On July 29, 2010 I had the pleasure of watching Testament, Megadeth and Slayer. I was looking forward to this event for a long time. You see, I was originally planing to see that show at the Air Canada Center a few moths before. That show had to be postponed because Tom Araya had to undergo back surgery. What was even worse was that I heard about the cancellation when I walked into the venue and discovered it was closed. These are some of the things that stood out on that night's event:
Testament had Paul Bostaph of drums. They played two songs from what I believe is their best album: The Gathering. They had decent energy, however, I couldn't help thinking that they are past their prime. That band has been through countless line up changes that left a mark on their music.
Megadeth preformed their entire Rust in Peace album from start to finish and then played four more songs. I believe that those tracks were Head Crusher, Trust, A Tou Le Monde and Symphony of destruction. It was a descent set and worth seeing. However, I really hoped that they would play more new material. I really love all the work that they did from The System has Failed on ward. Hopefully they are planing to come back and play a smaller venue as a headliner and play something for their die hard fans. It was nice to see Dave Ellefson back in the band. Even though that new bassist was infinitely better, it's just not Megadeth without "Junior." The new guitarist, Chris Broderic, was awesome. He played every Marty Freedman solo note for note and with a lot of soul. I cant wait to see what his line up will do next.
Slayed played mostly songs from their Seasons in the Abyss album. They opened the show by playing two new songs: World Painted Blood and Hate World Wide. Then they played almost the entire Seasons in the Abyss album. The closed the night by playing Reign in Blood and Angel of Death. They did not bother going back stage and being encored. They just thrashed out from start to finish without talking too much. They wanted to give the fans as much music as possible.
The atmosphere of the show was pretty cool. Slayer fans are a colorful bunch of people. I particularly enjoyed chanting "Slayer Slayer" in the washroom after the show. However two things I was not fond off. I had a ticked in the 400's section which cost me $75 plus tax. I bumped into a friend who got the same ticked for $10. I could not understand that. Are they punishing people for wanting to support a band and get their tickets when they go on sale? If anything, tickets should increase in price as the concert draws near.
The other thing that pissed me off was seeing how many people purchased pirated band t-shirt after the show. I think that that is just discussing: you are literately steeling from the band you love. I can understand downloading music, since if you buy a CD for $20, less then a $1 will make it into the bands pocket. But buying merchandise at a concerts is the best way that you can support your artist since most of that money will go to the band. So if you love a band and have downloaded all their music for free, go see them live and buy a t-shirt. Don't be an asshole!
Friday, July 30, 2010
Fighting Back Against Security Scum
Every concert goer at one point had to deal with an asshole security guard. I'm sure you know the type: smug and arrogant assholes who one day dream of going into the police academy. However, until that day comes, they will exercise their complete authority (following the rules to the last detail) that was granted to them by the employer.
The average concert goer is completely powerless against such pricks, as with the push of a button, they can have you ejected off the premises absolutely at their discretion. One power hungry asshole has the power to ruin the experience for countless of concert goers. And, for the most part, we are helpless against them. If you punch them out, you will go to jail. If you file a complaint, it will get lost in the bureaucracy.
So what can be done about this? Is there any way that people can fight back against this within the law? The answer is NO. The reason for this is that most of the time the security guard has a legitimate reason to be engaged with you. The concert goer might be drunk or smoking weed which off the bat puts the concert goer at a disadvantage. However, drinking alcohol or smoking cannabis is just standard behavior at a Heavy Metal concert. If you don't want to be around that then go to a John Mayer show. However, recently I heard a story that gave me hope.
A good friend of mine recently shared an amazing tale of heroism that inspired me. While attending a big out-door metal concert my friend decided to smoke a small joint at the back of the venue hiding among the rest of the smokers. He was not even able to take a good toke before this smug security guard approached him. With a polite smile on his face, my friend apologized and extinguished the joint. However that was not enough for that asshole. He demanded that my friend drop the joint on the floor and rubbed the joint into the pavement with his military boots unil the weed was un-salvageable. Then with a phony, patronizing smile on his face he said "don't let me catch you smoking weed again, next time I will eject you." Instead of doing nothing, my friend decided to fight back. He took an empty plastic beer glass and went to the bathroom with it. There he filled it with urine. He stood with the cup for about 20 min so the piss cools down. Then when the lights went down and the main act was about to go onstage, in the commotion he pretended to trip and spilled the urine right on the security guard. He then quickly apologized and went back to his seat. I believe that my fiend is a hero! Imagine the countless concert goers who had their time ruined because of that pretentious asshole. This was Karma doing its thing.
Now to be fair, not everyone who works security is an asshole. A lot of them are decent human beings who are just trying to earn an honest living. This blog post is in no way encouraging any one to make their lives miserable. In a civilized society, there have to be people who have legitimate authority over you. However there is a difference between keeping the peace and getting high on power while earning minimum wage. If that security guard would of made my friend extinguish the joint and issue a warning, he would be just doing his job. There would be nothing wrong with that. However, he made my friend drop the joint and then destroyed it. This was totally unnecessary and he got justice. It is time that people start standing up for them selves. The written law cannot cover every single incident and too many times the bad guys are on the side of the law.
Gandhi said that " an eye for an eye makes the world go blind," and Jesus encouraged us to "turn the other cheek." That is why this kind of retaliation must be exercised with the most caution. This society would dissolve into chaos if every time a police officer would issue a ticket, a cop car would get torched. However, there is a difference between enforcing the peace and being a dush-bag with a uniform. I believe that when you see people abusing their power, it is your duty to fight back in anyway you can, whether it is against a security guard, an abusive supervisor, or a neighbor. Sometimes God can use you as his hammer. No one would call the young people at Tienanmen square who stood up for their rights criminals. I know I am not alone in this type of thinking. You just need to see the following quotes by these famous patriots:
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
-Edmund Burke-
Those who hammer their guns into plows will plow for those who don't
-Thomas Jefferson-
The average concert goer is completely powerless against such pricks, as with the push of a button, they can have you ejected off the premises absolutely at their discretion. One power hungry asshole has the power to ruin the experience for countless of concert goers. And, for the most part, we are helpless against them. If you punch them out, you will go to jail. If you file a complaint, it will get lost in the bureaucracy.
So what can be done about this? Is there any way that people can fight back against this within the law? The answer is NO. The reason for this is that most of the time the security guard has a legitimate reason to be engaged with you. The concert goer might be drunk or smoking weed which off the bat puts the concert goer at a disadvantage. However, drinking alcohol or smoking cannabis is just standard behavior at a Heavy Metal concert. If you don't want to be around that then go to a John Mayer show. However, recently I heard a story that gave me hope.
A good friend of mine recently shared an amazing tale of heroism that inspired me. While attending a big out-door metal concert my friend decided to smoke a small joint at the back of the venue hiding among the rest of the smokers. He was not even able to take a good toke before this smug security guard approached him. With a polite smile on his face, my friend apologized and extinguished the joint. However that was not enough for that asshole. He demanded that my friend drop the joint on the floor and rubbed the joint into the pavement with his military boots unil the weed was un-salvageable. Then with a phony, patronizing smile on his face he said "don't let me catch you smoking weed again, next time I will eject you." Instead of doing nothing, my friend decided to fight back. He took an empty plastic beer glass and went to the bathroom with it. There he filled it with urine. He stood with the cup for about 20 min so the piss cools down. Then when the lights went down and the main act was about to go onstage, in the commotion he pretended to trip and spilled the urine right on the security guard. He then quickly apologized and went back to his seat. I believe that my fiend is a hero! Imagine the countless concert goers who had their time ruined because of that pretentious asshole. This was Karma doing its thing.
Now to be fair, not everyone who works security is an asshole. A lot of them are decent human beings who are just trying to earn an honest living. This blog post is in no way encouraging any one to make their lives miserable. In a civilized society, there have to be people who have legitimate authority over you. However there is a difference between keeping the peace and getting high on power while earning minimum wage. If that security guard would of made my friend extinguish the joint and issue a warning, he would be just doing his job. There would be nothing wrong with that. However, he made my friend drop the joint and then destroyed it. This was totally unnecessary and he got justice. It is time that people start standing up for them selves. The written law cannot cover every single incident and too many times the bad guys are on the side of the law.
Gandhi said that " an eye for an eye makes the world go blind," and Jesus encouraged us to "turn the other cheek." That is why this kind of retaliation must be exercised with the most caution. This society would dissolve into chaos if every time a police officer would issue a ticket, a cop car would get torched. However, there is a difference between enforcing the peace and being a dush-bag with a uniform. I believe that when you see people abusing their power, it is your duty to fight back in anyway you can, whether it is against a security guard, an abusive supervisor, or a neighbor. Sometimes God can use you as his hammer. No one would call the young people at Tienanmen square who stood up for their rights criminals. I know I am not alone in this type of thinking. You just need to see the following quotes by these famous patriots:
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
-Edmund Burke-
Those who hammer their guns into plows will plow for those who don't
-Thomas Jefferson-
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Manowar: Well Versed In Classics
Sadly, even in the 21st century, fans of Metal still have to face stereotypes that they are less intelligent because of the music that they choose to listen to. Whats more sad is the fact that the same people who choose to ridicule will go and rock out to crap bands like Nickle Back or Sloane. Every true metal fan knows that Metal is a fine art. One needs to have a basic idea of scales, harmony and progressions to write a good tune. A good metal album should have enough riffs to fill ten commercial records. One only has to see Dream Theater to be convinced. However, still the stigma lingers on.
However, I believe that the world is slowly waking up. Recently, the CBC reported a story where they compared peoples personalities to the music they listened to. Through serendipity they discovered that people who listen to metal have similar character traits as fans of classical music. The reporters reported on this with great amazement. However, the findings of that study did not surprise me at all, since, I became a fan of classical music through Metal. In his documentary Metal a Headbangers Journey, when disusing the origins of Heavy Metal, Sam Dunn credits Wagner as the first Metal composer for "bringing out the bottom end of the orchestra."
I believe that Metal can make people smarter since its content usually focuses on literary works, mythology, social justice and obscure schools of philosophy. Literary works such as The Lord of the Ring, Hobbit, and even the Bible are a common theme in Metal; and I bet a lot of people significantly expanded their knowledge by listening to the lyrics. I can speak for myself, recently I discovered a band called Skyforger. The theme of their music primarily focus on pagan traditions and believes of the Balts. This inspired me to get interested in my own heritage and research Slavic paganism and folklore. Metal made me want to learn!
There is hope! while reading up on Manowar in Wikipedia, I found a little review of their epic opus Achilles, Agony and Ecstasy in Eight Parts. For those unfamiliar with the song, it is an eight part, 30 minute opus that opens up the legendary album The Triumph of Steele (1992). The track is based on Homers Iliad. The track recently attracted the attention of a group of scholars at Bologna University in Italy. Mrs. Eleonora Cavallini, Professor in Classics, has written about this song:
"Joey DeMaio’s lyrics imply a careful and scrupulous reading of the Iliad. The songwriter has focused his attention essentially on the crucial fight between Hector and Achilles, has paraphrased some passages of the poem adapting them to the melodic structure with a certain fluency and partly reinterpreting them, but never altering or upsetting Homer’s storyline. The purpose of the lyrics (and of the music as well) is to evoke some characteristic Homeric sceneries: the raging storm of the battle, the barbaric, ferocious exultance of the winner, the grief and anguish of the warrior who feels death impending over him. The whole action hinges upon Hector and Achilles, who are represented as specular characters, divided by an irreducible hatred and yet destined to share a similar destiny. Both are caught in the moment of the greatest exaltation, as they savagely rejoice for the blood of their killed enemies, but also in the one of the extreme pain, when the daemon of war finally pounces on them. Furthermore, differently than in the irreverent and iconoclastic movie Troy, in "Achilles, Agony and Ecstasy in Eight Parts", the divine is a constant and ineluctable presence, determining human destinies with inscrutable and steely will, and, despite the generic reference to 'the gods', the real master of human lives is Zeus, the only God to whom both Hector and Achilles address their prayers"[1]
I'm glad that the academic world is slowly waking up. And who knows maybe one day this song will inspire me to give Greek Classics a try and learn more about it.
However, I believe that the world is slowly waking up. Recently, the CBC reported a story where they compared peoples personalities to the music they listened to. Through serendipity they discovered that people who listen to metal have similar character traits as fans of classical music. The reporters reported on this with great amazement. However, the findings of that study did not surprise me at all, since, I became a fan of classical music through Metal. In his documentary Metal a Headbangers Journey, when disusing the origins of Heavy Metal, Sam Dunn credits Wagner as the first Metal composer for "bringing out the bottom end of the orchestra."
I believe that Metal can make people smarter since its content usually focuses on literary works, mythology, social justice and obscure schools of philosophy. Literary works such as The Lord of the Ring, Hobbit, and even the Bible are a common theme in Metal; and I bet a lot of people significantly expanded their knowledge by listening to the lyrics. I can speak for myself, recently I discovered a band called Skyforger. The theme of their music primarily focus on pagan traditions and believes of the Balts. This inspired me to get interested in my own heritage and research Slavic paganism and folklore. Metal made me want to learn!
There is hope! while reading up on Manowar in Wikipedia, I found a little review of their epic opus Achilles, Agony and Ecstasy in Eight Parts. For those unfamiliar with the song, it is an eight part, 30 minute opus that opens up the legendary album The Triumph of Steele (1992). The track is based on Homers Iliad. The track recently attracted the attention of a group of scholars at Bologna University in Italy. Mrs. Eleonora Cavallini, Professor in Classics, has written about this song:
"Joey DeMaio’s lyrics imply a careful and scrupulous reading of the Iliad. The songwriter has focused his attention essentially on the crucial fight between Hector and Achilles, has paraphrased some passages of the poem adapting them to the melodic structure with a certain fluency and partly reinterpreting them, but never altering or upsetting Homer’s storyline. The purpose of the lyrics (and of the music as well) is to evoke some characteristic Homeric sceneries: the raging storm of the battle, the barbaric, ferocious exultance of the winner, the grief and anguish of the warrior who feels death impending over him. The whole action hinges upon Hector and Achilles, who are represented as specular characters, divided by an irreducible hatred and yet destined to share a similar destiny. Both are caught in the moment of the greatest exaltation, as they savagely rejoice for the blood of their killed enemies, but also in the one of the extreme pain, when the daemon of war finally pounces on them. Furthermore, differently than in the irreverent and iconoclastic movie Troy, in "Achilles, Agony and Ecstasy in Eight Parts", the divine is a constant and ineluctable presence, determining human destinies with inscrutable and steely will, and, despite the generic reference to 'the gods', the real master of human lives is Zeus, the only God to whom both Hector and Achilles address their prayers"[1]
I'm glad that the academic world is slowly waking up. And who knows maybe one day this song will inspire me to give Greek Classics a try and learn more about it.
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