I'm friends with a LOT of metal dudes. Almost none of them "live it" in that sense.
The attitude of the extreme metal dude is very similar to that of an extreme sports dude: how hard can you go? can you top the next guy? can you do it faster, or harder? can you push past the boundary of what the normal person can handle?
Very rarely is it about actually being a dark, miserable, death-obsessed weirdo.
I think it's actually the New Romantics, goths, and other "sensitive" types who have a tendency to take themselves waaaaaay too seriously (see: Morrissey).
Seriously, though -- Moz really seems to be losing it, doesn't he? Up until very recently I really enjoyed his persona, but his recent stunts really have an air of unhealthy detachment from reality. It's like he created an outsized caricature of himself which has now eclipsed the actual person.
1955 is a weird year to use in that example, considering everyone knows the charts definitely WERE bought in those days.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola
I get what they were going for.
Of course, people also consume booze, coke, weed and virtually every other drug on earth in order to feel connected, and make themselves incredibly annoying in the process. I kinda think you have to live through it to see how that works (or doesn't work).
I always wondered about Christgau's weird hard-on for Petty. Most of the reviews read like complete hatchet jobs, yet he still ends up grading the albums in the B range.
This is definitely a Petty/Heartbreakers album. 15 completely new recordings, one bona fide hit single, and tons of interviews and press (at the time) about how the movie had inspired Petty to do an entire album instead of the one song he was asked to contribute.
I'd actually put it just below Full Moon Fever.
It's impossible to disagree that vocab is not the sole, or even the best, gauge of a rapper's talent. And it's kind of obvious that the dude responsible for these charts isn't exactly an authoritative hip hop journalist.
Still, I'm kind of amazed that there are people who say they'd really take DMX, on the whole, over Aesop Rock. Is this just part of the blanket rejection of indie rap, which has lost a lot of its countercultural shine thanks to the New Weird Mainstream (Lil B, Riff Raff, etc.)? Or are people just thinking of the three DMX songs they actually remember and ignoring the fact that the majority of his 15+ year career has been spent doing exactly the same thing over and over again?
With very few exceptions, I've never thought of Petty as an album artist. He's basically the type of guy that greatest hits collections were created for. If you've got the Greatest Hits plus Damn the Torpedoes, Full Moon Fever, and Wildflowers, you've pretty much got everything you could ever need.
People on this site get very upset and downvotey when you point out the undeniable fact that the Lips' days as a worthwhile creative entity are long over.
Hope springs eternal, I guess.
I don't think Yoshimi has really aged all that well, either. I think people mostly just remember it as an album they loved but don't actually listen to it much.
Some of the melodies are really transcendent (title track, "Do You Realize", "Are You a Scientist") but the lyrics are very hokey (and not endearingly so), while the beat programming is really kind of primitive and starts to sound very samey over the course of an entire LP.
At its worst (basically for the past decade or so), the Lips' music is a shell game, delivering vague arms-length renditions of concepts such as "fun" and "psychedelia". But even at their best, their music is usually a pretty-good execution of might've-been-great ideas.
I once saw a video by a band called Crucial Taunt that used this exact same concept. Hopefully Nicki had a more pleasant on-set experience.
http://basementrejects.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/waynes-world-cassandra-rob-lowe-tia-carrere.jpg
Your perspective makes total sense to me, as does any other which admits conflictedness about this kind of aesthetic (and have upvoted all of them, while most Bolzer apologists seem to be downvoting me on sight).
I am also fine with anyone who acknowledges that Jones must know these are provocative symbols, and uses them for the purposes of provoking conversation and/or outrage. This is precisely the "flirtation with fascism" that I refer to. We are *all* fascinated by evil/racism/fascism, but most of us don't go out of our way to identify with fascist symbols in order to explore that fascination. When you choose to do that, I think you ought to have a really good explanation for yourself, and my subjective opinion is that Jones does not. The imagery I see/hear in "Wolfshook" and in Jones's tattoos seem to aim for the "cool" or "edgy" aspect of fascism rather than interrogating it in any meaningful way.
Some will argue that an artist doesn't have a responsibility to take political stances. I would agree, unless the artist makes himself political by making political references in his work, however vague they may be. (In fact, a vague political reference is much more dangerous than a direct one, since it runs away from its own responsibilities.)
The argument I call bullshit on is the one that claims swastikas are only political symbols when uptight liberals decide they are, or that they can be recontextualized in any way that does not make at least a passing nod to fascism. When people throw that kind of bogus line at me, I'm likely to lump them in with the Coldwar-esque crypto-fascists who similarly insult my intelligence.
I also responded to Jones's direct insults with more venom than was probably necessary. It honestly never occurred to me that Jones himself would participate here. If it had, I certainly wouldn't have tried to open a dialog by calling him a "knob". The internet environment makes us a little more flippant than we ought to be sometimes.
I don't think Okoi Jones is literally a neo-Nazi, although he certainly might be, and he's invited that ambiguity by romanticizing these images the way he has. I *do* think he clearly has a Nazi fetish, and despite his feelings or intentions, he has failed to direct that fascination toward anything other than glorifying and mythologizing those images.
I truly truly hate it when comment threads become about the commenters rather than the article, and I really have tried to resist posting here over and over, but people have tended to address me directly and I've felt the need to reiterate what I feel is plainly obvious to anyone who isn't overly acclimated to the cognitive dissonance that so often attaches itself to this genre.
I'm struggling to discern the difference between Jones's rationalization and the Coldwar guy's rationalization. They are exactly the same, except that Jones has better aesthetic taste.
It's really interesting how many people have come here to support Jones while substantively agreeing with his critics.
This is silly. If any band was ever the sum of its parts, it's Zeppelin. It was foolish to ever even continue post-Bonham. They're maybe the only rock and roll band without whose drummer they simply would not have sounded like themselves.
I am not even a Zep fan but I don't see how anyone can fail to acknowledge the immense and equal contribution of all four members to a completely inimitable sound.
I really don't think there's any group in music history who seems like they'd have been more fun to hang out with than the Beastie Boys. Just really awesome, smart dudes.
To answer your question, though, I am not a huge EDM fan but I have been to one underground rave and one huge house night in London, both sober, and loved them both. The slow-build-to-cathartic-release that a great DJ can create is an experience in itself.
No idea if Aoki, Deadmaus, etc. provide the same type of feel as I've never really listened for more than a minute.
Don't you think Tom Petty's grandparents asked the same question about his generation of musicians? And weren't they at least partially right as well?
It's not like Petty has been a vocal proponent of straight edge.
Everyone knows Led Zeppelin are rip-off artists. This has been common knowledge for roughly 46 years. Do you really think this is some mindblowing shit uncovered by those legendary musicologists Opie & Anthony?
Pipe down already.
I have enormous respect for Robert Plant's willingness to live out the rest of his life as an actively creative person rather than allowing himself to be propped up onstage singing the hits like an automaton at Chuck E Cheese.
It's hard to overstate how much love and respect I have for Tom Petty, but I stopped listening to his opinion on contemporary music when I saw an interview with him back in the early 90s where he told that lame joke about how "you can't spell 'crap' without 'rap'".
I ain't mad at him, though. The world needs lovable curmudgeons.
David Duke will tell you he's not a racist. It's a reassurance that means nothing. I judge a man by his actual behavior, not the rationalizations he provides after the fact.
Dude sings about Nazis, gets swastikas tattooed on him, and incorporates the wolfsangel into his band logo, and I'm a reactionary troll for identifying him as someone who romanticizes fascism? Get a grip.
I can see this link must have been publicized by Bolzer somewhere, so I can assume from here on this thread will be clogged up by fanboy apologists who don't even normally visit this site. There's no point in even trying to engage with that.
I've lived in the US and UK and am well aware that Jones can be Welsh in addition to being a popular American surname (particularly with African-Americans). Simply put, I had no idea where Jones's last name came from and didn't make any assumptions about it.
Take a look at Jones's tattoos and tell me they look like the fylfot. Jones's swastikas are angled with long arms, not vertical with short ones.
Is the wolfangel also an ancient British symbol? Did King Arthur preside over the "sermon of the crooked cross"? There's no way to explain away this guy's Nazi fetish by pointing to ancient sunwheels. People keep on trying though!
Yep, and as I said upthread, I don't see what it has to do with anything. People with black dads can romanticize fascism too. You are aware that Latin America is possibly the world's biggest postwar Neo-Nazi stronghold, and that Hitler himself wasn't exactly Aryan, right? This is basically an adapted version of "Some of my best friends are black!"
Jones is the only person I've personally insulted in this thread. I don't suck up to crypto-fascists, but I do try to at least be civil with their apologists.
He seems like a knob in the interview, and proved he is a knob by the way he carried himself in this thread, lobbing insults and using his dad as a defense. (I didn't realize being 25% black gave a person carte blanche to rep Nazism. Now *that* is some mealy-mouthed PC bullshit.)
I think it speaks volumes that Jones's defenders have been more capable of an adult conversation than the man himself. Apparently some people are only willing to defend their work when their buddies lob them softballs in puff-piece interviews.
Brandon -- I'm no more vested or combative than you are. I have also used actual examples from the band's work to back up my argument, and haven't referred to anyone as a "moron" (which Jones called me yesterday) or "limp-wristed" (which I guess means I'm gay or something? It's been a while since I was in junior high).
Your response reveals nothing new about your position. We both agree the band romanticizes fascism. The difference is that you think it's cool, and I don't. I also find it amusing that you accuse me of trying to "rile" people while you defend the use of swastikas in metal precisely BECAUSE they rile people. Your stance on this is just totally incoherent, and it is completely fine that you disagree with me.
//[Metal] hinges on challenging our values with the fringe elements of our own cultures and psyches. It is not a blank check to do and say whatever you want, but the point is to balance on the edge of what is aesthetically and socially acceptable [....] The sheer fact that we are arguing tirelessly about the meaning of these symbols and their value or danger is sort of testament to my point.//
I would agree with all of this. Clearly we differ on the point of whether this particular band's aesthetic crosses over the line of "what is aesthetically and socially acceptable".
Of course, the band itself isn't making the argument you're making; they insist that none of this imagery has anything to do with fascism and it's all a big misunderstanding on the part of people who don't read books or understand ancient cultures. I think that's plainly disingenuous, and the band is clearly using these images precisely to walk that "edge" and align themselves with metal's flirtation with fascism.
It would appear you agree with me on all the facts but have drawn a different conclusion. I can live with that if you can. How does that make me a troll?
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