The Wild and the Young

A humorous send-up from the daze of the Satanic Panics when a crew of numpties made their living claiming that rock and roll was hypnotizing the youth and bringing about the destruction of society.

Stay With Me Tonight

A gorgeous, bluesy power ballad from Quiet Riot. 

Music from a time before the world became an obviously dystopian hellscape.

Maybe it was too good to last.

They don't write 'em like this anymore.

Slick Black Cadillac

Another underrated gem from Quiet Riot.

It's a shame, but I don't think that Kevin Dubrow was a very happy person at the time of his death. I met him at a meet and greet once, and it just seemed like the spark had died and he wasn't happy with the way things had turned out. By then, the band was pegged as a nostalgia act, which is demeaning. They still had a lot to offer. I'm sorry things turned out that way, Kevin. You deserved better.

 

Twilight Hotel

A clever video from Quiet Riot. It's a shame they were really only known for Bang Your Head and, to a lesser degree, their cover of Cum On Feel Tha Noize.

Flash And The Pan - Waiting For a train (9 minutes) 1982

George Young and Harry Vanda were amazing musicians. They don't make 'em like this anymore. Rest in peace, George.

November PAD Chapbook Challenge 2019: Day 18: Monody: Silenced Voices

Collage made by Yours Truly using Pixlr

though all different

you each had a special gift

I won't forget you

~Cie~

Notes:

Today's November PAD Chapbook Challenge asked for a poem having something to do with music. These people all had something to do with music, and they all died after the turn of the twenty-first century. And if anyone wants to be a wanker and demand to know how I can have Jeff Hanneman and David Cassidy in the same collage, I will tell you that I can because it's my damn collage and I'm not a narrow fuck who only listens to one kind of music.

However, the great thing about being someone that no-one pays attention to is that I can do something like this, and ain't nobody gonna give a fuck.

Strange Connections: Good People in Bad Romances

Other than substance addiction issues, one might not think that Bon Scott and Amy Winehouse have much in common. However, both of them were involved to the point of obsession with people who were incredibly bad for them, and although musically speaking they are both artists I can't get enough of, I have to stop listening after a fairly brief period of time because I know what and who they're singing about and it's really depressing.

The other issue is the fact that I can relate all too well to being obsessed with a person who is really, really, really horrible for you. I did it more than once. People think that all-consuming "love" is wonderful. It's anything but, and usually, it isn't really love, it's an obsession. So, yanno, no thanks to ending up in the ER with bloody wrists over some asshole who doesn't deserve my pain. Better to be alone than to be with someone toxic.

Although, unfortunately, in my case, more often than not, I'm alone in bad company.

Plus, in the case of AC/DC, I can only listen for just so long (and that isn't long these days) before I start getting really pissed off about the way Malcolm Young went out. Dementia is the absolute fucking worst, particularly when it takes out someone whose intelligence was a key part of who they were. Malcolm Young was a high school dropout, but he was smarter than a lot of people with strings of letters behind their names.

The late Glen Campbell's wife said of dementia "It's better to die some other way," and she's absolutely right. Fuck dementia.

As Bob Seger once said, sometimes I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then.

~Cie~

Observations of a Dead World: Burlesque Silliness with a Heartbreaking Ending

Hipster music journalists love to decry this band as a one-trick pony, but they were actually full of surprises. Sure, the same five songs get played over and over and over on commercial radio stations. Even though I was an early fan of AC/DC, I started changing the station whenever "For Those About To Rock" would come on so I wouldn't start hating it. That's how badly that particular song was overplayed.

Musical chops aside (and the musical choppage is strong in this lot) these guys were obviously not professional models. Bon seemed fairly well at ease with striking poses, and Angus is a ham. The others never seem to know quite what to do with themselves.

Mark Evans and Cliff Williams both tended to have neutral facial expressions in photos. Maybe it's a bass player thing. In this particular photo, I'm not sure there was much else that Phil Rudd could have done. After all, Angus was stepping on his head.

I really do wonder what Malcolm was doing, though. Did the photographer tell him to do that? Was there someone up above pouring some sort of beverage down on him and he was hoping to drink it rather than getting soaked by it? Is he performing a Stupid Big Brother Trick and pretending he's going to bite Angus' leg? Did he feel stupid when he saw this picture after the fact?

Although Angus was the one who became (in)famous for stripping off, Bon was the band member who had a tendency to dress like a member of Chippendale's. There are many photos of him wearing pants which looked like they'd been painted on, and he often struck poses indicating that said pants were about to come off.

This incarnation of AC/DC really wasn't around that long in the scheme of things. 

I've likened the way I feel looking at photos of AC/DC to the emotions expressed by the priest in Arthur C. Clarke's powerful story, The Star. The priest experienced a crisis of faith after discovering that the Star of Bethlehem shone as brightly as it did because it had gone supernova, destroying a peaceful civilization.

In some ways, AC/DC had a (crossed) binary star system. There was the band in its incarnation with Bon. This was the beta star in the system. It shone brightly but was short-lived. 

The alpha star continued on for 37 more years after Bon's passing. It started going into its death throes when Malcolm became too ill to perform anymore and collapsed on itself when Brian Johnson was no longer able to continue performing due to hearing problems and Cliff Williams retired because things had become too fucking depressing.

I'm in the camp that thinks that AC/DC needs to rock in peace, to remain a nebula rather than trying to cobble together some sort of zombie version of itself. To be clear, I am not one of those ageist assholes who thinks that only the young and the hawt should play music. I subscribe to the belief that as long as you can and want to play, you should, and most of the truly talented musicians I can think of are not "Hawt." 

Angus and Stevie Young should work on other projects. Whatever they create together ought to be good, because they're both talented musicians. Certainly, there's no problem with them playing AC/DC's material. AC/DC was, after all, half Angus' creation. He was the face of the band while Malcolm was the brains.

Without its brain, AC/DC was a different band. It was still a good band, but the material on Rock or Bust shows the marked change in a band that had lost its leader and one of its key components. Still, the band could arguably continue working under the AC/DC name at that point. Malcolm's replacement, his nephew, had learned much of his technique from the original and had been given the green light by Malcolm himself to take up the reins.

With the loss of Brian Johnson and Cliff Williams, AC/DC was done although Angus Young was still there.

I feel very sad for Angus. Not only did he lose his best friend of a lifetime, but he also lost the project which had been his reason for living for some 44 years. I hope that if continuing to play can bring him some semblance of peace, he will do so. Despite being a broke fuck, I would find a way to support his work by buying his albums. However, I hope he lays AC/DC to rest. Whatever lineup was created at this point would be a hollow echo of the band's past glory.

AC/DC needs to be allowed to fade to black.

~Cie~

AC/DC, doing stuff that got them on the Satanic Panic Shit List.

30 Days of De-Objectification: Heavy Metal Angel

Per Yngve Ohlin, AKA Dead

January 16, 1969 - April 8, 1991

30 Days of De-Objectification:

Heavy Metal Angel

The tragic tale of Per Yngve Ohlin, vocalist for the Swedish death metal band Morbid and the Norwegian black metal band Mayhem, evokes strong emotional responses. Per suffered from severe psychological disturbances. Reading about him in the chapters translated into English from Blod Eld Död, I have the feeling that he may have been autistic. He would become greatly upset if disturbed while performing a task. Despite his intelligence, evidenced in his thoughtful and provocative song lyrics and his clever though disturbing artwork, he did poorly in school.

After Per’s parents divorced, he changed schools. His previous classmates were used to his unusual behavior and were generally tolerant of him. His new schoolmates bullied him, and, on one occasion, beat him so severely that he ended up clinically dead. Following this event, he became obsessed with death and referred to himself as not being alive. The head trauma he incurred from the assault may have caused him to develop Cotard Syndrome, a rare condition in which a person believes their body is dead.

Although he has been gone from this world for twenty-seven years, Per continues to be exploited, both by those who insist on seeing him as some sort of icon for evil and those who look only at his physical appearance without seeing the very troubled human being behind the flowing blond hair and the striking, angular face.

Per was obsessed with occult imagery, but he wasn’t truly evil. He was angry at a world which had caused him grievous harm. Many of those who attacked him probably identified as “good Christians.” It’s no wonder that he wanted to be the opposite of his attackers or that he dreamed of being able to exact revenge against those who injured him.

As for the idea of Per being some sort of sex god, there is no evidence that he was ever sexually involved with anyone or that he even had any interest in sex. There have been fantasies written about him by a certain contingent of horny female fans, usually postulating him as some sort of vampire king or demon lord. I wish I could say these fictions were worthy of their subject. Most of them are poorly written and I wouldn’t feel right about quoting the explicit and ludicrous scenarios postulated therein.

Worst of all, there are still people who see fit to share the actual, post-suicide image photographed by Per’s former bandmate, Øystein "Euronymous" Aarseth. My opinions of Aarseth are not exactly favorable, but I became somewhat more sympathetic to him after viewing interviews with his former bandmates and schoolmates, Kjetil Manheim and Jorn “Necrobutcher” Stubberud.

Regardless of my personal opinions of Euronymous, photographing the corpse of your housemate, even if you weren’t particularly kindly disposed to him, is unconscionable. As the surviving members of Morbid said on the liner of their 2011 release, The Year of the Goat, “No thanks to the distributors and buyers of the post-mortem pic. Fuck you.”

Those words of wisdom sum things up perfectly.

With love and respect,

Cie