Showing posts with label Music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Music. Show all posts

Thursday, December 7, 2023

The hellscape of KISS avatars and AI art

KISS (holograms) love you!
KISS just wrapped up a 50-year career in typical KISS fashion.

Selling product.

Not content to leave the stage with a remaining shred of dignity intact, KISS left their fans with a message, and a sales pitch: “The new KISS era starts now!” And unveiled the next era of KISS.

Digitally created avatars.

The new beginning? Artificiality.

KISS presumably means to render themselves, and their income streams, immortal. “The band will never stop because the fans own the band,” explained frontman Paul Stanley.

Paying fans, with their money going to KISS in perpetuity. 

Fuck I hate the world right now.

***

Artificial entertainment is not unique to KISS. We’re being increasingly inundated with images spun out of DALL-E, text spit from ChatGPT. Fake videos with AI trained voiceovers are making it increasing harder to tell what is real.

Now we’ve got AI KISS. Holograms, programmed to move based on training data, not spontaneity.

A nightmare.

I ask, with earnestness: What is the point?

Before the advent of AI, had you asked me why I liked KISS I would probably have answered “the music."

But now I realize, it was also the band members.

People made the music. Putting aside debate about their actual talent, Gene, Paul, Peter, and Ace blended their unique backgrounds and experiences to write songs. They had several false starts and tentative steps toward their final brand image. It was a messy path of false starts, playing shows in high school gyms in front of a dozen disinterested fans, before they finally hit it big.

The end product was, almost miraculously, pretty awesome, at least from an entertainment perspective. 

Paul Stanley is a human being possessed of loves and interests, passions, faults, foibles, and flaws. As were the other members of KISS. Together they wrote great songs and terrible songs. Classic albums and awful clunkers. They did some amazing tours, limped through others, and put out some really shitty merchandise.

I love it all.

I love it because KISS is unique, and every member that served in the band, unique (especially Vinnie Vincent). It’s what makes them entertaining. This humanness is an incalculable part of what makes KISS endearing to its fans. 

KISS is easy to pick on, and mock. “They were already artificial!” OK, fair enough. But they were and are real people who against long odds, built a career most would envy.

The next era is a mockery, and its only just begun.

Will AI generated Paul Stanley paint pictures, bang groupies, have children, fight with digital Ace Frehley on Eddie Trunk? Will the band members write ChatGPT generated memoirs about their “tours”? Inspire new AI artists?

Are we supposed to go to concerts and cheer on holograms?

There is no point to AI generated art. It is soulless in every sense of the term. Because there is no soul behind it, not even a ghost in the machine. Just scraped and aggregated data, vectored and served up.

One small bit of good news is that it appears AI generated art is not copyrightable. And it doesn’t deserve to be, because there is nothing worth preserving in it. It is the pinnacle of corporate, Silicon Valley soul-lessness, a golem of circuitry built from the flesh and blood output of real artists.

If we had any sense as a species, AI would be put to use solving actual big problems like climate change and nuclear fusion. Detecting cancers unseen to the naked eye. Or automating soulless, mind-crushing tasks.

To be fair AI is being used in some of these applications. I hope these succeed. But most of the product development is being applied in the creative industries, and white collar businesses. 

Why? As with any open question about business, the answer is the same here as with any other: follow the money.

Companies are now rapidly training niche AIs and then selling them as subscription products. Businesses are already outsourcing human labor to machines, reducing overhead expense and increasing their profitability to shareholders.

This is commerce, not art.

Worse, kids are using it to write papers, teachers to grade these fake papers, “creators” to fuel their content pipeline. What are we learning? What is more impressive, a guitar virtuoso who has spent 25 years mastering his craft, a generational talent like Frank Frazetta painting with fire, or some kid putting prompts into DALL-E?

People are the losers in the AI race. As are dignity, hard work, effort, and talent.

So is the future. We’re sacrificing that, too. And we’re making a mockery of the past.

A massive part of the appeal of Conan and Solomon Kane and Kull is its creator, Robert E. Howard. Howard was rooted in Cross Plains, possessed of a voracious reading habit, writing talent, and an imagination as big as Texas. He was complex, contradictory, full of great passions, “giant melancholies and gigantic mirths.” All of it formed the wellspring of his art.

AI has none of this. There is no background to excavate, no influences to explore, no literary legacy to debate, no arguments over places in the pantheon. 

AGIs have no history. They never worked on oil fields, felt the sting of lost loves, experienced the alienation of an artistic soul in a town whose residents despised its craft.

AI generated writing is the death knell of literary criticism. How can one say anything about the output of a program, scraping and training itself on massive data sets of already existing content? A hellish, endless loop of sophisticated repetition and large-scale copying, including everything Robert E. Howard ever wrote?

To recap: AI generated art, including images and text, but also AI avatars, AI music, all of it, is void of meaning. It is shallow, empty, and purposeless.

Inhuman.

I will not be part of creating it, or consuming it. 

Neither should you.

Sunday, August 27, 2023

Ace Frehley, Nashua Center for the Arts (Aug. 2023)--a review

We had good seats... up close and personal with Ace Frehley.
Wildly unexpected: Ace Frehley played a cover of Thin Lizzy’s “Emerald” at the Nashua Center for the Arts last night. But I’ve come to expect the unexpected out of Ace.

The former KISS lead guitarist has always been a loose cannon. That’s what led to his departure from the band; Ace quit in 1982 but his time was coming to an end regardless. He loved booze and drugs too much, lacked discipline and seriousness, and was unreliable. Which of course put him at direct odds with the businessmen and defenders of the KISS brand, Paul and Gene.

Ace went on to have a moderately successful solo career with Frehley’s Comet, famously reunited with the band for a reunion tour in 1996, and left again in another huff in 2002. In his wild biography No Regrets Ace sends most of his ire in the direction of the controlling, sex-addicted Gene Simmons; today he is openly quarreling with Paul Stanley, who himself stooped to Ace’s level by denigrating Ace’s playing and professionalism (despite the fact that Paul is openly using vocal tracks to cover up his shot voice).

It's rather pathetic, watching the infighting of 70-year-old men who hit the equivalent of the lottery in the 70s but can’t seem to get beyond their own egos and let the past remain there.

But to be honest, it’s also fucking fun, in a watching a train wreck from afar, guiltily, kind of way.

When you’re a deep fan of KISS--the kind who goes beyond the music and explores their crazy history, the rise and fall and glorious return, the nonsense of albums like Unmasked and The Elder and weird transient members like Vinnie Vincent, and all the merchandise spinoffs and now public beefs and shit-stirring—it’s like participating in a reality TV show spanning 50 years, with dozens of spinoffs and subplots. It’s endless and endlessly fascinating.

There aren’t really a lot of good guys.

KISS (the current incarnation) does not precisely even play concerts anymore, but put on a highly choreographed performance; everything is calculated and planned. Zero spontaneity. Yeah, Gene/Paul/Tommy/Eric put on a much bigger, brighter, and more colorful show than Ace, and KISS sounds much better, but it’s plastic. For almost 20 years now, perhaps since the “farewell” tour of 2001, it’s been essentially the same thing; the last unique show I remember KISS putting on was Psycho Circus and its ill-conceived 3D effects. 

Ace has slouched along with his own solo career since the mid-80s. He’s never had a good voice, never taken care of himself physically (though he says he’s been sober since 2006), BUT he does his brand of loose, boozy rock well, and has surrounded himself with a talented band including three dudes who can all sing, and share the vocal duties and take the load off what is clearly at this stage a very frail Frehley.

So KISS isn't great these days, and neither is Ace. But I still love them both.

Concerts have always for me been about good times with friends, and unique experiences, first, and the music, while important, is second. Last night was a fun experience, and the music was OK too. It checked the boxes for a good time. And it was.

Ace busted out a lot of old KISS tunes including “Parasite,” “Detroit Rock City,” “Cold Gin,” “Shock Me,” “Deuce” and “Love Gun.” He played many solo hits, including (of course) “New York Groove,” but also “Rip It Out,” “Rock Soldiers,” “Snowblind,” “Speedin’ Back to My Baby” and “Hard Times.”

I think I got them all, but I wasn’t taking notes, either.

Oh yeah, and “Emerald,” which was a pleasant surprise

Wayne and I. 
The usual weird Ace-ness accompanied all of this. Ace slagged Paul once; Ace admitted he can’t sing Love Gun, “but neither can Paul” before turning over the vocals to his drummer. He told a weirdly placed story about falling down his stairs in his own home in a sort of half apology for not being as spry on stage (he never has been). An odd fedora wearing promoter who resembled a faux pro wrestling manager lurked along the side of the stage taking pictures, and at the end of the show held open a bathrobe for Ace to step into. 

Ace shared interesting short anecdotes about old KISS songs (conceiving the riff for Cold Gin on the subway, Gene admitting not knowing what lyrics of Deuce meant, etc.). And of course he played a smoke show solo.

Nashua is a little rough around the edges but the main drag was loaded with breweries, restaurants, and pubs. We watched one overserved dude make an ass of himself before moving on.

Fun stuff, quirky, unique. Another one for the record books. 

My friend Wayne and I both remarked that this may be the last time Ace comes this way, based on his condition, but one never knows. He is after all, a wild card, and may yet have an Ace in his deck. OK, that's enough card metaphors for one day.

Tuesday, January 3, 2023

Railing against AI art

I hate computer generated art* and worry very deeply about what a future dominated by artificial intelligence will look like. Both for artists, consumers, observers, fans, and anyone who cares about human creativity in general.

One of the regular YouTubers I enjoy watching is Rick Beato. Rick serves up long form, in depth interviews with artists whose work I admire (recently Sting, and Billy Corgan for example). He attracts great guests because he’s not a quack, or a conspiracy theorist. His large following (3.3M) appreciates his candor, personality, passion, and sharp insights into what makes certain songs, albums, or artists great. Moreover through his talent he replicates many of those sounds in the studio with a guitar or keyboard.

But in his most recent video he touches on something that has occupied my mind more and more these days. “How Auto-Tune Destroyed Popular Music” includes a discussion of generative artificial intelligence music companies set to unleash music wholly made by AI. “The selling point of generative AI is that no musical knowledge or training is necessary. Anyone can potentially create a hit song with the help of computers that evolve with each artificially produced guitar lick or drum beat,” Beato says.

Yuck. Sounds fucking awful.

A quick recap of where we’re at:

  • Humans can prompt AI programs (i.e., Midjourney, etc.) to generate pictures, for example sword-and-sorcery images that look a lot like something Frank Frazetta or Ken Kelly might have created, while also being something new. Many of these are pretty good.
  • ChatGPT is authoring stories with just a few prompts. Not as good, often poor, but in some cases passable… and this technology will get better.

I fail to see how any of this is good for art.

The argument about “democratizing music” is horseshit. Yeah, let’s bypass the cost of having to pay for a studio drummer and democratize the cost of a recording studio for the struggling musician… but now let’s cut out the song writer and the singer as well, and proceed straight to entering prompts in a computer.

My best friend’s son is just starting to learn the guitar. Even though he’s just 13 he’s gotten pretty good… because he’s put in hours of practice. It’s awesome to watch him grow, but also fair to ask: Why bother, kid?

Are human beings supposed to consume computer developed art, and embrace it with our soul (if you believe we have one, and are not just flesh and blood robots)?

What about guys like Beato? Are they supposed to analyze computer generated art? Who are they going to talk to… some nerd who input the prompts, or the software engineer who designed the program? Or maybe some version of HAL 9000?

At that point, why have humans at all? Should we just accept our robot overlords?

Where is the place for high, noble art in all of this?

The real crime is that all of these algorithms are based off mass data that is taken from original work by human beings who will never be acknowledged or compensated for their efforts. Google has floated a repeated claim that all information should be “free,” and all of the world’s library digitized. But they and a handful of other large corporations are the ones getting rich from this process. Beato asks the same: “Really the only question is, who gets paid for it? Who are the songwriters? Are they the programmers that program it?”

And this is just art. No one is really talking about deep fakes, and the destruction of what is truthful through the production of fake news, and the subsequent loss of our grasp on reality.

I think AI has amazing potential for improving the quality of human lives, and in many ways already has. If an AI can detect cancers unseen by a radiologist’s eye, that’s a technology I want deployed STAT. I’m in favor of self-driving cars that reduce the human error that leads to most roadway fatalities. Let’s get cheap self-driving cars out there, even if they cost drivers’ jobs.

But art? Art is not a tool; art is created by humans and enjoyed by humans. Creating art, and putting in the hours to do so, is a meaningful act, i.e., meaning-generative. It’s one of the few refuges of meaning we have left. What’s the point of art without a human mind behind it, guiding its creation?

Call me an old fart but a world where we consume AI generated art is not one I want to live in. I’m glad I have my old CDs and will just sit in my corner and listen to them. And go see cover bands that cover the old shit I like while refusing to auto-tune their voices.

I have tried to embrace new tech, and have (laptop, cell phone, reasonably modern car) but general AI seems to me a bridge too far, and one we should not cross--at least without some serious thinking about the economics and societal impact.

Yup, first post of 2023 and I’m officially an Old Man Who Shouts at Cloud.

*I make an exception for CGI, etc. that adds detail to sets and supplements the work of human actors. 

Saturday, April 23, 2022

Defending 80s KISS

Big hair, and hair shirts.
According to some "fans" (I won’t name names—yet), KISS was only good in the 70s, and once the makeup came off they were irrelevant. The same types think that KISS is entirely a gimmick, a circus act that, minus the costumes and fireworks, would be forgotten to history.

Needless to say I don’t agree with this argument, and push back hard on it. I would never compare KISS to Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, nor even the better metal acts (Maiden, Priest). But nor would KISS, frankly. They’re a party rock band who happened to do that type of music as well or better than anyone. They know this, we know this, we’re all in on it together. And having fun.

I started listening to KISS somewhere around the dawning of my interest in rock music, 1987 or so, circa my freshman year in high school. The first KISS album I ever owned was Crazy Nights. By then, KISS had long been out of makeup, shorn away two members of the original band (and a few others like Mark St. John and Vinny Vincent had also come and gone). In place of fan favorites Peter Criss and Ace Frehley were Eric Carr and Bruce Kulick. 

I knew KISS from the likes of Beth and Rock and Roll All Nite, but it wasn’t until 1987 and Crazy Nights that I became a true fan. So, I categorically reject the argument that KISS is a gimmick who roped in kids with the makeup. I’m sure that occurred in some instances, but come on, be serious—how long can that infatuation and shock stage possibly last? A year, three, 10? Surely not 50 years. A wave of trash bands with more shock and awe came along in KISS’ wake, and today no one remembers them. Underneath it all, KISS wrote a lot of good, straightforward rock-and-roll that kept the fans coming back. Simple stuff, yes. But if writing commercial rock hits were easy everyone would be doing it. 

KISS was of course awesome in the 70s, taking a rocket ride straight to the top with the likes of KISS Alive. They were on lunchboxes, comic books, even starred in a terrible made for TV film (KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park). And, underneath the limousines and seven-inch leather heels, they wrote some of their best material in the 70s. Hard rock hits like Parasite, Strutter, Deuce, and Detroit Rock City, were great then and still are. Everyone loved KISS in the 70s—how could you not?

I do too. But, I’ve always had a soft spot for 80s KISS. Maybe it’s the nostalgia of my Crazy Nights tape, which I still have by the way. Maybe it’s one too many beers in the 90s, or in general a suspect taste in music. 

Possibly, but I don’t think so.

I actually think KISS peaked musically in the mid-80s. Eric Carr was without question a better drummer than Peter Criss. Ace Frehley is an underrated talent who wrote some iconic solos and hooks, but Kulick can play, and at this point was far more disciplined in his craft than the dissolute Frehley. KISS was also facing much stiffer competition from younger, more energetic bands like Van Halen, and had to step up their game. To its credit KISS delivered with some awesome music in the 80s.

I’m going to leave one example, right here.


I love this song. Paul sounds phenomenal. In the 80s he grew fully into this voice. This was his  best decade vocally. The guitar tone is perfect. The deep backing chorus is magnificent. The lyrics are what I want—empowerment, girl you messed up when you left me ‘cuz I’m the best, stuff I wanted to hear then, and still has a place now. It’s got power and punch. It’s better than just about anything you’ll hear on the radio these days but that’s not saying much, either.

I could go on and on with further examples. A few others: Creatures of the Night, War Machine, Lick it Up, Fits Like A Glove. KISS had it going on.

KISS was undoubtedly less popular in the 80s, ceding space in the limelight to the likes of Def Leppard. By the turn of the decade they already seemed a little old, perhaps a little out of touch. And they hurt themselves with a pair of turkeys out of the gate (I like a couple songs off 1980’s Unmasked and the ill-fated The Elder (1981), but no fan would call these largely lousy efforts their finest hour). But, for those who kept listening, after some initial stumbles they soon started putting out some really good material. It started with Creatures of the Night (1982), which holds up as an outstanding example of 80s hard rock/nosing up to heavy metal. I think it’s one of their best albums, ever. KISS continued to crush it on Lick It Up (1983), which got big props from the likes of Kerrang. Animalize (1984) was a step back, but who doesn’t love “Heaven’s on Fire” and the terribly underrated “Thrills in the Night,” one of my favorite all-time KISS tracks? Asylum (1985) had “Tears are Falling” and “Who Wants to be Lonely.” (“Uh! All Night,” a song about as subtle as a Penthouse centerfold, is embarrassing, but not really). Then of course came 1987s Crazy Nights, with its rousing anthemic title track, “Reason to Live” and my favorite, “Turn on the Night.” Which still makes it into my regular rotation when I want to hear KISS. 

KISS closed out the decade with Hot in the Shade (1989), which I don’t think holds up as well as the previous albums I’ve listed, a bit of whimper to be honest, but since I danced with my wife to “Forever” at our wedding, because of “Hide Your Heart” and “Rise to It,” AND because it was the first tour on which I saw KISS, it still holds a soft spot in my hard heart.

So there you go. 80s KISS. You probably won’t find too many riding out to the defense of the band in the decade of excess. I can’t defend the most garish of Paul’s outfits (green sleeve gloves and tight white jeans?), his trapeze acts, or Gene’s hair. But their music? Yeah, I’ll defend that.

Wednesday, April 13, 2022

Gordon Lightfoot recap

So the Judas Priest concert was cancelled after 70-year-old Rob Halford came down with a bad cold, but 83-year-old Gordon Lightfoot powered through on Sunday with a memorable concert at the Tupelo Music Hall in Derry, NH.

Yeah, my musical heroes are aging--check that, are aged. Or, more charitably, well-seasoned. Gordon as you'd expect has changed quite a bit vocally, losing his resonance and richness, and doesn't move too fast on stage anymore. Not sure if he ever did. 

But, none of that mattered. With a good band behind him, a great venue, and my old man and brother by my side, it made for a memorable evening. It was quite cool to see this old legend still performing, after all these years.

Gordon played 90 minutes and we were out of there by 8:30--old men all around, early to bed :). But he got through (almost) every one of the classics I was hoping he would. "Sundown," "Early Morning Rain," 
"If You Could Read My Mind," "For Loving Me," "Carefree Highway," "Song for a Winter's Night," and of course the highlight and everyone's favorite, "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." The latter was the highlight, and maybe it was my imagination but Gordon seemed to channel some deep wellspring of strength for this one. It was powerful and sounded pretty darned good.

In an era where everything can be immediately captured on video and shared instantly with the world, it's interesting that this song, which became a no. 1 hit in Nov. 1976, almost a year to the day after the maritime disaster itself, outlives the ephemera, and the crisis of the day that really isn't. That's the power of art over instant gratification. We remember the doomed ship when we hear those sad opening bars, even now.

If anyone reading this is a resident of MA/NH or the broader New England region, the Tupelo is a good take. New, clean, small so the views are all great. Excellent bar with a good beer selection (I drank a couple local brews, a nice Battle-Axe IPA brewed by Kelsen). Reportedly good food too, if you want it. They open 90 minutes before showtime so you can get in and enjoy yourself, and have some cool art on the walls, acoustic guitars signed by a few of the greats, etc. 

Nice bar.

(L-R) my brother, old man, and me. The place did fill in to capacity.



Tuesday, October 12, 2021

S&S updates: Glass Hammer, Schuyler Hernstrom, and more

In full disclosure I'm not a big prog fan, unless you count the likes of RUSH, and perhaps a bit of Yes' back catalogue. I'm metal all the way. But I've had the pleasure of discovering the band Glass Hammer recently after hearing from one of the band members, bassist/lyricist/co-founder Steve Babb, who is a reader of this blog.

Glass Hammer was founded in 1992 and possess a deep catalog of material based on the likes of The Lord of the Rings, C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy, and sword-and-sorcery. In 2020 they released Dreaming City, an album inspired by Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melnibone stories. Glass Hammer is now about to release  “Skallagrim – Into The Breach,” the second album of a proposed trilogy, on October 15th. As Babb explains:

“The project began as a nostalgic homage to the Sword & Sorcery genre, and to a lesser extent, the stories of H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith. It’s turned into much more, however, and my story of the Skallagrim, the thief with the screaming sword, has evolved into my first full-length fantasy novel which I plan to release next year.”

“Skallagrim is a thief who lost his memory and the girl he loves,” he goes on to say. “He’s up against dark magic and terrifying monsters to reclaim both, but finds an ally in a sentient, eldritch sword. Now his fate is bound to the sword as much as to the quest to find his love.”

Sounds pretty cool, I'll be digging into the album in the coming days. Check out the official video of "Anthem to Andorath" here on Youtube. After an atmospheric intro this one rips. And sounds great.

In some other news, my review of Schuyler Hernstrom's The Eye of Sounnu is up on the blog of DMR Books. Check it out here. I'm a fan of older sword-and-sorcery material and have not kept up as I should with newer authors and releases, and am slowly trying to rectify that. Hernstrom is a first-rate talent who gives me hope for the future of the subgenre and I can't recommend this book highly enough.

In more downbeat news, we recently lost author Robert Low (1949-21) back in June of this year. You can find a Facebook tribute here and a recent piece recalling his life and works over on Black Gate. I've heard many good things about his works over the years, in particular the Oathsworn series. Another author I have to seek out. 

I hope Low's spirit is sailing on a whale road of a different sort, and I thank him for his contributions to heroic fantasy and historical fiction.

Sunday, March 7, 2021

A review of Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road (Neil Peart)

Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road (2002) did not quite meet my expectations, both the book itself and in a larger sense who I believed/expected Neil Peart to be. In life Peart was such a private person that I knew very little about him, even after listening to Rush for decades, seeing them in concert some 6-8 times, and reading articles and interviews here and there. With Ghost Rider I spent 460 pages inside Peart’s head, and now feel like I know him a lot better.

The bulk of the book consists of reprinted letters to his friends written and sent while on the road from approximately 1998-2000, during some 2 years of solo motorcycling that took him across Canada, North America, and Mexico. Peart would get up early and ride his BMW motorcycle all day, stopping at hotels around 4 or 5 p.m. to eat, drink, and smoke, occasionally tour the local scenery, and write letters. He often rode through the rain or navigated unpaved roads, putting a beating on his bike which necessitated frequent repairs. Peart is revealed as a lover of nature, an aficionado of good food and wine/scotch whiskey, books including the likes of Jack London (he’s a fellow The Sea-Wolf and Martin Eden fan, I was pleased to discover), and someone who valued staying connected through letters and evening calls with a circle of friends. Peart also put a premium on staying private from the general public. He was rarely recognized during his travels and when he was, was intensely uncomfortable with the attention. Ghost Rider reveals that Peart had some low(ish) self esteem issues, and was amazingly humble given that he was/is a top 5, maybe top 3, rock drummer of all time. I’d also put him way up in the pantheon of all-time great rock lyricists.

Of course this trip was prompted after the crushing loss of his daughter and common-law wife within a year of each other, the first at age 19 in a single car accident, the latter from cancer but also depression and a broken heart. Heart-rending stuff. These experiences destroyed the former Peart and left him rootless, unmoored from his past, and severing him from what he thought to be his chief interests, including drumming, which he abandoned for more than 18 months. Certainly he lost all interest in touring and playing with Rush, which clearly he considered his work/professional life, separate from the interests that fed his soul. Rush and music are mentioned surprisingly little in Ghost Rider.

Ghost Rider is also raw at the edges.Peart is at a few points angry, even petty, in his criticism of “fat Americans,” and an inattentive waitress. Some of these passages come across as a bit mean-spirited, directed at people who didn’t seem to actually interact with him, and were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. But these incidents were most prevalent earlier in his ride/early in the book, when he was angry at the world. A few times Peart expresses (understandable) anger that loud, boorish people are alive, while his wife and daughter are dead. I can’t blame him—that’s a catastrophe that I cannot imagine enduring, and I’m sure it led to emotions spilling out of which he had no control. I give him a pass.

Peart on the road.
In short, Ghost Rider is recommended, but probably only to Rush fans. At more than 400 pages it gets a bit repetitive on the travelogues, and could have been trimmed down. I would have liked to have seen less emphasis on letters, especially letters recounting old stories with old friends that lack emotional impact and relevance to an outsider, and more self-reflection on his healing journey. Some of the passages about him going through his daughter’s effects (stuffed animals, books) were heart-breaking and will remain with me. Peart’s time wintering in Canada, fending off the depravations of a squirrel intent on his bird feeder, with a nerf gun, were good fun, and revealed surprising sides of a complex person I never knew. I was so glad to see him meet the love of his life at the end, and say goodbye to the “Ghost Rider” persona he adopted on the journey (he adopted a few others too, pseudonyms, which seemed to be an ongoing theme in his life, a coping mechanism for not being fully comfortable in his own skin, but this aspect was not as well explored as it could have been).

I find myself these days listening to more Rush than I have in a long time. It’s fueled by a love of great music of course, but I suspect it’s also nostalgia for my youth, and for my days seeing Rush in concert, which will no longer happen again after Peart passed away in early 2020 from a glioblastoma.

Farewell Neil Peart, you are gone but never forgotten. Thank you for Ghost Rider, and the music, and your life.

Saturday, February 6, 2021

Some ramblings on old school tastes in music, reading

Now that's old school.
I was glancing at my bookshelves recently, as I’m wont to do when I’m in between books and scanning for the next title … or if it’s just Tuesday. And it struck me that my reading tastes are rooted firmly in the past.

My top shelf has got the collected works of Rudyard Kipling, Rafael Sabatini’s Scaramouche, and several books by E.R. Eddison and Poul Anderson. The next shelf down are the Lancer Conan Saga, Karl Edward’s Kane, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Not exactly George R.R. Martin, Patrick Rothfuss, or John Scalzi. Any of which I could be into, but am really not, even if some day I do plan to finish A Song of Ice and Fire, if Martin ever gets around to it.

I do take comfort in the fact that I’m not alone. An adherent of Anglo-Saxon literature and Icelandic Saga, J.R.R. Tolkien was of the mind that anything after the Canterbury Tales was (mostly) not worth his time. I’m glad I’m not that extreme, or else I never would have discovered The Lord of the Rings or “Beyond the Black River.” But, in another sense I’m quite like Tolkien, my eyes cast ever backwards at the literature of a lost age. We’ll never have another golden age of sword-and-sorcery, when drugstores carried Conan the Buccaneer on their wire spinners and Thundarr the Barbarian thundered through living rooms on Saturday mornings. But that doesn’t mean I’ve moved on from those glory days. Today my drugstore is Abe Books and Ebay, where I hunt down old copies of Pursuit on Ganymede and Raven 5: A Time of Dying. And I know there are many others like me, based on what I’ve seen in the Facebook groups I belong to.

My tastes in reading are analogous to my tastes in music, which is likewise the music of my youth. My favorite bands are Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, KISS, Rush, and AC/DC. Some of these guys are still writing new material—some of it damned good—but mostly they are associated with their heyday in the 70s and 80s. If you’re a fan, you’re ancient history, pal.

I would not say I’m a hopeless case, irrevocably trapped in the past. I can and do enjoy some new stuff. Battle Beast, a young Finnish metal band for example, caught my attention, and now have muscled their way into my playlist alongside the likes of Blind Guardian and Pantera. I like Joe Abercrombie, including the likes of The Heroes (2011). At this very moment I’m reading and enjoying Brian Keene’s The Lost Level (2015), which just came out in the last decade.

But on some level even these “new” finds are anachronistic, often deliberately so, which continues to prove my point that I like old shit. For example, The Lost Level is a clear homage to the likes of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Pellucidar series. Battle Beast is an unabashed throwback to the 80s. It should come as no surprise that the band draws inspiration for its sound and lyrics from that era. Even in the new stuff I consume, I’m drawn inevitably to older forms of expression.

I do wonder: Do we develop our tastes during a formative time in our lives and become part of us forever? Does some biochemical process shape our malleable brains between the ages of 8-18, and permanently alter our mental wiring? Musician and musicologist Nolan Gasser offers some answers along those lines, arguing that the music you listened to as a youth placed you within a culture that formed part of your identity:

“I actually use the term ‘intraculture’ to describe cultures that take place within a culture,” he explains, likening them to subgenres of music. “A lot of it has to do with where you grew up and what kind of musical influences are in the air, but we participate in so many subcultures of affinity, just based on what we like. Intracultures provide us with access to music just because you’re a part of a group, and that group means something to you.”

“Music becomes that stake in the ground — ‘this is who I am,’” says Gasser. “But at the same time, the music people listened to at an early age becomes their native home comfort music. When they grow up, that music will be part of who they are, tied in with memories and growing up. All of these powers are why music is so important to us.”

There is no doubt that heavy metal had its own culture and ethos, one that I participated in, and on some level still do. I may be indistinguishable from your average everyday middle-aged middle class dude, but I have a metal spirit in me, an anti-authoritarian streak and a pride in having tastes that are harsher than the mainstream, even anathema in some quarters. I’m sure that’s part of the reason why I maintain such an enduring loyalty for these bands.

Interesting is my lack of nostalgia in other areas—I enjoy the latest psychology and self-help books, for example. I delight in the latest and greatest beer from new breweries (Heady Topper is way better than Pabst Blue Ribbon). I’ve come to enjoy podcasts as a new medium for consuming information and entertainment, even though I still prefer the printed page over e-books.

It’s really only certain forms of art, in particular music and fantasy literature, where my preferences clearly lie with works pre-1990.

Another possible explanation: Were the authors and musicians of my youth simply better at their craft? Were these subgenres—heavy metal and sword-and-sorcery—more widely practiced because they were more lucrative, or more creatively vital, and hence attracted more and greater talent, producing better art than we see today? Perhaps. Some authors can and did make a living writing for Weird Tales back in the day, and of course many metal acts made a fortune in the 80s. Artists don’t enjoy the same market realities today. The bar to writing and publishing stories and music is easier than ever, but I don’t believe it’s as easy to make a living at either these days.

Who knows. Be it a matter of identity and cultural imprinting, or idiosyncratic tastes, it’s hard to say why I enjoy the old shit. All I know that is that heavy metal and Tolkien and sword-and-sorcery were my obsessions then, remain so today, and likely always will be.

Saturday, January 11, 2020

Farewell to a King


It always hurts, losing a piece of your past. Although you might have never met them, the passing of an artist that formed such a large part of your adolescence can make you feel like you have lost some vital part of yourself.

That’s how I’m feeling today, a day after the news that Neil Peart of RUSH succumbed following a three-year battle with brain cancer. This one hurts.

Growing up I idolized Peart. I climbed on the RUSH train somewhere around Hold your Fire (1987, my freshman year of high school), and remember buying Presto on tape shortly after it came out in late 1989. My introduction to the band were these polished, mature albums from a band at the height of its powers, and so I was both puzzled and delighted when I went back to their early catalog and discovered that they were a rougher, harder rocking, more byzantine band in the 1970. RUSH’s fantasy and sci-fi influences—songs like By-Tor and the Snow Dog, Rivendell, The Necromancer, 2112, Xanadu, and A Farewell to Kings—deeply resonated with me, as I was by then reading everything fantasy related I could get my hands on.

Truth
I experienced the same feelings of alienation RUSH captured with the brilliant Subdivisions. I loved their pentagram artwork. In short, loved everything about the band, and I knew (despite the fact that RUSH was deeply uncool with the popular kids) that they were three amazing musicians. But in particular, even though I’m not a musician myself and can’t play a lick on a guitar or read sheet music, I understood that even among these three titans Peart was something special. The guy was a freaking god with the drumsticks. I air drummed along with songs like Distant Early Warning and The Camera Eye and thought to myself, how can a human being do this? I beat the living shit out of the steering wheel of my 1982 Chevy Impala, pretending I was driving a Red Barchetta through the Rockies and hugging the cliffs at high speed. What times.

As I grew older I replaced “idolized” (I really don’t use that word for anyone now) with a deepening level of respect for the man himself, apart from the lighted stage. Peart endured massive tragedies in his life, including the loss of his 19-year-old daughter to a single car accident in 1997. Given that I have a 17-year-old and 14-year-old daughter myself, I don’t know if I could ever bear such a loss. Less than year later his wife passed away from cancer. I NEED to get a copy of Ghost Rider and read about his journey of 14 months on a motorcycle across the United States as he dealt with an unimaginable level of grief. That’s now on 2020 to be read list.

I’m glad he eventually returned to the band. I’ve seen RUSH in concert several times over their career, starting with Presto, twice on Roll on the Bones, Counterparts, and Test for Echo, then for Neil and the band’s return for Vapor Trails, Snakes & Arrows—at least eight times, counting my ticket stubs (possibly with one missing). Everyone in his passing has said it already, but I’ll say it again: You don’t take beer or pee breaks during RUSH’s drum solos. I have many times done so for KISS or Motley Crue, but Peart’s solos were bravura performances, arguably the highlight of the concert.

I am glad I got to see a true artist at the height of his craft. The Professor made my world brighter, and brought magic into my life through not only his playing, but his phenomenal works as a lyricist. As I hopped around Youtube last night listening to some of my favorite RUSH songs, this lyric from “Closer to the Heart” remains as true today as the day it was written: “And the men who hold high places, must be the ones who start, to mold a new reality, closer to the heart.” The men who hold high places and make decisions based on power and money and fear and greed are the source of so many of the world’s problems. We could all use a little more kindness.

Listening to a song like “Mission” makes me think of the brilliant artistry of Robert E. Howard and Frank Frazetta. I came to grips long ago with the fact that I would never be a fiction writer. It was no small source of grief and disappointment, but the lyrics of “Mission” made me realize that such passionate intensity and emotional attachment to art comes with a cost:

It’s cold comfort
To the ones without it
To know how they struggled
How they suffered about it

If their lives were
Exotic and strange
They would likely have
Gladly exchanged them
For something a little more plain
Maybe something a little more sane

We each pay a fabulous price
For our visions of paradise

After hearing the news of Peart’s passing I reached out to some friends via text. We shared a few old RUSH stories and our disbelief that Peart was gone. It made me feel a little closer to humanity. I forged friendships with some of these guys in part out of our common admiration for RUSH, and I’m still friends with them today. That’s pretty cool.

In short, I’m grateful that Peart lived, shared his amazing talents, and made the world more awe-inspiring. Thank you for the music Neil. If there is an afterlife I hope you find deserved rest after a life writing fearless lyrics for a band that never compromised its artistic integrity. Rock on.

Saturday, August 3, 2019

A review of Iron Maiden, August 1 Mansfield MA

Wake alone in the hills 
With the wind in your face 
It feels good to be proud 
And be free and a race that is part of a clan 
To live on highlands 
The air that you breathe 
So pure and so clean 

When alone on the hills 
With the wind in your hair 
And a longing to feel 
Just to be free

Iron Maiden has been ignored by radio stations their entire career. Largely passed over by mainstream media outlets. And granted no consideration by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But on Thursday, August 1 they played in front of a sea of 19,000 fans at the sold out XFinity Center in Mansfield, MA.

I was one of them. And they kicked my ass.

It's unbelievable that these six dudes from England, now all in their 60s, can still sound this fantastic and draw such huge crowds. They've kept themselves in great shape, stayed off the drugs that got so many metal bands in trouble, and possess an incredible degree of artistic integrity. As a result they've built up an incredibly loyal fan base. Maiden requires no external, artificial support to sell tickets. Their music speaks for itself.

These days for me, concerts are in all honesty more about the friendship than the music. As great as
Tailgating trio. Me at left.
Maiden was, hanging out in the parking lot for a couple hours beforehand drinking beer and blasting Maiden CDs with a couple friends on a beautiful 80-degree night, was the highlight. Just an unbelievable amount of fun, you could not wipe the shit-eating grin off my face.

Take that Hitler!
Inside, seeing Maiden rip through Aces High with a full-size Spitfire over the stage, and Bruce in a leather pilot jacket, aviator goggles and leather helmet, had me grinning ear-to-ear. Hearing Churchill's speech over the PA always makes me want to scramble a fighter and shoot down some ME-109s.

I got to hear The Clansman and belt out the epic ass-kicking patriotic verses (see above). Where Eagles Dare had me air-drumming in a frenzy. For the Greater Good of God was unexpected, an excellent song from a great album (A Matter of Life and Death). I loved Sign of the Cross, the second song Maiden pulled out from the Blaze Bayley years. It's heart-warming that Bruce performs songs during the era he chose to leave the band to pursue a solo career.

Bruce was in fine form singing and is a smashing entertainer. He came out for Fear of the Dark in a dark trenchcoat, looking like Jack the Ripper, slowly swinging a sinister green lantern back and forth as he intoned the opening verses ("When the light begins to change; I sometimes feel a little strange; A little anxious when it's dark"). You know the rest. He battled a monstrous Eddie on stage during The Trooper.

What an encore. The Evil that Men Do, Hallowed be Thy Name, and Run to the Hills, back-to-back-to-back? Are you kidding me? Metallica or Black Sabbath could not match that trio of hits. I'd put The Evil that Men Do and Hallowed in my top 5 Maiden songs of all time.

You can find the complete setlist here if you're interested. If you're at all a fan of heavy metal you owe it to yourself to see Maiden on this tour. Of course I'd say that about every Maiden tour.

Friday, June 29, 2012

A review of Iron Maiden at the Comcast Center in Mansfield, MA

My apologies for the delay in posting a review of Iron Maiden at the Comcast Center in Mansfield, MA. The morning after the show, groggy from too little sleep and too much beer and loud music, I left for our annual vacation to our family's summer cottage in NH where internet access wavers between extremely spotty and utterly non-existent. By some miracle I have a decent connection so here goes...

It seems that more and more I appreciate the pre-game warmup to concerts as much as the event itself. That was the case with Maiden, as I attended the show with four other friends and Maiden fans. None of them knew each other (I was the common thread connecting them all) but we had a great time nonetheless. Four of us piled into my Chevy Cobalt and drove to Mansfield where we met the other dude (Falze), who had a 3 1/2 hour ride up from NY. The drive and meet-up proved to be an adventure, as after a longer than expected, traffic-snarled ride we found ourselves parked a mile away from Falze in Mansfield's enormous parking lot. And we had a large cooler packed to the gills with ice, beer, water, and half a cherry chocolate cake to carry. But, walking the heavy cooler in two at a time shifts, stopping to reorient ourselves with our cell phones over the din of blasting radios, we made it across the battle-torn, pot-smoke obscured, heavy metal parking lot to Falze.

June 26 also happened to be my birthday and as we stood on the Comcast Center asphalt I remarked that there was no other place I'd rather be for the first day of the 39th year of my life than at an Iron Maiden concert with a cold beer. I don't require much from life, you see, which is the secret to staying happy, incidentally. I had a blast bullshitting and chit-chatting with my friends, and accosting passers-by with concert T-shirts or tattoos that caught my eye. Falze packed us some subs from a place called DiBellas and man, they hit the spot. You were right Falze, they were worth it.

Inside the show I did something I hadn't done in probably 15 years--purchased an Iron Maiden concert t-shirt. It was my favorite Derek Riggs image, Eddie in cowboy hat at a card table from the Stranger in a Strange Land single. I used to buy a concert T at almost every show I attended "back in the day," but that was a different era when they cost $15-20 and I had ample opportunity to wear them. This shirt was--cough $40 cough--but arguably was worth it, as I will undoubtedly be wearing it to any and all future concerts, Iron Maiden or no.

Alice Cooper was the opening act and old Alice was very good. Even in his heyday he had a raspy, scary sounding voice and I detected no difference in his singing style. He played all the usual hits you'd expect ("School's Out," "I'm 18", "Hey Stupid," etc.). "Poison" made an appearance, a song that holds powerful nostalgia for me (Cooper's Trash tour back in 89 or so was the first concert I ever attended). Good stuff.

Maiden was great. Really my only complaint was that Bruce's mike was a bit low in the mix and the guitars too loud. But they played an exceptional setlist, blasting out of the gates with "Moonchild" and never letting up. Some highlights for me included "Seventh Son of a Seventh Son," "The Evil that Men Do," "Wasted Years,"  "Run to the Hills," "Fear of the Dark" and "Aces High." I was really pumped to hear "The Phantom of the Opera" which works exceptionally well in concert. The only headscratcher (and it was a complete puzzle why they played it) was "Afraid to Shoot Strangers," an obscure song off one of their lesser-regarded albums (Fear of the Dark). Dickinson dedicated the song to the late Charlton Heston. I scooted out and grabbed a beer during "Afraid," returning just as the band kicked it back into high gear with "The Trooper." During the beer break I attempted to get the Comcast Center employee to admit that $9.25 was very expensive for a single 16 oz. Coors Light. She smiled, and almost caved, but she had to toe the company line. She wished me happy birthday and my mouth sagged open in surprise as I asked her by what brand of evil sorcery she knew that fact--until my buddy Scott dope-slapped me.

"She's holding your driver's license, you dummy."

Hey, what can I say, I was riding a buzz.

So yeah, fun night, and if you can get out and catch a stop on the Maiden England tour I recommend it quite highly.