Type O Negative

I recently had a dream that myself and some other person – female, but I can’t remember who – were hanging out with Peter Steele, initially getting along with him, but eventually he turned creepy and stalking us.  We managed to get rid of him, somehow – without killing him.  Then I woke up and realized, “he’s dead.  No need to be concerned about him anymore.”

A friend of mine turned me onto the New York City band called Type O Negative.  I started with Bloody Kisses – still my favorite – and eventually collected the rest. 

Lineup.   Peter Steele on bass & vocals; Kenny Hickey on guitar; Josh Silver on keyboards; Johnny Kelly on drums.

Discography.  Slow, Deep and Hard; The Origin of Feces; Bloody Kisses; October Rust; World Coming Down; Life is Killing Me; Dead Again.

Live.  I managed to see them a few times.  The most important show was the first, headlining at the Old 9:30 Club in DC on May 10, 1994.  Then two opening slots, for Danzig at Mike’s Eighth Avenue near BWI in Maryland, November 29, 1994, and as one of many opening acts at the first Ozzfest at Nissan Pavilion (now Jiffy Lube Live) on May 24, 1997.   Excellent shows, but again the headlining one is the one I remember most.  Peter Steele would talk back to the crowd, a New York thing about hecklers.

The sound is heavy and gothic, with Steele having a deep voice.  “Black #1” and “Christian Woman” are my favorites, plus their counterintuitively slow and heavy cover of “Summer Breeze” - all from Bloody Kisses.  They also covered Neil Young’s “Cinnamon Girl”.  Think Black Sabbath slowed down even more, similar to Electric Wizard.

Steele was the heart and soul of the band.  6’8”, certainly imposing, and handsome enough to pose for Playgirl in 1995, a move he later regretted when too many guys paid attention to it.  He died in 2010 of a heart aneurysm.  I’m glad I saw the band in concert at least once as a headliner, and I’ll have to make it a point to listen to TON a bit more often again in his memory. 

One more thing. I can't speak for any of the band members, but years ago when I donated blood, I ascertained my blood type.  Take a wild guess....

The True Fans

Here’s a Wednesday blog as Thursday is Turkey Day and I don’t know if I’ll be in the office on Friday.  Plus there are some football games played on Thursday – all between division rivals.  So the topic might be appropriate.

As you may know, I’m on the Book of Faces and a fan of the Minnesota Vikings, which I have been since the late 1970s, a time when their quarterback was the much-beloved (at least by Vikings fans) Fran Tarkenton and the team had just lost its fourth and final Super Bowl.   Notwithstanding its 6 NFC Championship losses since then, a few of them agonizingly close, I still support the team and hope it will finally win the Big One.  That is, win the NFC Championship and THEN beat the Chiefs, Dolphins, Raiders or Steelers.   Or whichever AFC team it’s up against, possibly even the Patriots.  Hey, Eli Manning is 2-0 and Nick Foles is 1-0 against Tom Brady, so it can be done.

Anyhow.

Obviously there are Vikings pages on the Book of Faces and us Vikings fans might have cause to dispute things between ourselves.   In observing and participating in these spirited discussions I’ve observed three types of fans.

Type C:  The Fair Weather Fan.   We all know the type:  sporting team gear when the team is competitive but oblivious to the sport itself otherwise.  We love to wrap ourselves in the warm cloak of self-righteous contempt against such fans.   Of course.  Not sure how many Vikings fans are like that now, as the team isn’t exactly dominating its division.  Actually, with both the Bears and Lions getting competitive, along with our hated rivals the Packers, no one team can be said to have a lock on the division championship.  It may well get down to the wire this season, with the losers not even guaranteed wildcard slots.  We’ll see. 

Then there’s the Type B:  The Fanatic.  No matter how poorly the team is doing and how strong its opponent, regardless of whether we’re playing an away game and our star players are all injured, this fan loudly proclaims, with utmost conviction and sincerity, that we’ll win the game.   More to the point, this fan accuses anyone who doesn’t share his optimism as a Type C fan.  Huh?  Come on.   We’re Type A.

Type A:  The Realist.  We support the team even if it’s 0-16 (fortunately the Vikings have never been that bad, unlike our pals in Detroit) or if the coach is obviously a moron.  We’ll cautiously support the team against all opponents but feel free to express skepticism when the opponent is relatively stronger.  Our worst fault is Monday morning quarterbacking.   I try to avoid this, and stick to simply making observations I know are supported by the facts and evidence, because I can’t claim to know nearly enough to exceed the skills of even our most incompetent coach.   

Ideally we should all be Type A, supporting the team through thick and thin but not mindlessly cheering when the team does stupid things or loses games it should win.  Personally, the Type B’s strike me as the same type to support popular demagogues – how many Type B Vikings fans not only voted for Trump but still support him even now?  No clue, but I have my suspicions.  

Now, repeat this for the other 31 teams in the NFL, all the MLB baseball teams, the NBA teams, the NHL (probably quite a few Type C Capitals fans nowadays, Ovechkin being far more ubiquitous than he was before), and so on.   And knock yourselves out this Thursday.   Hopefully Mike Zimmer has a plan to beat the Packers next Sunday.   Or perhaps tie again?

Sell Out!

One beef I hear quite often is that bands “sell out”.  That is, they betray their fans and their heritage by changing their sound to sell more albums and make more money.  I’d like to address this issue.

As professional musicians their job is to write and record music, then perform it, to a sufficient level of competence that a critical mass of people are willing to purchase the music and pay to see them perform it.  It would be odd to suggest that a band deliberately write music to minimize their audience and income.   “We need to write music good enough that people actually buy it, but not so good that too many people like it.”

Having said that, I rarely watch the Grammy award shows and almost never listen to the bands and artists who win the most.  My own tastes center around AC/DC and Black Sabbath, plus stoner rock, the Beatles & Beach Boys, and progressive rock like Pink Floyd (who played stadiums in the late 70s, including Montreal!) and King Crimson (not the same level of popularity).   Some bands I like only play clubs and very likely will never play any larger venues:  Clutch and many stoner rock bands.  But if by some miracle Clutch had a top 10 album and were thrust into a spotlight headlining hockey arenas or music festivals, I’d be just as happy to see them there as I am to see them at the current places they play, mainly small local clubs.

Here are some examples.

Aerosmith.  Originally a classic rock band in the 1970s with an excellent album, Toys in the Attic, years later they hit it big with Permanent Vacation and other similar albums.   These are clearly more commercially oriented than Toys in the Attic, though you can be sure they continue to play the older material live.  Did they sell out?  Probably.  Are they worth seeing?  Sure.   Is the new material worth listening to?  Maybe on Spotify, but I wouldn’t spend my money on it.

Metallica.   Three thrash-defining albums with Cliff Burton on bass:  Kill ‘Em All, Ride the Lightning, and Master of Puppets.  Cliff died touring the last album, replaced by Jason Newsted, and the band blew everyone away with …And Justice For All.  Here’s an example of an album which achieves commercial success based on its merits rather than any deliberate attempt to sell for the sake of selling.  I’d argue the following album, self-titled Metallica, aka the Black Album, is more of the same, roughly the same running time of music divided into 12 songs instead of 9.   Because if you really thought the Black Album was the sellout, you’re wrong: it was the next album, Load.   Subsequent albums Re-Load and St. Anger gave us more of the same, Death Magnetic as well, and Hardwired…to Self-Destruct sounds like a return to the more traditional Metallica sound.

We saw the band tour recently in 2017, but the last show we saw was 1997, on the Load tour – our first show was (yes, I’ll mention it yet again) Donington 1985, on the Ride the Lightning tour.  We were not impressed with Re-Load through Death Man-getic and only Hardwired persuaded us to return to the camp.    

Def Leppard.   Did they sell out?  Yes.  Did they get away with it?  Remarkably, yes.  Initially yet another New Wave of British Heavy Metal band like Iron Maiden, Saxon, and Metallica-inspirers Diamond Head, Def Leppard had a forgettable debut album, On Through the Night, a killer second album, High’n’Dry (my favorite) produced by John “Mutt” Lange – the man responsible for AC/DC’s Highway to Hell, Back in Black, and For Those About to Rock (We Salute You) – and an excellent, if somewhat more commercial third album Pyromania which blew the doors open for them.   The next album, Hysteria, really threw off the pretense of metal and said, “ladies, line up here.”   However, it did eventually catch up with them after subsequent albums simply gave us more of the same and fans lost interest.  They still tour, but none of the albums have come close to matching Hysteria’s sales. 

Pink Floyd.  Here’s a weird case.  Obviously Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals and The Wall sold far more than Piper At the Gates of Dawn through Obscured By Clouds, the prior albums.  But arguably they should have – they are much stronger albums.  How often does anyone listen to “The Grand Vizier’s Garden Party” or “Sisyphus” (Mason and Wright’s studio contributions to Ummagumma)?  I certainly watch “Live at Pompeii” and enjoy Atom Heart Mother, but I’d say the later material is still better.  

  

Some bands actually go backwards, starting out trying to sell millions of albums and then switching to simply writing whatever material they feel like, without any concern for sales.

Deep Purple.  Guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, bassist Nick Simper, and keyboardist Jon Lord were frustrated with the lack of success of their respective bands in the late 60s and recruited singer Rod Evans and drummer Ian Paice to form Roundabout, quickly retitled Deep Purple.  From spring 1968 to summer 1969 they had three albums, Shades of Deep Purple, Book of Taliesyn, and (self-titled) Deep Purple, but despite touring the US opening for Cream and Vanilla Fudge, couldn’t get anyone much interested in them.  Their material was 50% covers and generally calculated to sell – and didn’t.   By July 1969 they’d persuaded singer Ian Gillan and bassist Roger Glover to quit their now-stagnant prior band Episode Six and by early 1970 had In Rock out in the record stores.  This was followed by Fireball and Machine Head.   Note, of Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and this band, only Deep Purple released a live album, Made in Japan, at the same time as the tour it was recorded on.  The band only became successful AFTER it stopped trying to be successful.  So much for that.

The Beatles.   Same deal here.   The earlier material was intended to move units, by Sgt. Pepper they decided to stop touring and record whatever they wanted to.  Of course, by then they had established themselves as a band people wanted to hear, so John-Paul-George-Ringo aren’t quite the same as Ian G-Roger-Ritchie-Jon-Ian P (aka Deep Purple Mark II).  Be that as it may, they also quit touring, foregoing what could have been lucrative tour income – if only they could get all those screaming girls to shut up.   

Note:  Frank Zappa is famous for hating the Beatles, and my understanding is that he disagreed with the prior analysis of Sgt. Pepper representing a break with their prior commercial tendencies, cynically concluding that the band simply changed its tactics but not its strategy.  In fact, he titled his third Mothers of Invention album We're Only In It For The Money and designed the cover as a deliberate parody of Sgt. Pepper's famous cover.  It's hard to miss the point Zappa was trying to make.

Oddly, he liked the Monkees, who if anything were far more egregious than the Beatles.  Zappa’s distinction was that the Monkees themselves were trying to break out of the commercial prison they’d agreed to play in, insisting on playing their own instruments on the albums and writing their own material.  Fair enough, except that the Beatles had been doing so since Please Please Me.  I can scarcely imagine that the Monkees themselves, or their biggest fans, would compare Headquarters to Sgt. Pepper.   Mind you, the bands themselves got along with each other, and the Beatles encouraged the Monkees to expand beyond their original commercial constraints.  In terms of 60s psychedelic idiocy, Magical Mystery Tour and Head are probably about equal.  Getting back to Zappa’s assessment of the Beatles, though, even Rubber Soul and Revolver are far different than Please Please Me, “Tomorrow Never Knows” lights years apart from “Love Me Do”.   I’m a big fan of Zappa, but I’m also a fan of the Beatles, and on this issue I’ll side with the Liverpool guys over Frank.

In general I find this tendency to scream “sell out” whenever a band begins to achieve more commercial success to be the rock equivalent of “snowflake” status.   It’s really convenient that this seem to happen AFTER the person has already been seeing the band in concert.   Anyhow.   Sometimes the material sells more because it’s better, sometimes not, not necessarily one or the other.  As noted, there’s Def Leppard and there’s Pink Floyd.  Decide after listening to the music itself, NOT because the band wound up at the Grammys.   

NRA Wish List

I’m suffering writer’s block this Friday.  This is blog #660, and of course I prefer to avoid repeating myself – not that I’m aware of anyone actively searching the blog archives or calling me out on repetitions.  I haven’t seen any memorable films or finished any books, and I suppose there’s a limit to how many times I can bestow praise and esteem on yet more bands distorting Orange amps (what happened to Marshall?  Well, at least Monster Magnet still uses those) while invoking bongs, blunts, 4:20 etc.  Nor am I inclined to talk about drugs, legal or otherwise, constantly, or bitch yet again about the guy in the White House.

I’ve already commented at length fairly recently about my arsenal, such as it is, so I’ll wax poetic about the weapons I want.

Class III.  Technically full-auto weapons are legal if you the patience to go through the BATF procedures.  The issue really isn’t paperwork, it’s money:  these guns had to have been in the US before 1986, so regardless of how many million were made during WWII, if it wasn’t brought into the US before 1986, it can’t be brought in now.  The biggest problem is that they are EXPENSIVE.   Of course they go through ammo quickly as full auto weapons, but they’re expensive to buy.   Unless someone knows of a PPSH for less than $1000?  I didn’t think so.

Having said that, my Class III Wishlist would be:

1.         MG34 or MG42.  German WWII machine guns.   [8mm Mauser.]

2.         MP EMP aka Erma.  A German submachine gun used in the Spanish Civil War and by SS units during WWII.  Wood stock with a foregrip and slits in the cooling sleeve.  [9mm]

3.         PPSH SMG.  Famous Russian WWII submachine gun, used a 71 round drum magazine.  Also used by North Koreans and Chinese during the Korean War.  This has a fairly high rate of fire, 900 rpm. [7.62x25mm].

Normal Weapons Ordinary People Can Afford.

Luger.  We have the replica, but actual Lugers are not that expensive – well, aside from those chambered in .45.  I just never got around to buying one.  [9mm]

Short Magazine Lee-Enfield Mark III.   The WWI variant.   Classic bolt action, [.303 caliber, as invoked in “Breaker Morant”].  As seen in countless movies if the British or Canadians are involved.

Springfield Armory Saint.   I sold my AR15 awhile ago, replaced it more recently with an AK47, but I dare say anyone’s arsenal should include an AR15.  This is the most recent version with all the refinements, but remarkably it costs less than $1000.   And it looks nice, though I miss the M16-looking ones; the one I used to own looked exactly like an M16.  Nowadays too many have some bizarre handguard that looks like there should be a gaming computer somewhere inside.  [.223/5.56mm]

FN FAL.  Eons ago we bought toy versions of this in Belgium, of all places.  It’s semi-auto. The Brazilian Army uses them, and with Bolso taking power I’m sure the Exercito Brasileiro will get more publicity in the near future.   I’d go with the 21” variant.  DSArms sells one for a sane price.   [.308 (7.62x51) (actually the two aren’t EXACTLY the same but whatever)]. 

Gewehr 98.  The original Mauser rifle for the German Army, first used by Germans in the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 in China, then throughout WWI, until replaced in the 1930s by the 98K.  Best seen in “All Quiet on the Western Front”. [8mm Mauser.]

Gewehr 43.   Since I already have a WWII Mauser 98K, this would be next step.  Germany’s copy of the Garand, i.e. its attempt at a semi-auto infantry rifle to replace the bolt-action K98 and thus come even with US forces, didn’t do too well, and the STG44 was more popular with Fascists even if made in similar numbers (400,000).  I saw one at a gun show for $2800.  Maybe I’ll find one for cheaper when I actually have the money.  Not counting on it.  [8mm Mauser.]  

Joe Rogan

Recently I had the good fortune to watch two Joe Rogan comedy specials on Netflix Streaming.   The man is seriously funny.   As so often happens when I discover something I like, I go on the Interweb and look for more stuff by the same person.  With regard to Joe Rogan, this is what I found.

NewsRadio.   A network sitcom from 1995-1999.   The main actors are Dave Foley – best known from “The Kids in the Hall” – and Phil Hartman, best known from Saturday Night Live, particularly his dead-on portrayals of Reagan, Bill Clinton and Frank Sinatra.  Sadly his wife had some serious issues and killed him and then herself.  Not good.  Maura Tierney, the patient mom in “Liar Liar” opposite Jim Carrey, and Stephen Root, later playing Milton in “Office Space” and more recently the Man in the High Castle himself, plays the boss.  

Where does Joe Rogan fit in this?  He’s the radio station’s electrician, who comes in periodically to make off color remarks and set up Dave’s laptop for Internet porn. 

UFC/MMA.  He became interested in jiu-jitsu, karate, and mixed martial arts, eventually achieving more fame and notoriety as an announcer (e.g. for UFC) than a participant, according to his website he achieved black belt at age 15.  [I took aikido for several years in the late 90s and finished up with a first degree black belt.   I suppose a Steven Seagal blog may be coming up in the distant future, but no promises.]

Fear Factor (2001-2006 and 2011-12).   I zoned out on this when it was on, as I’m not a fan of reality shows, let alone one which has the contestants doing all sorts of weird, gross and disgusting stuff.  He may have been an excellent host for all I know, but the subject matter of the show is too far distant from my interests to induce me to watch simply for his sake.

The Zookeeper (2011).  Kevin James' marginally memorable film about a zookeeper.  Rogan plays his romantic rival for the love of Stephanie (Leslie Bibb).  He seems to be playing an evil version of himself, in any case far more entertaining than James, and in that regard competitive with Ken "Venom" Jeong and the animals themselves for being the true stars of this movie.  

PodCasts.    These are long but intriguing.   So far I’ve only seen the one with the mushroom guy, Paul Stamets (#1035), but he’s done many others.  Most are with MMA people and fellow comedians, but here’s a nonexhaustive list of the ones who I recognized and interest me:  Kevin Smith (three times), Anthony Bourdain, Doug Benson, Bobcat Goldthwait, Tommy Chong, Maynard James Keenan (singer for TOOL), Andrew Dice Clay, David Lee Roth, Paul Stanley, Joe Perry, Gary Johnson, Jesse Ventura, Jordan Peterson, Scott Adams, Ronda Rousey, Jay Leno, Roseanne Barr, Diamond Dallas Page, Larry Sharpe, Elon Musk, Henry Rollins, Neil Degrasse Tyson, Russell Peters, Dave Foley, Andy Dick (both on NewsRadio), Adam Corolla, James Hetfield, Shirley Manson, Jamie Foxx, Pauly Shore, Russell Brand, Danica Patrick, and Mel Gibson.  As I said, non-exhaustive.  These are fairly long, so I have neither the time nor patience to watch them all.

Standup Comedy.   By now I’ve seen several amateur comedy shows at clubs and one professional:  Russell Peters at Atlantic City.  Rogan himself has been doing it for 20 years, but as yet I haven’t seen him and don’t see that he’s currently touring.  I have seen his two Netflix Comedy Specials.  These are stand-up shows filmed for and shown on Netflix:  the ones I’ve seen are his two most recent:  Triggered (2016) and Strange Times (2018).  Add him to Ali Wong on my list of comedians I care enough to consider seeing live.

Politics.  Rogan is libertarian, so I share his views.  He’s pro-weed and pro-liberty, and not shy about supporting libertarian causes and candidates (Larry Sharpe and Gary Johnson were both on his show).   Not only that, he’s vocal about this in his comedy shows, so by all means knock yourself out.  Somehow I doubt he’ll run for any office, but we’ll see.  Who imagined we’d have the current President?