. Maybe those little kids that downloaded T1 and T2 became fans and are now old enough to go to the cinema on their own and watch it.

One thing is certain, piracy is designed by the lobby groups so that they can get stupid legislation passed that puts them back in control of the distribution.

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A to Z of Making It, Copyright, Music, My Stories

The Week In Destroyer Of Harmony History – March 22 to March 28

4 Years Ago (2017)

I always like to highlight some of the bullshit that Copyright spews up. For a law that’s meant to protect the artist, it’s a instantly abused so that Corporations benefit. And pretty soon, expect to see laws change that benefit investment funds.

I wrote about how the RIAA/MPAA are large perpetrators of fake news in the world. When billions of dollars are involved, these industries employ some of the most creative writers in the business to basically creating fictional works of fakery. Does anyone remember these ones.

  • Home Taping Is Killing Music And It’s Illegal
  • Copy a CD and get a criminal record
  • Piracy: It’s a crime
  • Piracy kills artists.

And I wrote about artists who made up by sharing their files with fans as unsigned artists and how some bands couldn’t include a song on an album because they couldn’t track down the original writer because of bad record keeping by the same organizations who claim to protect the artists.

Artists were also taking their labels to court for digital payments as Spotify was making inroads in the US market and these artists on deals pre tech were still getting paid on that old sale royalty deal.

The Spotify Release Radar was that good that I need to write about the artists and songs that appeared like “Midnight Flyer” by The Night Flight Orchestra.

My favourite Swedish supergroup of metal heads was back, playing the classic rock music I love. This time around, it’s about a galactic space opera, where the human race is pitted against female space commanders with pearl necklaces. It’s a brilliant James Bind script.

“Sinking Ship” by Harem Scarem and that funky groovy foot stomping Intro riff was on the list.

How good is Pete Lesperance on guitar?

Along with Harry Hess they have navigated 30 plus years of Harem Scarem, plus their solo work and side projects.

Other tracks that appeared are “Snakes In Paradise” by Crazy Lixx, “Never Was A Forever” by Honeymoon Suite, “Light Me Up” by Doom Unit, “Straight To The Top” by Creye, “Underneath” by Blacktop Mojo and “Big Sky Country” by KXM.

8 Years Ago (2013)

I was still on a Bon Jovi and White Lion deep dive into their catalogue. Here is a post of “We Got It Going On”. It’s the best song on the “Lost Highway” album.

I did a week 2 update on Bon Jovi’s “What About Now” album as it slipped from Number 1 to Number 7. In week one they had 101K unit sales to 29K units in week 2.

At the time, Mumford and Sons who after 26 weeks on the chart, was still moving 27,000 units of their album “Babel” and in total, “Babel” had sold 2,122,000 copies.

7 years later, the “What About Now” album still doesn’t have any certification.

Where does a band fit who where promoted as pretty hair boys in tight leathers but played a brand of hard rock that was technical and who also wrote about serious themes.

Thats the predicament White Lion found themselves in. “El Salvador” appeared on “Fight To Survive”, the anti war ballad “When The Children Cry” appeared on “Pride” and on Big Game, the band was singing about apartheid in “Cry For Freedom”, religion in “If My Mind Is Evil”, Greenpeace and the Rainbow Warrior in “Little Fighter” and violence in the family “Broken Home”.

Here is my review of the “Big Game” album.

And here was Part 2 of a Guitar World interview with Vito Bratta discussing the album.

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Music, My Stories

The Week In Destroyer Of Harmony History – March 15 to March 21

4 Years Ago (2017)

I wrote about heavy metal music.

In 2018, it was 50 years from when Steppenwolf, screamed the words, “Heavy Metal Thunder” in their iconic “Born To Be Wild” song. And while the reference to “heavy metal thunder” was the loud sound of the motorbike, it seemed to stick for a style of music that was just around the corner.

But heavy metal goes back a bit further than that. I go back to the 1930s to talk about Django Reinhardt and how a certain guitarist from Birmingham used him as a reference to deal with losing the tips of his fingers.

8 Years Ago (2013)

I was on a Jovi kick as they had just released “What About Now”, which I didn’t like, so I did a deep dive into their catalogue. It brought back a lot of memories. And I wrote a post on what made “Slippery When Wet” explode?

But it wasn’t all back catalogue songs, as I posted about how the old scorched earth marketing policy also got Jovi a Number 1 album for “What About Now” and I asked the question if it would be around for a month.

And I can tell ya, the album within 4 weeks was almost out of the Billboard 200.

Then I moved to Vito Bratta and his Guitar World, September 1989 interview.

And I came back to Bon Jovi to talk about two classic Bon Jovi songs waiting to be discovered in “BrokenPromisedLand” and “This Is Love, This Is Life” and having a few gamesmanship digs at the band.

Finally there was a two part review of the Kiss and Motley concert.

To close off this post, there was a personal post on my cousin called “Remembering Mega” during this period.

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Classic Songs to Be Discovered, Influenced, Music, My Stories, Unsung Heroes

The Week In Destroyer Of Harmony History – March 8 to March 14

4 Years Ago (2017)

I was writing about 1983.

“Frontiers” from Journey is the response from a band at the top of the charts as the “Don’t Stop Believin” and Jonathan Cain era was in full swing.

“Separate Ways” is the piece d resistance. How good is the opening keyboard lick?

“Faithfully” inspired “Purple Rain”. In This Moment also use this song as an influence for the outro of their song “World In Flames”.

“Troubled Child” is one of those underrated gems on an album.

“Bent Out Of Shape” from Rainbow is how far MTV changed the way bands wrote albums. Suddenly experimentation, longer guitar solos or longer songs in general went out the window. Every band was trying to make that arena rock song.

But the single here should have been “Stranded” instead of “Street of Dreams”.

“Flick Of The Switch” from AC/DC is a solid album.

The producer of their holy trinity albums, Mutt Lange was also out. Their manager Peter Mensch was also out. Angus and Malcolm stepped up to give the world a live and raw version of AC/DC.

There is a lot of groove and swagger. The slower tempo’s make it sound HEAVY. But the songs don’t get played live, and the album remains largely forgotten to the masses.

“Never Surrender” from Truimph showed a band that could write ambitious and melodic tracks along with metal and rock tracks as well.

Yngwie Malmsteen was involved with Alcatrazz and “No Parole from Rock N’ Roll” with Graham Bonnet on vocals and “Steeler” with Ron Keel on vocals.

8 Years Ago (2013)

I listened to Bon Jovi’s new album “What About Now” and had a rant over it. And then I heard “That’s What the Water Made Me”.

Cause devils in heaven
There’s angels in hell

We live in a world of fakes, a world of avatars and the lines between good and evil are blurred these days.  

1994 (27 Years Ago)

“Superunknown” from Soundgarden and “The Downward Spiral” from Nine Inch Nails are released.

1987 (34 Years Ago)

U2 started their world domination era with the release of their fifth studio album, “The Joshua Tree”.

1986 (35 Years Ago)

Rick Rubin got Steven Tyler and Joe Perry to record parts of “Walk This Way” so that he and Run DMC could transform it into a hip-hop jam.

Both acts weren’t enthusiastic about the collaboration but money talks and the track resurrected Aerosmith’s career and pushed Run DMC’s name to a whole new audience as well.

1984 (37 Years Ago)

Ian Gillan’s days in Black Sabbath came to an end, just as Mark II of Deep Purple reformed.

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Music, My Stories

The Week In Destroyer Of Harmony History – March 1 to March 7

4 Years Ago (2017)

This period is always busy for me, with getting the football season up and running in Australia, so as a volunteer to my local club, there’s no time for blogging.

“All The Right Reasons” from Nickelback is certified Diamond for sales of over 10 million copies in the United States. Not bad for a Canadian band who started out as a Metallica copy cat in the garage.

8 Years Ago (2013)

Like 2017, this period is always busy for me, with getting the football season up and running in Australia, so as a volunteer to my local club, there’s no time for blogging.

Also in 2013 an important case happened in a Czech court.

Lamb Of God singer Randy Blythe was charged with manslaughter, stemming from a 2010 gig in Prague in which a fan went onto his stage to stage dive and Blythe pushed him off, which is the norm at these kind of concerts.

In this instance, the fan sustained head injuries during the fall, however he still finished watching the concert, but after the concert he didn’t feel well, fell into a coma and died. When LoG toured Prague again, Blythe was arrested and held in jail.

This happened in June 2012.

After spending more than 8 months in jail Blythe was acquitted of manslaughter and returned home to the U.S.

And here is some other music history.

2003 (18 Years Ago)

Who didn’t hear the “Fallen” album from Evanescence (which came out during this period)?

2002 (19 Years Ago)

“The Osbournes” premiered on MTV which showcased a very high or intoxicated Ozzy trying to work out how to use a remote control and his family at home. In the process it became the most-viewed series on MTV.

1999 (22 Years Ago)

It pisses me off when labels do this to artists, because without the artists the labels would have nothing. In this instance, (and according to Wikipedia) Trauma Entertainment filed a $40 million breach-of-contract lawsuit against the band Bush for their failure to deliver a new album.

1994 (27 Years Ago)

Lemmy wrote some of his best lyrics on “I Don’t Want to Change the World” which appeared on “No More Tears”. And it got Ozzy Osbourne a Best Metal Performance with Vocal.

1991 (30 Years Ago)

“The Doors” biopic from Oliver Stone is released, with Val Kilmer playing the role of Jim Morrison. I watched the movie and I felt like it was the real people, compiled of intimate footage found.

I need to rewatch it and see if it’s stood the test of time.

1986 (35 Years Ago)

Some people call it their greatest album. For me, it’s always “Ride The Lightning”. But during this period, “Master Of Puppets” from Metallica was released.

1984 (37 Years Ago)

“This Is Spinal Tap” is released, one of the best movies I have seen. Well at the time, I thought it was a movie, I must have missed the part at the end that said it was fictional and all that.

1974 (47 Years Ago)

Rush (with no Neil Peart) release their debut album, a blues rock influenced album with some progressive overtones. “Working Man” become the anthem.

1973 (48 Years Ago)

“Dark Side Of The Moon” from Pink Floyd is released. It didn’t set the world on fire initially, but word of mouth kept promoting it and its biggest sales happened between 1977 and 1988.

And that’s it for this week.

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Music, My Stories

The Week In Destroyer Of Harmony History – February 20 to February 28

4 Years Ago (2017)

Another Score Card post were I rechecked in with some of the artists I wrote about a few years before, just to see what is happening. Because three years in the music business is a long time.

Bands like Mutiny Within, Evans Blue, Corroded, Another Lost Year, Hell Or Highwater, Heartist, I Am Giant and Fates Warning all got mentioned.

I wrote about dictatorship in bands. My general viewpoint is that each band needs someone to steer the ship otherwise it all goes to hell.

Hetfield and Ulrich steer Metallica. Harris and Maiden. Sixx and Motley. Portnoy and Petrucci with Dream Theater and after Portnoy left, Petrucci took the reins. The Young brothers on AC/DC. And if their wasn’t someone steering the ship, I used Dokken as an example.

I wrote a post, called “Streamline”. It was basically asking the question of “Where do artists want their fans to go?”

Give people too much choice and they don’t buy at all. It’s one of the reason’s why a lot of people are still sitting on the fence when it comes to streaming. They’re not sure if it’s going to stick.

My musical journey started with vinyl and cassettes, then I had to upgrade my vinyl/cassette collection to CD’s, then I ripped all of my CD’s into MP3’s and now I’m doing streaming. I’m just one music consumer from millions.

Look at the band releases these days and how many different offerings they have. A normal Metallica release will have the following packages;

  • CD – normal album
  • Vinyl – normal album
  • CD – Deluxe album
  • Vinyl – Deluxe album
  • iTunes – normal album
  • iTunes – Deluxe album
  • Streaming – normal album
  • Streaming – Deluxe album

Why is there a need to have a normal album release and a deluxe album release these days?

Why is there a need to have bonus tracks added to certain geographical locations only?

Why can’t the album just be the album?

If the band wants to put out three discs, let them put out three discs and call it THE ALBUM…

8 Years Ago (2013)

I wrote a review of a Bullet For My Valentine gig in Sydney and I mentioned that if any band member leaves I won’t be interested as the band is a sum of their parts.

Well since 2013, their bass player left a few years after and then their drummer was told to not return to live duties when he took time out to sort out his personal life and to deal with becoming a father.

And slowly, I started to lose interest.

This one hurt to write as I was a huge fan of the band. But when One Less Reason went the fan funded route, they really needed to deliver to their fans the physical product they paid for. But they didn’t do it in a timely manner.

They basically fucked up the release and sending out of CDs. Some fans waited over 12 months for their CD to arrive, resorting to piracy to hear the album they fan funded. Questions to the band didn’t get answered and no one knew what the fuck was happening.

The band is still around today, I still listen to em but I’m sort of on the outer.

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Copyright, Music, My Stories, Piracy

The Week In Destroyer Of Harmony History – February 13 to February 19

4 Years Ago (2017)

It was busy during this period as I got my mojo back for writing.

I started writing a series of “Score Card” posts a few years before this and within three years I rechecked in with some of the artists I wrote about to see what was happening with them.

Because three years in the music business is a long time.

Bands like Vanishing Point, Harem Scarem, Rev Theory, Adrenaline Mob, Lizzard, Thirty Seconds To Mars, Audrey Horne, Stryper, Nonpoint, Breaking Benjamin, Sound Of Contact and Kingdom Come all got mentioned.

I wrote about how fast we move on to other things. The BlackBerry was “the phone” with emails and phone capabilities and then iPhone’s launch with apps in 2007 changed the game.

People wanted to do more with their phones and that more came from apps which put tools into the hands of their users. Developers and companies rose up all around the world, to create apps for the iPhone. But they couldn’t do the same on the Blackberry.

In 2007, Blackberry was number 8 in global smartphones sold. By 2017 it had zero market share. The speed at which people abandon one thing and move on to another is huge. Remember MySpace. Remember Yahoo. Remember dot-matrix printers. Remember film cameras.

The Pirate Bay (TPB) was about to turn 14 years this year. From its inception, it was a facilitator, spreading the disruption caused by Napster years earlier to even larger audiences. It showed the entertainment industries how they needed to change.

But they didn’t change and it took companies like Netflix and Spotify to make this happen. And they did it by using the same technology made famous by The Pirate Bay. While Netflix realised that the money is in producing your own content, Spotify and other streaming providers have not.

Licensing content from someone is not a satisfactory business model. Just ask HBO, formerly known as Home Box Office. Their early business model was all licensed content and they lost money year after year, while the movie studios got richer. It wasn’t until HBO went into original content, that they started making some serious cash.

TPB stood strong against the pressure put on it by the MPAA and the RIAA and their sister organisations throughout the world. It has stood firm against government officials (loaded up in lobbyist dollars) trying to prosecute it. It was taken down, raided and it still survives. And it keeps on innovating even when court orders become the new normal, requesting ISP’s to block the web address or domain registries to deny any applications for TPB domains. Even in it’s home country of Sweden, court appeals and cases are still ongoing. Google was even pressured to alter (in my view censor) its search algorithm, so TPB doesn’t come up.

But TPB is still alive. It has become a vessel for people to access content they normally wouldn’t have access too. In the process, it has made the world a better place.

Metal music in general has grown to all corners of the world. Suddenly, every country has a metal scene and the larger metal bands that have the means to tour are suddenly hitting markets they’ve never hit before.

The high rates of software piracy in Eastern Europe caused an IT skills explosion.

The high rates of music creation software piracy led to the electronic dance explosion coming out of Europe.

The Pirate Bay spread via word of mouth. It didn’t embark on a scorched earth marketing policy. Maybe there’s lessons there for all.

And I went down memory lane for a post called “In The Name Of Metal”, writing about the record shop days and how all the bands I like got labeled as Metal.

If you wanted to find their music, you had to go to the heavy metal section of the record shop. Even Bon Jovi could be found in the metal section.

And I wrote about Metal history and how it was to be a metal fan, in the 80s.

8 Years Ago (2013)

The labels were trying to destroy radio by getting it to pay more. And if listeners went to streaming services, that would be okay for the labels because they get most of the streaming money, pus they have a percentage stake in these organizations.

I was cranking the Journey catalogue and I couldn’t resist not writing about how similar “Seperate Ways” and Measage Of Love” are similar in the Chorus.

I went 2000 plus words on a Mane Attraction review from White Lion that covers some back story, the year 1991, the competition, some hindsight views from artists after 1991 and the album review itself.

And what it means to be the main songwriter in a band and other band members wanting a songwriting credit for doing sweet fa.

And finally I was pissed about CDs.

Lyric booklets became non existent and if they did come with lyrics it would be something like fitting the lyrics of 12 songs on two pages.

We still had those stupid FBI Anti Piracy Warnings.

Did the labels and the FBI seriously believe that these labels work or deter people from piracy?

You couldn’t even skip those ads on DVDs.

Well that’s my DoH history for the week?

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