Archive for July, 2009

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Stay Hungry Is 25

Friday, July 31st, 2009

There’s an interview with Dee Snider on the subject of the 25th anniversary of Stay Hungry at Blabbermouth.

It’s a pretty good read, actually, even though he doesn’t really say much of anything that is really new or couldn’t have been guessed at. However, what makes it fun is how clearly Dee Snider’s personality comes across in the interview, and the fact that he’s clearly still enthusiastic about the music, even twenty-five years after the fact.

I personally am never surprised to see We’re Not Gonna Take It in a list of the best of whatever. The great part about that song is in its very lack of specifics. The song is pure rage against the establishment, with a great hook. It can be applied to anything, so it’s basically tailor-made for the ‘angry playlist’ in the MP3 player.

There’s even video from when We’re Not Gonna Take It was certified gold on digital downloads at the bottom of the interview.

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Random Song: Rainbow In The Dark

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009

Artist: Dio
Album: Holy Diver

I can’t really remember how I got into Dio. I seem to remember that it was kind of similar to how I found Bon Jovi–through Deadliest Catch. As I recall, it was because I had heard Edgar Hansen talking about Rainbow In The Dark, and once again I got curious. (That is one terrible picture of Edgar.)

The thing that I love most about Rainbow In The Dark is the wonderful hook that it has. It stands up, slaps you in the face and declares that you are about to experience metal. You can’t do anything else but headbang when you hear this song.

The lyrics are also a battle cry for anyone who’s feeling abandoned. The song embodies a relationship that has drifted apart or fallen apart, without descending into maudlin glop like pop music. Only heavy metal can take a subject as emotionally weighted as an unraveling relationship and turn it into something gloriously dark.

The lyric “do your demons, do they ever let you go” is an unflinching confrontation of the personal issues that destroy so many relationships. The song doesn’t gloss over what the demons did to the relationship. There’s anger about the failure of the relationship, and it’s angry at the other person for letting their demons win.

The open way that metal songs, like this one, unflinchingly explore and even revel in the darker emotions is part of what drew me to the genre in the first place. Pop songs about failed relationships are inevitably dreary and sad. Metal introduced me to music that shone a light on feelings that other songs hadn’t explored.

The guitars in this song are also spectacular. Yes, it does use synthesizers, but it’s the guitar work in this song that shines as only heavy metal guitar can. The technical skill required to play a guitar like that is awe-inspiring.

This kind of song is what helped me appreciate the depth and breadth of what music could be, after having grown up during the unfortunate Age of Grunge.

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LEGO Rock Band: Where does it end?

Monday, July 27th, 2009

I’ve already griped about how Harmonix and Activision are milking their respective Rock Band and Guitar Hero franchises by adding silly gimmick or band-centered games. (You can read about them in the posts on E3 and the one specifically about band games. Lately it seems that Harmonix is even worse than Activision about this kind of thing.

Evidently Harmonix went to the trouble of at least adding something that passes for meat to the Beatles edition of Rock Band. (You can read about the harmony vocals feature at the official site.) Unfortunately, I don’t see the three-part harmony vocals feature getting much use. I don’t know about other people, but I have a hard enough time getting anybody to take vocals on Rock Band when I organize a multiplayer game. That’s even with using the No Fail mode from Rock Band 2. (If I’m not the one doing lead vocals, that’s pretty much a necessity.) Getting three people to do vocals, two of which won’t be the melody? In my group of friends, fat chance of that happening. It’s a cool feature, but not a selling point any more than the drum trainer in Rock Band 2 was a selling point or the ability to create your own tracks was in Rock Band World Tour.

GameFocus has an article with a list of the released track titles for LEGO Rock Band. These include You Give Love A Bad Name. Effectively, this means that Bad Name will never be made available as DLC for Rock Band 2. If people really want any of the songs on this game, they’re going to have to buy the game. The problem is that buying games to get a few tracks gets really expensive. The only track in the whole list over at GameFocus that I really want is Bad Name. If they were available as DLC for Rock Band, I might buy Final Countdown too.

Ultimately what will sell any of these games will be how badly people want the songs in the game. For those of us who have already bought plenty of these games, we would rather have these songs as downloadable content for the games we already own. Pretty pictures of the Beatles or LEGO bricks don’t add much to the gameplay as far as I’m concerned. I’d rather have Bad Name and the Beatles tracks as downloads for Rock Band 2. I certainly won’t be buying either of these games, and I won’t be asking for them as gifts.

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Black Sabbath Horror Movies Coming

Friday, July 24th, 2009

Tony Iommi has agreed to a deal where a series of horror movies will be produced under the Black Sabbath name.

Ordinarily I’d call this a normal licensing money grab, which is standard issue for most successful bands. (There are reasons that ‘sellout’ is an insult, and bad movie licensing decisions have their place in the list.)

But this sounds like it might have some potential; it’s got a little more meat to it than just slapping the band’s name on it and capitalizing on their reputation. Iommi will also be working on the musical score for the films. I’d actually be interested to hear what he comes up with. He’s a gifted musician, and often times when rock stars take on movie projects they stretch their comfort zones a bit and produce surprising results.

I’m not a big horror fan, but I will be interested in hearing any soundtrack music released from these.

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More Brutal Legend Gameplay

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

Destructoid has another Brutal Legend gameplay demo video.

You might be well-advised to skip this (and the video) if you’re at all spoiler-conscious. This video does give away a lot, even more than the last one. I’m actually kind of sorry I watched it, and usually I’m not big on avoiding spoilers.

The post continues, with spoilers and all, after the jump.
(more…)

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Brought a cold home from vacation

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

I spent last week on vacation in New Jersey, and came home late Saturday night with a cold. My brother shared. Like I needed a reminder of why I don’t miss living with my family most of the time.

Interestingly enough, my old nemesis, Percussion Freaks, has been retired and replaced with a Guitar Hero machine.

  • I didn’t even know they made Guitar Hero arcade machines.
  • The machines are blasted expensive.
    ($1 for one song? You’ve got to be kidding.)
  • Average arcade-goers in New Jersey evidently are not very good at Guitar Hero.
    (Seriously. I can’t make it all the way through the Hard tour on GH3 and the one time I played, I left the second highest score on Cliffs of Dover. On Medium. And I’m out of practice because I’ve been playing Fable.)

Normal posting schedule will resume tomorrow.

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Random Song: Captain Crash & The Beauty Queen From Mars

Friday, July 17th, 2009

Artist: Bon Jovi
Album: Crush

This is a first for the Random Songs–a song that I didn’t like.

Crush was the second Bon Jovi CD that I purchased, after Cross Road. In some ways, Crush was a bit of a surprise, as several of the songs didn’t sound like what I was used to from Cross Road. I could deal with that, though, since it’s never fair to compare a Greatest Hits compilation to a regular release.

Captain Crash was a bit of an anomaly though; it’s one on a relatively short list of Bon Jovi songs that I instantly disliked the first time I heard it. I wasn’t sure why; it didn’t drag like some of the others on Crush, and it wasn’t annoying or anything. In fact, the tune was a solid pop-rock tune almost as good as It’s My Life. I just Did Not Like It.

If I had to guess, I’d say that the nonsensical quality of the lyrics put me off, but that doesn’t add up either. I love I Would Do Anything For Love, and that song doesn’t exactly make a ton of sense. (You can read the Random Song for I Would Do Anything For Love here.)

It didn’t get better with time, either. Many of the other songs that I had instantly disliked (If I Was Your Mother, Tom Sawyer) I eventually warmed up to after many hearings. In some cases, like If I Was Your Mother, I would eventually come to really like the song. But Captain Crash just didn’t do anything for me, no matter how many times I listened to Crush.

It wasn’t until I attended my first concert (Prudential Center, November 3, 2007) that I finally got it. When I heard the first notes of the song, my first thought was “oh no, anything but this”. But once I heard more of it, I started to get into it. This is a song that somehow undergoes a magical transformation when played live. I don’t know what it is about live performance that completely transforms this song, but it somehow becomes a marvelous experience at a concert.

I still don’t really like the studio recording. Even though I enjoy hearing it live, and swaying along with the rest of the crowd at concerts is part of the show that I really look forward to, I just can’t get into the studio version. Something about it just seems kind of hollow compared to hearing it live. It’s too bad that a live version of Captain Crash and The Beauty Queen From Mars wasn’t included on One Wild Night, because that would be one of my favorite songs. Maybe. I don’t know if the magic of the live show would carry over to the recording.

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EA Promotes Brutal Legend Right

Wednesday, July 15th, 2009

As part of the marketing for Brutal Legend, EA is co-sponsoring a free metal concert, the Brutal Legend Metal Meltdown. (You can read more details at The Escapist.)

They’re bringing in a pretty good crew of musicians to perform at it, including GWAR. It’s hard to find a band that takes metal further to the extreme than GWAR does. It’s just one more thing that enhances the metal pedigree of the game. It’s also cool that they would actually go to the effort of getting a band this big for a promo gig.

They also timed it right, if they set it up to coincide with the beginning of Comic-Con. That should help raise the profile of the game with a large potential audience right there. Plus, the convention provides fertile ground for word-of-mouth marketing–if the concert is good, which looks likely to be the case, there could be a lot of good PR for the game.

Too bad it’s on the other side of the country from me. It sounds like a fun event.

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Random Song: Hell Is Living Without You

Monday, July 13th, 2009

Artist: Alice Cooper
Album: Trash

I actually purchased this album at the same time as Richie Sambora’s Stranger In This Town. (There’s a Random Song pick for Rosie too.) This was the one that I listened to on the drive home that day. I initially bought this album for no better reason than that I had discovered the video for Poison on the internet and loved the song. Since I was already ordering Stranger, I just tacked Trash onto the order as well.

I can understand why the purists among Alice’s fans don’t like this album. It sounds like hair metal. (Well, actually, it sounds like it was produced and heavily co-written by Desmond Child, which it was.) However, it was a perfect fit for pop radio in its day. And it also explains why I was instantly attracted to the songs from this album.

That first day, driving home in the car, something about Hell Is Living Without You stood out in particular. It sounded an awful lot like a Bon Jovi song. I initially just wrote it off to recognizing Child’s writing style as a common influence. It wasn’t until I got it home and actually checked all the songwriter credits that I discovered that Jon and Richie actually were co-writers on the song as well.

If you listen closely to the song, you can hear a lot of the same lyrical qualities that Jon and Richie bring to their power ballads. They have a singular ability to create emotionally powerful lyrics while at the same time delivering solid rock in a tidy, radio-friendly form. Alice Cooper’s influence on the songwriting is also a powerful presence, bringing a darker, more menacing tone than is present in Bon Jovi’s work. (Only Alice could take what is fundamentally an intense, beautiful love song and make it feel menacing. It’s his gift.)

The unfortunate thing about this is that this is a really under-appreciated song. (It doesn’t get played anywhere, not even on the Boneyard on XM.) The album was disowned by Alice’s hardcore fans because it represented too drastic a shift in sound. If this song had been released by Bon Jovi, this song has all of the makings of a hit (at least in my opinion). It would certainly fit in right alongside all the rest of Bon Jovi’s power ballads.

This is still one of my favorite songs of all time. I still stop whatever I’m doing when I hear it come up on the stereo and sing along, with hand gestures. I have a weakness for all the bombast of big power ballads, and Hell Is Living Without You delivers on all counts. Plus, the extra bit of a dark edge that Alice brings to it makes it deliciously different from every other power ballad that I’ve ever heard.

I’d love to hear Richie perform this song, but seeing as how they reverted right back to doing I’ll Be There For You instead of These Days, the chances of hearing something like this performed is nonexistent.

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Inadvisable Advice, Circa 1989

Friday, July 10th, 2009

Awful Library Books recently brought Dee Snider’s Teenage Survival Guide to my attention.

I guess I fall into the classification of ‘hipster’, according to the posters over there. (shudder) Just because I would find this book ironically amusing. This was the guy who had to answer to Congress for the content of his act, handing out advice to kids on how to get through their teenage years. I’d have to assume that this book predates Snider’s run-in with the PMRC, because I don’t think too many publishers would have held him up as an example after the fact.

(My parents would probably have found it funny, had I been a teenager at the time, but then my parents are different. We’re talking parents who had a freak-out over finding a copy of David Cassidy’s Cherish in my room, but didn’t bat an eye at Black Sabbath’s Mob Rules.)

Really, though, if we look at the book as a historic artifact, it’s not that far out of place. Dee Snider, along with the rest of the hair metal crowd, were some of the biggest celebrities out there in their day. And for some reason, the 1980′s were really big on the celebrity-fronted public service announcement. (CBS still does them to some degree, but they use actors from their TV shows. You can’t tell me that William Petersen has the same name recognition in 2006 that Dee Snider did in 1988.)

I think they’re right though–in terms of relevance, this book has passed its expiration date. I think the commenters are right–the library should sell it on ebay and use the proceeds to buy a few new books to replace it. It’s definitely a collectible now.

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