Alice Cooper on The Muppet Show

Kind of reminds me of Max in Where the Wild Things Are.

"Welcome to My Nightmare"

"School's Out"

"You and Me"


Watch the whole show, and find out what Statler and Waldorf think of Alice Cooper's sister:
Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Merry Kissmas

Philip K. Dick that you can bang your head to

Outside of Kraftwerk, sci-fi may have no greater music ally than metal. Everyone from Rod Serling to Isaac Asimov has explored the concept of machine becoming man, but few have done so as effectively as Judas Priest, Meshuggah and White Zombie.

Judas Priest, "Metal Gods"
Set to a chugging riff and the original synchronized headbang, Rob Halford belts a fantastic tale (read the lyrics) of robots reaping their vengeance on mankind. Should the machines ever rage against us, I'd hope we'd get a soundtrack like this to fight them off with. There's also an obvious pun in the title, but the Priest should be commended for understating their status in the music world.


Meshuggah, "Future Breed Machine"
Jens Kidman's accent and death growl make the lyrics (read here) particularly indecipherable, but the music sounds like the A.I. creation it describes--unpredictable, heavy, fast and destructive. Pushing even the most proficient metal into a new arena (figuratively and literally,) "Future Breed Machine" is one of Meshuggah's best songs, and one that still sounds as brutal as any death metal you'll hear.


White Zombie, "More Human than Human"
The sci-fi stylings of Rob Zombie's first band are usually beyond campy, but for their greatest song Rob took inspiration from a line in Blade Runner, which is as unimpeachable as anything that sci-fi's ever offered. What the rest of the words mean is anybody's guess (check 'em out,) but it all sounds pretty beast over that killer slide guitar lick.

"Raining Blood" with Thor

Five reasons to quit your job

There's no end to the amount of great songs about working, quitting your job, getting fired, telling the boss off or struggling to stay on top of a 9-5. However, depending on your tolerance for high volume/awesomeness, here are a few that should be on any mix CD.

Monster Magnet, "Powertip"
An underrated band and absolutely killer live act, Monster Magnet are a filthy stoner metal band that verged on stardom in the late '90s. Best known for their infectious hit "Space Lord," they really struck gold with this song, perhaps the greatest ode to megalomania in existence. It's hard to beat the chorus, "I'm never gonna work another day in my life."


Rebel Meets Rebel, "Get Outta My Life"
While breaking from Pantera, Dimebag, Vinnie and Rex recorded an amazing barfight metal album with outlaw country legend David Allan Coe. Hank Williams III guests on "Get Outta My Life," perhaps the band's strongest track. It's a redneck superstar party that employs rock's oldest and greatest theme--sticking it to authority. Try not singing along by the second chorus. It doesn't work.


Dead Kennedys, "Take this Job and Shove it"
Another DAC composition, this one performed by the irrepressible Dead Kennedys (when they were still talking to each other.) "Take this Job" has been recorded by a slew of different artists, but no one, not even Coe, could sing it with the bite, roguishness and defiance of the eternally obnoxious Jello Biafra.


Bad Brains, "Sailin' On"
This is probably about a girl, but it's vague enough to be a perfect send-off song for any occasion. No one could drop a melody into a hardcore song the way that Bad Brains could, and "Sailin' On" is easily one of the best songs that HR & the gang ever offered. It alone is more than enough to justify the workplace, relationships and even punk rock as a whole.


Rage Against the Machine, "Maggie's Farm"
Of course the original's better, and Dylan fanatics that tell you to check out the Bootleg Series version aren't just being fanatics. But for a heavy rock band telling someone where to shove it, it doesn't get much better than Rage Against the Machine drastic rewrite of one of Dylan's masterpieces. By the time we reach the part about Maggie's brother, I already feel sorry for whoever hired Zack de la Rocha.

The Melvins on Pancake Mountain

The Furious Five

2008 has been an incredible year for music. A lot of it has been chronicled here. However, if you can own only five records this year:

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!

It's official. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds are longer peerless, having joined the upper, upper echelon of immortal musicmakers in their third straight decade of being awesome. "Fierce," "curious," "literate," "delightful," "rich" and "extraordinary" don't begin to describe the talents of ringmaster Cave and his distinct, prodigiously gifted band of miscreants, who created eleven individual worlds on Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, and reported back to save the rest of us from visiting.


Gojira, The Way of All Flesh

No band sounded bigger, cooler and heavier than Gojira, metal's best-kept secret until October 13, 2008. Pulling off technically-baffling prog numbers, mega-hooky death metal stompers and tribal metal jams about global warming as if they were easy as pie, The Way of All Flesh would be heard as an experiment in destroying the boundaries of metal music if listeners weren't too busy getting their senses pummeled by the best metal album of the year.


The Melvins, Nude with Boots

Just when it looked like the rest of the world was catching up to the grungy, uninhibited sound of King Buzzo, Dale Crover & co., the Melvins distanced themselves from everyone by making a supremely weird, catchy, dark and skull-crushingly heavy album, easily a high point in their 25-year career. Extra credit goes to Big Business bassist Jared Warren and drummer Coady Willis for pushing these guys even further than Kurt Cobain did.


Torche, Meanderthal

Melodies soar, guitars pummel and stoner metal gets the startling reinvention its been deserving for all these years. For an album that's devoid of cliche, I'll borrow one to describe it--"Faster than a speeding bullet and more powerful than a locomotive." The recent departure of guitarist Juan Montoya exemplifies how painfully rare a great record like this is, but with Meanderthal, Torche have already made one for the history books.

Amon Amarth, Twilight of the Thunder God

Death metal isn't supposed to be this infectious and power metal never gets this heavy, but Amon Amarth don't bow to any rules or genre conventions on Twilight of the Thunder God. This awesome record channels Norse mythology in a speaker-busting compositional massacre that comes armed with lyrical odes to Thor. Cynic were more technical, Ihsahn took a further leap and Meshuggah were heavier, but it's the band that makes you feel like a Viking for the win every time.

Some other lists you should be checking out:

Those Who Know Music: My comrades at TWKM somehow came up with a top five that complements my own, five must-hear 2008 releases that you should have picked up by now, including Ihsahn, Cynic and Secret Chiefs 3.

Metalsucks: Looking for super generic lists that honor the same three bands? Well, first check yourself, then check out these guys, who offer top tens that'll push your buttons and introduce you to more great music than you can handle. Read the staff lists here.

Sound Opinions: Right, wrong or both, Sound Opinions has the sharpest reviews in the country. Hosts Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot both have reliably fantastic top ten lists this year.

Skullsnbones: Haven't heard most of these, but Iann Robinson has great taste in music, as evidenced by Enslaved, Made out of Babies and Harvey Milk.

About.com: Props for an excellent top ten--the rest is hit and miss, but anything in the first part should make your shortlist, particularly Metallica and Meshuggah.

AV Club: The Onion's spin-off posted a list of celebrity music choices, which gets a link solely for commenter "ZODIAC MOTHERFUCKER" and his endorsement of The Reawakening, the new album from Earache's death metal Aussies The Berzerker.

"FAVORITE ALBUM OF 2008 SHIT THATS EASY SON ITS THE REAWAKENING BY THE BERZERKER BUT YOU KNOW WHAT I SHOULDNT EVEN RECCOMMEND THIS SHIT BECAUSE THIS SHIT WILL JUST STEAMROLL YOUR ASS AND LEAVE YOU WONDERING WHAT THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED YOUR GONNA THINK THE FUCKING APOCOLYPSE IS GOING DOWN AND COMING RIGHT OUT OF YOUR SPEAKERS AND RIGHT THE FUCK DOWN YOUR THROAT OR LIKE SOMEBODY SPRAYING NAPALM IN YOUR EARS AND INCINIRATING YOUR FUCKING BRAIN SERIOUSLY THIS SHIT SHOULD COME WITH A FUCKING SURGEON GENERAL WARNING OR MAKE YOU SIGN WAIVERS OR SOME SHIT SAYING YOU WONT HOLD THE BERZERKER RESPONSIBLE FOR OWNING YOUR FUCKING ASS"

In hopes that we all convey music's awesomeness that well, check out some videos.

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, "We Call Upon the Author to Explain"


Gojira, "Vacuity"


The Melvins, "Suicide in Progress"/"Billy Fish"


Torche, "Healer"


Amon Amarth, "Twilight of the Thunder God"

What do Metallica and Snoop Dogg have in common?

Metallica, "Enter Sandman"


Snoop Dogg, "Murder was the Case"


Hint: it's not this:

"A Tout le Monde"

A friend's essay, wherein she contemplated several song lyrics sung outside of each singer's native tongue, inspired me to revisit one of my older favorites.

Megadeth, "A Tout le Monde"


First off, if you've never heard Megadeth before, ignore this and check out anything off Rust in Peace or Peace Sells...But Who's Buying. Then maybe some of their hits like "Symphony of Destruction," "Sweating Bullets" and "Skin o' My Teeth." Or the masterful "In My Darkest Hour" and the thrashterpiece "Set the World Afire." Or the most famous song Mustaine wrote in his Metallica stint, "Mechanix." Or the ferocious comeback "Kick the Chair." There are actually about 20 or so songs that are more representative of Megadeth than "A Tout le Monde," most of which don't have portentous videos and useless reprises.

Yet I can't get enough of this song. Against my conceived notions of Megadeth, my general dislike of power ballads and my better judgment, "A Tout le Monde" is a song I return to regularly. There's something intangible about it that makes it seem more like a brave artistic expression than a blatant stab at the airwaves.

Perhaps it's the show-stopping live version that won me over. I don't know what the fans are thinking when they all join in on the third chorus, but they really believe it.



For a guy who writes jazz-inspired thrash metal with political, personal and fantastic lyrics for a living, Dave Mustaine really hit one out of the park with a mournful ode to departed loved ones. Inspired to write "A Tout le Monde" by the loss of his French-speaking mother, Mustaine once said in an interview:

"It's when people have a loved one that dies and they end on a bad note, you know, they wish that they could say something to them. So this is an opportunity for the deceased to say something before they go. And it was my impression of what I would like to say to people...to all my friends, I love you all, and now I must go. These are the last words I'll ever speak, and they'll set me free. I don't need to say I'm sorry, I don't have to say I'm going to miss you, or I'll wait for ya. You know, I'll just say I loved you all, good, bad and different, I loved you all.

Mustaine had to spend a lot of time explaining the song's lyrics--released in the hypersensitive year that Kurt Cobain took his life, "A Tout le Monde" was interpreted as pro-suicide and initially banned from MTV (which played videos, even by metal bands, back then.) The controversy returned years later when a college student in Montreal mentioned the song on his blog, shortly before embarking on a shooting spree that ended with the gunman's suicide. Despite decrying the actions at a concert in Montreal that month, the damage had been done. It would go far in redeeming the term "power ballad" in anyone's mind, but "A Tout le Monde" still never gets the FM play or chart success that it deserves.

Angus Young's duck walk

Awesome.

"Fucking Hostile"

Today is the fourth anniversary of "Dimebag Darrell" Abbott's death, and I've joined the many tributes that came up today (and have been coming up for the past four years) with a post on Metal Injection. Now, for the more self-indulgent post to go here.

One day in middle school, a friend brought in a copy of Pantera's Vulgar Display of Power. Pantera was a daunting listen, entirely forbidden from the local rock radio stations my friends and I listened to. The reputation of four hard-living, tougher-than-nails rednecks who played louder and faster than Metallica preceded the music, as did that awesome album cover art with a guy getting punched in the face.

Upon finding the music department's CD player, I did what any red-blooded American middle school boy would do when no teachers were looking. I skipped ahead to the track called "Fucking Hostile."

One!two!three!four!



I feigned toughness, unable to admit that my inner savage was jumping up and down at how awesome this song was. But I learned that extreme music was as thrilling as anything that guitars, bass, drums and vocals could emit. My boyhood hero, Billy Corgan, was certainly onto something when he cited Dimebag as his favorite guitarist.

"Fucking Hostile" is dripping with attitude. That onslaught of Vinnie Paul's double bass pedal. Phil Anselmo's gruff, tough yet tuneful bark. Dimebag's supersonic riffage and squealing, eardrum-burning solo. Rex Brown's groove-setting bass picking. No wonder these guys were called "The Cowboys from Hell."

"Fucking Hostile" is one of the fastest, loudest, loosest and dirtiest songs by one of the fastest, loudest, loosest and dirtiest bands in history. It contains just about everything that could ever offend a parent or teacher. It could provoke a mosh pit at a church or a funeral.

"Fucking Hostile" was never a single or a music video, but just about anybody who listened to metal in the '90s has been struck by it. Check out cover versions by Anthrax in Peru and In Flames in England--everyone in both crowds knows the words.

In Flames:


Anthrax:


Even better, revisit the original (live at Donnington:)


Rest in peace, Dimebag.

13 reasons to live in NYC, 2008

1. AC/DC at Madison Square Garden: Angus Young duck walks, headbangs and ostensibly has a seizure while unleashing an ungodly blues-metal solo during his band's performance of "Let there be Rock."

2. Amon Amarth at Irving Plaza: Amon Amarth provoke the crowd into a rousing Viking chant for "Steve," the local roadie who pours beer for the band to drink out of Viking horns.

3. At the Gates at Irving Plaza: The opening riff of "Slaughter of the Soul" prompts the full capacity crowd to scream back the first lyric, zealously welcoming At the Gates back to New York City.
   

4. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds at the Theater at Madison Square Garden: Cave releases something that the word "scream" can't do justice during "Hard on for Love."

5. Dillinger Escape Plan at Irving Plaza: Dillinger play the loudest version of "Hot for Teacher" in history, winning over Cavalera Conspiracy's audience and stealing the show from the storied headliners.

6. The Giraffes at Le Poisson Rouge: Aaron Lazar is reprimanded by security for smoking a cigarette, which he promptly puts out--in the palm of his hand.

7. Iron Maiden at Izod Center: Maiden perform "The Trooper," "Wasted Years," "The Number of the Beast" and "Run to the Hills" all in a row at Izod Center, before topping four of the greatest songs in metal history with "Rime of the Ancient Mariner."

8. Mastodon at Brooklyn Masonic Temple: The Georgian giants blow away respected headliners Neurosis by opening their set with the 14-minute "Hearts Alive."

9. Megadeth at Hammerstein Ballroom: Dave Mustaine throws the 25-year-old "Mechanix" in between the two movements of "Holy Wars" for Megadeth's encore.
   

10. The Melvins at Music Hall of Williamsburg: A faithful, earnest and a capella take on our National Anthem gets thrown into a fast, heavy, no-encore-or-stage-banter set that finds the Melvins at the top of their game.

11. Willie Nelson at Radio City Music Hall: Willie follows plausible closer "On the Road Again" with "City of New Orleans," before rocking out for about an hour longer than anyone had any right to hope or expect.

12. Nine Inch Nails at Izod Center: Each of Trent Reznor's bandmates bow individually and leave the stage, while Trent fades the final bars of "In this Twilight" and waves goodbye.

13. The Stooges at Terminal 5: Iggy Pop is Iggy Pop.

BoHeman Rhapsody (updated 12/5)

The original:


Update 12/5/08: On a very similar but still amusing note--"you don't like Star Wars?"

For the record, both these videos were found on SkullsnBones, yet another better waste of time than Myspace or Facebook.