While a certain percentage of readers know me as “LeBrain” on 107.5 Dave FM, my first radio appearance was actually a decade ago. Back in the late 90’s/early 2000’s, we used to get interview requests from a lot of students. Some were in business, some were in broadcasting, but they all wanted to talk to someone at the record store, usually the owner since he founded the whole operation on his own.
In this case, I was approached by a broadcasting student. He asked me if I’d like to do a radio interview over the phone regarding Napster, downloading, and how that was affecting the music business. Normally in the past all interview requests were passed on onto the owner. I thought that I could handle this one myself.
Even though I had serious doubts about the health of physical music sales at the time, I put on the brave face. There were still positive things happening.
“We haven’t noticed a decline in sales,” I said. “At least not a major one. The industry is responding to these concerns. I fully agree that $20 or more is too much to pay for a CD. I can tell you that if anybody is getting rich off the price of CDs, it’s not independent chains like ourselves. The markup we make on new CDs covers the shipping of the product to us and our overhead, and that’s about it.
“As I said though, the industry is responding. They’re putting bonuses inside the CD that you can’t get by downloading it off Napster,” I continued. “You’ll notice lots of bands, System of a Down for example, putting bonus DVDs or CD-ROMs in the package for virtually the same price.” Metallica too. Lars has obviously learned something from all this: Inside the then-new Metallica CD you got a free full length DVD plus a free concert to download on mp3.
I wasn’t optimistic about the future of physical CD sales, but I didn’t let on. I’d heard the buzz from customers and even staff members, downloading more and more, where they used to hunt for songs in brick-and-mortar stores. Some staff members of a certain generation refused to download on principle, but we were a shrinking group.
“Since I sell used discs,” I continued, spinning it positive, “a lot of the downloaders are selling off their collections to me. For us it’s turning into a winning situation since I have more, and better, stock than 5 years ago.”
The interview aired a day or two later. As it happens my boss happened to hear the interview and liked it. Although it might not seem like a big deal to all readers, I was just proud of myself for taking the initiative and doing it myself. He was surprised to hear the interview, since I hadn’t told him about it. I was confident in my experience and communication abilities, and I wanted the opportunity.
It wasn’t the last. The next one was a TV interview, for the local cable access channel. I don’t know if my boss ever saw that one, but he wouldn’t have liked it as much – all my facial piercings were visible! The idea of a dude with a labret stud and nose ring representing his store on TV might have been too much for him to handle!
Ahh, the much-maligned St. Anger! When I first reviewed St. Anger back in 2003, I pointed out that some Metallica fans are suffering from “Highschool Syndrome”:
Highschool Syndrome: “The band doesn’t sound the same as they did when I liked them in highschool, therefore they are sellouts and I don’t like this album.”
A staunch critic must remember something before they brand St. Anger a sellout. An album recorded this harshly, with songs this aggressive by anyone else would get zero airplay. How is that selling out?
Perhaps by “selling out”, some fans are referring to the lack of solos and the alternative, downtuned sounds on St. Anger. Unfortunatly, the lack of solos is really a mistake. Kirk Hammett did record at least one very cool and appropriate solo for this album; check out the movie Some Kind Of Monster for a glimpse at that. Hammett felt that the cutting of guitar solos was a mistake and so do I. As Hammett said in the movie, “Having no solos dates the album to THIS time (2003)”.
The production by Bob Rock was definitely the wrong direction. He was overcompensating for what was perceived as overproduction on Load, Reload and Black. The band probably should have taken a production direction like Garage Inc. (heavy, but conventional) instead of pushing the envelope like they did. The sound he created was so harsh that it is actually headache inducing for me to listen to St. Anger in one sitting. (And this is selling out?)
The songs contained herein are by and large pretty decent. The title track was brilliant, with a great video to match. My personal favourite is the fast and furious “Frantic”, the melodic “Sweet Amber”, the angry “Shoot Me Again” and the epic “All Within My Hands”. There are ample time changes and musical adventures going on here, which harken back to the ambitiousness of Justice, while not sounding like old-school Metallica.
The lyrics, mostly introspective, are not my cup of tea. Some may call them brilliant, some may call them psycho-babble trash. Whatever they are, it is the first time that Hetfield didn’t helm them and they were written by the entire band. Truly, they’re not that bad when you’re banging your head at full speed, but most fans want to hear Metallica raging against something other than themselves.
The CD comes with a cool booklet, and of course the bonus DVD: all of St. Anger, recorded by the Hetfield / Ulrich / Hammett / Trujilo lineup, in order, in the studio. (Bob Rock played bass on the album.) At the time, a freebee like this was a bigger deal. They were obviously trying to placate pissed off fans after the fallout of Napster. There was even a code to download an entire live show of your choice. Basically, you are getting the value of three albums in one, for the price of a single CD. Not bad.
Yet, St. Anger was a hard album to love, and few people did. It is the sound of a fractured band piecing itself back together and experimenting with some interesting directions. It could have been better. It’s an important album in the sense that, this was a huge turning point. The band were basically reduced to two guys (Kirk and Lars) for months on end while James was in recovery. We all know the story.
From that point of view, it’s an interesting listen. Music had changed, Metallica were trying to lead and play catch-up at the same time, so it seemed. I think you have to give them credit for attempting something new, sometimes those albums end up classics 20 years down the road. There are enough good riffs and solid songs on St. Anger to come back to it once in a while.
Besides, if you want a band to sound the same album after album, why would you listen to Metallica? AC/DC are still around, you know.
3/5 stars
Don’t count Bob Rock out — his work with the Tragically Hip has been excellent!
Part 2 of a 4-part series on early Def Leppard singles!
DEF LEPPARD – The Def Leppard E.P. (1979 Bludgeon Riffola)
I’ve been slowly, slowly working towards a complete Def Leppard collection. This is one of the last items from the early years that I still needed — The Def Leppard E.P. This is a 7″ single, 33 1/3 RPM however, and never have these recordings been released on a Def Leppard CD. This first EP had Frank Noon on drums. He was just a fill-in, and a month later Def Lep replaced him with a 15 year old Rick Allen.
I have been wanting this one since I was a young fella. Def Leppard was a band I was obsessed with back in highschool. They are in fact the band that really kicked off my collecting, as I described in one of the first Record Store Tales. “Ride Into the Sun” was the B-side to the “Hysteria” single, and it has long been a personal favourite of mine. What I found out later was that this B-side was actually a re-recording of one of the very earliest Def Leppard songs, pre-On Through the Night!
The self-produced 1979 version of “Ride Into the Sun” is a bit different, not as fast or heavy, and containing a different pre-chorus. It’s still a great, fun Def Leppard song from their brief “NWOBHM” period. “Getcha Rocks Off” is a Van Halen-style shuffle, a cool tune that really cooks, with hot solos and a couple smoking riffs. This recording was briefly available on Lars Ulrich’s NWOBHM compilation album. A heavier live (?) version of this song is available on the On Through the Night album.
Side B was taken up by a 7:50 epic track called “The Overture”. This song too was re-recorded by Tom Allom for the debut album (that version is just called “Overture”). Perhaps this song is as close as Def Leppard has ever been to a metal band. It riffs solidly along with some primitive dual guitar hooks. There are ample solos, pounding drums, and different sections and tempos. It’s like Def Judas Maiden. Or something.
The edition I bought is MSB001 of which 15,000 copies were made. This edition unfortunately did not come with the picture sleeve. The original cover was spoof of the His Master’s Voice logo, with a leopard instead of a dog.
I’m glad to finally have this Def Lep collectible. It’s been a long time waiting.
A treat for you boys & girls today! A guest shot, a vintage concert review, and a significant one at that. Remember when Metallica was just an opening act for mediocre bands? Meat does. And he’s back to tell you the story. Enjoy the first guest shot of 2013, by Meat!
W.A.S.P. w/ METALLICA and ARMORED SAINT – January 19, 1985
By Meat
I was lucky at a young age to have the opportunity to see some great concerts. The first concert of my life was at The Center in the Square in Kitchener, Ontario. It was The Monks (remember “Drugs in my Pocket”?) and I went with my childhood friend, Scott Hunter, and his mother. I also saw the almighty Black Sabbath play the Kitchener Memorial Auditorium, three days before my 12th birthday, on the Mob Rules tour on November 19, 1981. I saw Triumph on the Allied Forces tour play the Center in the Square, with my father not long after that. But really my early concert experiences were mostly, and most memorably, with the aforementioned Scott Hunter. I believe it was his uncle who had connections with a concert promotion at the time called CPI. He would leave free tickets at Will Call for us at Maple Leaf Gardens or wherever the show was. We saw the last Kiss tour with makeup at the time (Creatures of the Night tour) on January 14, 1983 with The Headpins opening. Also saw the first ever Kiss tour without makeup (Lick it Up tour) on March 15, 1984 with Accept as the opening act. As well as Motley Crue on the Shout at the Devil tour on June 10, 1984, at what is now the Ricoh Coliseum, also with Accept as support. Many of these shows are quite memorable and monumental, but none so much as the first time I saw Metallica live.
I remember the first time Scott and I heard Metallica. We would have a sleepover at his place every Friday night specifically because Toronto radio station Q107 had their “Midnight Metal Hour” on that night. We would have first heard Metallica (“Seek and Destroy”) either late 1982 or early 1983, before Kill ‘Em All was even released. Obviously it was an instant shot of Metal Up Our Ass! Kill ‘Em All was released on vinyl and cassette on July 25, 1983. I specifically remember (but not exactly when) walking into a record store downtown Kitchener called Records on Wheels and buying that album, Anthrax’s Fistful of Metal and Van Halen’s 1984 on vinyl, all during the same visit. I also remember buying Metallica’s second album, Ride the Lightning, the day it was released. Thanks to the World Wide Web, I know now that date was July 27, 1984. Starting grade ten that September, I was pushing Metallica on anyone that would be open to it at my high school. There were a very select few of us who were die-hards and would have Sony Walkmans stuck to our heads at every opportunity possible. Now I cannot recall if we got free tickets for this particular show, but I do remember how pumped I was when I knew I was gonna see Metallica live.
The bill was as follows: Armored Saint (with Anthrax’s John Bush on vocals), Metallica and W.A.S.P. Yes you read that right. Metallica was opening up for W.A.S.P. I do know that further along on the tour, Metallica and W.A.S.P. would trade headlining sets due to the obvious buzz around Metallica at the time. Here is a picture of an actual ticket stub of this show. Note the price ($15.00) and Armored Saint being spelled wrong on the ticket.
One thing I will add before I go on. Of all the concerts and bands I have seen multiple times live, it is kinda strange I only saw Metallica live twice ever. One of the reasons for this is quite obviously that after their album Load (otherwise known as Mighty Load of Shit), I never really had a great interest in seeing the band live again. But it is worthwhile noting that I have seen Metallica live twice and BOTH TIMES they were opening for someone else. (The second time being the strange bill of The Black Crowes / Warrant / Metallica / Aerosmith on June 29, 1990 at CNE Exhibition Stadium in Toronto) Again, note the ticket price for this. This was before The Eagles ruined ticket prices for all acts with the ridiculous prices for their shows. To quote “The Dude” I hate the fuckin’ Eagles.
So there we were, January 19th 1985 standing in line in front of the late great Toronto concert venue named The Concert Hall. It was freezing cold out, and windy too. So since this was a General Admission event, standing in line braving at least -15 Celsius weather, you can imagine how cold and bitchy people were. I recall the rush of metalheads being ushered quickly into the venue. The second I got in there I went straight for the merch booth and bought a Ride the Lightning tour shirt for me and a high school friend named Joe DeLeo. After that, like seemingly everybody, I had to take a wicked piss. After doing that, I was horrified when I tried to zip my probably really tight jeans back up, and couldn’t because my hands were numb from the cold. My embarrassed horror turned to laughter as I turned my head to see dozens of much older and much larger long-haired headbangers all having the same problem. Only in Canada I guess eh?
Sometime later, Armored Saint took the stage. I remember them being great and how loud it was in there. They were received well and that venue was filling up. While enjoying their set my buddy Scott gets my attention and points to the much-shorter person beside me. Immediately I recognized him as Russell Dwarf from the Toronto band Killer Dwarfs. Their name was very apropos considering this band consisted of nothing but short dudes with long hair. I can only imagine how this band got together. Wonder if an ad went out that said. “Metal musicians needed. Must not be over 5 foot 6 inches tall and have long hair”. I loved that first album. If you don’t know of them, here is their first single and video.
It was time for the Mighty Metallica. They started out with the first track off Ride The Lightning, the classic riff-monster “Fight Fire With Fire”. At this point I was probably about mid-way to the stage in a sea of metalheads. This was before the days of the “moshpit”. This was more of a Hair Swarm packed with long-haired sardines covered in denim and leather. It would have been about half-way through the show that I wormed my way to the front of the stage. This was no easy task as I am sure you can imagine, however being only 15 and much smaller than the masses (with the exception of the Killer Dwarfs of course), there I was literally feet from what would become the best-selling metal band of all-time. This brings me to a memory I will cherish forever. The seemingly monstrous Cliff Burton was right in front of me. I reached out and had in my hand, the bottom leg of his ragged bell-bottom jeans. He tried to kick me in the face, and thankfully missed. Can’t blame him either for trying to kick my head off, and honestly it was the first thing I thought of when said legend died in a bus accident a year and a half later in Sweden on September 27, 1986. R.I.P. Clifford Lee Burton. Check out this YouTube audio clip I found of Metallica playing “Seek and Destroy” from this exact show. Gotta love YouTube.
Check out this set list of the show the next night in Buffalo at some place called the Salty Dog Saloon. (I couldn’t find the Toronto set list online but I am sure it is identical)
“Fight Fire With Fire”
“Ride the Lightning”
“Phantom Lord”
“(Anethesia) Pulling Teeth”
“For Whom the Bell Tolls”
“No Remorse”
“The Call of Ktulu”
“Seek & Destroy”
“Whiplash”
Encores:
“Creeping Death”
Guitar solo
“Am I Evil?”
“Motorbreath”
Which brings me to winding down this novel of a concert review. How could W.A.S.P. possibly follow Metallica? Well, I do remember chants of “you suck”. I remember that the front was nowhere near as packed as it was for Metallica. Maybe Blackie thought he could follow them by drinking fake blood out of a skull (which he did). Here is a quote from Mr. Blackie Lawless comparing separate tours with both Slayer and Metallica and musing about this particular tour.
Blackie: I’ll tell you what was worse – us and Metallica. It was our first or second U.S. tour. It was us, Metallica, and Armored Saint. When they (Slayer) went out with us, they were still an up n’ coming band, didn’t have a lot of fans, so there was a pocket of division every night. With Metallica, I kid you not, it was like an invisible line was drawn right down the middle of the room, and half was theirs and half was ours. It didn’t matter what we were doing on stage. It looked like two opposing armies. Sometimes we just stopped what we were doing and watched. It was a war.
I realize that the merit of music is subjective and it is all in the Ear Of The Beholder. But lets face it. W.A.S.P. really does kinda suck. Some good moments but really not much to speak of. During their set myself and others that with us were just kind of mulling about as most others were really. It was during this time that a guy we were with named Kevin B. (nicknamed Little Dude) said that he saw Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson leaving out a side door during their set. Now to give some perspective on this, this person was a known bull-shitter. None of us believed him. True story: Kevin years later had trans-gender surgery and now is known as Treva. But anyways, we shrugged this off as yet another lie from Little Dude. It was months later reading a Blackie Lawless interview in Circus magazine that I read this quote. “Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson were actually at one of our shows in Toronto last year…. But they were not there to see us.” A classic example of the Little Dude who cried wolf.
I was sitting here, trying to think of some new content to write. Then it hit me: T-Rev Appreciation Day!
RECORD STORE TALES PART 120: T-Rev Appreciation Day!
T-Rev, a past contributor here at LeBrain’s Blog, is a man whom I owe a lot. Not only is he one of the best buds I’ve ever had (sniff) but he’s also responsible for getting me so damn many of my treasures. Directly responsible. Like, I’m not talking about stuff like, “Mike, you really need to buy some Oasis, Max Webster, and Steve Earle. Oh, and while you’re at it, the second Four Horsemen album is awesome!”
He did, in fact, turn me onto all four of those things. But I’m talking more about the kind of situation where a combination of his eagle eyes, musical knowledge, and friendship scored me some discs!
Here’s two:
QUEENSRYCHE – Road To Promised Landaka ARRIVED!
This 1995 promo CD is a neat little greatest hits, going chronologically from the first EP to the Promised Land album! The only exclusive track is a radio edit of “Damaged” but Trevor saw this one and gave me a call. He knew I loved Queensryche, especially since I was going to see them with Tom that summer.
DIAMOND HEAD – Lightning To The Nations (original mix!)
T-Rev and I were both Metallica fans, and were both aware that they had covered numerous Diamond Head songs. This, like the Queensryche disc, came into Trevor’s store. While I wouldn’t fault him for snagging this one for himself, he deemed it slightly out of the scope of his core collection. I’m glad he did, because this disc rocks! And this is the original “Lars Ulrich approved” mix of the album, ripped straight from the LP. Most CD editions were remixed, and the master tapes are now lost. So this is a real treat and hopefully I’ll get around to reviewing it. 15 tracks, from the album itself plus B-sides and so on.
I raise a glass to Trevor, surely one of the finest Record Store Dudes to ever grace a cash register! My memories, and my collection, would be poorer without you.
The Great Change happened around the turn of the millennium.
Prior to that, CD sales were fast and furious. DVD sales had begun to replace VHS sales. We still carried blank cassette tapes. Not too many people were downloading music. Most people weren’t even connected to the internet yet. I still had friends who would come over to use it, and I only got it in mid ’98.
Then I noticed a change. Cassette sales dwindled while requests for blank CD’s increased. Initially we resisted carrying blank CD’s. We thought by doing so, we would be unintentionally killing a CD sale. Eventually we began carrying blank discs, when they started dropping in price. They, they took off. We started hearing about Napster. And Metallica. Metallica fans began selling off their discs.
I remember one guying coming in with a great selection of Metallica discs. All the albums, plus the Live Sh*t box set.
“Wow, this is a great Metallica collection you have here,” I commented as I went through the discs.
“Thanks. I’m selling them because of that fucking asshole Lars. I ripped them all to my computer and now he can go fuck himself.”
I’ll never forget that because at first I felt like, “Well, that doesn’t really do anything to Lars, you already paid for the discs and gave him your money,” but I guess it was the principle of the thing. People were really pissed off. And that represented a huge change. People always bitched about CD prices. $24 for a regularly priced disc, that’s a lot of money. I used to get two albums for that money in 1986. There’d never been a satisfactory answer as to why a kid had to pay $24.99 for the new Judas Priest in 1998. And believe me, it wasn’t the stores ripping off the kids. The margin we made on new CDs could barely be called profit.
Over the next five years, I watched CD prices and sales drop, while we were forced to diversify in order to stay alive. We had already been carrying DVD’s. We started carrying McFarlane dolls. They were cool, but a lot of them were really limited. For example, for Kiss, we only got one Eric Carr, and two Aces. People would want the whole set, but all you’d have left was Paul and Gene.
Then bobble-heads came (which I hate, I absolutely hate bobble-heads). Then Osbournes family toys. Trivia games. Simpsons toys. Clocks. Posters. Books. Hats. CD wallets with a Linkin Park logo on them. Anything we could make a reasonable buck on, even if it was only marginally related to what we did, like the Simpsons toys. (We carried DVD’s, so Simpsons was marginally related.) Then we’d knock down whatever wasn’t selling to clearance prices, and try something else.
The only tangent that was really successful was Xbox and Playstation games. We had so many requests, and physically a game is identical to a CD or DVD, so games were a no brainer. People asked for them all the time. We had to educate ourselves from the ground up on game pricing and we jerry-rigged a way in our computer system to inventory them. However to me, the scent of decay was in the air. Because downloading had killed such a huge chunk of our music sales, the stores were nothing like the way I remembered.
Working in a store selling video games and bobble-heads wasn’t the dream job that started me on this path. I was always there for one reason: the music!
Forget the fact that I bought this twice. (Shame on you Metallica for releasing this digitally without even announcing that there would be a forthcoming physical release.) This EP, Metallica’s umpteenth (and fourth in a row last I checked) is totally worth whatever your local shop is asking you to plunk down for it. There’s nothing in the way of special packaging so if you already own a digital copy, you’ll probably be fine with just that. For sheer riffage per minute, this is Metallica the way I remember it.
The production or lack thereof is rougher than Death Magnetic, which is fine by me. The songs themselves all could have been on Death Magnetic, there’s really nothing weak here. “Hate Train” is among the better Metallica songs from the last 20 years. It careens from fast and heavy to melodic and back again. And that’s just the first track. If you liked Death Magnetic, then buying this is a real no-brainer. If you didn’t, and still can’t get over the fact that Metallica don’t sound the same as when you were in highschool, then avoid, because I’ll tell you right now this won’t change your jaded mind.
I was as surprised as anyone upon hearing “The View”. Lou Reed’s toneless vocal jarring up against Hetfield’s “YEAAH-HAH!” style of singing?…weird stuff. But compelling. Something about Lou’s tone-deaf delivery and the weird lyrics. Something about Hetfield’s always addictive yowls.
Tellingly, the Metallica logo is nowhere to be found. Buyers should probably consider this a Lou Reed album featuring Metallica, than a Metallica album featuring Lou Reed.
Lulu is definitely not for 99% of Metallica fans. It may also not be for a good deal of Lou Reed fans, although they are more likely to embrace Lulu for what it is. What it is, I’m not too sure, but I do know that I can’t stop listening to it.
I’m not even going to try to figure out what the lyrics are about (based on a German play of which I have no knowledge). I dig portions of the lyrics, every once in a while Lou Reed will come up with a cool set of words that just sound right, independently of the context. I mean, it’s Lou Reed, right?
I do find it weird when in the middle of “Pumping Blood” Lou proclaims “Come on, James!”
As for Metallica? There are bits and pieces of this album that shred. The odd riff just jumps out every once in a while, and kind of make you wish for a complete Metallica song to surround it. Some guitar bits will take you back to Justice-style melody, some riffs sound like Death Magnetic.
Yet, I keep coming back to the weird soundscapes. The stuff that sounds more like Metal Machine Music than Metal Militia. If you like a healthy dose of the abstract in your music, you may like a fair deal of Lulu, particularly the long songs. Personally I think Metallica deserve a hell of a lot of credit for stretching out. This kind of music is something I’m used to anyway, and consider to be highly accomplished.
Highlights: The speed metal shred of “Mistress Dread”. The strangely melodic “Cheat On Me”.
There’s an argument to be made that Metallica are not the kind of band that should be experimenting with the avante-garde, but those kind of arguments veer a little too close to “stay in your lane”. Lulu is definitely not for everybody. Don’t buy based on my review alone, if you’re in any way unsure, listen first.
mikeladano.com 