18 and Life

Dear James,

A couple of months ago I was taking the piss out of Skid Row and told you how their singer, Sebastian Bach (real name Sebastian Bierk), deserved a whole piss-taking post of his own. James, this is that post:

1. Sebastian Bach (real name Sebastian Bierk) named his 3 children Paris, London and... Sebastiana. If you and I were anything like Sebastian, I'd have a son called Stockport and you'd have one called Saint Saviour. Well, you'd have a son anyway. I suppose in many ways you have become more like Sebastian Bach than I will ever be. Unless I have a son and name him after a major conurbation, clearly. Leeds-Bradford Tunnard. It's got a ring to it.
2. Sebastian Bach (real name Sebastian Bierk) made his Broadway debut in 2000 in the title role of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
3. In 2002, SB (RN Sebastian Bierk) played the title role in a touring company's production of Jesus Christ Superstar. He was fired for "diva-like behaviour". That sounds unfair. If you're playing Jesus Christ you've got to get into the whole "I'm the Messiah" thing, right?



I like to think Sebastian would have at least put more passion into his performance than the guy in the above video. The original album featured Ian Gillan of Deep Purple as Jesus and Murray Head as Judas. Murray Head of course went on to great success in the 80s with One Night In Bangkok.



But I digress:
4. Sebastian Bach was turned down in favour of ex-Stone Temple Pilot Scott Weiland as the lead singer of Velvet Revolver, because Slash said that with Bach they sounded like "Skid Roses". Of course, the fact that that Americans are as ignorant of the phrase "skid mark" as Germans are oblivious to the double meaning of "Bismarck" only adds to the humour.

5. Bach played the guitarist in the Korean girls' band in Gilmour Girls. As a married man, I endured the Gilmour Girls for years. I'm so gutted this huge comic moment passed me by at the time.



You may notice how he mispronounces the phrase "breast-feeding route".

6. Like many people, Bach went 13 years without speaking to W.Axl Rose. They made up, and Bach joined Axl's Not N Really aNymore Guns N Roses on stage on May 12, 2006, singing My Michelle. He then rejoined them on stage on May 14, singing My Michelle. He joined them again on June 4, 6 and 9, singing My Michelle. And again on September 23, singing My Michelle.



Eventually, they let him sing Nightrain as an encore, but only because Axl was "ailing".

7. 2006 was a busy year for Sebastian. He also formed a supergroup for the VH1 reality show "Supergroup" with Scott Ian (Anthrax), Evan Seinfeld (Biohazard and porn), Jason Bonham (Led Zep drummer, son of dead Led Zep drummer), and Ted Nugent (Ted Nugent). Oddly for a man with a 20-year career behind him, the reality show gets more words on his Wikipedia page than anything else. Which is probably about right.

8. That above article goes on for a bit, so I'll leave you with this gem:

In 2007, on an episode of the Trailer Park Boys season seven titled Friends of the Road, Bach played himself as a celebrity guest hosting a model train convention

I just don't know what to make of that, aside from the envy that Bach got to host it and not me, when I know loads more about trains. Anyway, 18 and Life, fantastic song in the late-80s glam rock vein of picking a name at random (Ricky, Billy, Johnny, etc) and writing a story about a young kid gone off the tracks. Great video too. Youth Gone Wild, meh.

Monkey Business

Dear James,

What's this funk,
That you call junk?
To me it's just monkey business.

Back in the summer of 92, the cool metal kids who wouldn't let me join their gang were listening to something heavy which I didn't recognise. This came as a shock. I'd spent the previous two years watching my Raw Power videos over and over again to become the ultimate metal geek.
"Who is this?" I cried over the wanky guitar solo.
"Skid Row", said one of the metal boys.
"Damn!" I thought.

You see, Skid Row didn't used to be like this. They used to be hair metal and sing songs about Ricky, the lost kid acting tough on the streets. My friend Gary who listened to Bon Jovi and Def Leppard, listened to them, which made them officially crap and for girls only. Then Sebastian Bach (real name Sebastian Berk) got into Pantera and they went heavy. It was OK to like them, even though Sebastian Bach had luscious long hair and looked like a girl.

We'll have more on Sebastian Berk later, as his Wikipedia page is ripe for piss-taking, but for now I'll tell you about my bass guitar idol between the summer of 92 and the autumn of 92, Rachel Bolan (real name James Southworth), who wrote this song with Dave "The Snake" Sabo (real name David "Michael" Sabo). The thing I idolised most in MRs. Bolan was his nose chain, which went all the way from his nose piercing to his pierced ear (see here). I tried to pull off the look myself, but those chains are really heavy. Plus, you can get away with that look in certain circles in Los Angeles, but you go out with that in in your nose in Stockport on a Friday night and there's no way you go home with it.

Monkey Business has some of the best rock lyrics ever, such as "Kangeroo lady with her bourbon in her pouch, can't afford the rental on her bamboo couch". Eh? Who rents a bamboo sofa? "Little kiddies playing dollies in the New York rain, thinking Bowie's just a knife". That one had me when I was 16. What's a Bowie knife? how could anyone not have heard of David Bowie? The song also includes two of my favourite rock guitar moments: At 0:59 ("widdly widdly phrooom!") and at 2:01 ("phroom -kjnk, kjnk, kjnk!").

But Monkey Business wasn't the song the cool boys were listening to. No, I got into Skid Row for the same reason I got into Guns N Roses through "It's So Easy": They said "fuck" in a song. In fact, in "Get The Fuck Out", they said it loads. It was great.

Paradise City

Dear James,

I had one of those "where did all that time go?" moments at work the other day. I was doing the subtitles for episode one upstairs, where our remaining designers work while listening to Radio Kabul, a fine radio station if ever I heard one. I find this with designers, being able to work with music on. I find it very distracting. Even now I'm writing this while listening to Guns N Roses and I can't hear myself think. Anyway, there we were when this song came on and I remembered when it came out for the second time (the first release failed to chart) in 1989, kicking off my switch from Queen-fidelity to dabbling in metal. I realised that this made it the first time I was aware of music in the big wide world out there (apart from Queen, which was always very much a private thing) and that this had happened a full 20 years ago. Until that moment I had considered "Paradise City" as the start of "modern" in my record collection, as opposed to the "old" stuff. It turns out that there are probably a billion or two young whipper-snappers on this planet who categorically categorise this song among the old, like when you'd listen to Dave Lee Travis with your mum on a Sunday morning in the late 80s and hear ELO songs from what appeared to be a bygone era but turned out to be nothing earlier than 1979.

So then I got to thinking that from Paradise City up to 1999 I could quite easily give a visitor to planet Earth (or my children, whichever comes first) a full and frank overview of the past decade in music: big-hair rock, Madchester, shoe-gazing, grunge, Metallica, Britpop, 60s, 70s and 80s revivals, Take That, Spice Girls, the tragedy of Coldplay and the fourth re-release of John Lennon's Imagine. But if my imaginary children or this imaginary spaceman overprioritising pop culture in his bid for world dominance were to say to me: "Tell us about the music of the period between 2000 and 2009, we're not altogether happy with the phrase "the noughties" but haven't been able to come up with a better alternative", I'd smile at them blankly and hope they'd think I'd gone senile rather than thinking I didn't really know much about anything. And then they'd go off and get into all kinds of music from the period between 2000 and 2009 which I knew nothing about because I'd spent the whole decade listening to Guns n Roses and ELO and reminiscing about Dave Lee Travis.

Do you ever have thoughts like these? Or do you think like Taasha of The Audreys:

"A person quizzed me a few days ago about Paradise City and kept referring to the Axl Rose song, so I told him to imagine it for the women," Taasha offers. "Axl's singing that the grass is green and the girls are pretty with his misogynist view, so what was it like for the women in that city? Well it was probably pretty fucked. I really love people's interpretations of our songs and they're often more interesting than our own."

Incidentally, Slash's suggestion for the second line of Paradise City was "Where the girls are fat and they've got big titties". This was tragically vetoed by the rest of the band.

Dear Daniel,

It explains why Velvet Revolver didn't catch on in quite the same way as G'n'f'n'R.

Do you think your lack of naughtie-knowledge if down to your interest drifting away from modern stuff or it is that you are living in a different culture to the musical one you reference from 60s - 2000?

A lot of what you speak about it down to a shared frame of reference in one country. A rough 2000s from here looks, on guitar, like The Strokes through The Libertines, Franz Ferdinand, Arctic Monkeys, The Killers while at the same time pop was doing Destinys Child, J-Lo, through Pink, Busted, McFly, the rise of the Black Eyed Peas and underground was turning the internet into a modern socialist revolution.

But in America, the whole guitar scene listed above is largely unknown and is replaced with Eminem and Emo. Pop's much the same, but it's all about marketing by multinationals so that's unsurprising.

Anyway, it's not like you've never heard of these acts. What are you talking about?

Dear James,

Yeah but no but, I've heard of them but they haven't formed any kind of soundtrack to my life in the last ten years, and due to my refusal to listen to much radio I've been making my own ignorantly oblivious soundtrack. Right here, on this blog.

Plasticities

Dear James,

In my search for half-decent music on Argentinian TV, I recently came across I-Sat's Basement Recordings, a half-hour program of hip musicians recording songs in what we are led to believe is a dingy cellar, but in all likelihood is a ground-floor TV studio with no windows. No matter, I-Sat is now officially my favourite channel, if only for their Friday night comedy feast of Peep Show, Extras and The Mighty Boosh. Yes, the Mighty Boosh. Maybe it's just my excuse for not going out on a Friday night.

So the other day we had Andrew Bird making his Argentinian TV debut, probably. Many people consider Mr. Bird to be the best rock whistler since Axl Rose chirrupped all over Patience, and I for one am not about to disagree. Sadly, Axl Rose never worked out the whole pizzicato violin sampling thing, and Guns N Roses' music has always suffered for it. Sometimes I like to think I could be a professional musician, then I see Andrew Bird doing things like this and think "Nah..." Sadly, such videos have no similar effect on Axl Rose.

Then this other band came on singing lovely harmonies and arcane lyrics. Good as the I-Sat show is, they do tend to neglect to display the name of the artiste and song title in any prominent position, making them perhaps the Led Zeppelin of the TV world (Led Zeppelin didn't put their name or album title on their first four albums, or release singles in the UK). This means I have to memorize lyrics while enjoying the bands, then google them and see what comes up. Turns out it was Fleet Foxes.

One

Dear James,

Three posts in a day, it´ll be a miracle if you ever get down to that Bob Dylan advert. Anyway, we just found this on youtube and it´s wonderful. I once wasted good money on Apocalyptica Butcher Metallica but this more than makes up for it. How does one headbang and play cello at the same time? The mind boggles.

The original was written by your friends and mine, James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich, back in 1988 or thereabouts. The song tells the story of a young man who loses his arms and legs in battle and uses morse code to tell his doctors to kill him. Yes, that old pop chestnut. It was inspired by the 1972 film Johnny Got His Gun. Or maybe they just used bits from the film in the video (here with dodgy Spanish translation). As a direct result of this video, a Metallica fan spat in Hetfield´s face at a post-gig meet and greet. Metallica had sold out by making their first video, after three albums of strict non-sell-out-ness. I wonder if the same fan now uses youtube, or whether he´s seen Some Kind of Monster and is in the mood for some more backstage spitting. That sounds like an awful euphemism. And here´s something I never knew:

"One" was voted as the 7th of the "100 Greatest Guitar Solos" of all time by readers of Guitar World, placed between "November Rain" by Guns N' Roses (6th) and "Hotel California" by the Eagles (8th).

...And a week later my cousin Amelia deigns to send me this clip on Facebook instead of commenting in the relevant area. Some people! And she lives in Japan and everythinG!

Anaestesia (Cutting Teeth)/Whiplash

Dear James,

How long before this is used as an advert for, I don't know, car insurance? Why can't we metal kids be in on a TV joke or two?

There are many things to recommend this video: Cliff Burton's declaration of ZZ Top love; Dave Mustaine's presentation of Cliff Burton "on the four-string motherfucker"- that's a bass guitar to you and me; one of Cliff Burton's early solos for the band, which ended up on the album as Anaestesia (Pulling Teeth), because obviously that's the first thing you think of when you hear a bass solo; and finally, a song so fast it's nigh on impossible to work out what's going on. And yet Cliff refuses to use a plectrum! That's what I was aiming for in my 1990 bass lessons. I fell well short. Started using a pick, like Duff McKagan. Sigh.

You can admire the young Hetfield's Whiplash lyrics here. It's the only Metallica song to mention "Metallica". There's a pub quiz question for you.

I could take Guns n Roses tapes on access days with my dad, but Metallica had to stay at home.

This is taken from the classic video, Cliff Em All, a tribute to the dead bassist. Jason Newstead must have been gutted that he didn't get a similar tribute, although to be fair he didn't quite die enough, he just went off in a huff. And of all the metal albums and videos I sold at university for beer money, this and Master of Puppets are the two I regret the most.

Mr. Brownstone

Dear James,

Speaking of Elvis, which I was just now, I remembered yesterday's idea for a post about this song. It may have been my state of mind while listening to this seminal rendition from The Ritz in 1988, but I got the impression that it could have been an Elvis Presley cover. It isn't, but try singing along to this with A Little Less Conversation, give it a skiffle beat and I'm sure I'm onto something.

Mr Brownstone was written on the back of a grocery bag by Axl and Izzy after one of those days on the heroin, or Mr. Brownstone as they liked to call it. That's why the grocery bag is vastly superior to the plastic bag. You can write a song on the back of a Tesco bag, but only if you do so before shooting up.

Got The Time

Dear James,

So first I was listening to Black Sabbath and wondering why it had taken me nearly 33 years to get into them. Then I was reminiscing to Iron Maiden's first album. Then I thought, wouldn't it be fun if every time James didn't post after 72 hours, I would post heavy metal videos until he started posting again. Then I searched for Anthrax's Got The Time, that nasty track from the glorious rock year of 1991. My bass teacher once arrived and said "Isn't it awful, that Anthrax song? The bass player can't play in time". I'd just been about to ask him to teach me it. It was favourite song during a week hiatus in between changing from claiming Duff McKagan as my favourite bass player to claiming Cliff Burton as my favourite bass player. My bass teacher's words stayed in the back of my mind, and to this day, I can't for the life of me remember the name of that bassist from Anthrax.

Then I remembered this: Got the Time was a cover of a song written by Joe Jackson, and remembered I had always assumed that Joe Jackson must have been the name of the songwriter in Judas Priest or something. Hang on, I then thought. I know another singer called Joe Jackson, the one who did Is She Really Going Out With Him? Could it possibly be the same person?



What a fucking song!

And I Love Her

Dear Daniel,

Rick Wakeman is currently (2:21pm, 18th December 2008) on 5Live basically busking tunes listeners are asking for. Unfortunately for Rick, he doesn't appear to know a great deal of them. He also just made a big deal of going to a music school and then was asked what a Picardy third was and admitted he didn't know. I guess that's not unusual, but it's more bizarre when Wikipedia includes Roundabout by Yes among the four big modern hits to feature one. Things aren't going well for Rick. He's been using a celeste sound on his keyboard, until Simon Mayo told him he was "turning everything to cheese." I wonder which guest pulled out at the last minute?

That list: And I love Her, Roundabout, Sweet Child o Mine and Black Sabbath's N.I.B.

Watching this bit from a Hard Days Night through again, I wonder why it took so many years for TV to copy the Richard Lester wobbly-camera bits that still look good here even though every show on the box has been doing it since 1995. Have you seen The Bill nowadays? Gor Blimey! Even my gran accepts shakeycam!

Dear James,

As an indication of how busy I am, it's taken me 22 hours to respond to this post. That's shocking blogging. Thanks for that clip of The Bill. Hasn't it changed these days? Although still with unfeasible storylines where accomplishes hand over the loot in broad daylight in the middle of the Arndale Centre. They're just trying to get on TV Burp, aren't they?

Anyway, music. We should probably explain to our reader that a Picardy third is when a song in a minor key changes to major. One of my favourite moments of the 1990s was when the Prime Minister donned a Davey helmet and went down a pit. There's nothing so finer than that change from Major to miner.

Sweet Home Alabama

Dear James,
Is this the worst song ever?
This was on VH1 right before the Hey Saint Peter video, and was no doubt instrumental in heightening my appreciation of the latter. This video has so many things to dislike:
-the barrels under the drum-riser (0:30). Why? Do they have a constant supply of Jack Daniels fed intravenously into every one in the audience so they'll holler more? Are Lynyrd Skynyrd vintners?
- the double bass drum (0:31). Why again? Are they going to launch into a Slayer cover? Or does the drummer have a small penis?
-the futility of having a keyboard player (0:41) with two keyboards for a song that consists of the same three chords over and over again. Is the keyboard pink as well? Does the keyboard player have a small etc and so on?
-all these references to the south (0:59). Can you imagine if there was a war between north and south England, the north lost and Stuart Maconie was left wandering the theatres of West Yorks. with an obsolete flag singing "Sweet Home Wakefield Westgate"? I bet you can.
-there are at least 9 people on stage to perform a song that could easily be done by 4. Are Lynyrd Skynyrd the new GNR? Do they run some kind of musicians' cooperative? Is it so that half the musicians can play interminable solos? Ah.
-the hair. Can't the ageing backing singers share their conditioner around? Sadly, Lynyrd Skynyrd got their name from gym teacher Leonard Skinner, who enforced the school's anti-long hair policy. I suppose once you've made that kind of statement, the barber shop's kind of out.
- I think this is where GNR got their inspiration for their 10-minute version of Knockin on Heaven's Door hey hey hey hey hey yay.

Charlie Garcia, Argentinian nutjob and occasional musician, did a cover of this called Sweet Home Buenos Aires. You don't really want to click on that link.

Alternatively you can watch Free Bird and tell me whether that slide guitar is out of tune or not.