The Daily Procrastinator

Important News! Mötley Crüe is releasing their Greatest Hits album on November 17, 2009.    Greatness!

Well, at least if you don’t already have:

One

Decade of Decadence,

Two

Greatest Hits,

Three

Supersonic & Demonic Relics,

Four

The Millennium Collection,

Five, Six

Red, White & Crüe (2-disc set),

Seven, Eight

Music to Crash Your Car To (Volumes 1 and 2), or

Nine, Ten, and Eleven

Loud as F@*k (3-disc set).

Jesus.  Did Gene Simmons die and take over the body of Nikki Sixx or something?

Not man is crying, guys! Crying!

It’s tough being an Anthrax fan. On July 21 news hit the web that Dan Nelson, newly anointed lead singer of the thrash metal band, had been fired from the gig days before a European festival tour was to begin and three months before their new album “Worship Music”, was to be released (it was in the final stages of production). In a carefully worded press release, the band suggested Nelson was too ill to go on tour, and that the band would soon be auditioning for a new lead singer. Dan Nelson would later release his own press release, saying that the band’s reasoning was bogus and that his legal counsel would take appropriate action.

Well, shit.

This is not the first time Anthrax has had problems with its singer (unfortunately).  For instance, back in ‘05 Scott Ian and Charlie Benante, founding members of the band, decided to tour with their original lead singer, Joey Belladonna and the rest of their “Among the Living” lineup in recognition of their 25th anniversary as a band.  For me, it was a bit of a head scratcher as the band had just released “We’ve Come for You All” to critical acclaim, if not matching sales (if you haven’t heard it, do yourself a favor and grab it).  John Bush, their singer from 1992 until then, felt slighted and left the band, leaving the band frontman-less when Belladonna decided he did not want to continue with the band after the tour.

That situation always seemed to me to be Ian and Benante’s fault – I don’t know that too many fans were clamoring for an “Among the Living” reunion tour and Ian’s reasoning that the death of Dimebag Darrell made him want to see what “might have been” had Joey never left still seemed like a jerk move when considering Bush’s perspective.  And so they burned that bridge with Bush, leading them to pick up Dan Nelson as their singer.  It’s now been 6 years since Anthrax has released a new album.

This time, however, I can’t see how Ian and Benante can be blamed.  Something led them to kick Nelson to the curb before the European tour began, before the first album with Nelson fronting was released.  It apparently wasn’t Nelson’s decision, based on his press release, so Ian and Benante would have to some MAJOR reason to can him.  What was it?  No one’s saying, but there have been some reports of tension between the band members during their Rocklahoma appearance.  I just know that the release of Worship Music is now pushed back until a new lead singer is found, and who knows what the status of those songs will be?  Will we fans of Anthrax ever hear Nelson’s versions?   It’s doubtful.  I guess the bigger question is: will there even be another album?  John Bush is going to join them for a one-off at England’s Sonisphere show – I’m hoping against hope that there might be enough remnants of that bridge to rebuild it.

For me, it’s a bit depressing to think of a future that will be Anthrax-less.  I’ve been banging my head to their thrash for over 20 years now, and have longed to see them get the recognition bands like Metallica and Slayer get (two of the pillars of thrash, along with Megadeth and Anthrax).  I had hoped Worship Music would have announced a triumphant return.  It looks like it might be an unheard swan song.

I’ve been a big fan of the Greatest American Rock Band series from FlashCap, but because I’m a writer, I struggle with listening to music with vocals while I’m working, especially music that I know the words to.  None of my clients want the lyrics to “Hot for Teacher” interspersed with their web content.

Therefore, I present to you my favorite mellow music: Acoustik Guitar by John H. Clarke.  This guy is good.  Period.

Watch him play via YouTube.  Trust me, it’s worth a moment of your time.

There’s little in this paparazzi-driven world that can bring an issue to the forefront of public consciousness quite like celebrity involvement.  The recent news about Rihanna and Chris Brown is no exception.

At first, I really didn’t pay much attention to the story.  The extent of my knowledge of either of them was largely limited to the gym: her music playing during sculpting workouts, or their faces on the pages of the Entertainment Weekly found in the magazine rack.  It seemed like an unfortunate story that happened to faraway people in Celebrityville.

But as more time passed, I heard things that were increasingly disturbing.  They weren’t details about the attack.  They were the responses to it.  MTV.com ran an article with a headline that caught my eye, entitled “Why are people blaming Rihanna for alleged altercation with Chris Brown?” In it, they note that:

“Based on comments MTV News has received on the incident, a surprising number of people — some of whom are apparently female, although screen names often aren’t gender-specific — are blaming Rihanna for the alleged incident.”

The Guardian in the UK posted the following:

“Major media outlets spent days trying to ponder what possibly could have ’caused’ Brown to allegedly attack Rihanna. After all, he had such a ‘clean cut’, ’squeaky clean’ image. The most egregious media platforms crossed the line from victim blaming right into victim defaming.”

A good point from the Guardian, but clearly the rest of the world can’t really think like this. These “what caused it?” stories are just a case of the media being full of people looking for both sides of a story to exploit.  That’s not what it’s like in the real world, right?

Oh, how I wish I was wrong.  While hanging out at my local coffee shop recently — a coffee shop which is frequented by an unusually significant number of Bible study groups and other people speaking openly about their Christian faith — I was seated next to a pair of girls who looked to be about the same 20-ish age of Brown and Rihanna themselves.  As they sat there, with their Bibles on the table, I overheard this conversation:

“You know, it’s, like, totally ridiculous.  I mean, he should know that he can’t rough up his girlfriend.  The Bible says you can’t do that until you’re, like, married.”

It took everything in my power not to beat this girl with her King James edition.  Maybe I’m showing my age here, but since when did it become okay to condone violence against women, and even worse, to teach that God thinks it’s okay?  I left the coffee shop in a caffeine-fueled frenzy, angry to think that in 2009, we still haven’t taught kids that this sort of behavior is not acceptable.  Period.

I was delighted to hear that Brown was charged with two felony counts, including felony assault and making criminal threats.  Hopefully that news alone will be enough to make guys think twice before hitting their girlfriends or wives.

Teaching women right from wrong may be another story entirely.  If the rumors are true, and Rihanna has, in fact, taken him back (or married him), then I’m not sure that these coffee shop girls will ever learn their lesson.  Will it take her being beaten to death before they stop and take notice?

LAMB OF GOD - WRATH

I am a huge fan of thrash metal.  There is just something about it that grabs you by the throat and won’t let you go.  The best metal of this sort has a “groove”:  riffs to kill for keeping time with hellaciously fast blastbeats, riding cymbals, and a pounding bass.   Back in the mid- to late 80s, there existed a sort of glory days of thrash.  This was exemplified by the four pillars of the genre (Anthrax, Slayer, Megadeth, and old Metallica) coupled with the “newcomers” Pantera.  Go ahead and throw in Prong (particularly Beg to Differ) and Testament as a couple of other favorites.

Lamb of God is today’s undisputed leader of the genre and is leading a renaissance of thrash.  Sure, Slayer and Metallica get the Grammys, but that is just a case of  name recognition on the part of the voters.  I was first turned on to LoG after hearing “Laid to Rest” from their album Ashes of the Wake, which was the first album I’d bought in a long time that simply ripped my face off.   And while I was never a huge fan of the “cookie monster”-style of vocal stylings, LoG just made it work for me.   Their follow-up, Sacrament, became a drop-date purchase for me, and it continued to impress.

But both albums have been eclipsed by the triumph that is Wrath.

Where do these guys get all of these wonderful riffs?  Seriously, if you don’t find yourself involuntarily headbanging during the bridge of “Dead Seeds,” you have no metal in your soul.   High points (as if there were low points) include “Set to Fail”, “Contractor” and “Choke Sermon”.    But my personal favorite is the closer, “Reclamation”:  the blues-based lick that provides the structure and, simply put, drive of this song is perfectly pieced together.  It is the juggernaut of the album.

Wrath is now the front-runner for album of the year.  It will be interesting to see what other bands are willing to put out this year in the face of this onslaught.

So a bedeviled Angus Young is shoveling coal into the furnace of a jet black train speeding out of control while two scantily-dressed women stroke and lick his steadily-stiffening pointed tail (wink-wink, nudge-nudge), culminating in his throwing the wenches off the train so he can ram it through the end-of-the-line barricade in a huge explosion of lights and sound.

Subtle, these guys ain’t.

But that’s the exact point of an AC/DC show. While Angus, Brian Johnson and the crew are pushing 60, they know what the crowd wants to see and gives it to them. You want blood? You got it. And by blood I mean the hits (although the absence of “Money Talks” and “Who Made Who” was kind of glaring). Loud and with an energy that most bands half their age just don’t have the interest in putting into their shows. This was greatly appreciated by the sold-out crowd which seemed largely made up of parents bringing their 12- to 16-year-old children to experience what a “real” rock band is all about.

Unfortunately, I’ve heard rumors that this may be AC/DC’s farewell tour (and judging by the price I paid for my ticket they’ll be going out in style). Disregarding the notorious lack of reliability these sorts of rumors have (see The Rolling Stones, Ozzy Osbourne), it was good to see AC/DC is still at the top of their game.

I paid how much for this ticket?