From heavy metal hellfire to Hello!
The News Review:
- From heavy metal hellfire to Hello!
- Can’t Miss
- Rollin’ on the (Interstate) River
From heavy metal hellfire to Hello!
Telegraph.co.uk – Jan 14, 2007
A significant part of the Sabbath formula was their determination to escape these Brummie mean streets. Black Sabbath’s way out of Birmingham and their gift to the world was the brand of hard rock known as heavy metal. Heavy metal was and remains an intoxicating brew for teenage boys the world over a seemingly irresistible combination of slow chromatic change widdly-whee guitar acrobatics and lyrics preoccupied with sex death or the devil – in Sabbath’s case all three. McIver catalogues Sabbath’s relationship to the many variations that have followed in the group’s wake (black metal doom metal epic doom stoner doom etc etc till deaf) in terms that may baffle a novice but he is endearingly candid in his account of how Sabbath invented heavy metal – literally by accident. Three members of the group had only the most basic musical skills and the fourth Iommi lost the tips of two fingers while working in a sheet metal factory forging his own rudimentary prosthetics from a melted plastic bottle. The necessary compromises in technique combined with a reaction to the prevailing mood of love and peace (“You wouldn’t wear a flower power shirt walking down the street in Aston!”) and a Dennis Wheatley-ish focus on the occult produced something unexpected – not just a batch of still-spectacular records such as Paranoid War Pigs and Iron Man but an entire musical genre as stupidly exciting (or excitingly stupid) today as it was then. McIver is especially good on the music’s strengths and weaknesses and his enthusiasm for early Sabbath is infectious… A significant part of the Sabbath formula was their determination to escape these Brummie mean streets. Black Sabbath’s way out of Birmingham and their gift to the world was the brand of hard rock known as heavy metal. Heavy metal was and remains an intoxicating brew for teenage boys the world over a seemingly irresistible combination of slow chromatic change widdly-whee guitar acrobatics and lyrics preoccupied with sex death or the devil – in Sabbath’s case all three. McIver catalogues Sabbath’s relationship to the many variations that have followed in the group’s wake (black metal doom metal epic doom stoner doom etc etc till deaf) in terms that may baffle a novice but he is endearingly candid in his account of how Sabbath invented heavy metal – literally by accident. Three members of the group had only the most basic musical skills and the fourth Iommi lost the tips of two fingers while working in a sheet metal factory forging his own rudimentary prosthetics from a melted plastic bottle. The necessary compromises in technique combined with a reaction to the prevailing mood of love and peace (“You wouldn’t wear a flower power shirt walking down the street in Aston!”) and a Dennis Wheatley-ish focus on the occult produced something unexpected – not just a batch of still-spectacular records such as Paranoid War Pigs and Iron Man but an entire musical genre as stupidly exciting (or excitingly stupid) today as it was then. McIver is especially good on the music’s strengths and weaknesses and his enthusiasm for early Sabbath is infectious.
Can’t Miss
Washington Post – Jan 14, 2007
The Gatesof Hell Party[concert] Even if you aren’t a fan of industrial-goth-metal (but c’mon who isn’t?) this evening headlined by Richmond quartet Synthetic Nightmare should still be fun. There is an open bar from 8 to 9 p. after which guests wearing priest or zombie costumes get in for $3. How many opportunities do you get to break out the Roman collar?Tuesday at 8 p… LEND ME YUR EAR:MUSIC LISTENING 101 WITH DAVEY YARBRUGH– Friday at 6:30 p. The jazz saxophonist and educator who chairs the instrumental music department at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts discusses the history and improvisational nuances of jazz in this pre-concert lecture. The Music Center at Strathmore 5301 Tuckerman Lane Bethesda.
Rollin’ on the (Interstate) River
Lakewood Buzz – Jan 14, 2007
Get out here in the spacious places and people are going farther faster for less. I can’t extrapolate my formula to say New England or even Idaho but it held for the lower heartland. n a radio station that starts with K I listen to classical music hosted by Jeff Esworthy the Jeff I know from his days in Kent hio to be an aficionado of off-color jokes and flat-out the best old-time fiddler I’ve ever played with the Jeff I know is now in Minnesota not in klahoma. It’s the NPR version of local-radio-that-really-isn’t. The banks of this river of road turn red. Farmland morphs into rangeland. I see horses llamas miniature donkeys and bison but mostly cattle massive rectilinear blocks of beef mighty hunks of Black Angus cholesterol on the hoof… I wonder briefly who would even want such a thing and drift idly into wondering what part of the animal yields a steak that size. I never learn the answer to the second question but get at least one answer to the first. Days later eating breakfast at the 49er Diner in Death Valley National Park I listen in on the next table where a perfectly normal-appearing woman is telling her granddaughters about having ordered a free 72-oz steak. (f course I eavesdrop that’s what you do when you eat out alone. ) She tells the story so well I don’t even have to admit I’m eavesdropping by asking her questions to fill in the details. The deal is it’s free only if you eat it all within an hour. And you have to eat not just the steak she tells them but the bread the vegetables and the mashed potatoes that come with it.