Milton Keynes: Satan's Lay-by

Sticking for a moment with our heavy metal theme and with reference to a town I know all too well:

The metal concert at the end of the universe, and other poems

As is oft his wont, John Darnielle has been writing poetry about metal bands.

I've quite enjoyed a couple of his recent offerings: 'the temple at the end of the cosmos' (on Ride for Revenge) and 'sacred worlds' (on Blind Guardian).

Related: JD talks such topics with The Believer.

And explains here, that death metal rules.

If you listen to fools, the mob rules

I'm sitting in a living room in north London watching telly, and Sky News tells me that Ronnie James Dio is no more.

That's saddening.

Even as a (relatively) old man, he rocked more than most:



And he had a refreshing sense of humour about it all.

RIP RJD.

(Also: Long Live Rock and Roll, Heaven and Hell, Neon Knights, Holy Diver and Caught in the Middle.)

Thursday evening culture report

An article at the New York Times has brought two fascinating looking films to my attention.

First, The Age of Stupid, a documentary about global warming framed in a backward-looking fictional future perspective starring Pete Postlethwaite. I very much liked the director's previous film, McLibel, and this looks good:



Also, Anvil! The Story of Anvil, a documentary about the eponymous Canadian heavy metal band:



And, for those of you who like this kind of music (and I count myself among you), here are sample of Anvil in action then ('School Love') and more recently ('Winged Assassins').

Just as a kestrel sees more vividly than a mole

I recently ordered the first volume of George Orwell's collected essays, journalism and letters (we have volumes two and three, and very well thumbed they are...).

It's striking that, before you've even read a few dozen pages, you find such amazing examples of both cutting insult and sublime praise.

The insult comes from a review of J. B. Priestley's novel Angel Pavement:

When a novel lacks the indefinable, unmistakable thing we call beauty, one looks in it for sound delineation of character, or humour of situation, or verbal wit. But one looks in vain in Angel Pavement--Mr. Priestley can be clever, but he cannot be in any way memorable. (26)

Oh, that's painful, in a particularly painful way. But then comes the coup de grâce: Orwell notes that Priestley has been much over-praised by other reviewers, and he continues,

Once this absurd praise is discounted, we can salute Mr. Priestley for the qualities which he really possesses, and take Angel Pavement for what it is: an excellent holiday novel , genuinely gay and pleasant, which supplies a good bulk of reading matter for ten and sixpence.(Emphasis added, 27)

Oh man...that must have burned.

On the other hand, Orwell knew how to make a well-placed compliment.

In the context of a review of a biography of Herman Melville, he enthuses:

More important than his strength, he had--what is implied in real strength--passionate sensitiveness; to him seas were deeper and skies were vaster than to other men, and similarly beauty was more actual and pain and humiliation more agonising. Who but Melville would have seen the beauty and terror of a ridiculous beast like a whale? And who else could have written scenes like the bullying of Harry in Redburn, or that shocking and ludicrous account of an amputation in White Jacket? Such things were done by a man who felt more vividly than common men, just as a kestrel sees more vividly than a mole. (Emphasis added, 20-21.)

Partly because of this review, and partly because I noted recently that Melville also made the top of the 'best reads' list by J. G. Ballard some years ago (I found this in the additional material added to my copy of Millennium People), I have thought I should probably give Moby Dick another chance.

It was--like many things...and nearly Shakespeare!...ruined for me in high school (a common story, perhaps).

Though my renewed Melvillian interests may also be partly because I've been enjoying my belated discovery of Mastodon's 2004 heavy metal concept album, Leviathan, which is based on that novel about the white whale.

(I very much like the song--though not so much the video--for 'Blood and Thunder'...which for some reason involves clowns. Far scarier than whales, if you ask me.)



Any post-secondary-school Melville fans out there with their own observations?

And, yes, I know: from a strictly naturalistic perspective, one could have turned Orwell's metaphor on it's head, saying just as a mole feels more vividly than a kestrel.

But somehow I don't think it'd have worked as well.

Funny, that....

Tötally Brütal

According to Blogger, this is the 670th post at this here blog.

Which means, obviously, that we let the 666th go by without, you know, properly celebrating.

The trailer for the upcoming 'black metal adventure game' Brütal Legend seems a good way to atone for that oversight. (Via Offworld.)

It offers not only the needless Umlaut (the unparalleled symbol for bad-ass evilositude everywhere) and a hero based (loosely, it would seem) on Jack Black (whose sinister rock'n'roll we've featured before), but it also features Dio's 'The Mob rules' and plenty of gory battle-axe action.



(As cool as the music is, it's hardly black metal, but who am I to uphold the doctrinal purity of heavy metal subgenres?)

Oh, and while we're at it, let me reiterate my recommendation of the recent (and free) Mountain Goats EP, Satanic Messiah. Which, in fact, has nothing to do with metal. But which is very, very good.

Keep those horns up, people.

(Image context provided here.)

Sunday: A day for evil rock, horror novels and space opera...

OK, so the world economy has turned desperate and the American election has turned nasty. It would seem a little escapism is in order....

For your listening pleasure, I would suggest Blood Ceremony, whose self-titled début album was released last month.

Might it appeal to you? Well, it depends on how you would react to a musical mixture recalling bands like Black Sabbath, Jethro Tull and Coven with lyrics that seem to have been inspired by repeated (perhaps excessive) viewings of The Wickerman.

I happen to like that sort of thing.

You, I realise, may not. Psychedelic doom metal is not, I am aware, universally loved. (In this house and the world over...)

In any case, it's grimly atmospheric sound is ideal for your Halloween party...and then all the gloomy year through. (With many thanks to Last Plane to Jakarta for the tip.)

I've been listening to it non-stop. An exorcism may soon be in order.

To stick with the horror theme for a moment, while we turn to books: I've been reading a lot of Stephen King lately. I'd never read anything by him in my life before a few months ago, but as part of my readings in post-apocalyptic fiction, I ran across The Stand and was...well, hooked.

Since then I read Salem's Lot (which I loved), the short story collection Skeleton Crew (a bit hit-or-miss, but with highpoints such as the novella 'The Mist') and am currently working my way through It, which is shaping up nicely and...creepily.

I've never been a huge fan of horror fiction, other than the work of H. P. Lovecraft. Re-reading his work over the last year or so has been partly to blame for kindling my interest in this genre.

Along with drawing strong characters, King, it strikes me, is particularly good at evoking the darker side of two things: small-town life and childhood (and the tendency for the traumas of the latter to haunt adulthood.)

Again, not everybody's cup of tea -- and hardly, um, obscure -- but a new discovery for me, and one I'm glad I made.

Finally: I don't know why it took me so long to realise this, but the new Battlestar Galactica is excellent.

Well, I suppose I do know. Not having had American TV for the last 7 years, it kind of passed me by, and then I never got around to buying the DVDs.

A friend we visited in France last month, however, generously lent me the pilot film and the first season, and I've been enthralled, as I've (slowly...little time for TV watching...) started making my way through it. Since I'm probably the last science fiction fan in the universe to pick up on this, I'm not sure how much this recommendation is worth, but I thought I note it.

And say thanks to said generous friend. So...thanks friend.

Well, those are my listening, reading and viewing suggestions for the next while.

You may now sigh with relief that they're over.

So, I suppose we can get back to the world coming apart and the drama of American democracy in action.

How the Mind Works (Twisted Tenacious Pinball Longstocking edition)

I'm in the process of marking an MA-thesis on Graham Greene which contains a chapter on Brighton Rock. This is why, for the past few days, I have had "Pinball" Wizard going through my head. You know: "From Soho down to Brighton, I must have played them all ...."

Brighton ... Brighton Rock? Oh, the mind works in mysterious ways! Or is it only my mind?

Speaking of videos and academic theses: last week saw another little cluster of associations, following John's absolute need to show me the video of "Kickapoo" by Tenacious D. OK, I said -- go ahead:



As we can see, this is a cannily intertextual clip, what with an unrecognisable Meatloaf playing dour Dad disallowing his offspring to rock -- which is nicely undercut (or -lined?) by the fact that this is recognisably an epically Meatlovian track. Apart from this little internal in-joke, "Kickapoo" is part of the enduring rock-to-the-rescue genre popularised by the likes of Twisted Sister. Which is why the husband, at that moment writhing with teenage nostalgia, made me watch the following, too:



Now, this isn't exactly my kind of music ... at least it didn't use to be. But for the first time in my life I became painfully aware of the true human suffering that is at stake -- in heavy metal in general and this video in particular. The evangelical moron of a father loosening his belt in order not to spare the rod ... on that poor little boy whose only crime is to want to ROCK (John informs me that he believes the correct spelling in this context is "RAWK". So much for American university education). This is painful to watch and saddening to consider. And I am not being facetious now! "We're not gonna take it" is a Blakean hymn to the oppressed, the tied, shackled and manacled, the wretched skinny boys of the Earth.

And this is where the free association kicks in.

On that same day, I had a discussion with a student writing a thesis on children's versions of Gulliver's Travels. She and I were disagreeing somewhat on the question as to what kind of characters children like. Bolshy cynic that I am, I suggested that most children would defy Rousseauian notions of virtue and morality and choose nasty characters instead. Someone like this pugnacious chap:



Now, some of you might not know this little guy. But for Astrid Lindgren fans this is the all too familiar visage of Karlsson on the roof -- a vicious cross between a proto-skin school-yard bully (look at that Ben Sherman shirt) and smug civil servant, who loves to make things unpleasant for Lillebror, a little boy living in the house above which Karlsson resides. Significantly, only Lillebror can see Karlsson, which makes the latter his uncanny Doppelgänger: Karlsson is actually Lillebror's dark alter ego -- his own Mr Hyde. Which in turn suggests that kids not only dig nasty guys, but ultimately have to in order to free themselves from the suffocating effects of either parental tyranny or love.

At least, that is how Astrid Lindgren saw it, whose characters -- well, some of them -- were ambiguous enough to call forth a host of anxious educators trying to put a stop to that kind of hazmat. This response included the one character who is probably most reminiscent of Twisted Sister:


She probably doesn't need introducing.



See what I mean?