Tag: metallica

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The State of Heavy Metal

My wife and I watched a TV show last night on a metal concert called Sonisphere in Knebworth England. I have to say while the show was decent we noticed a trend in the advertising during commercial breaks – erectile dysfunction, beds to reduce back pain, pills to make you feel young again and home insurance. Wow. Heavy Metal shows will soon have Depends advertising on them or maybe Metallica’s next tour will be sponsored by Preparation H or Metamucil.

Yes, the metal bands from the 80’s and 90’s are all approaching their 50’s and 60’s in age, but there are still a few in their late 30’s. Some have fared better than others. San Francisco was the epicenter to thrash metal in the 80’s and early 90’s before grunge pushed them underground. We had Metalica, Testament, Death Angel, Exodus, Laaz Rockit and that’s just off the top of my head. Apologies to my buds who I left out. Bands from out of town found San Francisco a must stop place to play. The Record Vault was where every metal band had to put in an appearance.

When out of town bands lost a member they usually turned to the San Francisco bands to find a replacement. Now we’re relegated to VH1 Classic. Classic rock was what you referred to bands who stopped recording albums and performed only reunion tours. The Rolling Stones first reunion tour was in 1975. That today is Classic Rock, not Slayer or Metallica.

I have noticed a few changes over the years in metal’s appearance and part of that has to do with the grunge movement. As the metal heads get older and their hair starts to thin, if you cut your long hair then you must grow facial hair. If you still have thinning long hair then you grow a goatee. If you shave your head then you need a ridiculous amount of facial hair [Scott Ian, Kerry King] Lemmy of Mötorhead is the only exception because he’s had the mutton chops and mustache since he was born. He eats nothing but red meat and potatoes and downs a fifth of Jack Daniels a day and his liver is still in perfect health and he doesn’t look a day older than he did in the 80’s.

If you have gray hair you either dye it [Joey Belladonna] or wear a beanie. Not the propeller head beanies, but a black one preferably with a skull and crossbones on it. Sadly there are few metal bands left in the San Francisco Bay Area. We have Metallica that’s usually off touring somewhere just like Death Angel who at least puts in a showing at the Haight Street Fair [special note, Will and Ted of Death Angel were in a band called Warfare D.C. I used to manage and the pre-Death Angel reunion group when they were the Organization I recorded their demo so I have to give them special props].

Heavy metal isn’t dead, but it isn’t growing the way it was pre-21st century. It’s mostly the same bands from the old days reforming. If you want to find new metal bands you have to look to Europe or more specifically Finland for new blood. That’s how things started  with the New Wave of British Heavy Metal in the 80’s so maybe by 2020 we’ll see something new pop up in the states and specifically San Francisco. We have lost a few from back in the day, but in most cases it’s not been from drugs, but cancer or some other failure of a body part. Yep, we’re getting older, but the advertisers don’t have to remind us every day.

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I Got Punked.

I should have realized that it was posted on April 1st, but I didn’t take notice when I read an article on Metallica breaking up. I got punked. Metallica is one of the biggest metal bands and for them to break up would be huge. Sure, they don’t please everyone anymore. I still like the earlier albums, but then again, I used to roadie for them back in their club days.

No one has confirmed it was an April Fool’s joke, but I’m pretty certain at this point it is. I haven’t had any contact with any of the guys in years so I can’t say for sure, but I’m pretty sure it’s a joke. The actual story from ultimate-guitar.com stated the following:

Despite the recent talks of a new album and 3D movie, Metallica’s James Hetfield has officially announced that Metallica, the world’s biggest heavy metal band, has called it quits.

In an official statement from Hetfield on behalf of the entire group, Hetfield revealed the factors that contributed to this surprising decision: “We’ve been doing this for 30 years. At a certain point, we all realized we wanted to explore new territories musically. The project with Lou Reed [”Lulu”] seemed to awaken a desire to move onto new musical horizons. It’s come to that time; we can’t be Metallica anymore. But fear not, you’ll be hearing new music from each of us in the future.”

Plans for said musical projects from each band member remain speculative; however, each member of Metallica has announced tentative plans for what’s in store for them musically in the coming months.

Hetfield, admittedly inspired by his onstage reunion with former Metallica guitarist, Dave Mustaine, has expressed desire to start a new group with the Megadeth frontman. Commenting on this, Dave Mustaine says, “I’ll have to think about it.” No word yet on who would fill in the bass and drum slots. Hetfield has admitted to having a strong respect for keyboardist **** from Children of Bodom, which could be a possibility.

Lars Ulrich, when asked what he plans to do, expressed desires to work alongside Marylin Manson. “I’ve been drawn more to the artistic side of heavy metal – with a guy like Manson, I think I’ll be satisfied artistically. We’ve gotten together a few times and thrown some ideas around.”

Bassist Robert Trujillo has issued some rather undiplomatic statements, calling Lars a “tool” and Hetfield a “control freak.” Trujillo plans on returning to his previous band, Suicidal Tendencies.

This news comes as a surprise to fans eager to hear the follow up to their 2008 return-to-form album, “Death Magnetic.” Although the ill-fated album with the Velvet Underground’s Lou Reed seemed to foreshadow a mid-life crisis for the metal giants.

However, Lou Reed still remains in the Metallica circle; it is rumored that Metallica lead guitarist, Kirk Hammet, will team up with Reed for a concept album that explores the dynamic range of his favorite electric guitar effect- the wah pedal. “The wah pedal is pure expression, much like Lou Reed’s voice. Everything on the album – percussion, vocals, guitars, bass – will go through a wah pedal.”

We at UG are certainly surprised to hear of this news. Metallica will always be remembered as one of the most influential metal bands of all time. This is quite the way to begin the month of April…

Now I didn’t even know they made an album with Lou Reed and after checking it out on iTunes, I have to say that would have been an better April Fool’s joke. It just proved that Lou Reed is completely tone deaf. Death Magnetic was recorded too loud to the point that the whole album is distorted. I’m not really pissed about being punked by the announcement, only feeling dumb that I didn’t catch that it was posted on April 1st.

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KUSF Dead: Rampage Radio, what’s next?

This is really early on, but it appears that as of this morning it was announced by the regents at the University of San Francisco that KUSF has been sold. From the USF website they posted the following:

“The University of San Francisco (USF) announced today that KUSF, the university’s radio station, is moving to an online only format, effective immediately. The university has reached an agreement to assign the FCC license for radio frequency 90.3 FM to Classical Public Radio Network, which is launching a non-commercial classical music station in the Bay Area. CPRN is owned by University of Southern California.

Read the press release from USC and Entercom Communications.

The call letters KUSF were not sold, and the KUSF logo and all music inventory will remain USF property. All KUSF staff will be offered similar positions at KUSF.org.

The move to online-only distribution gives KUSF a powerful opportunity to grow its worldwide audience. Previously, the station was limited to 100 online listeners at a time, but capacity will be increased to accommodate thousands of listeners.

The station will go dark briefly for necessary engineering work. It is possible the electrical work could take several days.

As it shifts to an online-only format, USF will focus on the station’s primary purpose as a teaching laboratory for students. The university is evaluating ways to improve the student learning experience and enhance its curriculum in digital media and audio production. USF is also pleased to announce that CPRN will make internships available to qualified USF students interested in radio broadcasting.

USF will invest the proceeds from the sale to support its mission, and will continue to offer a valuable learning experience for its media students. USF is pleased that it can also help ensure the long-term presence of high-quality classical music programming in the Bay Area.

The sale must be approved by the Federal Communications Commission.”

OK, I’m sure not a whole lot of you remember KUSF or even heard of it [great if you did though]. I discovered it through a friend I met in a nightclub early in the 80’s, Ron Quintana who started and is still a DJ with Rampage Radio. While I tried listening to it during the day I hated the really bad alternative rock they played that out of the thousands of songs maybe only a couple of bands were good enough to get record contracts. On the other hand, when Rampage Radio started up late night on Saturday it was all about the hard rock and heavy metal scene that was building up steam.

I was not much of a late night guy so staying up late was always kind of difficult for me. I was able to make to the studios a couple of times after club shows and it was almost like it was the after hours party for the metal shows locally. Ron and Ian Kallen who started the show worked hard to get in contact with the rising metal bands around the world before there was internet or skype so they had to do it all by hand and they were instrumental in getting a lot of these bands to come to San Francisco because we actually knew who they were from listening to Rampage Radio.

[mappress mapid=”1″]As it turns out Rampage Radio is looking into online streaming “radio”, but for some reason when you go to their page and click to enter it’s redirecting you to Facebook. I’m sure they’ll fix that soon. From the little info that’s trickling out I’ve heard that the station was sold for $3.75 million dollars. From what I can tell, that’s what USF gets out of the deal. The station is owned by the city of San Francisco and apparently sold it for $80 million dollars word has it at the moment.

In the end, KUSF may end up doing better. I certainly hope Rampage Radio does better. Non-profit radio has been going downhill for years. It’s all about the internet now and I’m hoping the Rampage crew embrace that wholeheartedly. It costs less that operating a broadcast station, reaches people all around the world and decentralizes the staff so that they can work from their own homes. Best of luck to them all!

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Happy New Year to all! GOOD MORNING!

I got out of bed this morning at 7am. Probably because I went to bed at 11pm last night ushering in the new year with the citizens of New York and Nashville. I don’t need any more fun than that since being in my late 40’s and it’s cold and rainy out and we didn’t have access to a babysitter [like you could find one on New Year’s Eve], so we hunkered down with the television for enjoyment.

We laughed as the people complaining about snow and not being able to get to work or the grocery store when we just have to worry about putting on another layer of clothes and a thicker jacket when we go outside. For being the New Year’s Day, I woke up feeling pretty good, but I can’t remember the last hangover I’ve had in years and I still drink. I think my ability to get up happy in the mornings is because now that I have a daughter I get exercise again. We have year round available playgrounds although sometimes in winter they’re a bit wet, we have good weather here, neither too bloody hot or too bloody cold. We don’t need to blow all our dough on air conditioning in summer and heat in the winter, thought we’ve had to turn the heat on a bit this year.

I don’t usually make New Year’s resolutions, but I’m going to make one this year. As you can see I’ve changed the look of the blog. I’m also going to be using 2011 to expand and make the site look more professional. I WILL NOT be adding adsense crap that no one clicks on to make my site look uglier. I will move around the city more and get outside the Sunset District more to show you more of San Francisco. I will be using better equipment to bring you better pictures and video and lastly, I will be interviewing some of the more interesting people around the town for the occasional Baghdad by the Bay podcast. Mostly audio, but sometimes there will be video involved as well.

I’ve always prided myself that I can get you to any street in San Francisco [barring traffic] within less than 30 minutes. I know this town and how great it is. I have friends from around the world who want to know how they can migrate here to live. Some do and make it, for others it’s just a working vacation that lasts them a few months and then they leave dejected that they couldn’t make it here. I wouldn’t look at it that way. I’d say you had a long vacation that you had to put in some work. Those of us who were born here usually have a family member who wisely invested in a house so you have some equity to draw on at some point.

We get people like Anthony Bourdain who dislikes San Francisco because of Alice Waters which when I meet him someday I’m going to knock him upside the head with a big white truffle and point out to him that Alice Waters is in Berkeley, not San Francisco. He’s beginning to warm up to us after he did a show here, but he hasn’t yet found some of the rockstar chefs we have here or cultural spots that don’t involve people sitting on urine stained bar stools picking up their drinks off of bars soaked for the past 75 years of swill being spilled onto them and maybe cleaned up afterwards. Bourdain needs to see the Beach Chalet/Park Chalet. He needs to see Java Beach and Surfer’s Row at the foot of Judah street that’s growing into a thriving community. YOU need to see these places too if you haven’t because there’s a calmness to the area that you don’t feel like you have to drop an eight ball of coke to fit in.

Then of course there are places like Mara’s bakery in North Beach that has a wonderful selection of Italian pastries and cannolis to cry for. Some of the Mission street taquerias where you better know how to count in Spanish because that’s how they call your order number. Let us not leave out the sourdough bread that people would buy at the airport to bring home with them or the dungeness crab that made this city. These are the things I’ll be bringing along in 2011.

Lastly I wanted to share a bit of amusement I had this morning. I was checking my stats for the site and was looking at what words people were using to find my site. Now it used to be my talking about why medical marijuana would increase revenues to the California coffers. Now apparently I’m attracting readers who are looking for drunk+redneck+sex. I guess my one article about Sunset rednecks is reaching farther than the wafting smoke of marijuana.

To all of you I wish you a prosperous new year that will put you and San Francisco in a much better position than 2010 did. May the year bring you smiles and happiness which is because you’ll be making more money at a job that doesn’t suck for a change.

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Heavy Metal Never Dies

After reading about Ozzy and Mötley Crüe and how they tried to kill themselves I thought it would be nice to have a book about Metal in San Francisco from it’s start in 1980 to where it is in present day.  So I’ve decided to write a book on the subject and have it self published.

What I need is to hear from the bands and people involved in the scene because there’s some parts that are a bit foggy for me and some that I missed out on. I want to do interviews for the book with the people who also pushed the scene along like Ron Quintana, Danny D and all of the others. Pics will help as well. I’m hoping you’ll all provide the words and stories that I missed out on, like the East Bay scene which I was only a peripheral member of, mostly seeing the bands when they came to play in San Francisco. Remember some of the old Waller house parties?

San Francisco was the spawning grounds for Thrash Metal that defined San Francisco as one of the big thrash metal scenes, so please contact me with information so I help all of us remember who was who back then.