Les-Fest II

NO.

It's not what your thinking (unless you're thinking about Scotlands award winning Metal/ Rock Festival, in that case yes, "Les-Fest II" is coming and it's sure to be bigger and more RAAAAAAAAWK than last year.  We've got 3 days of madness, music, tents, beer, cider and good times ahead.
It occurs to me that this entire entry may take place inside these brackets, ah well.

Anyways, on with it..)

It's this:

LES FEST II

Metal Outlaw TV will be there interviewing the bands, the people and quite frankly anyone else who is unfortunate enough to stand in my way.

If you see us wandering around and the cameras on run.  RUN AND HIDE!

Be warned, I may be channeling.

I WILL BE SHOUTING AT YOU!

I WILL INTERVIEW YOU WITHIN AN INCH OF YOUR LIFE!

BE TOLD!!!!

Why Robocop is awesome.

It's just awesome.

4 main points:

1. It's funny
2. It's violent as hell
3. It's quotable
4. Robocop is bad ass

If you don't agree with me so far then know one thing, you're wrong and here's why.

Robocop is a ridiculous name for a film and that is one of the reason it took so long to get made.  A film about a robot policeman, seriously.  Techno Police!  CYBER CRIME SQUAD! MACHINE DETECTIVE!  It could have been worse.

Let's cast a skinny guy no one knows because he'll fit in the suit (Weller).

Get a director that had never made a film in the US before (Verhoven).

Lets get Rob Bottin to design the suit.

Let's cast a dude who usually plays nice wholesome guys to play the evil villain mastermind (Ronnie Cox).

I didn't know any of this when I first saw it when I was 10 or 11 on pirate VHS and I loved it.

It was a big robot dude shooting people.

It had a guys hand getting blown off.

Robocop stabs a guy in the throat and blood squirts out every where.

ED209!!!  "PLEASE PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPON YOU HAVE 15 SECONDS TO COMPLY!!!"

Robocop has got an awesome gun!

The Cobra assault 50mm guns that Clarences gang get.  BOOOOM!

As I grew up I saw the meaning and satire in the film, the toy commercials, the sunblock commercial, the commercial for an artificial heart and my favourite, the 6000 SUX.

I saw the Christ allegory.

The sheer ridiculousness of it is amazing.

It's a really good action film because Clarence Bodicker is such a cool bad guy. with 3 of the best lines in 80s action films:

"Bitches leave."

"Can you fly Bobby?"

"Just gimme my fuckin' phone call." (then spits blood on the sign in sheet).

Kurtwood Smith is awesome.

Now that I think of the 3 lines, Id have to add:

"You probably don't think I'm a very nice guy?"

Peter Weller did an amazing job, his monotone voice, his movement, his face when the helmet comes off, he really shows sadness just with his eyes.  He's just superb.

His deadpan voice when delivering the lines is great.  For example, when he stops the attempted rape the woman just wants comforted and he says, in his best computer voice, "Madam, you has suffered an emotional shock, I will notify a rape crisis centre".  LOL!  He's a logical machine, that's the logical course of action.

The rest of the cast are good too, the old man, Bodikers gang, Lewis, they all fit in really well and make the film better for being there.

Miguel Ferrer is cast as a 80's wall street business executive dick in a future Detroit and he nails it.

Robocops suit is a tremendous bit of work.  Apparently Boddin was going for the look of a car.  It actually looks a bit like if Judge Dredd dressed as a Delorian.

I used to draw it quite a bit when I was a kid.

I loved the design then and now.

ED209 was terrifying.  It just looked evil.  I loved the voice too.

The music was awesome bit clanky marches and the emotional music was really, well, emotional.  Listen to the music when Robocop/ Murphy revisits his old home, it's really quite sad.

It's a futurist, satire, scifi, action film.

It's basically a good Judge Dredd movie.

Here's the trailer.

Go and watch Robocop, or there will be trouble.

BE TOLD!!!

Postmodernism

It frequently serves as an ambiguous overarching term for skeptical interpretations of culture, literature, art, philosophy, economics, architecture, fiction, and literary criticism. It is often associated with deconstruction and post-structuralism because its usage as a term gained significant popularity at the same time as twentieth-century post-structural thought.

I know nothing about it.

I know a fair bit about Star Wars though and I like the odd Scotch pie.
I like how a Scotch pie is like the Death Star. (see figure 1.)

figure 1.

It's got a big shell that got a small hole in the top.

If you stick dynamite in that small whole and detonate it, it completely destroys the pie.

Not pi though.

YEAH!!!!!

Postmodernism or pie?

Pie is tasty (and a bit like the Death Star).

Be Told!!!

Pop music and why its a good thing.

Pop music by definition is music that's popular.
It's music that's accepted by a majority of people.

Black Sabbaths new album 13 reached no.1. in the UK charts this weekend.
That means it's popular, it's music, it's pop music.

It's just not shite.

And there in lies the problem.  The crap that get's passed off as popular music these days is barely even music.
Music:  
"The art of arranging sounds in time so as to produce a continuous, unified, and evocative composition, as through melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre."
OR
"An aesthetically pleasing or harmonious sound or combination of sounds"

At this point I was going to provide a link to some popular chart music of today that contradicts the 2 quoted phrases.  But do you know something  I can't actually bring myself to link to it.
I've heard it.
I despise it for what it is.
Mass produced, soulless, product designed to be sold to kids and people who don't really know what music should be.
You're luck if there's a snippet of actual instruments in most of this crap.
2 bar loop, midi arranged autotune, layered auto tuned vocals, over processed "hot" mastering,
Shit.
Take some poor little muppet that's marketable, use them to make someone a lot of money, have them exist in a bubble of self promotion, discard them when you can.

Pop music isn't always bereft of merit.

Muse, Foo Fighters, Chili Peppers, Cold Play, Oasis et al.
I'm not a huge fan of either of the first 2 but the point is it's actual musicians doing the work, not a studio engineer working with sounds clips of someone elses creations and a tuner.
There's a guy actually playing drums, there's a someone actually thinking about what chords to play and then putting the physical effort into to playing them as well as they can.
This for example:

Foo Fighter: Walking after you
Is a prime piece of nice pop ballad.  Well written and there's a bit of soul in there too.  Nice relaxed drums, airy vocals, pretty nonthreatening "rock ballad".

Muse: Knights of Cydonia
This got played to death on the radio, did good business for Muse and sold their album.  It's got a good up beat tempo you can dance too, it's a bit electronic so it's not too scary for normal people.  As manufactured as it may be, The guys in Muse are really talented musicians.  
Matt Bellemy is a phenomenal musician. 
Pretty much Muse trying to do a Bohemian Rhapsody.  Not a patch on the arse of Queens epic but you can see what they are aiming for.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers: Under The Bridge
This is a great bit of pop, beautiful song, written about drug addiction form the Chillis break through and  best album Blood Sugar Sex Magic (which is still one of my favourites).
They lost it and because this soulless, average corporate crap for 35 year old BMW drivers.
Again, Flea, Chad Smith and John Fruscantie are amazing musicians (Kiedis can write but his voice is muck).
They could fart in a jar, but some drums and bass on it and people would still buy it.
It was also murdered by a group of talentless tarts.

Oasis: Whatever 
Good track from a well made rock album, defined an era in the UK charts and probably encouraged more people to pick up the guitar in the 10 years preceding it.
Polarising but good.  The whole Oasis/ Blur thing reawakened the rock scene for a lot of people.
But also inspired a lot of NME reading fuckwits who though that wearing a Parka made them "Rock N Roll".
Wanks.

Cold Play

Yup, that's enough written about them. Dreary, dreary men.

My point is pop music isn't just BEEBAH, NIKI MINJA, Britney or any of that vomitous musical sputum.

Pop music is mostly what people know.

I can ask someone at work if they like Dimmu Borgir and I'll get blank looks but if I mention Motorhead then "Oh I love Motorhead "ACE OF SPADES, ACE OF SPADES!!"".
So can Ace of Spades be classed as a pop song.
Yes, yes it can.
That whole business getting Rage Against the Machine to UK Xmas number one killed that song for me.
Over played now.
But it did get some people who didn't know them into RATM (another bunch of ridiculously talented people).

It's a fucking good pop song.

It's not as good as Killed By Death though.

Linkin Park's pop music.  It's quite catchy.  But in the end it doesn't really matter.

ANYWAY!

Pop musics good because it popularises and opens up people to different kinds of music (I'm talking about Foo Fighters, Oasis and the like here).
It's a jumping point to get to new music if you've not listened to anything else before.

Go listen to some blues or classical.
Buy a CD by an artist or genre you wouldn't normally go for based on a recommendation on Amazon or iTunes.
I got to this:
Riverside
From The Beatles on Amazon, just going through the "people who bought this also.." section in 4 steps.
It sounds like Deep Purple crossed with Living colour.
Not too bad though.  Bit of "cleaning" going on on the vocals but there's a groove there.

Just don't exist solely on Now ## Albums because then you're a lost cause.

BE TOLD!!!!

Everything Dies.

I really like Type O Negative.

I do.

I remember seeing the Christian Woman video on Headbangers Ball on night on MTV and once I heard Pete Steeles voice and the sound of that bass guitar, Jesus I was hooked.

Around that time I was in the U.S. on holiday with my parents and I was in a record store and got Bloody Kisses on tape (YES TAPE!) along with Marty Friedmans Dragons Kiss, Weird Als Alapalooza and basically spent my entire holiday listening to Bloody Kisses.

Some of it I didn't get at the time, like the soundscapey stuff, all I had heard was Christian Woman.  What the fuck was this "Kill all the White People" shouting about?!?!
I grew up listening to everything from Megadeth, Jean Michelle Jarre, Queen, Sisters of Mercy, Duran Duran and 8 Bit chip music, so this was a bit of a departure.
I soon did.
I managed to get a copy of Slow, Deep and Hard but that was a different feel, much more hardcore rather than gothy.
I learned the bass lines, tried to mimic Petes voice.
Listened to it over and over.
Then October Rust came out.
I FUCKING LOVE THAT ALBUM!  Start to finish, it is an amazing piece of work.  
Love you to Death, Be My Druidess, In Praise of Bacchus, every sing track is well crafted and full of a weird, hippy, chilled out, gothy, doom.

It was around that time I started using the internet properly, fan sites and forums were discovered, the more I read about them the more I liked them.

I got a hold of Origin of the Feces which is a brilliant bit of work, there's rumours and talk about how it's not really a real live album and a bit of a piss take and everything but it's mostly rerecorded old stuff, which just sounds amazing.  "I Know You're Fucking Someone Else" is a tremendous bit of venom and the Hendrix cover is just a peach, go get it if you haven't got it.

Then we have World Coming Down which was recorded after Pete went nuts and a bit off the rails.  It's fucking dark dark album, dealing with addiction and death but it's phenomenal piece of work.
Lot's of soundscape parts again and listening to them on headphones really does convey a sense of panic and horror.  Some of it is quite unsettling.
There are lighter track on the album like Pyretta Blaze which is quite hippy and upbeat.
There's also a mad Beatles mashup that is just unadultarated madness (in a good way)

Life is Killing Me is a much straighter album, no soundscapes, just 70 odd minutes of music and my god what an album it is.
The title track is a near 7 minute epic and I defy any metal head not to get goose bumps listening to Pete screaming "I don't feel anything" on Anesthesia and the sheer depth of the mans voice on Nettie.
All this mixed with the cover of Hedwigs Angry Inch is fucking marvelous. 

Dead Again was the last Type O Album and seeing the video for September Sun (which is a beautiful track, I used it as an alarm clock track for a year) let me see how old Pete had gotten.  He looked weathered and tired.  
Honestly I was a bit taken aback by it.
The album is good though and has so many of Type O's trademark sounds.  Bass lines that carry a song, that big ass bass drum punching and slapping away.  Kenny's sustainer/ chorused chords.  Pete's voice pulling out some really really made ranged choruses and Kenny picking up a lot of the vocals too  It's a really good album.  It's not my favourite by them but it's good.

On April 14th 2010 Pete Steele died from heart failure.

The big romantic goth died of a broken heart. :)  
Pretty fitting.

I was gutted for days and I still get a bit sad when I think that there will never be any more Type O tracks.

I met the guy once at a signing and it was one of only 2 times in my life when I've actually been so awe struck I couldn't speak.
The only thing I could muster was when he stood up in front of me and I said "Jesus, you're a big bastard!" to which he graciously said "Thank you" and signed my album.
I mean I'm 6 foot and a chunky guy but he was a giant.

I only saw them live once, on the October Rust tour and was blown away by the sound.  I'd never heard a bass so prominent in a song live.  It was like motown but goth :)

Anyway, enough of this go listen to Type O Negative:
I Don't Wanna Be Me
Bloody Kisses
The did a cover of Black Sabbath's Black Sabbath and redefined Black Sabbath for me.  I listen to Sabbath now and think, what would Pete have done :)
The finest cover/ remake ever!
And of course:
Everything Dies

You still reading?

GO LISTEN!!!!

BE TOLD!!!!!

...and the beat goes on.

I bloody love wrestling.

Not this watered down, PG era, crap.  I like old wrestling.

Jake the Snake, Macho Man Randy Savage, Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat.  That stuff and then onto Stone Cold Steve Austin, DX, The Rock (Pre Hollywood).

See, the rose tinted spectacles are firmly on and the "Cena Sucks!" chant is in full effect.
The guys that are doing the wrestling now are just not as stand out as they use to be, the belts mean practically nothing and the feuds are shot to non existent.

Back in my day, Hogan and Savage feuded for nearly a year, Rick Rude and Jake for 6 months.  These are feuds that were built up and built up between the 4 pay per views.
Now there's a PPV every month and it's just "Yeah, Cena has the WWE belt and someone else has the one that used to be the WCW one, that means less"..
They don;t build star up like they used to.
The biggest build up we've had in recent months/ years has been Fandango.  FANDANGO!  A wrestling ballroom dancer.

VINCE!

WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?!

The built up Ryback too as the next Goldberg.  Mercilessly destroying opponents.  Then he came up against Cena, who doesn't loose, unless you're The Rock, but then it's only so you can milk another PPV out of him.

VINCE!

WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?!

Arguably the only 4 things that the WWE has done right in the last year are:
Daniel Bryan (comedy Genius)
Sandow (Comedy Genius)
Ziggler (basically Mr Perfect)
The Shield (3 guys who are believably unstoppable)

But Vince doesn't care.
He's a mad man, with more money than you.  He loves wrestling but having someone who loves wrestling, is a power mad nut bag, with no competition and basically created his his own universe.
Actually he does care.
He wants to create and interesting product but I don't think even he knows what it is.

Yeah, he's created the ultimate kids, super hero in Cena but Cena appeals to kids.  I don';t hate Cena, I just think hes hideously over pushed as this invincible good guy.  He lacks one thing.  Hogans superhero like belief and self vision of himself.

See Hogan/ Ultimate Warrior/ Macho Man all had one thing in common.  Completely off the chain, insanity filled interviews where they exploded with superhero promos about how they were bigger than men, they were bigger than heros, they were stronger etc.
They were nuts.
AND full of Red Bull.......or...you know....whatever....

Good nuts.

If John Cena started going on about his pythons and lifting Trump Towers on his back, which actually I think he could do given the commentators constant mention of his "freakish strength", so he lifted Big Show, Christ, everyone's done that.  Then I'd probably like him more.
Instead of talking about poop.
Cenas old battle raps where way more interesting than his droning on about whatever it is he drones on about, honestly I can't remember a single Cena promo.

On the other hand, Daniel Bryan only needs 2 words Yes! and No!.  Genius.

Sandow is basically Leaping Lenny "The Genius" Poffo, but easier to like.

The Shield is the NWO.

I bet they screw it up but expanding it but Vince has been smart enough not to give every fucker in the locker room creative control.

We'll this has been a meandering rant hasn't it.

Basically I don't like WWE just now.

But I still love wrestling.

BE TOLD!!!!

Cosmic spying

A giant white heated sphere has been following me all day.  Making my skin red. Making me to warm.
Making me thirsty.

I like the rain, its cold and it stops people going out.
I dont like driving in the sun
I like driving in the rain.
I like waffles and I like cheese.
Im not a big fan of peaches.

I remember once getting trapped in a lift between 2 floors.  Felt like I was in Die Hard.

Good movie that, 'Now I have a machine gun. Ho ho ho.' lol :-D

You know what else is a good movie?
The Terminator.

BE TOLD!!!!

Interesting

Ooh.
Ee.
Ooh.
Ah Ah.
Ding.
Dang.
Wallah wallah.
Bing.
Bang.

And thats all the weather.

BE TOLD!!!

Megadeth. O2. Glasgow

Dave Mustaine won.

He won the gig.

He's won all gigs.

Stunning.

Superb set, some odd ones in there I'd not heard in a long time (Ashes in your Mouth anyone?!?!?)
Highlights were:

• Symphony of Destruction
• Hanger 18 (although the sound was a bit yenky)
• Dawn Patrol
• Holy Wars
• Toute Le Monde
• Super Collider
• The mad monkey video for Public Enemy No. 1
• Peace Sells...But Whos Buying

Most of the set actually.

The crowd went BERZERK for Symphony and even more so for Peace Sells.


Broderick is a machine.  Looked like he was having fun and not even trying to be as good as he is, what a player.

Ellephantson on bass was Ellephantson on bass, solid, clanky and in the pocket

Shawn Drover was the drummer, nothing amazing, solid as fuck though.  Actually yeah, he was pretty good now I think about it.  I didn't notice anything intrusive or out of place so he must have been spot on!

Mustaine was Mustaine.  Growly, ginger and really, really appreciative of the crowd.  Total shred god!!!!
Dave's awesome.
WE LOVE DAVE!

BE TOLD!!!!!

Music

I love music me.

I love listening to it
I love making it.

It's weird that when I listen to music now that I break down what I'm listening to and work out how it was made.
I can no longer just listen to a piece of music and go "YEAH!!! ROCK!" or "my word I'm moved by that".  I think in terms of keys and the chord progressions, or what the drummers doing or try in vain to understand how the fuck a composer wrote that while I struggle with righting multiple guitar harmonies (DEEP BREATH).

See music is one thing that most people have in common.  People have good tastes and bad tastes but it's all subjective and self opinion (but that's a lengthy topic for some other time).

I love music.
I heard the Inception score the other day.  Zimmer really did a good job with that and even though it's got that big epic feel, it's not quite John Williams' Star Wars.
Star Wars is the measuring stick I use for all film music.
Listen to the main theme, there's so bloody much going on it there, there's not just the trumpet fanfare, everything moves, all the time, it's incredible.

See, Zimmers score is more atmospheric, the main theme is a droning note, a big, awesome bassy note.  But it's so good because it makes you feel huge.  It's kinda hard to explain.
You get that uplift, the hairs on your arms go ZING!
But it's that feeling I like.
I don't get that feeling with metal or rock or country (well very very very occasionally I do) but that doesn't matter because it's still amazing.

Anything that someone creates and puts effort into.

Shit like this amazes me, so simple and so good: Reverend Gary Davis total feel music, he's in the zone for his shit right now.

This too, smojoblues.  Just a guy playing a 3 string cigar box.  But he's making it.  It's all him. Him and the strings.

Simple or complex, it's all created, it's all good.

Pick a tune listen to how someone worked their guts out on that solo, listen to this guys vocals on the chorus, Listen to that fill at the end of the 2nd chorus, the key change here, the bass going off on a ragga trip.
It all works together, you can tell the songs on albums that musicians really put everything into and you can tell the "we need another 14 minutes on the album, let's whack in Bryans song about chickens" ones apart.

Example:  Rearview Mirror from Vs by Pearl Jam a song that starts off simple and builds and builds up the end, same album as Blood, 3 minutes of muck.
You can tell the songs Pearl Jam crafted and the ones they bashed out.
Yeah, some people might like Blood, I don't, this is my blog, I'll say what I bloody like :)

Every band/ composer is the same.  Danny Elfman sometimes sounds like he's gone into auto pilot, so does Alan Silvestry ( you can spot both of them within a few seconds of hearing a score).
BUT!
But, maybe that's it right there, it's their style.  I can spot a Steve Vai solo or a Korn Riff or a Stevie Wonder track a mile off just like I can with most composers scores unless they go experimental, like John Williams War of The Worlds score.

Danny Elfmans Batman Suite

Alan Silvestri Predator Soundtrack - Main Title

John WIlliams Star Wars


This rant really had no point did it?

Or did it?

I'm not sure.

But musics good, don't limit yourself.  Listen to everything.  Except plastic pop shit, that'll suck out your soul.
I have nothing against a well written pop song but soulless churned out, manufactured, auto tuned, over sampled, clinical, 2 lyric pieces of shit need to die.

BE TOLD!!!!!!

I got a real bad feeling about this.

Spent most yesterday editing a drum track in midi and it completely changed the feel of the song for the better.

Drummers will hate me for this next comment but it's not supposed to be a dig.  It's odd that something as simple as a beat can change the feeling of a song.

A prime example of this from the world of Metal (yes with a capital "M") is Domination by Pantera, double time intro into a half time verse, same(ish) riff, different drums, different feel (probably why it's called half time feel).

The main reason Dub Step works so well is the timing changes.  When you get to "the Drop" the drums invariably go to half time which seems to add weight to the entire section.  It's a tool that when used, sparingly, while writing really can change the feel of a song quite tremendously.

Also reverb helps.

And distortion.

And talent, although that's debatable looking at some of the dull eyed drones in the music business just now.

I suppose they don't write the shit they mime to, they're just the seeing part of it.  Some poor wee guy probably on a shit salary is churning out the bland, lifeless, offensive music.

Go listen to Primus or Live or John Williams, just something that was crafted instead of copy and pasted!

BE TOLD!!!!!!