Read This

WTF? Marilyn Manson inspired books?

by hardrockchick [about 1 year, 0 months ago.]

I received this headscratcher of a press release…really really bad. Just awful.

This is not a promotion of these books- this is a warning to stay far, far away.

Marilyn Manson Inspires Homophobic Attack

Author Thomas Chi’s novel, Marilyn Manson Murders by Pastor Paul Sherman, is inspired by the life of Marilyn Manson, but begins by promoting hate against homosexuals. The very first sentence starts with an attack against gay children, “Homosexuality is a sin. Families are destroyed, especially in the military. Gay children are coming out of the closet at 14 years old and having sex as early as 12. The backlash is a social retardation distracting children from a higher purpose. Homosexual teens do poorly in school, tend to be more promiscuous, and lack the schooling or testing skills to advance their education. The social disease is unproductive. The answer for most delinquents is America’s military.”
Taking on the pseudonym Pastor Paul Sherman in the first book of the series, “Marilyn Manson Murders,” Chi cleverly intertwines fact and fiction beginning with the coincidental arrivals of President George Bush and Marilyn Manson in Detroit, MI on July 23, 2003; Bush, in town to speak to autoworkers in Dearborn and Manson, to perform at Ozzfest. Written like a Christian novel, “Marilyn Manson Murders” follows the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) as the agency fictionally searches for serial killer Danny Jameson, who’s been killing drug dealers at Manson concerts across the country and attempting to assassinate Marilyn Manson. The FBI captures Jameson in New York and asks for assistance from Pastor Sherman, who insists Manson risked the life of President Bush while in Detroit. (Factually one month after Michigan, Manson is later officially banned by Christian movement Kingdom Bound and is the only musician prohibited from playing Ozzfest near Buffalo, New York on August 11, 2003. He then proclaims himself the Antichrist.) “Marilyn Manson Kills: Confessions from Marilyn Manson’s Assassin,” second in the fictional series, is told from the prison cell of Danny Jameson where he explains why he went on the international killing spree: to avenge the death of his Manson obsessed girlfriend, Angela Ulster, who died from a drug overdose. So distraught from the loss, Jameson became fanatical believing he was being followed by Manson’s twin, a Freudian doppelganger. Jameson also believes Pastor Sherman’s involvement is to push a Christian agenda. Book two is written to be reminiscent of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni.” Book three, written as a memoir, “Marilyn Manson Destroys by Jennifer Sherman,” brings to light the abusive nature of Pastor Sherman toward his granddaughter. Renounced by her parents from lies told by her grandfather, Jennifer runs off with a man named Roman Sucha. After being tossed aside by Sucha, she enters the harsh world of stripping and pornography chronicled through hundreds of photos. The fourth book, “Studying Marilyn Manson: Groupies, School Violence and Bullying” examines the research behind the previous three murder mysteries.

Seriously?

Genre(s): Read This

1707Comments (4)2009-02-16+08%3A07%3A23hardrockchick

Nice NYT Article on Acrassicauda

by hardrockchick [about 1 year, 1 month ago.]

It was nice to read that Acrassicauda, the band featured in the documentary Heavy Metal in Baghdad, is living their dream. The US granted them refugee status, and they are currently living in New Jersey. They’ve also met their heroes, Metallica. Welcome to America!

hmb

Genre(s): Read This

1593Comments (1)Nice+NYT+Article+on+Acrassicauda2009-02-04+06%3A06%3A50hardrockchick

Upcoming Hip Hop Act Asher Roth’s Bassist Helped Subdue Bomb Scare on Plane to LAX

by hardrockchick [about 1 year, 2 months ago.]

Wow, what an interesting story.

Asher Roth, who has been named one of MTV’s MCs to Watch in 2009, will undoubtedly be getting a lot of PR from this story.

As Asher Roth and band’s flight from Atlanta was landing at LAX, where they were going to be on the Carson Daly show, a man announced that he had a bomb. After hearing a flight attendant’s cries for help, bassist Chris Llewlyn and other passengers helped pin the guy to the floor until the plane landed.

In a statement from their PR agent today:

More information has come in from the Asher Roth camp last night after hours (they had gone straight to the tv studio for Carson Daly following the LAX situation) and gave us more detail at approximately 11pm eastern. Asher Roth bassist, Chris Lewellyn, was the real deal tackler of the person crying bomb on flight 110 yesterday and they and Asher want to give him his full hero due. Asher is thankful and proud of Chris’ bravery and hopes Delta gives him free flights for life!

I bet this event will inspire some really good tracks.

photo by bassist Chris Llewlyn

bomb threat

Genre(s): Read This

1417Comments (0)2009-01-08+19%3A28%3A24hardrockchick

Stooges Guitarist Ron Asheton Found Dead

by hardrockchick [about 1 year, 2 months ago.]

Stooges Warfield

Stooges Reunion 2007 Warfield Poster

Yesterday morning brought sad news to the rock community, as Ron Asheton, guitarist and bassist for The Stooges, was found dead. Another rock stars dies alone in his home, only to be found days later…so sad.

I had just picked up the above poster at Amoeba last week- one that I had missed when I went to see The Stooges on their reunion tour in 2007. Really glad I did that.

Genre(s): Read This

1408Comments (0)2009-01-07+19%3A11%3A02hardrockchick

NYT Article: Songs From the Heart of a Marketing Plan

by hardrockchick [about 1 year, 2 months ago.]

The New York Times recently featured an article discussing music licensing, and its potential effects on the creative process of creating new music in the future.

You know, I’m really starting to get sick of the whining about the music industry not being what it used to be. It is what it is, and let’s get over it. The author, in discussing the increased lucrativeness of licensing for musicians nowadays, muses about musicians starting to write songs with their marketing potential in mind.

The fact of the matter is that there have always been and will always be musicians that make music with the end product in mind: selling it, making it commercial, getting rich. And there have been and always will be those who create their music as a true artist.

Likewise, there will always be listeners who ‘discover’ music through commercials, movie trailers, etc., and then there will always be those of us who dig and dig and dig to find new stuff on our own. Articles like this often ignore that the new music industry has allowed us to find new bands much easier through things like MySpace, iLike, itunes, and Pandora….even videogames, gasp!

The subtext of this article is the age old ’selling out’ label. I’ve never thought that an artist should be labeled a ’sell out’ as long as they didn’t change their music to be in a commercial or film. If they can’t make money selling records, then let them license their music as they please without calling them a sellout.

Genre(s): Read This

1365Comments (0)2008-12-31+19%3A38%3A04hardrockchick

Nine Inch Nails used in “auditory assault” on Guantanamo Bay prisoners

by hardrockchick [about 1 year, 3 months ago.]

This is messed up on so many levels. Is this seriously some laid off music exec’s job- to pick out music to torture prisoners with?

I would be fine with all songs mentioned until I got to Barney. The thought of it just drove me momentarily crazy. But March of the Pigs on repeat at high volume? No problem.

This is so a Bush thing- some crazy old man designating ‘that rap music’ and ‘that metal crap’ as good torture material. One month, 10 days, baby.

prison

From the Associated Press:

Musicians protest use of songs by US jailers

By ANDREW O. SELSKY – 19 hours ago

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) — Blaring from a speaker behind a metal grate in his tiny cell in Iraq, the blistering rock from Nine Inch Nails hit Prisoner No. 200343 like a sonic bludgeon.

“Stains like the blood on your teeth,” Trent Reznor snarled over distorted guitars. “Bite. Chew.”

The auditory assault went on for days, then weeks, then months at the U.S. military detention center in Iraq. Twenty hours a day. AC/DC. Queen. Pantera. The prisoner, military contractor Donald Vance of Chicago, told The Associated Press he was soon suicidal.

The tactic has been common in the U.S. war on terror, with forces systematically using loud music on hundreds of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, then the U.S. military commander in Iraq, authorized it on Sept. 14, 2003, “to create fear, disorient … and prolong capture shock.”

Now the detainees aren’t the only ones complaining. Musicians are banding together to demand the U.S. military stop using their songs as weapons.

A campaign being launched Wednesday has brought together groups including Massive Attack and musicians such as Tom Morello, who played with Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave and is now on a solo tour. It will feature minutes of silence during concerts and festivals, said Chloe Davies of the British law group Reprieve, which represents dozens of Guantanamo Bay detainees and is organizing the campaign.

At least Vance, who says he was jailed for reporting illegal arms sales, was used to rock music. For many detainees who grew up in Afghanistan — where music was prohibited under Taliban rule — interrogations by U.S. forces marked their first exposure to the pounding rhythms, played at top volume.

The experience was overwhelming for many. Binyam Mohammed, now a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, said men held with him at the CIA’s “Dark Prison” in Afghanistan wound up screaming and smashing their heads against walls, unable to endure more.

“There was loud music, (Eminem’s) ‘Slim Shady’ and Dr. Dre for 20 days. I heard this nonstop over and over,” he told his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith. “The CIA worked on people, including me, day and night for the months before I left. Plenty lost their minds.”

The spokeswoman for Guantanamo’s detention center, Navy Cmdr. Pauline Storum, wouldn’t give details of when and how music has been used at the prison, but said it isn’t used today. She didn’t respond when asked whether music might be used in the future.

FBI agents stationed at Guantanamo Bay reported numerous instances in which music was blasted at detainees, saying they were “told such tactics were common there.”

According to an FBI memo, one interrogator at Guantanamo Bay bragged he needed only four days to “break” someone by alternating 16 hours of music and lights with four hours of silence and darkness.

Ruhal Ahmed, a Briton who was captured in Afghanistan, describes excruciating sessions at Guantanamo Bay. He said his hands were shackled to his feet, which were shackled to the floor, forcing him into a painful squat for periods of up to two days.

“You’re in agony,” Ahmed, who was released without charge in 2004, told Reprieve. He said the agony was compounded when music was introduced, because “before you could actually concentrate on something else, try to make yourself focus on some other things in your life that you did before and take that pain away.

“It makes you feel like you are going mad,” he said.

Not all of the music is hard rock. Christopher Cerf, who wrote music for “Sesame Street,” said he was horrified to learn songs from the children’s TV show were used in interrogations.

“I wouldn’t want my music to be a party to that,” he told AP.

Bob Singleton, whose song “I Love You” is beloved by legions of preschool Barney fans, wrote in a newspaper opinion column that any music can become unbearable if played loudly for long stretches.

“It’s absolutely ludicrous,” he wrote in the Los Angeles Times. “A song that was designed to make little children feel safe and loved was somehow going to threaten the mental state of adults and drive them to the emotional breaking point?”

Morello, of Rage Against the Machine, has been especially forceful in denouncing the practice. During a recent concert in San Francisco, he proposed taking revenge on President George W. Bush.

“I suggest that they level Guantanamo Bay, but they keep one small cell and they put Bush in there … and they blast some Rage Against the Machine,” he said to whoops and cheers.

Some musicians, however, say they’re proud that their music is used in interrogations. Those include bassist Stevie Benton, whose group Drowning Pool has performed in Iraq and recorded one of the interrogators’ favorites, “Bodies.”

“People assume we should be offended that somebody in the military thinks our song is annoying enough that played over and over it can psychologically break someone down,” he told Spin magazine. “I take it as an honor to think that perhaps our song could be used to quell another 9/11 attack or something like that.”

The band’s record label told AP that Benton did not want to comment further. Instead, the band issued a statement reading: “Drowning Pool is committed to supporting the lives and rights of our troops stationed around the world.”

Vance, in a telephone interview from Chicago, said the tactic can make innocent men go mad. According to a lawsuit he has filed, his jailers said he was being held because his employer was suspected of selling weapons to terrorists and insurgents. The U.S. military confirms Vance was jailed but won’t elaborate because of the lawsuit.

He said he was locked in an overcooled 9-foot-by-9-foot cell that had a speaker with a metal grate over it. Two large speakers stood in the hallway outside. The music was almost constant, mostly hard rock, he said.

“There was a lot of Nine Inch Nails, including ‘March of the Pigs,’” he said. “I couldn’t tell you how many times I heard Queen’s ‘We Will Rock You.’”

He wore only a jumpsuit and flip-flops and had no protection from the cold.

“I had no blanket or sheet. If I had, I would probably have tried suicide,” he said. “I got to a few points toward the end where I thought, `How can I do this?’ Actively plotting, `How can I get away with it so they don’t stop it?’”

Asked to describe the experience, Vance said: “It sort of removes you from you. You can no longer formulate your own thoughts when you’re in an environment like that.”

He was released after 97 days. Two years later, he says, “I keep my home very quiet.”

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Update 12/18/08: SFgate.com posts on the subject, accumulating weird, strangely conservative comments. My fave: “who is this guy. what happened to drunk reznor.”

Genre(s): Read This

1310Comments (0)2008-12-10+16%3A29%3A49hardrockchick

Rockers react to Obama win…and then Chris Cornell reacts to himself

by hardrockchick [about 1 year, 4 months ago.]

from blabbermouth:

Several rock and metal musicians were quick to hail Barack Obama’s election victory as a boost for the whole world.

Tony Harnell (TNT, WESTWORLD, MORNING WOOD): “The world is changing, finally. I have hope and am really excited about the future. Love to all whoever you voted for. Obama will stand up and serve for everyone. I just had to share my joy! It’s a new day.”

Scott Ian (ANTHRAX): “Today was a great day for America. Cheers, my friends!!! Here’s to a better world.”

Chris Cornell (AUDIOSLAVE, SOUNDGARDEN): “I feel a huge sense of relief. I feel lucky to be alive to witness what has happened in the U.S. over the last several months. To witness what happened today. Historical. We needed this. I needed this. I need hope. I feel hope when I see good in human nature. I have seen it a lot lately. Out on tour doing in-store visits with [Cornell's producer/songwriter] Timbaland signing posters. Taking pictures. Playing live with his band to fans who were open to a collaboration that is truly unique. I don’t care what anyone says. What we did together is different than anything that has been done before, and I saw goodness in the people that came to the events with the willingness to be open to something different than what they are used to. Great people. Great fans. The best fans!”

Wow. He should work in the spin room on CNN or something. How come everyone else could say, “cool- Obama won, yipee!” and leave it at that? Chris, just use your mouth for singing. Your publicist sux.

Genre(s): Read This

1222Comments (3)2008-11-06+06%3A53%3A38hardrockchick

To blog or not to blog

by hardrockchick [about 1 year, 4 months ago.]

I’m getting mixed messages.

Wired is telling me that blogging is so 2004, that I should live twitter my reviews, no one will read my stuff, I can’t compete with these professionally written blogs, etc.

Then the NYT goes off and tells me that they let blogs pick their CMJ schedule, and how they did a great job, the bands felt really fresh, the shows were authentic, etc.

One of the above gets it and the other does not. Can you guess which one it is?

blog
image via winterjade.com

No blog is created equally. Even music blogs. Would you like me to perform a segmentation study for you? No, I won’t bore you with that, but I’ll just say that a a blog that extends a music print magazine is not the same as a blog that gives away mp3s, or a fan blog, or a live music blog. Get it? Blogs are becoming specialized, providing different points of view on different subjects and genres. So stop lumping them together and calling them irrelevant.

And about that live blogging thing…I’ve thought about it, but do you seriously want to read this?:

10:09 OMG bands on tha stage!

10:45 I love this sonfg!

12:02 Oops I forgot about this damn twitter thing

Genre(s): Read This

1139Comments (4)To+blog+or+not+to+blog2008-10-24+07%3A21%3A06hardrockchick