Rocking the world

The News Review:

- Rocking the world
- ur Picks
- … She Couldn’t Look Jay-Z In The Eye – News Story | Music…
- Reproductive justice victory in Alabama

Rocking the world
New Statesman – Jul 26, 2007
Four decades after the words “heavy metal” were first used by the rock critic Lester Bangs to describe Black Sabbath the West Midlands is rightly celebrating its place as the epicentre of a cultural movement that has swept the globe. Heavy metal has long been sneered at by music snobs for being resolutely proletarian often aggressive and obsessed with macabre occult imagery. ver its 40-year history however it has achieved a level of worldwide ubiquity rivalled only by that of hip-hop. This year the Indian band Parikrama were chosen to support Iron Maiden on two dates in their UK tour. Subir Malik Parikrama’s keyboard player and manager tells me that heavy metal has “exploded” in popularity in India in the past five years. “Even though a minority of Indians speak English people here connect to rock music like crazy” he says… This explanation rings true for thousands of young people around the world: heavy metal speaks to them. And what does it say (apart from “Raaaargh”)? At the Walsall symposium a group of tattooed T-shirted men gathered to discuss the question in earnest. Nic Bullen a founder member of Napalm Death described his band’s low guttural vocals as a form of “pure sound” that connects with listeners at a primal level. The music critic and artist Edwin Pouncey agreed telling how the first time he saw the ultra-noisy industrial metal band Swans play live: “It was like having the air pumped out of the room so you could hardly breathe. It was scary but the greatest feeling in the world.

ur Picks
Washington Post – Jul 26, 2007
The shock-rock chameleon and the granddaddies of death metal bring the noise. Merriweather Post Pavilion 10475 Little Patuxent Pkwy.

… She Couldn’t Look Jay-Z In The Eye – News Story | Music…
MTV.com – Jul 26, 2007
Mya and Claudette rtiz formerly of City High headlined the weekly R&B Live showcase at Spotlight Live in Manhattan New York on Tuesday night. Music industry bigwigs Steve Stoute Sylvia Rhone and Jacob “The Jeweler” Arabo were in attendance as D-Nice manned the DJ booth. Don’t worry about calling Bartman — the Simpsons have the United Nations on their side… The Eagles of Death Metal are starting to write material for the follow-up to 2006′s Death by Sexy. According to frontman Jesse “The Devil” Hughes the guys “hear your cries for boot-skootin’ guitar-rock-tootin’ sex-rock music honeybabies” and promise a 2008 release for their next set. “EDM will quench your musical thirsts with a burst of mantastic-fantastic!!! Album #3 will be the greatest EDM release to date.

Reproductive justice victory in Alabama
Workers World – Jul 26, 2007
She revealed that the doctor was David Gunn who was fatally shot inthe back by an anti-abortion protester in the parking lot of a Pensacolawomen’s clinic in 1993. The first of several abortion providers murdered by the ultra right wing Gunnhad dedicated his life to providing ob-gyn services to women from rural northFlorida to central Alabama including Birmingham. Reproductive rights activistscampaigned after his death for Congress to pass the 1994 Freedom of Access toClinic Entrances Act prohibiting physical force or intimidation from beingused to prevent people from gaining access to a reproductive healthfacility. Sabel stated that with Gunn’s death she immediately began clinic defenseat the Montgomery clinic where he had practiced and had dedicated herself tothe struggle for “each woman to decide for herself whether or when tobear a child… ”Many passersby offered support: office workers on lunch break; anAfrican-American woman in her late teens walking to her high school equivalencyclass nearby; a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Alabama who hailedfrom Ivory Coast. They also turned up the music at their restaurants to heavy metaland loud alternative rock to drown out the SA preaching in the area. During the week at least one-third of the defenders were young people fromtheir late teens to late twenties and about one-third weremale-identified. The right-wing forces spewed non-stop hate including anti-Islam anti-LGBTand anti-woman diatribes. Speakers also gender-baited abortion supportersaccusing them of not being “real” men or women. Another tactic wasthe right-wing forces’ claim that their hate campaign againstreproductive choice was in the same tradition as the heroic Black civil rightsstruggle of the South.