Video of the week: Candlemass - Bewitched

Much thanks to the wonderful Map of Metal for introducing me to this marvelous track from the late 80's by Swedish doom metal act Candlemass.

Three reasons Bewitched demands listening.

1. Singer Messiah Marcolin's demonic choirboy voice has to heard to be believed.

2.  That riff.

3. It actually starts with Handel's Dead March done in the metal style.

3. This video by Jonas Akerlund (of Smack My B**tch Up notoriety) which walks the line between complete hokum and even more utter hokum.

Let me break it down for you:

0:00 - It's the metal re-enactment of the Monty Python Undertaker's sketch.

0:30 - Riff!

1:25 - Wait. Who left the dry ice in that coffin!

1:30 - Woah! Mad monk's just leapt out of a coffin!

2:00 - First appearance of the Messiah Marcolin front-crawl-head-bang dance! Yeah!

2.45 - MM starts hypnotizing metal fans with his sweet, sweet singing. And his luxurious mane of hair. #envy

3.00 -  You are beee-weeeeeeee-ttched!

3.10 - Oh. MM appears to have met a woman. She's dressed very sensibly for the snow in a green parka with her hood up.

3.50 - MM turns the full force of his vocal power on her. She sensibly flees before the onslaught and the wild, wild overacting that accompanies it...

4.10 - ... but she is eventually, yep, you guessed it - beee-weeeeeeee-ttched!

4.25 - MM has a whole army of beee-weeeeeeee-ttched metalhead zombies

4.45 - Guitarist takes a solo while MM alternatively strokes and shoves his denim clad minions.

5.15 - Still soloing, still shoving

5.30 - Uh-huh - still soloing

5.45 - Riff!

5.50 - Everyone does the Messiah Marcolin front-crawl-head-bang dance! Yeah! 

6.00 - Close up on stomping Swedish feet #vintageconverseenvy

6.45 - Headbanging around the coffin is the new All Around My Hat.

7.10 - You are beee-weeeeeeee-ttched!

7.15 - Back in your coffin, Marcolin!

Room 101: Fear the Parrot of Self-righteousness

I knew nothing of folk music as a young man. I'd been made to do country dancing at school, and didn't like it one bit. I feared morris dancers.

And then this was my first exposure to folk, in the loosest sense of the word.

 

Let me state for the record that I think the Levellers' politics are great and I really do like 15 Years and Just The One. I still can't quite get with the rest of their music, feeling as I do that folk music should be about heartbreak and death rather than upbeat tales from the alternative community, but I can live with it now.

But I came across This Garden first, their commercially successful but - for me at least - ill-fated dance experiment during the Second Summer of Love. It had both a didgeridoo and a repetive parrot sound effect which I felt was just a bit too much; and I was partial to a bit of Banco di Gaia in those days so my global village tolerance threshold was quite high.

And then there were the lyrics, which were - kindly put - the kind of left-wing holier than thou posturing non-activists hate. It made the nearest thing the UK in the 90's had to The Clash sounds like finger-wagging vicars.

I never thought, I'd see the day / When you became what you've become / It's easy now just to look away / And leave your conscience on the run

Spend so much time not looking for an answer / But someone else's to blame / As long as you don't take the drop / To you it's all the same.

Again, I am reminded that there's a difference between being right and being persuasive.

Room 101 post: ah House of Pain, how you live up to your name

There are many reasons to dislike this song, but credit where credit's due - at least it starts with the good bit: the brass sample from Harlem Shuffle.

At student discos in the 90's that BAAAAA! BA BA BAAAAA! was the signal for a sudden rush to the dance floor for some, but also for an expeditious retreat by yours truly. 

Why? First and foremost, it's The Screech. Wikipedia kindly informs me it's a saxophone - yet another example that of how that instrument can be used to commit great wrongs. The screech is right up there with brushing paving slabs - my own personal 'fingers on blackboard' sound - as one of the most annoying things I've ever listened to.

The only thing that would make it worse it would be sticking The Screech over a lumpen lopsided piano riff. Oh wait...

There's also something about how Jump Around translated onto the UK dancefloor I never liked. The repeated direction to jump around became something mandatory, almost coercive instead of inspirational. It turned the mood hyper-masculine and the battle rhyme threats - removed from their context thousands of miles away - left a sour taste in the mouth.

So, yeah. I discard it utterly.

Video of the week - Supermen Lovers: Starlight

The track is a piece of guilty pleasure mid-90's disco, the video is a marvellous bit of animation with a surprisingly great narrative about the pitfalls of the music industry on this and other planets.

All the Man wants is the same old skeletons in sombreros.

Video of the week - Professor Elemental: Fighting Trousers

I'm not sure about the chap-hop micro-phenomenon as a whole - I feel a whole 'nother post coming on about it for the New Year - but this track from Professor Elemental is a rather excellent, very English battle rhyme with some rather marvellous cosplay in the video.

Also: first citation of Peter Duncan in rap? 

Video of the week - Japan: Life In Tokyo (extended disco mix)

I like to think of this song - this aesthetic - as the point at which New Romantic was born.  And I - unironically, you understand - love the dandy look David Sylvain's rocking here. I think it's great that he and the rest of the band can be presenting a very different masculine image than the usual.

Video of the week: Dordeduh - Dojana

Romanian black-folk-pagan metal act in surprisingly mellow mood on a hillside. Fabulous.

Eurosceptic zombies attack!

Best party conference stunt which wasn't ours - "Euro zombies attack at Conservative Party conference. Conservative Way Forward surprises everyone with a campaign against unaffordable bail-outs to the eurozone [and hence "zombie"] economies"

As you can see, all efforts to turn undead proved fruitless. But then we know from experience that free marketeers are resistant to turning. 

You can also see some bees buzzing around in the background from us on the clip.

Why I like it? It was spectacular; geeky; fun; totally overshadowing anything else that was going on; it was videoed for easy dissemination; it demonstrated the power of theatre; it got an issue on the agenda for Conference delegates.

Questions: Whether it actually changed anyone's mind, and whether it was a bit too outre for your typical Conservative delegate? 

Geek criticism: strictly speaking the walking dead should have been demanding brains, not shrieking. 

What if this were real? David "two brains" Willetts would be a man in zombie demand. Chris "armed response" Grayling would be practicing his head-shots. The Umbrella Corporation would be sponsoring fringe events at Tory Party Conference.

But I think we can safely assume that no right-thinking, home-is-my-castle Conservative wants zombies on their lawn. The mad gardening skills of Middle England would see 'em off.