Tuesday, April 26, 2011
SETI's Detector Array Being Shut Down Due to Lack of Funding
Hey Great Filter/SIA/Fermi Paradox chatterati: if you consider this an important question, here's your chance to put your money where your mouth is. The array at Hat Creek near Mt. Shasta that's the main one used for SETI work is being shut down because they can't pay their bills. They note the irony that this is happening exactly when the number of extrasolar planets we're fidning is sky-rocketing. They need five million U.S. to keep it running. Without an active search, discussions of the Fermi Paradox and aliens will return to being only idle speculation.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Monday, April 4, 2011
A Metal Debate!
Appropriate, after a previous discussion of Dave Mustaine's Christianity, the following was an April Fool's joke but it would've been fun nonetheless: "Megadeth Frontman Dave Mustaine To Debate "God Is Not Great" Author Christopher Hitchens" (from Metal Underground). I imagine the outcome would have been about as one-sided as a guitar contest between the same two.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Kingsbury's Psychohistorical Crisis
May I recommend that if you're an Asimov fan, you read Psychohistorical Crisis. It is a non-authorized addition to the Foundation series, taking place two millennia after Hari Seldon. While the names are different, the universe is recognizably that of the Foundation series. And the novel succeeds not only as a Foundation tribute novel but as an outstanding work of science fiction its own right. (Here are two reviews.) What's so great about it?
1) It knits together history so far with distant future history in a non-childish, non-current-era-centric way. This is rarely done and is the holy grail of projection fiction; when it is done it's usually done in a narrow way around a specific theme or technology. Reading Kingsbury feels like reading history.
2) There's also some really interesting hard science/philosophical speculation woven into this book, as there usually is in Kingsbury's work. One discussion involves the finite information density of the universe and how that necessarily means that history is lost, not just in the sense of destroyed documents but the basic physical recoverability of information about past events.
3) He introduces a technology called the "fam" to deal with the complexities of a culture that has endured and accumulated (and lost knowledge) over tens of thousands of a years. The fam is a neurologically-interface computer that allows people in the novel to deal with, among other things, the galaxy's ten million word vocabulary, negotiate financial transactions and human geography, and in general function. Kingsbury thinks about the technology in depth. Removal or loss of the fam has devastating consequences that parallel brain damage in our own culture, losing the ability even to navigate ones neighborhood or understand language. Still there are exceptions. One character takes off his fam to stroll meditatively through nature, and another invites a sex partner to try intercourse without it, to focus on the bestial sensory world unpolluted by semantic thought. The massively complex, nonsystematic accretion of culture is terrifying to contemplate, and the only better metaphor I've run across is from a William Gibson novel, when a character observes a repair job in the London subway and notices how many unknown layers of tile there are on the walls, in a kind of cultural atherosclerosis.
4) It's interesting watching for Kingsbury's workarounds so that he could (legally) play in a universe that didn't necessarily want to be played in. Apparently there was no legal action from the Asimov estate but there were threats. Unfortunate, since the Asimov canon would be poorer without this apocryphal contribution.
5) This essay isn't the first to observe that science fiction is a genre which seems to assume (on average) that in the future, all humans will be white heterosexual male anglophone agnostic physical scientists or engineers. This has changed for the better over the years but when this assumption is violated it's still comment-worthy. (Case in point, the role of religion in Dune or the Pitch Black series.) This doesn't damage science fiction to the point of uselessness, but the values of its authors are more necessarily manifested, because they're often consciously writing about today's trends projected further into the future. Another interesting subject here is Iain Banks, whose Culture is basically the Enlightenment writ large, though his writing seems quite conscious of this idea, and the other concepts the Culture conflicts with are his foils (the Hells, the Affront, and the "out of context" problem.) In fact an argument can be made that, in having the protagonists use astrology to subvert psychohistory (the near-dictatorial guardians of which are some the most enlightened humans ever to live), Kingsbury is making a comment on the limits of reason and the Enlightenment to alleviate the human condition. A comment about salvation through Christ in the historical timeline Kingsbury included with the novel might lead one to interpret this as motivated by theism.
Consequently what I like about Kingsbury's future is that it's not obviously Western-centric and unquestioningly extending the Enlightenment, both of which assumptions are still the implicitly the case (generally) in science fiction. Kingsbury does actually mention America by name as a flash-in-the-pan empire - in naming past nations Kingsbury's history is more clearly a future history of the actual Earth than Asimov's was (or perhaps could have been, since in the Foundation era in the canonical Asimov universe, Earth had been forgotten as the human homeworld.) This distant future's cultural conventions are less familiar to a modern Westerner than in Asimov's series. There are a lot of interesting changes between the first three Foundation novels and the much later last two, driven by cultural changes in the intervening era, although to his credit Asimov addressed many of these directly. In Prelude to Foundation he addresses the racial makeup of the characters for the first time; Westerners, Easterners and Southerners parallel modern white, Asian, and black humans. Of course Asimov is not alone in this. As has been observed of Star Trek, this either supposes that off-Earth settlement will begin in our relatively near future, or more sadly assumes that humans of varying ethnicities will never mingle genes. (It's more annoying in Star Trek. It's 2300 and most people on Earth are still of one or another distinct race? Really? Depressing. Don't tell us you couldn't find multiracial actors either, it didn't seem to be a problem for Fifth Element.)
The Deer Singularity
Let's say we wake up tomorrow, and deer are on average slightly smarter than humans. Would the world become better or worse for most humans? What problems might we encounter?
I deliberately picked a timid herbivore for this thought experiment to avoid accusations of being alarmist. No point in debating what would happen if tomorrow morning we have a bunch of mountain lion Einsteins running around.
I deliberately picked a timid herbivore for this thought experiment to avoid accusations of being alarmist. No point in debating what would happen if tomorrow morning we have a bunch of mountain lion Einsteins running around.
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Sigh, Corpsecry/Angelfall (Imaginary Sonicscape, 2001)
The following is definitely one of the more approachable Sigh pieces, which I post here in the hopes that more people will help them "spread the plague of Eastern terror", as Msr. Kawashima once wrote. Sigh remain the only band whose recordings have literally terrified animals in my house.
I find this piece interesting because the ending contains some intervals and sounds that sound very classically East Asian (high pitched notes with vibrato, and the bells striking along with those pitched notes are quite atypical to a Western ear). I fear that were Mirai to read this he might take it as an insult to be placed in a tradition of modern East Asian composers (read: charges of unoriginality), to which I can only reply, your fans hold you to high standards sir.
In 2003 I had the rare pleasure of seeing Sigh in Raleigh, North Carolina, after which show Mirai and the boys obliged in signing my back with a Sharpie. I don't read enough kanji to know what it says. My hope is that it was some kind of shamanic or Shinto curse. And when I woke up the next morning, it was gone.
The production improved markedly on Hangman's Hymn, although I think we won't see a return to the "crazier than a shithouse rat" quality (to quote an actual professional review) of Hail Horrour Hail and earlier work. This is fine with me.
I find this piece interesting because the ending contains some intervals and sounds that sound very classically East Asian (high pitched notes with vibrato, and the bells striking along with those pitched notes are quite atypical to a Western ear). I fear that were Mirai to read this he might take it as an insult to be placed in a tradition of modern East Asian composers (read: charges of unoriginality), to which I can only reply, your fans hold you to high standards sir.
In 2003 I had the rare pleasure of seeing Sigh in Raleigh, North Carolina, after which show Mirai and the boys obliged in signing my back with a Sharpie. I don't read enough kanji to know what it says. My hope is that it was some kind of shamanic or Shinto curse. And when I woke up the next morning, it was gone.
The production improved markedly on Hangman's Hymn, although I think we won't see a return to the "crazier than a shithouse rat" quality (to quote an actual professional review) of Hail Horrour Hail and earlier work. This is fine with me.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
The Singularity and the Fermi Paradox
The idea that there will be a technological singularity relies on the development of self-replicating technology that is able to improve its replication and anticipation of the future (i.e. it is self improving). Those who argue for a singularity would seem to think there is a high likelihood of this happening, assuming humans continue to improve technology.
Therefore, if you believe that technology-using intelligence can evolve elsewhere in the universe, you should also believe that singularities have very probably already occurred elsewhere in the universe, barring an argument that the singularity is somehow predicated on provincial aspects of human technology.
If that is the case, it is very likely that evidence of any non-entropy-driven replicators (i.e. "life") from outside the solar system will be from an alien singularity, rather than the klugey "naturally" evolved aliens themselves.
This argument parallels Bostrom's simulation argument. A general form for arguments of this sort is
A) If the concept of revolutionary technology/event X is coherent,
B) And if humans are not the first technology-using intelligence to evolve,
C) then X has probably already occurred,
D) and also the universe as we already experience it is likely to exhibit characteristics determined by X.
It's worth asking how a very post-singularity star system would look from 50 LY away. Of course by asking about star systems, I'm engaging in matter chauvinism, because I assume matter is required for doing things like computation. Perhaps there are better substrates where we should be looking.
For those who think a human singularity is inevitable, but agree that we have not seen evidence of alien singularities, if the assumptions above are valid, then we should start rephrasing solutions to the Fermi paradox in terms of the singularity:
1) Singularity always equals cancer: when systems of self-organizing matter can move in giant steps rather than tiny incremental steps, their bad rules or inefficiencies matter much more, so they behave unsustainably and destroy themselves (in LessWrong parlance, they become paperclip maximizers.)
This is just a singulatarian instantiation of Fermi's concern that technological civilizations would destroy themselves, making Drake's L factor a major attrition factor.
2) There are signs are all around us but we don't recognize them (or, we just haven't looked hard enough.) We're not so bright. Do we know what a singularity would look like 25 million years after it happened? Don't discount this one. It's my explanation of why we haven't seen found anything yet.
3) We're in a backwater. If we look far enough away, or wait long enough, we'll see them.
4) Singularities conceal themselves. The ones that don't get destroyed.
Therefore, if you believe that technology-using intelligence can evolve elsewhere in the universe, you should also believe that singularities have very probably already occurred elsewhere in the universe, barring an argument that the singularity is somehow predicated on provincial aspects of human technology.
If that is the case, it is very likely that evidence of any non-entropy-driven replicators (i.e. "life") from outside the solar system will be from an alien singularity, rather than the klugey "naturally" evolved aliens themselves.
This argument parallels Bostrom's simulation argument. A general form for arguments of this sort is
A) If the concept of revolutionary technology/event X is coherent,
B) And if humans are not the first technology-using intelligence to evolve,
C) then X has probably already occurred,
D) and also the universe as we already experience it is likely to exhibit characteristics determined by X.
It's worth asking how a very post-singularity star system would look from 50 LY away. Of course by asking about star systems, I'm engaging in matter chauvinism, because I assume matter is required for doing things like computation. Perhaps there are better substrates where we should be looking.
For those who think a human singularity is inevitable, but agree that we have not seen evidence of alien singularities, if the assumptions above are valid, then we should start rephrasing solutions to the Fermi paradox in terms of the singularity:
1) Singularity always equals cancer: when systems of self-organizing matter can move in giant steps rather than tiny incremental steps, their bad rules or inefficiencies matter much more, so they behave unsustainably and destroy themselves (in LessWrong parlance, they become paperclip maximizers.)
This is just a singulatarian instantiation of Fermi's concern that technological civilizations would destroy themselves, making Drake's L factor a major attrition factor.
2) There are signs are all around us but we don't recognize them (or, we just haven't looked hard enough.) We're not so bright. Do we know what a singularity would look like 25 million years after it happened? Don't discount this one. It's my explanation of why we haven't seen found anything yet.
3) We're in a backwater. If we look far enough away, or wait long enough, we'll see them.
4) Singularities conceal themselves. The ones that don't get destroyed.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Middle Eastern Metal Is Coming. Are We Ready?
Recently Boing Boing reported that Bahrainis were feeling "triumphant, warlike, metal" based on their top download, Fates Warning "Ivory Gate of Dreams" from lastmood.fm. Somehow I had grown up a son of late 80s/early 90s metal without listening to much Fates Warning. Because of Bahrainis' enthusiasm, I have corrected this. So now Middle Eastern metal kids, you're influencing the rest of us. With your newfound freedom you must pursue the one sure path to enlightenment: METAL! Maybe it will be Middle Eastern metal that saves the rest of the world from the encroaching metal Dark Age.
And it occurs to me that in simultaneous service to freedom and metal, the metalheads of the free world should start checking out Middle Eastern metal. Without further ado, here's what I done found. (If you know of any others please comment.)
BAHRAIN:
- The Voice of Metal in Bahrain on Facebook
- General rock and metal site on Facebook
EGYPT: A whole sh*tload at metalunderground.com.
IRAN: There's a whole frickin blog of Persian metal bands.
IRAQ: Acrassicauda of course! (Here on Facebook too.) (5/29/11 at Brick by Brick in San Diego!)
JORDAN: Bilocate
LIBYA: Disrooting
OMAN: Arabia (that's the name of the band)
PAKISTAN: somebody put together a video summarizing their 10 favorite Pakistani metal bands.
SAUDI ARABIA: Crossroads Arabia, SA death metal magazine
SYRIA: Trendkill
TUNISIA: Barzakh
YEMEN: couldn't find any! Do you know of some? Let me know!
And it occurs to me that in simultaneous service to freedom and metal, the metalheads of the free world should start checking out Middle Eastern metal. Without further ado, here's what I done found. (If you know of any others please comment.)
BAHRAIN:
- The Voice of Metal in Bahrain on Facebook
- General rock and metal site on Facebook
EGYPT: A whole sh*tload at metalunderground.com.
IRAN: There's a whole frickin blog of Persian metal bands.
IRAQ: Acrassicauda of course! (Here on Facebook too.) (5/29/11 at Brick by Brick in San Diego!)
JORDAN: Bilocate
LIBYA: Disrooting
OMAN: Arabia (that's the name of the band)
PAKISTAN: somebody put together a video summarizing their 10 favorite Pakistani metal bands.
SAUDI ARABIA: Crossroads Arabia, SA death metal magazine
SYRIA: Trendkill
TUNISIA: Barzakh
YEMEN: couldn't find any! Do you know of some? Let me know!
Sunday, March 27, 2011
The Three Ages of Metal So Far: And the New Dark Age
If you don't read this blog for metal, you'll want to skip this one. If you do, gather round, and listen to tales of yore by your metal elders!
Metal has actually run in cycles from its speciation as a genre until now, with dark ages and Cambrian explosions alike. Here I argue that we're probably entering a new dark age but that the coming-online of parts of the world who've not yet contributed to global metal complicates this and may save us from the 2010's answer to Nu Metal.
The Iron Age of Metal and the Big 3: 1970-1975
I'm not going to rehash the Central Dogma of Metal, except to note that the early days of metal in the early 1970s were really dominated by 3 bands: Sabbath, Zep and the unfairly underemphasized Deep Purple, who often sound more like the bands that followed in the 80s than the other two. (For my money Zep is the least impressive of the bunch.)
The First Dark Age: 1975-1983
In terms of bands which inspired the next wave of metal, after the mid-70s there was an 8 year lull with the notable exception of Iron Maiden. Little is known about this era or the other bands that populated it, much like the Sea People of the ancient Near East.
The Golden Age of Metal: 1983-1994
This coincides with thrash, speed, etc. metal (which were stupid terms because they were all equivalent, since none of them ever distinguished any characteristic of any band from any other band), and contains the Big 4: Megadeth, Anthrax, Slayer and Metallica. The dark age here snuck up on us: 91-94 was the initially non-obvious backside of this curve. The genre was no longer underground once Metallica started appearing on MTV and the radio. Carcass went to Sony, then was shown the door. There were some ominous motifs noted even at the time: album covers and videos started being overrun by old men. Perhaps the genre knew its energy was flagging.
The Great Dark Age: 1994-2001
1994's Slayer release was not up to their usual standard, perhaps because it was Lombardo-less. Wearing on into the mid-90s, Danzig IV was bad (and don't even ask about Blackaciddevil). Sepultura broke up. Worst of all, mosh pits formed at a Belly show outside my dorm window. Everywhere were signs of decay. Bands began dabbling in every other genre, whether for broader acceptance or a need for unlistenable, super avant-garde originality (think of Pestilence, Mordred). I was so traumatized by this that, now that I'm seeing similar trends in prose in works like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies I tremble for the future of literature in general. This was to be metal's Mannerist Period, except instead of long necks, it was mongrel metal.
There were bright moments during the interegnum. Carcass put out Heartwork at the tail end of the Golden Age and Swansong came out in '96; thereafter Carcass disbanded, an immoral act if ever there was one because it deprived us of future art. Also during this period there were solid releases from one of the Big 4, specifically Megadeth putting out Youthanasia and Cryptic Writings; but Load and Diabolus in Musica didn't give the world what it needed. (Semen on the cover of an album? Did that really seem like a good idea gentlemen?)
Meanwhile, filling in the gap by the late 90s/2000 we had the dreaded nu metal*, the likes of Limp Bizkit, Kid Rock, Korn and Slipknot. These were truly desperate times. In '94 the metal depression was not obvious but in '96 it could not have been denied.
Recovery and the Silver Age: 2001-2009
(Keep in mind that in 2001 I was already 27 and a little out of the metal demographic. So forgive me if these dates are a little later than they were for you.)
The early waves of NWOSDM reaching the U.S. in the late 90s were a real bright spot. In Flames gave me hope that the light of metal was not yet extinguished (by the way, if you think I'm being a little stupidly melodramatic, go read some Billzebub interviews and then come back with your palate cleansed.) In the U.S. the New England metal scene was producing commercially successful bands, but nothing hard except for Hatebreed (and that Seth Putnam comedian was still staggering around.)
There was a major non-music factor that drove the recovery: technology. Metal sites like Blabbermouth appeared that supported the community like never before. During the golden age, there were a couple usenet groups and a couple magazines, but there really was very little two-way communication outside your little circle of 4 metal buddies from your high school or dorm. Culturally I think it helped that metal fans relaxed and started having fun at shows, and appreciating when musicians had fun - instead of trying to impress everyone with how mean and evil and angry you are all the time. (Granted, this was and still is polluted by irony to some degree; some people will do anything to avoid appearing to be made happy by something!) The best early example I saw of the "return to fun", for want of a less stupid-sounding term, was at the Grocery in Manhattan in 2002, which had a weekly live metal karaoke night. What a blast!
Again, as with the beginning of the dark age, the beginning of the recovery and the death of nu metal was not obvious at the time - Limp Bizkit opened for Metallica as late as 2003 - but it was coming, and the recovery had started in retrospect by 2001. I had expected metal would get an infusion from punk and hardcore, which happened - at the Gilman in Berkeley in 2000-2002, if you asked kids in the bands whether they were metal or punk (because they sounded the same), their answer mostly correlated with whether they liked Bad Religion or Pantera better. By 2003 I heard Avenged Sevenfold blaring out of a house in my neighborhood and knew the recovery was on.
2 other minor innovations: it seemed like metal bands had exhausted every cool noun or noun phrase to use as a name by the late 90s, so I wondered if they weren't going to start using verb phrases (As I Lay Dying, Avenged Sevenfold, etc.) I'd also expected metal to start raiding other religions for novel eschatology and theodicy vocabulary, and was satisifed to see this had happened when I saw Shadowsfall open for In Flames at the Glass House in L.A. ("the First Noble Truth"). (Side note: they had TVs embedded in every surface, including the floor, and were cycling the eye-slicing scene from Un Chien Andalou. Try to relax while that shit's playing before you've had your second Guiness.)
Before moving on, a word is required for the excellent upper Midwestern metalcore scene in the mid-aughts; Dead to Fall and Black Dahlia Murders come to mind. Other innovative American acts that are still with us include The Sword, Pelican, Mastodon, along with a peppering of excellent cerebral European metal (Lyzanxia). By the mid-aughts it seemed that musicians composed innovative metal while recognizing that there were rules of composition they could choose to deviate from, or not. Conventions had been set. Silent Civilian, for example, strikes me as an outstanding band that's dead-set on producing great metal, rather than neurotic about "originality" (think of Handel: was he worried about "originality", or about writing good music?) While it might've been hard for me to admit this at 18, this is to the genre's credit (and Silent Civilian's - listen to this and try to tell me it's not excellent. This is pretty cool too.)
Descent Into A New Dark Age: 2009-?
A new world not quite so brave, one might even say - in fact, right on the edge. (One of my top rules for living: always work in Carcass lyrics when you can.) But what happened? Again we've lost our way. By Cloud Connected, In Flames had turned into Abba. For that matter, name a band that became well-known in the past 2 years that you really dig and expect to be around in another 2 years. By the end of the last decade bands were making claims that they had written Ride the Lightning Part II (sorry Trivium), and fallen far short. So I have some bad news for you: we're now at the beginning of another metal recession. It's never obvious for the first couple years, but here we are. I don't know who will save us (are you a kid playing metal? maybe you!). Unfortunately I might be too old the next time around the block.
My Predictions For the Next Wave of Metal
- Metal will be composed and performed by accomplished musicians (often professionals from other genres) with no axe to grind and no need to prove to people that metal is a real genre. There will also be recognized and not-resisted well-established rules of metal composition - metal has been around long enough at this point that there's no debating it, and the overstated obsession with "originality" will decrease. The downside is that, even though metal will be more ubiquitous, there may not be a metal "community" as such anymore. This is partly a result of the internet, which means that subcultures don't scare people anymore - they're too easy to look up on Wikipedia.
- We'll move away from the myth that metal bands are primarily a live phenomenon (Metallica in particular believe this about themselves and it's flatly false). Given piracy, certainly to make money, you will have to do live shows. So studio recordings will have to be either passion-driven and available free, created by kids in high school and college (and hopefully, a searchable online metal resource so the crowd figures out what's good so you don't have to wade through crap); OR, more records will end up being crowd-financed by the distilled fanbase that reads the Twitter-stream equivalent. (This is happening already with movies.) We're also going to see a lot of metal that never came out of a guitar.
- I think the emotional space of metal has been pretty swept-out. It's modern war-dances, and there are only so many variations on that theme. I have no predictions for the direction that sweeping-out will drive it.
- I keep predicting that the rise of middle classes around the world and the internet will result in metal from elsewhere, twisted in unique ways by local tastes. The international brotherhood of metal is ever stronger, but still there are no bands getting to us from China or Argentina. Why not? I largely credit NWOSDM with salvaging metal during the Dark Ages, but I see no emerging non-Anglophone metal scene to save us! This is why we need a directory. Malay metal! Salvadoran metal? Here a plug for the metal scene in Calgary, Alberta, which I stumbled across, and which is awesome - but I never would have known about it otherwise. (By the way, I'm not as active a metal-seeker as I was and if this does exist, please direct me to it.) I imagine there's a lot of pent-up anger in all those new or soon-to-be Middle Eastern democracies - here's a directory of their metal.
- If I'm going to draw another art history analogy, I would say that music in general (outside of the academy) hasn't really been that strongly influenced by computers yet (by that I mean its production, not its distribution). Maybe this is limited by the bandwidth of the human ear and brain; if not, we're going to see a chance in the next decade parallel to what happened when art became abstract in response to being supplanted by photography a century ago. What it might mean to decompose metal into planes, I don't know, but a) it would be cool and b) I eagerly await metal's Picasso and Dali, as opposed to its Michelangelo and Velasquez who have already come. (Meshuggah may already be its Cezanne.)
*Speaking of nu metal, Lars Ulrich once said P.O.D. (remember them? Me neither), a nu-metal band, copied Hallowed Be Thy Name by Iron Maiden. I don't have the axe to grind with Ulrich that a lot of people seem to, having randomly met him once in San Francisco and talked to him (he was nice enough). But I do think he had a lot of chutzpah on this specific point, considering that Ride the Lightning closely tracks Powerslave and Number of the Beast in song structure and lyrical theme, if not direct melodies.
Metal has actually run in cycles from its speciation as a genre until now, with dark ages and Cambrian explosions alike. Here I argue that we're probably entering a new dark age but that the coming-online of parts of the world who've not yet contributed to global metal complicates this and may save us from the 2010's answer to Nu Metal.
The Iron Age of Metal and the Big 3: 1970-1975
I'm not going to rehash the Central Dogma of Metal, except to note that the early days of metal in the early 1970s were really dominated by 3 bands: Sabbath, Zep and the unfairly underemphasized Deep Purple, who often sound more like the bands that followed in the 80s than the other two. (For my money Zep is the least impressive of the bunch.)
The First Dark Age: 1975-1983
In terms of bands which inspired the next wave of metal, after the mid-70s there was an 8 year lull with the notable exception of Iron Maiden. Little is known about this era or the other bands that populated it, much like the Sea People of the ancient Near East.
The Golden Age of Metal: 1983-1994
This coincides with thrash, speed, etc. metal (which were stupid terms because they were all equivalent, since none of them ever distinguished any characteristic of any band from any other band), and contains the Big 4: Megadeth, Anthrax, Slayer and Metallica. The dark age here snuck up on us: 91-94 was the initially non-obvious backside of this curve. The genre was no longer underground once Metallica started appearing on MTV and the radio. Carcass went to Sony, then was shown the door. There were some ominous motifs noted even at the time: album covers and videos started being overrun by old men. Perhaps the genre knew its energy was flagging.
The Great Dark Age: 1994-2001
1994's Slayer release was not up to their usual standard, perhaps because it was Lombardo-less. Wearing on into the mid-90s, Danzig IV was bad (and don't even ask about Blackaciddevil). Sepultura broke up. Worst of all, mosh pits formed at a Belly show outside my dorm window. Everywhere were signs of decay. Bands began dabbling in every other genre, whether for broader acceptance or a need for unlistenable, super avant-garde originality (think of Pestilence, Mordred). I was so traumatized by this that, now that I'm seeing similar trends in prose in works like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies I tremble for the future of literature in general. This was to be metal's Mannerist Period, except instead of long necks, it was mongrel metal.
There were bright moments during the interegnum. Carcass put out Heartwork at the tail end of the Golden Age and Swansong came out in '96; thereafter Carcass disbanded, an immoral act if ever there was one because it deprived us of future art. Also during this period there were solid releases from one of the Big 4, specifically Megadeth putting out Youthanasia and Cryptic Writings; but Load and Diabolus in Musica didn't give the world what it needed. (Semen on the cover of an album? Did that really seem like a good idea gentlemen?)
Meanwhile, filling in the gap by the late 90s/2000 we had the dreaded nu metal*, the likes of Limp Bizkit, Kid Rock, Korn and Slipknot. These were truly desperate times. In '94 the metal depression was not obvious but in '96 it could not have been denied.
Recovery and the Silver Age: 2001-2009
(Keep in mind that in 2001 I was already 27 and a little out of the metal demographic. So forgive me if these dates are a little later than they were for you.)
The early waves of NWOSDM reaching the U.S. in the late 90s were a real bright spot. In Flames gave me hope that the light of metal was not yet extinguished (by the way, if you think I'm being a little stupidly melodramatic, go read some Billzebub interviews and then come back with your palate cleansed.) In the U.S. the New England metal scene was producing commercially successful bands, but nothing hard except for Hatebreed (and that Seth Putnam comedian was still staggering around.)
There was a major non-music factor that drove the recovery: technology. Metal sites like Blabbermouth appeared that supported the community like never before. During the golden age, there were a couple usenet groups and a couple magazines, but there really was very little two-way communication outside your little circle of 4 metal buddies from your high school or dorm. Culturally I think it helped that metal fans relaxed and started having fun at shows, and appreciating when musicians had fun - instead of trying to impress everyone with how mean and evil and angry you are all the time. (Granted, this was and still is polluted by irony to some degree; some people will do anything to avoid appearing to be made happy by something!) The best early example I saw of the "return to fun", for want of a less stupid-sounding term, was at the Grocery in Manhattan in 2002, which had a weekly live metal karaoke night. What a blast!
Again, as with the beginning of the dark age, the beginning of the recovery and the death of nu metal was not obvious at the time - Limp Bizkit opened for Metallica as late as 2003 - but it was coming, and the recovery had started in retrospect by 2001. I had expected metal would get an infusion from punk and hardcore, which happened - at the Gilman in Berkeley in 2000-2002, if you asked kids in the bands whether they were metal or punk (because they sounded the same), their answer mostly correlated with whether they liked Bad Religion or Pantera better. By 2003 I heard Avenged Sevenfold blaring out of a house in my neighborhood and knew the recovery was on.
2 other minor innovations: it seemed like metal bands had exhausted every cool noun or noun phrase to use as a name by the late 90s, so I wondered if they weren't going to start using verb phrases (As I Lay Dying, Avenged Sevenfold, etc.) I'd also expected metal to start raiding other religions for novel eschatology and theodicy vocabulary, and was satisifed to see this had happened when I saw Shadowsfall open for In Flames at the Glass House in L.A. ("the First Noble Truth"). (Side note: they had TVs embedded in every surface, including the floor, and were cycling the eye-slicing scene from Un Chien Andalou. Try to relax while that shit's playing before you've had your second Guiness.)
Before moving on, a word is required for the excellent upper Midwestern metalcore scene in the mid-aughts; Dead to Fall and Black Dahlia Murders come to mind. Other innovative American acts that are still with us include The Sword, Pelican, Mastodon, along with a peppering of excellent cerebral European metal (Lyzanxia). By the mid-aughts it seemed that musicians composed innovative metal while recognizing that there were rules of composition they could choose to deviate from, or not. Conventions had been set. Silent Civilian, for example, strikes me as an outstanding band that's dead-set on producing great metal, rather than neurotic about "originality" (think of Handel: was he worried about "originality", or about writing good music?) While it might've been hard for me to admit this at 18, this is to the genre's credit (and Silent Civilian's - listen to this and try to tell me it's not excellent. This is pretty cool too.)
Descent Into A New Dark Age: 2009-?
A new world not quite so brave, one might even say - in fact, right on the edge. (One of my top rules for living: always work in Carcass lyrics when you can.) But what happened? Again we've lost our way. By Cloud Connected, In Flames had turned into Abba. For that matter, name a band that became well-known in the past 2 years that you really dig and expect to be around in another 2 years. By the end of the last decade bands were making claims that they had written Ride the Lightning Part II (sorry Trivium), and fallen far short. So I have some bad news for you: we're now at the beginning of another metal recession. It's never obvious for the first couple years, but here we are. I don't know who will save us (are you a kid playing metal? maybe you!). Unfortunately I might be too old the next time around the block.
My Predictions For the Next Wave of Metal
- Metal will be composed and performed by accomplished musicians (often professionals from other genres) with no axe to grind and no need to prove to people that metal is a real genre. There will also be recognized and not-resisted well-established rules of metal composition - metal has been around long enough at this point that there's no debating it, and the overstated obsession with "originality" will decrease. The downside is that, even though metal will be more ubiquitous, there may not be a metal "community" as such anymore. This is partly a result of the internet, which means that subcultures don't scare people anymore - they're too easy to look up on Wikipedia.
- We'll move away from the myth that metal bands are primarily a live phenomenon (Metallica in particular believe this about themselves and it's flatly false). Given piracy, certainly to make money, you will have to do live shows. So studio recordings will have to be either passion-driven and available free, created by kids in high school and college (and hopefully, a searchable online metal resource so the crowd figures out what's good so you don't have to wade through crap); OR, more records will end up being crowd-financed by the distilled fanbase that reads the Twitter-stream equivalent. (This is happening already with movies.) We're also going to see a lot of metal that never came out of a guitar.
- I think the emotional space of metal has been pretty swept-out. It's modern war-dances, and there are only so many variations on that theme. I have no predictions for the direction that sweeping-out will drive it.
- I keep predicting that the rise of middle classes around the world and the internet will result in metal from elsewhere, twisted in unique ways by local tastes. The international brotherhood of metal is ever stronger, but still there are no bands getting to us from China or Argentina. Why not? I largely credit NWOSDM with salvaging metal during the Dark Ages, but I see no emerging non-Anglophone metal scene to save us! This is why we need a directory. Malay metal! Salvadoran metal? Here a plug for the metal scene in Calgary, Alberta, which I stumbled across, and which is awesome - but I never would have known about it otherwise. (By the way, I'm not as active a metal-seeker as I was and if this does exist, please direct me to it.) I imagine there's a lot of pent-up anger in all those new or soon-to-be Middle Eastern democracies - here's a directory of their metal.
- If I'm going to draw another art history analogy, I would say that music in general (outside of the academy) hasn't really been that strongly influenced by computers yet (by that I mean its production, not its distribution). Maybe this is limited by the bandwidth of the human ear and brain; if not, we're going to see a chance in the next decade parallel to what happened when art became abstract in response to being supplanted by photography a century ago. What it might mean to decompose metal into planes, I don't know, but a) it would be cool and b) I eagerly await metal's Picasso and Dali, as opposed to its Michelangelo and Velasquez who have already come. (Meshuggah may already be its Cezanne.)
*Speaking of nu metal, Lars Ulrich once said P.O.D. (remember them? Me neither), a nu-metal band, copied Hallowed Be Thy Name by Iron Maiden. I don't have the axe to grind with Ulrich that a lot of people seem to, having randomly met him once in San Francisco and talked to him (he was nice enough). But I do think he had a lot of chutzpah on this specific point, considering that Ride the Lightning closely tracks Powerslave and Number of the Beast in song structure and lyrical theme, if not direct melodies.
Skynet Knows How to Tug On Our Heartstrings
By obsoleting the lawyers first, Skynet has bought itself a special place in our hearts. Who can be mad at the cuddly supercomputer as it consumes the livelihood of legal parasites the world over?
On the other hand, maybe the lawyers engaged in a Lovecraftian deal with the AIs in order to be eaten first. Not dead which eternal lie, ipso facto according to Part III conversant with the party of the third part.
On the other hand, maybe the lawyers engaged in a Lovecraftian deal with the AIs in order to be eaten first. Not dead which eternal lie, ipso facto according to Part III conversant with the party of the third part.
Meshuggah, Stengah (Nothing, 2002)
Make sure you've taken your ayahuasca before you click play, or you will be injured.
I admire how Meshuggah seems to have made conscious decisions to separately analyze the most basic elements of their work. How will we use rhythm? How will we use tone? Solos are either tone-only (long, drawn out single notes held for multiple measures) or motion-only, moving quickly through unpredictable patterns; trying to tell the notes is like trying to read a sparkler. A good solo on this album can be found in Glints Collide.
I admire how Meshuggah seems to have made conscious decisions to separately analyze the most basic elements of their work. How will we use rhythm? How will we use tone? Solos are either tone-only (long, drawn out single notes held for multiple measures) or motion-only, moving quickly through unpredictable patterns; trying to tell the notes is like trying to read a sparkler. A good solo on this album can be found in Glints Collide.
The U.S. Will Not Put a Man on Mars First
I don't know if I'll be able to put up with everyone acting surprised when Russia and/or Europe and/or China beat the U.S. to a manned landing on Mars. This article shows a combined Russian-European effort to explore some of the physiology and psychology problems that might arise during such a mission. Where will it be? Chinese patriotic fervor? Eccentric Russian fossil fuel billionaire and hardy army volunteers?
I think most of us would be all-for an international effort but in the U.S. political climate, committing to funds as would be needed for such an endeavor would be political suicide. I hope I'm wrong.
I think most of us would be all-for an international effort but in the U.S. political climate, committing to funds as would be needed for such an endeavor would be political suicide. I hope I'm wrong.
Philip K. Dick's Late-Career Revelation
Note: I wrote this post a few weeks before the earthquake in Japan. The last Philip K. Dick work I read was a short story collection I bought at a foreign language bookstore in Sendai. Sendai is the kind of city where you can find, tucked away on the third floor of shopping complexes, bookstores that carry science fiction in foreign languages. For that and many, many other reasons, it is my favorite city in Japan. Do what you can to help.
Ludicrously, there are more Dick films coming. I have not yet read the Christian-mysticism-themed Radio Free Albemuth, though I'm more excited about the coming Ridley Scott version of the Man in the High Castle.
I had never heard of Dick's late life real-life Christian mystic conversion, though given some of his other experiences it's not too surprising. Of course if we want to read about a science fiction writer from that era with a connection to religion, L. Ron Hubbard is much better known. There is of course the story that Hubbard once said to another science fiction writer that there was no money in science fiction, and the way to get rich was to start a religion. Though I have no love for something as silly as Scientology, I always thought that this too-fitting story was of dubious verisimilitude (although if you have a source please comment).
Well, it turns out that one common version of that story has Dick as the other writer. Zany! If such an exchange actually happened, it leads to interesting speculation about the motivation for Dick's In-Hoc-Signo:
1) He was honestly reporting his experiences, and was influenced by thiopental (schizophrenia initial onset at that age would be unusual, but these are heavy drugs)
2) He was doing clever marketing.
3) He saw that Scientology had actually taken off, got jealous, and wanted to start his own Xenu club.
I'm half and half #1 and #3.
Ludicrously, there are more Dick films coming. I have not yet read the Christian-mysticism-themed Radio Free Albemuth, though I'm more excited about the coming Ridley Scott version of the Man in the High Castle.
I had never heard of Dick's late life real-life Christian mystic conversion, though given some of his other experiences it's not too surprising. Of course if we want to read about a science fiction writer from that era with a connection to religion, L. Ron Hubbard is much better known. There is of course the story that Hubbard once said to another science fiction writer that there was no money in science fiction, and the way to get rich was to start a religion. Though I have no love for something as silly as Scientology, I always thought that this too-fitting story was of dubious verisimilitude (although if you have a source please comment).
Well, it turns out that one common version of that story has Dick as the other writer. Zany! If such an exchange actually happened, it leads to interesting speculation about the motivation for Dick's In-Hoc-Signo:
1) He was honestly reporting his experiences, and was influenced by thiopental (schizophrenia initial onset at that age would be unusual, but these are heavy drugs)
2) He was doing clever marketing.
3) He saw that Scientology had actually taken off, got jealous, and wanted to start his own Xenu club.
I'm half and half #1 and #3.
UCSD Should Start a Department of Rhythm Guitar Riffs
...and and make As I Lay Dying the first dean. When I hear this, I want to destroy the whole universe and end all life, i.e. it makes me happy.
Blade Runner Remake and the Elements of Literature
Blade Runner is the best movie of all time. If you want to argue that point, you are fundamentally flawed, cognitively and morally. I'm interested to see what they're going to try to create in the Blade Runner mold but I don't envy them their responsibility and I'm not getting my hopes up.
Reflections on film and prose in the setting of science fiction:
1) Film is much more capital-intensive. It costs more money to make a movie than write a book, which is fundamental to the nature of the work that gets produced. Film-makers are naturally going to be more risk-averse. This is why there's a longer tail on BOTH sides for books in terms of innovation and quality, and more interesting/ experimental/weird books than movies. The barrier to entry and risk to investment is just lower (and books can be written solo). Hence, movies like Blade Runner get accidentally made and are considered failures by most people responsible for their creation and distribution, because it was a box office disaster, even though it continues to make people happy, a mere 8 years from 2019. (Speaking of which, I'm calling dibs on Blade-Runner themed parties New Years Eve 2018-2019.)
2) In movies where a paradigm shift is key (spoiler alert, Deckard is a replicant), it's very difficult to pull off a second one. In fact this puts the producers of sequels in a very bad position. If you use the same paradigm shift, it won't be cool because everyone already knows; to their credit, in the new V, at least they didn't drag it out, like a vampire movie where you have to wait around for the police to figure out what the audience, and everyone with a brain, figured out the first time they find a corpse drained of blood by two bite marks in the neck. In Planet of the Apes the spin Burton tried to put on it was absolutely pointless. And the Matrix sequels were largely done in by the unexpectedness of the shift in the first movie. But on the other hand, if they don't do something with the who's-a-replicant question, they're not making a Blade Runner sequel, and why did you go see it? It's really a rock and a hard place, and why from an artistic standpoint these kinds of movies should be left alone after the first one. If they were Box Office flops like Blade Runner, they might be; if they made money like the Matrix, they won't be. This isn't a problem just in science fiction - action thrillers often use paradigm shifts as well. As the most intense possible plot element, paradigm shifts will be useful in any plot-driven genre, which both science fiction and action thrillers are.
3) Because of the capital-intensiveness and therefore the risk aversion of the film-making endeavor, the use of cinematic properties that are guaranteed an audience, or at least close simulacra of them, is one approach to minimize risk. E.g., Transmorphers, or Starcrash. These film makers didn't seem to have delusions of art like Ed Wood did - these are businesspeople, and they're very good at what they do, and they seem to get a good ROI. Even if you rent it just as a goof, unless you pirated the thing, you still paid to see it. Ironic dollars raise bottom lines just as well as earnest ones do. (Note: if you watch Starcrash, watch the documentary Marjoe too. I stumbled across Starcrash being shown in a bar on my 35th birthday, oddly immediately after I had seen the Marjoe documentary and not known that Marjoe was ever in a "real" movie.)
Science Fiction and the Elements of Literature
There's more to be said about the importance of literary elements in science fiction, versus other genres. Literature is first and foremost built on plot (I'm just paraphrasing Aristotle here - the focus on character is a modern development.) The evolution of literature is about bringing more of its basic elements into play over time. The first stories were just lies: plot elements that didn't happen, even if the people were all real. (Imagine a caveman telling his tribe that he fought a huge bear.) Gradually, people got smart enough to know when they were getting lied to but to enjoy it anyway, and to let the story-teller know that they knew they were being lied to, but keep going. Chimps can deceive each other but not on the level that we can. Eventually, some smartass decided to make up people who never existed, or even whole classes of people that never existed (like ghoststhe kind that live on Mt. Olympus.)
More recently, setting has been brought consciously into play, and we make up places and times that never existed. Thinking about it this way gives us an idea about how to resolve the perennial question of whether Shelley or Plato were writing science fiction: they were certainly using the setting element creatively, to make a point or tell a story that they couldn't tell without playing with setting, but (to their credit) there was no continuous convention of using the setting as one of the variable elements.
More recently than setting, structure and genre rules are in play. Again, we can look back to previous examples: some sections of Shakespeare's Tempest, or Don Quixote, or certainly Tristram Shandy play this game - but there was no continuous convention until the last century. In part, developing an awareness of these elements and structures is a malady of the postmodern age that we can't escape because this wealthy era so saturates us in media that we can't help but notice the patterns. Consequently, to stand out in the marketplace, writers have no choice but to tweak our nerves by violating these now-obvious expectations slightly. This is no surprise, since what drives pattern recognition in all organisms from worms on up is what has driven art since day 1: novelty with some preservation of patterns that can still be recognized.
Reflections on film and prose in the setting of science fiction:
1) Film is much more capital-intensive. It costs more money to make a movie than write a book, which is fundamental to the nature of the work that gets produced. Film-makers are naturally going to be more risk-averse. This is why there's a longer tail on BOTH sides for books in terms of innovation and quality, and more interesting/ experimental/weird books than movies. The barrier to entry and risk to investment is just lower (and books can be written solo). Hence, movies like Blade Runner get accidentally made and are considered failures by most people responsible for their creation and distribution, because it was a box office disaster, even though it continues to make people happy, a mere 8 years from 2019. (Speaking of which, I'm calling dibs on Blade-Runner themed parties New Years Eve 2018-2019.)
2) In movies where a paradigm shift is key (spoiler alert, Deckard is a replicant), it's very difficult to pull off a second one. In fact this puts the producers of sequels in a very bad position. If you use the same paradigm shift, it won't be cool because everyone already knows; to their credit, in the new V, at least they didn't drag it out, like a vampire movie where you have to wait around for the police to figure out what the audience, and everyone with a brain, figured out the first time they find a corpse drained of blood by two bite marks in the neck. In Planet of the Apes the spin Burton tried to put on it was absolutely pointless. And the Matrix sequels were largely done in by the unexpectedness of the shift in the first movie. But on the other hand, if they don't do something with the who's-a-replicant question, they're not making a Blade Runner sequel, and why did you go see it? It's really a rock and a hard place, and why from an artistic standpoint these kinds of movies should be left alone after the first one. If they were Box Office flops like Blade Runner, they might be; if they made money like the Matrix, they won't be. This isn't a problem just in science fiction - action thrillers often use paradigm shifts as well. As the most intense possible plot element, paradigm shifts will be useful in any plot-driven genre, which both science fiction and action thrillers are.
3) Because of the capital-intensiveness and therefore the risk aversion of the film-making endeavor, the use of cinematic properties that are guaranteed an audience, or at least close simulacra of them, is one approach to minimize risk. E.g., Transmorphers, or Starcrash. These film makers didn't seem to have delusions of art like Ed Wood did - these are businesspeople, and they're very good at what they do, and they seem to get a good ROI. Even if you rent it just as a goof, unless you pirated the thing, you still paid to see it. Ironic dollars raise bottom lines just as well as earnest ones do. (Note: if you watch Starcrash, watch the documentary Marjoe too. I stumbled across Starcrash being shown in a bar on my 35th birthday, oddly immediately after I had seen the Marjoe documentary and not known that Marjoe was ever in a "real" movie.)
Science Fiction and the Elements of Literature
There's more to be said about the importance of literary elements in science fiction, versus other genres. Literature is first and foremost built on plot (I'm just paraphrasing Aristotle here - the focus on character is a modern development.) The evolution of literature is about bringing more of its basic elements into play over time. The first stories were just lies: plot elements that didn't happen, even if the people were all real. (Imagine a caveman telling his tribe that he fought a huge bear.) Gradually, people got smart enough to know when they were getting lied to but to enjoy it anyway, and to let the story-teller know that they knew they were being lied to, but keep going. Chimps can deceive each other but not on the level that we can. Eventually, some smartass decided to make up people who never existed, or even whole classes of people that never existed (like ghoststhe kind that live on Mt. Olympus.)
More recently, setting has been brought consciously into play, and we make up places and times that never existed. Thinking about it this way gives us an idea about how to resolve the perennial question of whether Shelley or Plato were writing science fiction: they were certainly using the setting element creatively, to make a point or tell a story that they couldn't tell without playing with setting, but (to their credit) there was no continuous convention of using the setting as one of the variable elements.
More recently than setting, structure and genre rules are in play. Again, we can look back to previous examples: some sections of Shakespeare's Tempest, or Don Quixote, or certainly Tristram Shandy play this game - but there was no continuous convention until the last century. In part, developing an awareness of these elements and structures is a malady of the postmodern age that we can't escape because this wealthy era so saturates us in media that we can't help but notice the patterns. Consequently, to stand out in the marketplace, writers have no choice but to tweak our nerves by violating these now-obvious expectations slightly. This is no surprise, since what drives pattern recognition in all organisms from worms on up is what has driven art since day 1: novelty with some preservation of patterns that can still be recognized.
Testament, Electric Crown (The Ritual, 1992)
The Ritual followed the early 90s trend anticipated by Metallica of a mainstream thrash-to-rock transition; who knows if there was "something in the water", or whether it was a move motivated by sales. Either way this album was roundly criticized (including from within the band), which I think is ill-founded. Electric Crown is one of my favorite Testament songs and this record takes me back to my freshman year in college. I never even knew there was a video for
this (here it is, song cut short for the format.) Guessing, I think this was filmed at the Water Temple on the Peninsula near Palo Alto.
On posting this I realized I had many gentle Testament moments to share. Share yours in the comments, wontcha?
- Best one: I saw them on my 33rd birthday in San Francisco, an awesome show if ever there was one, with the usual two assholes with whom I go to Bay Area metal shows. These two assholes never read my blog, which is why I can repeatedly call them assholes in total safety. (On the other hand, to all the assholes who do read my blog, my sincere thanks.) There's no better way to stave off the advance of unwelcome maturity than with healthy doses of thrash metal, hence this show was a perfect birthday experience. At one point it was announced that someone had flown in from Beijing specifically to see this show and I believed it. The next day I was setting a group running trail in an awesome Bay Area State Park with not-so-awesome rangers, and because I was still deaf, I couldn't hear the approaching engines of their four wheelers as they chased us down for setting an illegal trail. Fortunately my trail-setting partner hadn't been to the same show and her hearing was intact, which fact kept us from an ugly confrontation. (We got away partly by heading into a canyon where the four wheelers wouldn't fit. The rangers were fat and wouldn't get off their four-wheelers. NICE.)
- I also saw Eric Peterson's Dragonforce several times, once in Alameda, where an earlier incarnation of Cast Iron Crow was opening for them, and got to shake Eric's his hand afterward. At that show he was wearing corpsepaint, which I hadn't been expecting. The corpsepaint tradition has spread from Norwegians to Apaches I guess.
- A few years ago at a Slayer show in San Jose I remember noticing a stunning blonde watching the show from next to the soundboard, which was set up in the middle of the venue floor. During the show I couldn't stop turning around to look at her. It wasn't until the end of the show as the crowd was breaking up that I noticed the large man standing next to her, named Chuck Billy. I saw them together at later shows, including at a Soilwork show in San Jose where both Chuck and Eric played a song with the band. (Eric had clearly rehearsed the part, whereas Chuck needed the lyrics printed out for him.) Later I got to shake Chuck's hand and thank him for enriching my life. He was quite laid back.
- A historical observation: much is made of Francis Drake's well-behaved interactions with the Indians he encountered during his pit-stop along the northern California coast in 1579. Even assuming his account was an honest one in this regard, I'm not impressed that this shows Drake's honor and decency. Why? It's likely that the people he met were Pomo. Chuck Billy is Pomo. Ask yourself this: if you landed a boat with maybe a hundred men in a strange land, and there were a few thousand guys there the size and shape of Chuck Billy, would you behave yourself? Yes, and not just cause you're so nice.
- Saw Alex Skolnick's jazz trio at the soon-to-go-extinct Blake's in Berkeley. He did easily the oddest version of War Pigs I've ever heard.
- Souls of Black was probably the first occult-looking album I bought. Until then I had only bought Justice (as opposed to high-speed dubbed it. Remember that? Tape-to-tape transfers?) and Justice isn't so evil-looking. Souls of Black fixed that.
this (here it is, song cut short for the format.) Guessing, I think this was filmed at the Water Temple on the Peninsula near Palo Alto.
On posting this I realized I had many gentle Testament moments to share. Share yours in the comments, wontcha?
- Best one: I saw them on my 33rd birthday in San Francisco, an awesome show if ever there was one, with the usual two assholes with whom I go to Bay Area metal shows. These two assholes never read my blog, which is why I can repeatedly call them assholes in total safety. (On the other hand, to all the assholes who do read my blog, my sincere thanks.) There's no better way to stave off the advance of unwelcome maturity than with healthy doses of thrash metal, hence this show was a perfect birthday experience. At one point it was announced that someone had flown in from Beijing specifically to see this show and I believed it. The next day I was setting a group running trail in an awesome Bay Area State Park with not-so-awesome rangers, and because I was still deaf, I couldn't hear the approaching engines of their four wheelers as they chased us down for setting an illegal trail. Fortunately my trail-setting partner hadn't been to the same show and her hearing was intact, which fact kept us from an ugly confrontation. (We got away partly by heading into a canyon where the four wheelers wouldn't fit. The rangers were fat and wouldn't get off their four-wheelers. NICE.)
- I also saw Eric Peterson's Dragonforce several times, once in Alameda, where an earlier incarnation of Cast Iron Crow was opening for them, and got to shake Eric's his hand afterward. At that show he was wearing corpsepaint, which I hadn't been expecting. The corpsepaint tradition has spread from Norwegians to Apaches I guess.
- A few years ago at a Slayer show in San Jose I remember noticing a stunning blonde watching the show from next to the soundboard, which was set up in the middle of the venue floor. During the show I couldn't stop turning around to look at her. It wasn't until the end of the show as the crowd was breaking up that I noticed the large man standing next to her, named Chuck Billy. I saw them together at later shows, including at a Soilwork show in San Jose where both Chuck and Eric played a song with the band. (Eric had clearly rehearsed the part, whereas Chuck needed the lyrics printed out for him.) Later I got to shake Chuck's hand and thank him for enriching my life. He was quite laid back.
- A historical observation: much is made of Francis Drake's well-behaved interactions with the Indians he encountered during his pit-stop along the northern California coast in 1579. Even assuming his account was an honest one in this regard, I'm not impressed that this shows Drake's honor and decency. Why? It's likely that the people he met were Pomo. Chuck Billy is Pomo. Ask yourself this: if you landed a boat with maybe a hundred men in a strange land, and there were a few thousand guys there the size and shape of Chuck Billy, would you behave yourself? Yes, and not just cause you're so nice.
- Saw Alex Skolnick's jazz trio at the soon-to-go-extinct Blake's in Berkeley. He did easily the oddest version of War Pigs I've ever heard.
- Souls of Black was probably the first occult-looking album I bought. Until then I had only bought Justice (as opposed to high-speed dubbed it. Remember that? Tape-to-tape transfers?) and Justice isn't so evil-looking. Souls of Black fixed that.
This Is Not Evidence of Life on Asteroids
I'm on record as saying we will probably find evidence of life in the form of replicator chemistry (more common parlance, von Neumann probes) on asteroids and comets. My reasoning is here.
There was a recent paper in the Journal of Cosmology on this very topic which has come in for a good deal of bashing. Like many theories, my theory is a good story. But good stories are a dime a dozen. So now we need evidence to support or falsify the hypothesis.
Unfortunately, after this paper, we still have none.
There was a recent paper in the Journal of Cosmology on this very topic which has come in for a good deal of bashing. Like many theories, my theory is a good story. But good stories are a dime a dozen. So now we need evidence to support or falsify the hypothesis.
Unfortunately, after this paper, we still have none.
CUT MATRIX SCENE: Morpheus Visits the Architect AND the Oracle
Although they take different forms than those to which he is accustomed...
and so does he.
What is "real"?
and so does he.
What is "real"?
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