Time to catch up on Tony’s stuff, this week. From the last… two weeks? And then, a most innocuous question from Azuretalon(!!!) creates a fascinating conversation about metal. And religion. So there. Enjoy!
QUESTIONS:
Dear Dissonant and Confused Forced Voice of the Magical Talking Hat, What are your middle names and why? — Azuretalon!!!
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I like the story behind my Dad’s middle name. He had 3 older brothers and an older sister, all of whom were very into playing at being Robin Hood (it runs in the family :)). And they all petitioned my grandmother to name the baby after him. So my grandmother said that since Robin was the Earl of Huntingdon, they would give him “Huntingdon” as a middle name. She could have gone with naming him “Robert” (Robin Hood’s given name) but one of the brothers already was a Robert.
I thought Robin was Earl of Locksley…?
I think his name is supposed to have been Robert de Locksley or Robert of Locksley–I’m not sure he had the title of Earl or not. But then supposedly he those lands were taken from him. When he died, he was Earl of Huntingdon, so perhaps Richard gave him new lands and a title (if there really was such aperson). There is this inscription on a grave at Kirklees Priory:
“Hear undernead dis laitl stean
Lais Robert Earl of Huntingun
Near arcir der as hie sa geud
An pipl kauld im Robin Heud
Sic utlaws as hi an is men
Vil England nivr si agen.”
Ok, help me out – I’m struggling with the third line? The rest I think I got . . .
Here underneath this little stone
Lies Robert Earl of Huntingdon
??? (Never an archer was as he so good??)
And people called him Robin Hood
Such outlaws as he and his men
Will England never see again.
“Never archer there as he so good.”
This is why I sometimes find it hard to call out my students on their text-speak spelling. All they’d have to do is be Middle-English speakers and they could spell however they wanted!
Symphonic metal — Tony have you heard/like Apocalyptica? (4 cellists–they have one album of Mettalica covers)
I *do* know them! And I need to buy some of their stuff… I’ve been meaning to for awhile!
I think if somone asked me to label Punk versus Metal as anarchist/nihilist, I would say Punk=anarchist, Metal=nihilist–but that’s way overgeneralized.
But that got me thinking that what I do think separates them is that Punk tends to be about things on a political spectrum rather than a religious/spiritual one. So the Jesus or Satan question for Punk is more Anarchist or Fascist, or Feminist or Misogynist.
WAY over generalized. I don’t think Metal in general is nihilistic at all. Sure, when you slip into Death/Black Metal you wind up with some of that. But a lot of power metal is very empowering… which makes sense. Helloween, Gamma Ray, Manowar, the previously meantioned Within Temptation and Dragonforce. All of that has messages of power, hope and Victory. That is the stuff that I actually tend to gravitate towards.
Sorry, didn’t mean to say that Metal–even in general–is all nihilistic. Only that in general, if one divides up punk/metal into categories, then metal is the one that has more nihilistic groups (like Death/Black Metal). And then it also has groups, as you said that have more messages of power/hope. It just makes me think that metal (again, in general) is addressing things on a spiritual spectrum–one end of which might be nihilism and the other hope. Or one end might be Jesus and the other Satan. Punk is more about political action/belief–but again across a scale so that you have Riot Grrls, but you also have bands that I think of as misogynistic (Blink 182).
That is very astute, I like that a lot. I am one that is never terribly interested in politics, political actions, or believes; and I am also not terribly interested in punk music. Like I said, big metal head, and I am interested in, or atleast can’t not think about, the cosmic horror of nihilism all the way to the eternal hope of Christianity. Supernatural cosmology in general and if that is the way more attached them to metal it makes sense why I like it, and knowing which end of the spectrum I would prefer attaches to the kinds of metal I enjoy. Also, I just think the symphonic/operatic/melodic stuff is just musically better. I do enjoy some goth metal though too.
I don’t think punk is generally lacking in musicality, though I understand that going for a more basic instrumentation (and away from extended guitar soloing) is a big part of where punk is coming from. There is stuff that sounds kind of like noise, but I think the same could be said about metal.
Tony mentioned Liz Phair (Exile in Guyville!). The Clash also seems to me to have plenty of musicality, and Billy Bragg, Sleater Kinney, Andrew Jackson Jihad (to name someone more recent).
The other big difference to me between the two (and I don’t know that much metal so I could be wrong) is that metal takes itself very, very seriously (which is one of the things being parodied in Tenacious “D”). Punk is more mocking/self-mocking.
For female led metal check out:
Within Temptation (I’m planning to see them for the second time in October)
Nightwish
After Forever
Epica
Eye’s of Eden
you already meantioned Lacuna Coil
All Ends.
And guitarists… I still believe the greatest guitarist ever was Hendrix. The stuff he was doing at the time he was doing it was insane. I’m also a fan of Joe Satriani and for sheer speed I love Herman Li of Dragonforce.
Yeah, Hendrix!
Although, check out Kaki King if you haven’t seen her play yet.
I always throw it to Hendrix, not just because of what he was doing but that he was basically innovating the insane stuff he was doing. And I am checking out Kaki King right now, she’s really good. Her play style is very strange in the best possible way.
I forgot to meantion with Nightwish that the original lead singer, Tarja Turunen, is/was a classical lied singer. She’s trained and very operatic.
Inspired by something from the start of the show:
Guess the name of the song:
“I hear that marvellous 19th century innovation, power of a thousand horses, connector of continents, a-coming,
It’s rolling round the perfectly-shaped, beautifully landscaped, bend,
And I ain’t seen our most glorious, celestial bringer of warmth and light, since I don’t know when…”
By the way, the Jesus or Satan bit did crack me up. I am still not sure 100% which side Distrubed is on. But I do want to say that I do believe I heard Flyleaf is Christian.
On a related note, I saw this years ago as a poster in my best friend’s room and I thought it explains metal pretty well.
http://hewgill.com/~greg/definitive-metal-family-tree.png
Oo… I like that graphic… I agree, it explains metal quite well…
I’m actually of the opinion that “rock and roll” only moved from being a sub-genre of previous forms to being a genre in its own right when metal came along.
By the way, Hendrix said that he was significantly influenced by this woman (start at 1:24 if you don’t want to listen to the entire song, but I think you’ll be missing out if you don’t): 🙂
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeaBNAXfHfQ
Names: I’m an Elizabeth, and my parents claim that is after my paternal grandmother, whose name is legally either Bette or Bozhenka (possible misspelling on my part – her parents were Slovak immigrants), so just like your sister-in-law, Elizabeth wasn’t part of her name at all. My middle name, Jane, is after my maternal grandmother who was Emma Jane but went by Jane in her adult life (a better deal than her sister, who has been called George most of her life).
Tony, some commercial voice over questions for you: the Crayola commercial with a tree, I think it’s a guy from 7th Heaven; Matt somebody maybe? And the Wayfair commercial with the singing, I think the second part is Lea Michelle, but I’m not certain, her line is something about “I’ve never seen selection quite like this, so many colors and styles in my mind”. Can you confirm/deny on either?
I think Zach Braff was the voice of the Cottonelle dog and Pur water filters and possibly something else all at the same time a few years ago. He seems to have fallen off the face of the earth since Scrubs ended.
I’ll need to see YouTube clips or something to determine those first ones… but I can confirm (at least in my opinion) that Zach Braff is *definitely* the Cottonelle puppy, and the Pur water filter.