Rock 'N Roll the Metro Map

I love maps. I love rock music. I love history. Not surprisingly, I love someone's attempt to combine all three things into one, as artist theonlyone did with this subway map:

It's marvelously flawed, of course: Van Halen and Elvis aren't on there, for example, and Europe gets a mention, but the progenitors of black metal do not. Emo and Nu-Metal don't deserve their own lines, categorizing Faith No More as just grunge is criminal, and the whole thing is much more a snapshot of current perceptions than reality (although one might argue that a diagram mapping influence would only work as a snapshot). But layout: man, it's beautiful, because it really takes advantage of the subway portion of the concept. Interchanges between lines and the line curves themselves make for an excellent demonstration of genre crossover, and the stations are placed in a rough chronological order that demonstrates where things came from and where they've gone since.

Via MetalSucks

Metal: Why I Listen

I am what some people might call an intellectual, which means - in this case - that I enjoy contemplating ideas and experiences. I also happen to enjoy writing about those contemplations, which is why this blog - and another on a different topic - exist, albeit within the confines of their respective topical spheres. One of the things I think about on a regular basis is why I listen to metal, a line of thinking that I like to think has more in common with "is there a God?" than "am I a meat head for listening to this type of music?" In other words, my motivation stems from natural curiosity about the depths of self than from lack of confidence about my perceptions in the eyes of others.

A couple of weeks ago, when looking for a picture to anoint one particular post, I came across an article entitled "The Philosophy of Heavy Metal," published by the American Nihilist Underground Society. I read the article with interest and do intend to write a response to its ideas at some point in the near future, but today when clicking around the site I came across a passage that struck me. From "History of Heavy Metal Music and the Heavy Metal Subculture":

Its primary distinguishing characteristic is that metal embraces structure more than any other form of popular music; while rock is notorious for its verse-chorus-verse structure and jazz emphasizes a looser version of the same allowing unfetter improvisation, metal emphasizes a motivic, melodic narrative structure in the same way that classical and baroque music do. Each piece may utilize other techniques, but what holds it together is a melodic progression between ideas that do not fit into simple verse-chorus descriptors. Even in 1960s proto-heavy metal, use of motives not repeated as part of the verse-chorus cycle and transitional riffing suggested a poetic form of music in which song structure was derived from what needed to be communicated.

The writing is a little obtuse and the tone more than a little arrogant, but the idea of metal being pop music's answer to classical music jumped out at me and made me wonder if the above paragraph contained the underpinnings of my metalheadom.

It's something I've explored a bit in the past: a love of music is one of the fundamental binders of my mother's family and my parents did their best to inculcate me with the value of classical music from a very young age. Perhaps in response, I did my best to tie my respect for classic music and my love for popular music together into my college thesis (further demonstration of how much time I've spent thinking about these ideas), where I tried to parse the history of progressive metal; i.e., metal in the form where it most apes classical music. Whether or not I succeeded is a question for another time, but looking back I can see the appeal: classical music had practically become part of my genetic material, but all the same, it did not appeal to me on the fundamental, motivational level I craved. Rock music created that motivational drive, but could not answer my need for narrative flow. At its best, metal fulfills both needs and thus I listen.

Metal Mutability

My wife and I had a party at our apartment this past weeend, which isn't relevant to this blog except that it means lots of cleaning, which in turn means I spend time listening to music and pontificating while my hands get the manual labor done. On Saturday my wife was out for the day, so I had the place to myself while I cleaned up the kitchen. To keep me company, I loaded up the stereo with Black Sabbath's Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and Nirvana's In Utero (in that order) and soon fell to thinking about Sabbath's influence on Nirvana and then - just to make things interesting - metal's mutability.

By mutability, I mean the music's incredible ability to successfully meld with almost any other style of Western music you throw at it, making metal like type O negative blood, the universal music donor. Think about it: how many different types of metal can you describe just by combining metal and some other type of music, like mixing chemicals in a vial? Here's a few I came up with off the top of my head:

• Thrash: metal and punk rock.
• Grunge: also metal and punk rock, but Sabbath-style 70s metal instead of 80s style NWOBHM metal.
• Hair Metal: take metal, glam and pop, mix together, shake vigorously. Serve with a cocaine chaser off the back of a stripper.
• Rap Metal: mix metal and rap. Spend years ripping off Rage Against the Machine. Be proud of it.
• Metalcore: metal and hard core. Metal and punk rock mixes tend to be very popular, because punk is almost as diverse as metal.
  
• Progressive Metal: metal and classical or jazz, depending on the artists. Not the same as jazz fusion.
• Industrial Metal: metal and the more hardcore aspects of electronica. Can't see the same thing happening with house music, though.
  

See, isn't this fun?

Live! Tonight! Sell Out!

Going back to the topic I touched on two days ago, let's talk about the other side of the experimentation coin: the all-too-frequent accusation by fans that a band has sold out because they changed their sound.

An example: I was in high school when Metallica released Load. As anyone who follows the band knows, Load marked the culmination of a direction hinted by Metallica, but rendered far more shocking to the metal community by new hair cuts, riffs that were far more hard rock than thrash and Kirk Hammett's incredible collection of facial piercings. The most metal dude I knew at the time (the only metal dude I knew at the time) was a guy named Josh Woodard, a true fan of metal who had hair that hung down his back, a spiked bracelet, wicked shredding ability and an "Up the Irons!" sticker on his guitar. He introduced me to Emperor by playing the opening to Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk over the PA speakers in my school's auditorium, instantly sealing a love for all things black and Norwegian in my heart. After Load came out, such was his outrage that he never referred to Metallica as anything but "Alternica" for the rest of the time I knew him. At the time, I was a callow, inexperienced youth and didn't know enough about either metal or Metallica to recognize a departure when I saw one; later on I became a callow, experienced youth and took up the banner of "they were better before..." and "sell out!" with all of the anger of a disappointed adolescent. Hell hath no self-righteous fury like an idealistic, pig-headed, disappointed teen.

What is selling out? Thus rages the debate. I think Greil Marcus said in Lipstick Traces that selling out as a defamation really took flight with punk rock and the punk movement certainly pushed the concept much further into the consciousness of pop culture, justifying the hanging of anti-heroes with sell out rope with generations of youth rage and idealism. Of course, for all that, there's no official punk rock definition; some might say it's making money off your art, others would draw the line at some level of money making that separates punk bands from rock gods who live in excess, spoiling the purity of the music.

Purity seems to be a strong element, as if the ancient Judeo-Christian customs that glorify the clean and the virgin lurked somewhere in the back of pop culture, affecting even those who scorn them. Purity also means avoiding the dirty taint of the suits who run the music business. Ian MacKaye never sold out in popular opinion because he's embraced DIY and used it to keep the purity of his music, even though he runs a record label. Selling out, therefore, is the destruction of the purity of art through the contamination of money and polluted touch of the profit-oriented hive mind, the classic battle of David (the fans) versus Goliath (big corporate interests). With ideological grounds like these, is it any wonder people get so worked up when they smell sell out?

Rocking With Cars

Two posts about Henry Rollins in two weeks? I must be crazy in the head.

My wife and I were watching Henry Rollins: Uncut from Israel, which debuted last Friday right before the premiere of Season 2 of his talk show. The film features portions of a set he did in Tel Aviv earlier this year, cut with an interview he did with the film maker on his tour bus and a tour he took of the country and makes for some good watching. During the set, Rollins told a story about the first time he went to see the Ramones. As it turns out, the only friend Rollins had with a driver's license was his childhood friend Ian MacKaye, who went on to become one of the most important figures in punk rock. Putting Rollins and MacKaye in the same car, on their way to see a "life changing" Ramones show, seems important enough from a pedantic history point of view, but then Rollins mentioned that every person who was in that car (five or six people) went on to form bands.

Now I'm wondering who else was in that car. Were the bands they founded as lasting (at last in punk term) and influential as Black Flag, Minor Threat or Fugazi, or were they little garage projects that never went very far and ended when someone went to law school? If you told me the names of those other rider on that fateful night, would I recognize any of them? Would I be able to find them in a search engine with minimal difficulty? If so, that trip from Washington, D.C. to Falls Church, VA and back might just be the most important car ride in rock history.