Metal Jew

The End All Around US

I have a chapter in a new edited collection The End All Around US: Apocalyptic Texts and Popular Culture The chapter is called 'End of the World Music: Is Extreme Metal the Sound of the Apocalypse?'.

Remember him this way

When Elvis Presley died in 1977, the New Music Express which was then smitten with punk, ran a front cover with a picture of the pre-army Elvis on stage. The headline was 'remember him this way'. This is pretty much what I am feeling about the death of Michael Jackson. Yes I feel bad for his kids. But he hadn't produced any music of note since 'Bad', his messianic hubris was appalling, his relations with children were at best bizarre and at worst abusive, his financial extravegance was disgusting.

So I will be remembering Michael Jackson as the extraordinary talent of the Jackson 5 era, when he voiced some of the most perfect pop ever created. Sure his 80s albums were also good, but it was in the 70s that he was truly extraordinary. It was of course his experiences in that time, being famous as a child, that probably damaged him irrevocably, making seeing him on stage as a kid bittersweet.

So, remember him this way:

 

Remember him this way

When Elvis Presley died in 1977, the New Music Express which was then smitten with punk, ran a front cover with a picture of the pre-army Elvis on stage. The headline was 'remember him this way'. This is pretty much what I am feeling about the death of Michael Jackson. Yes I feel bad for his kids. But he hadn't produced any music of note since 'Bad', his messianic hubris was appalling, his relations with children were at best bizarre and at worst abusive, his financial extravegance was disgusting.

So I will be remembering Michael Jackson as the extraordinary talent of the Jackson 5 era, when he voiced some of the most perfect pop ever created. Sure his 80s albums were also good, but it was in the 70s that he was truly extraordinary. It was of course his experiences in that time, being famous as a child, that probably damaged him irrevocably, making seeing him on stage as a kid bittersweet.

So, remember him this way:

 

The genius of Koby Israelite

Last Monday my wife and I went to see Baaba Maal at the Festival Hall, part of Ornette Coleman's Meltdown season. Baaba Maal was amazing but the real suprise was support act Koby Israelite . An Israeli living in London, he is a multi-instrumentalist who plays accordion on stage. He grew up as a drummer and apparently was in 'Israel's first speed metal band' (not sure who he's referring to. His current music is an extraordinary mix of klezmer, jazz, gypsy, balkan and metal music - often switching from one to another during the same song. His stuff is released on John Zorn's Tzadikl label. Has to be heard to be believed. Check him out. Also, there's an interview at Zeek.

International Day of Slayer

Today is the International Day of Slayer. Here's what you're supposed to do:

How to Celebrate

Listen to Slayer at full blast in your car.

Listen to Slayer at full blast in your home.

Listen to Slayer at full blast at your place of employment.

Listen to Slayer at full blast in any public place you prefer.

DO NOT use headphones! The objective of this day is for everyone within earshot to understand that it is the National Day of Slayer. National holidays in America aren't just about celebrating; they're about forcing it upon non-participants.

Taking that participation to a problematic level

Stage a "Slay-out." Don't go to work. Listen to Slayer.

Have a huge block party that clogs up a street in your neighborhood. Blast Slayer albums all evening. Get police cruisers and helicopters on the scene. Finish with a full-scale riot.

Spray paint Slayer logos on churches, synagogues, or cemeteries.[erm...maybe not]

Play Slayer covers with your own band (since 99% of your riffs are stolen from Slayer anyway).

Kill the neighbor's dog and blame it on Slayer.

It's Shabbat of course (I myself blogged this on Friday) but what better way of celebrating Motzei Shabbat than with a blast of 'Reign in Blood'?

This is a strange project in that it's hard to tell how tongue in cheek it all is. I'm interviewed on the site as part of a panel of experts. They asked some pretty serious and challenging questions. Have a look and decide for yourself.

Miscellaneous ('aint that a catchy title)

• My article on Jews and The Wire is now up - I'm quite proud of it.
• Invisible Oranges has a post featuring metal versions  of Hava  Nagila (although they don't mention this one)
• I hadn't  mentioned Punk Torah before. The ever-woinderful Y-Love offers his take here.

New publications

Although neither of these publications have much to do with my metal side, I am quite proud of them:

Jews talking about talking about Israel - article in Haaretz

Communities in conversation: Jewish involvment in inter faith activities in the UK - report published by the Board of Deputies

New publications

Although neither of these publications have much to do with my metal side, I am quite proud of them:

Jews talking about talking about Israel - article in Haaretz

Communities in conversation: Jewish involvment in inter faith activities in the UK - report published by the Board of Deputies

Investigating 'The Shield'

I'm a huge fan of the US TV show The Shield, which sadly came to an end recently. When I accidentally discovered that Five USA, the channel that shows The Shield in the UK, had mucked about with the season episode, it was an opportunity to dip my toe into the world of journalism. It's hardly Woodward and  Bernstein stuff but it made for a fun story - read it here.

Metal Cartogram

I blogged recently about the extraordinary History of Metal  project. Now here's another strangely beautiful attempt to map the metal world - the Metal Cartogram

I should have blogged this sooner...

...but I didn't. The call for papers for the follow up to last November's excellent metal conference in Salzburg is now up.

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand it's great that there's another metal conference. On the other, the metal and  gender conference in Cologne (which i will be going to) is only a month before. There are only so many metal scholars so it's probably that one or the other conference may suffer attendance-wise. Still, metal people are a committed lot, so a fair few will probably go to both (probably not me alas).

The history of metal - all of it, every little bit

I blogged a while back here and here about the book 'All Known Metal Bands'. Now thanks to Brian Hickam (who doesn't have a blog so I can't link to him), I've found out about another, even more ambitious metal art project - the boringly titled The History of Metal:

The History of Metal (T.H.O.M.) is a large scale visual art project detailing the origins, growth, and breadth of heavy metal music. I will attempt to identify every heavy metal band that ever existed, identify different subgenres within metal and their relationships to one another, and create a collection of artworks that represents metal’s place in history, the world, and in popular culture.

I've been a fan of heavy metal music since I was a teenager, but until now I haven't taken the time to delve into the history and genealogy of this unique music genre. I took on this project largely to educate myself and others about heavy metal, as well as to bring attention to what I consider to be one of the most complex and enduring facets of musical culture.

When I originally came up with the idea for T.H.O.M., it was to be a single drawing - a giant timeline that contained every heavy metal band from the 1970's to present day, organized by subgenre. It has since evolved and expanded to include several "peripheral" pieces that investigate heavy metal's cultural presence. The project as a whole currently consists of four pieces - three drawings and a interactive Flash presentation:

• The Timeline Study: A snapshot, if you will, of how the timeline drawing is being constructed. This drawing is the first of many tests to determine the ideal configuration of bands on a timeline.
• The Metal Map: The Metal Map is a hand drawn and painted representation of the concentration of metal bands in countries throughout the world. Each country has been assigned a color based on how many heavy metal bands have originated there throughout history, with amounts ranging from 0 - 9,396. The map reveals correlations between the popularity of heavy metal and political, racial, and economic climates throughout the world.
• Subgenre Interactive: An interactive Flash presentation that allows users to explore the different subgenres within heavy metal, and listen to samples from bands that represent those subgenres.
• Metal Subgenre Popularity Index: A large drawing showing the growth and popularity of each of the 14 main heavy metal subgenres from 1970 to 2008.

It's well worth checking out. I love the idea of trying to identify and nail down the entirity of a genre in a piece of visual art. On the one hand it's as futile as trying to nail jelly to a wall. On the other, it's a suitably mythic monument to a scene that is obsessed with making its own mythology. It'll be interesting to see how the project develops.
 

Celebrity Skins

The often asinine Heeb has a decent article up about white power bands attempting crossover success. See: Heeb: The Music Issue: Celebrity Skins.

Lecture at Texas A & M University

On 14 April 2009 I presented a guest lecture at Texas A & M University entitled 'The Color of Metal: 'Whiteness', 'Blackness' and the Roots of Heavy Metal in 1960s Rock'. I hope to turn it into an article at some point, in the meantime, you can my powerpoint presentation: Download Texas a and m lecture April 2009.

I'm now Twittering

I'm giving Twitter a go - my feed is here (@KeithKahnHarris)
Not sure whether I will keep it up for long. It seems like a real treadmill. In any case, my disgracefully short posts on this blog are almost Tweet-like in their brevity...

Greatest. Metal. Band. Name. Ever.

All hail Gaylord (their music is pretty good too)

Silence

Yeah yeah I know I haven't posted much the last couple of weeks - I've been away. Normal service will resume at some point. In the meantime, check out Ulytau , a not bad Kazakh folk metal band.

New Jewish metal article

I just had an article published on Comment Is Free on Jewish metal. Would be grateful if anyone wanted to put comments on it.

Also, here's a clip of Perry Farrell, doing a dissapointingly straight version of Oseh Shalom on the  Chabad telethon. A missed opportunity methinks (hat tip Beware of the  Blog):

My unwritten masterpiece

A few years ago, I wrote the first page of what was intended to be a lucrative blockbuster thriller and never got any further. I've decided to share it here for no particular reason. 

I’m aware that this first page is not evidence of a remarkable lost literary talent - quite the reverse. It's probably representative of the thousands of attempts to write a thriller that are scuppered by the lack of a plot. When I wrote the piece (in 1996) I had a great idea for a scene and an opening but no idea how to turn them into a novel. I thought the process of writing the first page would help – it didn’t. Enjoy:

On 19th March 1996 a man calling himself Nigel Lawrence asked for a room in the Green Guest House, Tsimshatsui, Hong Kong.  After a brief series of questions and answers, the bored owner, Rajind Shah took a weeks money in advance and gestured towards a room at the end of the corridor.    To Mr Shah, Nigel Lawrence appeared little different to the stream of travellers that constantly entered and left his small set of rooms.  A week’s money in advance was perhaps unusual but even this caused no more than a few seconds of flickering interest.  Rajind Shah did not see himself as an observer of people and had no interest in any of his guests.  But then, the Green Guest House bore little resemblance to the grander international crossroads clustered on Kowloon and across the water on Hong Kong Island.  It was situated in Chunking Mansions, a hellish warren of small guesthouses hostels on the upper floors and restaurants and electronic shops on the lower.  The Green Guest House consisted of one corridor with five window-less boxes on either side.  Each contained a bed, chair and had a tiny shower room attached.  Decked almost entirely in white tiles, the rooms were clean but lit with a harsh fluorescent strip that made them feel like interrogation cells.

This mattered little to the steady stream of western travellers like Nigel Lawrence.  In fact even having a room to oneself would be seen as a luxury by many backpackers and the steamy maze of Chunking Mansions offered a certain flavour of romance, intrigue and excitement to some.  But there was no romance in the place for Rajind Shah who wondered whether the steady living he made for him and his family justified a life without sun or space.  And there was no romance for Nigel Lawrence who was certainly not short of intrigue or excitement.

Yet Nigel appeared like any other traveller.  He was tall (but not too tall), tanned with unruly long hair, stubble and a ring through his nose.  He wore a tie-dyed T-shirt and battered blue jeans and carried a large backpack with a water bottle attached.  In his hands he carried a well-used copy of Lonely Planet's "South East Asia on a Shoestring" which he juggled with an equally tatty money belt.  Once inside the interrogation cell he did what travellers the world over do when they reach a new place - stretch, examine their surroundings, have a shower, then out again to explore a new territory.

There comes a point when an actor lives a part so comprehensively that he almost ceases to be acting and on that day in March Nigel had long ago reached that point.  He had spent two months in Thailand before he flew to Hong Kong that day.  He had done the usual traveller things in the usual traveller places.  He had trekked in Chaing Mai and Mae Sot, smoked acres on grass in Ko Tau and Krabi and met other twenty-somethings, students and assorted drop outs from all over the world.  On reaching the Green Guest House he was part of the subculture with a thousand checkable stories and sightings to prove it.  Yet that day in Chunking Mansions was also the day the acting stopped and the game begun.   

Hipster metal for hipster Jews - review of Jamie Saft's Black Shabbis

My review of Jamie Saft's Black Shabbis is now up on Zeek.

Welcome home Varg...

The ever-excellent Documents reports, via Fact magazine, that Varg Vikernes was paroled on 10 March. I'm pretty liberal on law and order matters but he's lucky to live in a society with a rehabilitative approach to criminal justice. To serve less than 17 years for an unprovoked murder (and even less than that when you count the various periods of home leave he has had) when you are an outspoken facist, when you've been caught with some heavy-duty weaponry while on leave and when you have been caught actually trying to escape - well it wouldn't happen in many other countries.

What happens now will be interesting. As Documents point out, there are some who have threatened revenge for Euronymous and his notoreity will mean he won't enjoy a quite life (which he pobably doesn't want anyway). I guess he'll probably turn into just another far right wack-job. As ever with Vikernes, the 'tragedy' if you could call it that, is that he is one of the most unique talents that metal has ever produced but his idiotic views and taste for drama means that he won't be remembered for that.

Faceless middle eastern metal performance piece

This sounds fascinating (hat tip: Nicola), hope fully it will come to the UK at some point:

Egyptian artist Nader Sadek will be displaying a new performance piece entitled B’doun Wag’h (”Faceless”), this piece will incorporate a mixture of Middle Eastern culture and death metal music. The following musicians will be performing said piece.

Steve Tucker (formerly of Morbid Angel)
Flo Mounier (Cryptopsy)
Nick McMaster (Krallice)
Mike Lerner (Behold… The Arctopus)

Admission price to witness B’doun Wag’h will be a suggested donation of $5 and proceeds will go toward victims of the Darfur crisis. B’doun Wag’h will take place during an afternoon event called “It’s All Yours Now” on March 15 at:

SculptureCenter
44-19 Purves Street
Long Island City
New York, 11101
718.361.1750

For more detailed information on “It’s All Yours Now“, check out the official press release:

http://www.sculpture-center.org/pressSpecific.htm?id=12577

No I'm not dead

I know I haven't posted in ages but I am snowed under at present.

In the meantime, here's the link to an article on Anglo-Jewry that I just had published on the Prospect Magazine website.

My kids rock

This evening I acted as DJ while my kids (6 and 2 years) danced like maniacs around the bedroom. It was one of those times when I remembered why I wanted to breed in the first place. Here's their favourite tunes:

Toy Dolls - 'Nellie the Elephant'
Electric Six - 'Gay Bar'
Ruslana - 'Wild Dances'
Plastic Bertrand - 'Ca Plane Pour Moi'

RIP Lux Interior

I have never been a huge Cramps fan but there's no denying that Lux Interior was the real deal. Remember him this way: