Since Jason isn’t feeling particularly inspired just now, I decided to track down a YouTube vid for our readers’ entertainment. Of course, being me I can’t supply you with the usual jazz and blues. However, I did take on board what people were saying about classical music during the last musical taste debate we had here at the Cat.
This means that over the fold you’ll find Metallica live in concert with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. They’re performing the title track from arguably the greatest metal album ever recorded, their 1986 masterpiece Master of Puppets. When done properly (as here) orchestral metal works incredibly well, although Metallica were always superb at complex, sophisticated composition.
26 Comments
See I have a problem with bands doing the symphony thing. It’s like when Axl Rose started wearing bike shorts on stage - it was all over.
Axl Rose only got as far as he did because G&R had a great guitarist. End of story. Just sayin.
I can understand Axl in shorts leading to a breakdown - but the symphony thing can be very good. Meatloaf in Melbourne with the MSO was awesome. Also its a source of revenue for the symphonies and helps get them off the taxpayers back.
Slash is/was one of the great axeman - the Sweet Child o’Mine riff is sublime. But, come on - to be fair to dopey, silly Axl - he did have a great rock ‘n roll voice.
That part is true, CL, but still nothing without Slash.
greatest metal album of all time is of course an oxy-moron.
Now I have first hand knowledge that Young Jase actually possess musical taste.
We should perhaps leave music to him
Homer, wouldn’t you agree that something like Hendrix’s Voodoo Child is metal? I thought you’d give that the tick of Homer rock ‘n roll approval.
Jimi Hendrix was a blues guitarist, he’s not metal.
Young Jase is correct.
Metal indeed.
Blues guitarists soon graduated to heavy rock as we see with Page, Clapton, Beck, Bishop, Bloomfield, Lee or even Hendrix.
Hendrix was more than a straight blues guitarist, folks. Francis - help me out here…
no-one is saying he was CL.
part of his history was being fired by Little Richard cos he was too pretty and only one boy could look pretty
Don’t know whether FXH is around, CL. Maybe you should give him a hoy?
Metal’s origins were in the ultra-amplified and electrically tweaked blues of a few British bands of the late 1960s. These had unquestionably been influenced by Hendrix - perhaps above all - and he himself was essentially a metal pioneer, apart from everything else he was. Jason is incorrect to say Jimmi was simply a “blues guitarist”.
AllExperts.com points out that Chas Chandler argued the very term “heavy metal” had its origins with a Hendrix newspaper review: “…it [heavy metal] was a term originated in a New York Times article reviewing a Jimi Hendrix performance”. That thesis is disputed but the article cites the genre’s lineage thus: “…the ‘grandfathers’ - Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, and Black Sabbath.”
If memory serves correctly, errant young Homer once saw Deep Purple perform live - and he and Christopher were at the Stones concert of ‘72. (Presumably long-haired and wasted).
Now that’s some serious music history. Me? I was just a teenage metalhead with a flanno shirt and an attitude while my contemporaries insisted on listening to Culture Club etc.
Neither Deep Purple, Black Sabbath or Led Zeppelin who I saw I think at the showground were heavy metal they were heavy rock. In a some cases sometimes a louder form of blues
Heavy ‘metal’ comes around a generation later when taste had been extinguished.
My home computer is so in need of an update that à can’t actually watch YouTube on it.
I’m sure it’s a lovely video or as Dame Edna would say, “a nice night’s entertainment”.
“Welcome to the Jungle” is the best Guns and/or Roses track.
Wouldn’t one call Hendrix a rock/blues guitarist?
I think “Bring Back” is being harsh, but I must say I prefer Jason’s Lucinda Williams, Beth Orton etc etc So much easier on the ears. However, I’d love to see Helen at a heavy metal gig waving those cornrows around.
(I do access the YouTube’s elsewhere so I have seen them).
I have seen Jason’s other YouTube’s if that wasn’t clear.
Oh and Meatloaf with an orchestra. That would be subtle, wouldn’t it?
Whiles blue influenced (and he paid his sues on the Chitlin’ circuit) Hendrix was a not a blues guitarist though he sure could lay down a fine 12 bar. Neither was he a heavy metal guitarist as such a narrow definition overlooks the scope of his work.
I’ll agree with Homer than Led Zeppelin and Deel Purple were not a heavy metal band but I’ll have to include Sabbath in there. After all, the Sabbath used the diabolus in musica, the ultimate heavy metal interval, for their eponymous song.
errr…change ’sues’ to ‘dues’ above
Yair I must admit the Sabbath were always pretty classic heavy metal to me, Shaun. Mind you, I’m happy to admit I know squat about music, but I do know what I like, and have some sense of its history/origins etc.
‘War Pigs’, ‘Paranoid’,'NIB’ etc. All great classic metal.
An aside, Hendrix also included the diabolus in musica on ‘Purple Haze’ but Sabbath did it with more eeevilll.
The other vid went walkies (and in so doing did weird things to the page layout), so I’ve embedded another one.
My music collection ranges from Bach to Black Sabbath.
I bought a 2 CD best of Black Sabbath compilation a couple of months back. I’m pissed off because it doesn’t have Sabbra Cadabra on it.
Never got into Metallica though. Sorry.
I always preferred Pearl Jam and Soungarden (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u00z0yDEGsU&mode=related&search=) to Metallica, and think the difference is that the former are really grunge, while Metallica is more in the Metal tradition of, say, Motorhead (remember “Orgasmatron”).
The best grunge metal song for mine though is Ministry’s classic “Jesus Built My Hotrod”! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RBKTo5K14M)