From the category archives:

Music

Kiss Off

by Joey deVilla on May 5, 2009

If you’re a fan of the Violent Femmes (and if you remember rotary-dial phones), you’re going to recognize the reference in this piece of retro-themed art by so0meone going by the name “9 0 0 0”:

kiss_off

There’s more stuff like this in 9 0 0 0’s Flickr photoset titled Plan 9.001.

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Poster for "Anvil! The Stroy of Anvil"

Anvil! The Story of Anvil was the one documentary I really wanted to catch at last year’s Hot Docs film festival. If you watched Canada’s MuchMusic station in the 1980s and its heavy metal segment, The Pepsi Power Hour (hosted by the mullet-sporting JD Roberts, who later became CNN’s silver-haired John Roberts), you might have some dim memories of Anvil and their hits Metal on Metal and 666. It was pretty cheese-a-riffic Canadian metal; when I was a DJ at Crazy Go Nuts University’s Clark Hall Pub, I used tracks from promo CDs of Anvil’s Strength of Steel and Annihilator’s Alice in Hell to get people to leave the pub after the lights had gone on so we could mop the floor.

(Okay, I’ll admit that I sort of liked their hit Metal on Metal.)

Anvil might have remained a footnote in metal history had it not been for a teenage roadie named Sacha Gervasi, who helped lug around gear for the band in the 1980s. Gervasi would later go on to become a screenwriter for movies such as Spielberg’s The Terminal. When Gervasi heard that Anvil were doing a big tour in 2005 and had landed the headline spot at the Monsters of Transylvania Festival, he asked their frontman, “Lips” Kudlow if he could film a documentary of them. “Lips” said yes, and a real-life This is Spinal Tap “rockumentary” ensued.

Every review of Anvil! The Story of Anvil points out that a lot of the mishaps experienced by the fictitious band Spinal Tap actually happen to Anvil, a real-life band. There’s the lifelong “David St.Hubbins/Nigel Tufnel-esque” friendship between the two founders of the band. The guitar player’s fiancee can’t speak English and mismanages the band into disaster. There’s a concert scene where the camera starts with a tight shot of a crowd near the stage and then zooms out to reveals that the band is playing to an audience of 200 in an arena that holds 10,000. The band memebers make ends meet through their day jobs: telemarketing and serving school lunches. There’s even a stranger-than-fiction scene where the owner of a club in the Czech Republic tries to pay the band in goulash rather than cash.

It’s funny, yet heartbreaking at the same time, because while Spinal Tap’s over-the-top problems were make-believe, the guys in Anvil were experiencing them in real life.

Here’s the UK trailer for the movie:

It looks as though Anvil will finally get their break. The movie is getting a lot of praise, people are actually coming to see their shows, and a number of their songs will soon be available as downloads for the Rock Band videogame.

I’m definitely catching the movie once it hits the theatres here.

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Queen’s Opening Acts

by Joey deVilla on March 26, 2009

Queen, live in 1984

For no reasons other than I love the band and my stumbling across this list, here are the names of the bands who’ve opened for Queen:

  • After The Fire
  • Airrace
  • Al Stewart
  • The Alarm
  • Alvin Lee & Ten Years After
  • Ambach Circus
  • Andy Fairweather-Low
  • Angel Child (Änglabarn)
  • April Wine
  • Argent
  • The B-52s
  • The Bangles
  • Belouis Some
  • Big Country
  • Billy Squier
  • The Blasters
  • Bloodrock
  • Bob Seger & Silver Bullet Band
  • Bow Wow Wow
  • Brownsville Station
  • Bullitt
  • Cate Brothers
  • Cheap Trick
  • Chris Rea
  • Cold Chisel
  • The Commodores
  • Craaft
  • Dakota
  • Eduardo Dusek
  • Erasmo Carlos
  • The Exploited
  • Foghat
  • Fountainhead
  • Frankie Miller’s Full House
  • Fruupp
  • Full Frontal Nudity
  • Gary Moore
  • General Public
  • The Go-Go’s
  • Head East
  • Heart
  • Hustler
  • INXS
  • Iron Maiden
  • Joan Jett And The BlackHearts
  • Kansas
  • Kayak
  • Kid Abelha and Os Aboboras Selvagens
  • Kiki Dee
  • Lancelot
  • Level 42
  • Lucifer
  • Lulu Santos
  • Lynyrd Skynyrd
  • Mahagony Rush
  • Manfred Mann
  • Marillion
  • Molly Hatchet
  • Mr. Big
  • The Narcs
  • Ney Matogrosso
  • Nutz
  • The Outlaws
  • Pepeu Gomes and Baby Consuelo
  • Ray Burton Band
  • Red Baron
  • R.E.O. Speedwagon
  • Rory Gallagher
  • The Royal Dragoon Guards
  • Sea Level
  • Seger
  • Solution
  • Sport of Kings
  • Status Quo
  • Steve Hillage
  • Straight 8
  • Storm
  • Styx
  • Supercharge
  • Taste
  • Teardrop Explodes 
  • Thin Lizzy
  • Tombstone
  • Treat
  • Voyager
  • Whitesnake
  • Yesterday And Today
  • Zas
  • Zeno
  • ZiZi Labor

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The “Heavy Metal Band Names” Chart

by Joey deVilla on January 20, 2009

If you’re looking for a name for your heavy metal band, you might find the chart below helpful:

Heavy Metal band name chart
Click the chart to see it at full size.
Found via The Triumph of Bullshit.

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“Before the Music Dies”: The Full Documentary

by Joey deVilla on January 2, 2009

In an earlier article, Branford Marsalis’ Take on Students Today, I posted a video in which jazz.funk sax man Branford Marsalis talked about his music students. His first lines in the interview are:

What I’ve learned from my students is that students today are completely full of shit.

That is what I’ve learned from my students. Much like the generation before them, the only thing they are really interested in is you telling them how right they are and how good they are.

I mentioned that the interview comes from a documentary titled Before the Music Dies,  a documentary film in which filmmakers Andrew Shapter and Joel Rasmussen “traveled the country, hoping to understand why mainstream music seems so packaged and repetitive, and whether corporations really had the power to silence musical innovation.”

A reader named “Tomas” said in a comment to the article that Before the Music Dies was posted in its entirety on Google Video. You can watch it in the little video window above, or at a larger size on its Google Video page. If you really care about music, whether as someone who plays it or simply enjoys it, watch it; you’ll find it’s two hours well-spent.

You can also buy the video on DVD for US$14.99 or download it for as little as US$2.99 from the Before the Music Dies site.

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Vatican Forgives Lennon

November 23, 2008

I think it’s rather sporting of them:
The Vatican’s newspaper has finally forgiven John Lennon for declaring that the Beatles were more famous than Jesus Christ, calling the remark a "boast" by a young man grappling with sudden fame.
"The remark by John Lennon, which triggered deep indignation mainly in the United States, after many [...]

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Happy 10th Anniversary, “Baby One More Time”!

November 3, 2008

Before November 3rd passes, I must make it known, that today, November 3rd, 2008, is the tenth anniversary of the release of Britney Spears’ single Baby One More Time. I wonder if Ms. Spears wishes she could take a time machine back to those more innocent days and re-do some of her life choices.
Here’s the [...]

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“Take on Me”, Literally

October 8, 2008

I love this: it’s the video for A-ha’s 1985 hit single, Take on Me, but with lyrics that match what happens in the song’s video to high-larious effect.

This isn’t the first time the video’s been parodied — Family Guy took a crack at it (click the picture below to see the animation):

And for nostalgia’s sake [...]

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“Musical Key to Unlocking Teenage Wasteland”

August 5, 2008

In Australian newspaper The Age, an article titled Musical Key to Unlocking Teenage Wasteland took the results of a study in the most recent Australasian Psychiatry journal and created a chart which seems designed to make parents paranoid about the music their teenagers listen to. I’ve reproduced the chart below:

Your Sounds:
What Studies Say:

Pop
Conformists, overly responsible, [...]

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Music Video of the Day: “New Math”

June 5, 2008

Here’s Bo Burnham singing his nerd-folk/filk song, New Math:

In case you were wondering what the lyrics were, here they are:

What’s a pirate minus the ship? Just a creative homeless guy
And an anteater plus a large hungry mutant ant? An ironic way to die
And what’s domain, domain, range (x, x, y) — a kid with too [...]

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“London Underground”

May 9, 2008

I should’ve posted this video during the recent (and blessedly short-lived) transit strike here in Accordion City, but I remembered it just now. It’s London Underground, a musical rant about Jollie Olde London’s subway system, performed by the team of Adam Kay and Suman Biswas, known as Amateur Transplants. Be advised, it’s pretty sweary:

Here are [...]

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The Crowd at a Rock Show

April 21, 2008

The webcomic Subnormality has done a good job at summing up the audience at a rock show:
Click the comic to see it at full size.

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Ed Force One!

March 18, 2008

If you haven’t yet seen these photos from the Iron Maiden Land in Toronto article in BlogTO, you’re in for a treat: here are photos of Ed Force One, the custom-painted Boeing 757 that Iron Maiden are flying about in their world tour, landing here in Accordion City:
Photos by Tom Podolec. Click the photo to [...]

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“Archie” Comics Meet Pulp’s “Common People”

March 16, 2008

Image from Chris’ Invincible Super-BlogClick the image to see it on its original page.
Back in the mid- to late nineties, one track you couldn’t avoid on alt-rock radio was Pulp’s Common People (from their excellent album, Different Class), a song that pokes fun at the genteel faux-poverty of kids from rich families at art school. [...]

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The Final Countdown, Again

March 5, 2008

Didn’t I just do this?
Once again, it’s my last day at the job, which means I’m cranking that classic of 80’s hair metal: The Final Countdown by Sweden’s gift to rock, Europe.
It’s become a bit of an end-of-job tradition for me that started back at OpenCola, the dot-com that Cory Doctorow co-founded and for [...]

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For Sale on eBay: Pete Townshend’s Camper Van

March 3, 2008

Someone on eBay is selling what they claim to be a VW camper van formerly owned by Pete Townshend of The Who.

Here’s the first part of the description:

TOTALLY UNIQUE. VW CAMPER OWNED AND LOVED BY PETE TOWSHEND AND PARTNER RACHEL FULLER. PERFECT CONDITION. LESS THAN 4500 MILES. MADE IN BRAZIL IN 2005 – SAME [...]

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