Professing Metal to The Masses (or 5 dudes from Stanford)

BEFORE?

Wagner Lamounier ex-guitarist/vocalist of Sepultura & Sarcófago during the 1980s. Currently a professor of economic science at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

A few weeks ago I did a radio special on KZSU which was a sort of "audio history lesson" on Heavy Metal. I was really suprised at a few things. Namely, the guys were really into virtually every song I played from Crazy World Of Arthur Brown in 1968 to Metal Church in 1984. A few things I've noticed in doing these sort of "History" specials:

- Cut things off at 1984. It grows exponentially insane at this point. 1984-86 the initial impact of Thrash, Speed, Black and Death Metal begin though all used interchangeably.
- Big, bloated bands like AC/DC, KISS, Led Zeppelin don't need to even need to be mentioned much less played.
- Blue Oyster Cult isn't Heavy Metal and only occasionally Hard Rock. The 1970's definition of Heavy Metal hasn't held up since 1979. I mean Foreigner, Journey and Bad Co. aren't Metal what so ever. (Not unlike people thinking AC/DC or Elvis Costello were "punk" around the same time). They have a few moments here & there but up against Black Sabbath, Judas Priest or Thin Lizzy fuggit about it!

Some interesting things my students brought up:

Q: Would people have called UFO "Metal" in 1979? A: Hard to say, the term was around then but it was a bit hazy. See above on the 70's definition of Heavy Metal. Yet there was a burgeoning (albeit virtually unknown in the U.S.) New Wave of British Heavy Metal in the UK. The music media in the U.S. was all about disco or anti-disco rockers like Ted Nugent.

Q: Thin Lizzy's singer was a black guy? A: Yes. Black & Irish in fact.

Also:
- Sabbath/Priest/Maiden = Son, Father & Holy Ghost (not sure on the order tho')
- They loooove to headbang in the Outer A studio to 'Priest, Motorhead & the like.
- Two of my students said despite the dark themes it's very jubilant and melodic (or at least the '68-'84 era).
- Where does double bass drumming come in? I answered that it was from Motorhead (and forgot to mention things like the faster or complex 'Priest/'Maiden songs ex: "Rapid Fire" and "Rime of the Ancient Mariner") and hardcore punk like Discharge which had an impact on Metallica, Anthrax and Bathory.
- Another student wanted to heard Metal Church and was gave me a dead on description of David Wayne's "screaming banshee" vocals.
- Motorhead's "Overkill" has 3 false endings if not more on the "No Sleep 'Til Hammersmith" version.

See "the kids" aren't just into that sideways haircut, faux-indie bullshit. There IS hope for the kids...at least these 5.

AFTER?

"Wagner" in his "Satanic Lust" days.

Thieves, thieves and liars! Hypocrites and bastards!

"If the people wonder at the suffering you've caused
And your massive avarice has left them at a loss
If by chance they notice your bloody snapping jaws
the blood upon your claws
your shifty eyes and laws
the nauseating flaws in all you've said
Trot out the dead
Trot out the dead

If by chance they give you the slightest bit of grief
Or perhaps they notice you're a liar and a thief
If they dare to question your lunatic beliefs
The wicked web you weave
The slimy trail you leave
Or maybe they perceive they've been misled
Trot out the dead"
- Hammers of Misfortune, "Trot Out The Dead"

Even though I'm only affiliated with Stanford's radio station , I'm still curious about what goes on the campus. War criminal Donald Rumsfeld last Fall land himself a cushy job as a Visiting Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institute. Some of the more conservative staff members on campus thinks the anti-Rumsfeld campaigns are "an implicit threat” to Hoover and “a kind of McCarthyism.”

OK, so, a "threat" as in blowing up the building threat? Or a telling him his a self-centered prick who's only looks out for himself & his cronies in fear of Rummy going on a shooting rampage at Stanford Mall? McCarthyism? They're just not gonna hire him. McCarthy destroyed people's careers and in many aspects their lives. Multi-administration, lifetime bureaucratic creeps like Rummy don't know what it's like to go to over 20 different job interviews in a month and still be rejected. He has it made-full stop. He'll get a book deal (If he doesn't have one in the works already) and likely a think tank gig somewhere else and there's always FoxNews. Ironically, that these conservative rich guys are feeling like Rumsfeld is being "persecuted for his beliefs" as if he's some kind of oppressed minority?

A pro-Rummy & pro-Condisleastack Rice editorial appeared in the Palo Alto Daily News awhile back. This editorial claims the Stanford community's mostly anti-Rumsfeld and anti-Condisleastack stance is "Politically Correct intolerance". Here are some choice quotes:

"Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is on leave from Stanford and indicated she plans to return after her time in Washington. Must she, too, be sent packing in the interests of tolerance, honesty and open inquiry?" - Answer is NO because for one she's a "Stanford Graduate" who didn't seem to learn anything about taking action after she "believes" she read a report "titled Bin Laden to attack America". Stanford graduate, folks. Secondly, it has nil to with tolerance, honesty and open inquiry considering she's made her career and enhanced many of the other crooks in the White House's career by doing the exact opposite of these three concepts.

"And Hoover, after all, is a conservative think tank, with close ties to Republican administrations." Fine. I don't have a problem with guys the furrow their brows, write poorly written editorials and wear giant glasses. But I DO have a problem with the pro-torture and privatizing defense stance of Rumsfeld. In fact, Nation reporter Jeremy Scahill who broke the story on Blackwater, notes Rumsfeld's post-9/11 policy:

"It became known as the Rumsfeld Doctrine. "We must promote a more entrepreneurial approach: one that encourages people to be proactive, not reactive, and to behave less like bureaucrats and more like venture capitalists," Rumsfeld wrote in the summer of 2002 in an article for Foreign Affairs titled "Transforming the Military."

To the great satisfaction of the war industry, before Rumsfeld resigned he took the extraordinary step of classifying private contractors as an official part of the US war machine. In the Pentagon's 2006 Quadrennial Review, Rumsfeld outlined what he called a "road map for change" at the DoD, which he said had begun to be implemented in 2001. It defined the "Department's Total Force" as "its active and reserve military components, its civil servants, and its contractors--constitut[ing] its warfighting capability and capacity. Members of the Total Force serve in thousands of locations around the world, performing a vast array of duties to accomplish critical missions." This formal designation represented a major triumph for war contractors--conferring on them a legitimacy they had never before enjoyed.

If you're that close to Haliburton and Blackwater you are guilty of working with war criminals and therefore are an accomplice. Last I checked the "politically correct intolerance" (as defined as censorious left-wingers and not apparently black & white world having censorious Bush cronies) was coming from people ranging from the Army War College who said the Iraq War was a mistake (real commies, that lot), ex-Clinton and Bush's former chief counter terrorism expert, Richard A. Clarke and many of the military people themselves who don't like Haliburton and Blackwater due these private contractors being far better equipped and paid at 10-20 times as much as regular soldiers.