Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Fuck me! Baron Mordant’s not wrong is he? Good of him to cough to it’s brilliance especially as we can now hear what may have in fact been a significant influence on his own recent work. I’ve been trying to get tickets for the next Groundhogs’ gig and can’t as I guess they’re not available yet and, all due respect to E.17 and that, but they appear to be playing at a pub in Walthamstow. This would mean they had a potentially smaller audience these days than say, Earthless, who cover Cherry Red as an encore. Groundhogs for this year’s Supersonic! (for which I have got tickets.)

The whole NWOBHM just bypasses me, I’m afraid. Iron Maiden’s appeal will forever remain a mystery. Same goes for their American descendents pretty much, with the honourable exception of Slayer. I guess it’s all about the return to Sabbath/Blooze for me!

That Ted Nugent track set me of thinking about genuinely weird tracks by major RAWK artists and the best I could come up with was this. I know virtually nothing by Alice Copper apart from this album (Killer) which I only checked out because the band Halo Of Flies (one of the best garage bands of the Eighties) took their name from the track. It’s notable for many reason, partly because it goes through so many “transitions”, a kind of super-hammy idiot prog. Lyrically it’s in "Sympathy for the devil territory" and contains possibly the worst line in the history of Language, I won’t spoil it by putting it down here, just let me say it arrives at 2:15 and ends at 2:19 leaving the listener wondering whether he can possibly have heard it correctly.

Nirvana do a killer version of Love Buzz of course. I assume it’s alright to prefer Bleach to Nevermind. Smells like... is undeniable, but the rest of it’s a bit forgettable for me.

I can’t decide which of these two riffs is better. But I would like to say that Adrian Belew is another one of those kind of consistently inventive, multi-talented (great voice, too), worked-with-everyone-important kind of guys who seems to get very little critical interest in his own right.
yep.... this riff-clash is turning into a right old attention/time absorber innit...
oh and re the Japanese, I now know how to say "I am drunk" and little more. Indiscipline indeed!

1 comment:

Seb said...

"Indiscipline" over "Red" any day of the damn week, man. Arguably my favourite Crimson song.

You could always combine your academic pursuits with the riff war and start mining J-rock for good material. Lord knows there's plenty, plenty, plenty. Speed Glue & Shinki, Flied Egg, Flower Travelin' Band, Inu, Friction, High Rise, Mainliner, Mosome Tonebender, Number Girl, even Melt Banana to some degree.

But skip anything with Kawabata Makoto's name on it if granite-cored, fist-pumping riffery is the ticket. I love Acid Mothers as much as the next westerner-who-loves weird-Japanese-bands, but fuck it.

Oh, and let if be said right now: Les Rallizes Denudés are shite.

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