Metal Jew

Spot on John Safran show

I'm going to be interviewed on the John Safran Show on Australia's Triple J station this Sunday at 9pm. The website also allows you to download the show as an MP3.

Bookniks

Jewish Book Week have produced a short animation publicising their Bookniks evening. The Bookniks session I am chairing is entitled Postcards From The Unholy Land and features Idit Esheel, Etgar Keret and Avi Pitchon.

Jews, anti-Semitism and metal

Aviva at Metal Israel has offered a provocative post on the upcoming visit of Mayhem to Israel. The post features a picture of Maniac with a Swastika on his forehead:

Meet Maniac, a former vocalist for the band.  Mayhem has played in Israel at least twice of which I know of.

In any case, I despise Mayhem because I’m a religious person.  But I also feel that even an atheist of Jewish blood shouldn’t dare put a dime in this band’s coffers.

There are other bands like Burzum and Graveland that people listen to in Israel, and Jews listen to, period.

What do you guys think?  Should Jewish people be fans of musicians that want to destroy them?

What’s really pathetic is that the promoter who brought Mayhem here is the child of Holocaust survivors, at least on one side.

Follow the discussion here. My own position is that the likes of Mayhem are trying to provoke with their imagery. Does that make it right? Maybe, maybe not. However, I think we have to distinguish bands such as Mayhem, who are  are focused on transgression and extreme imagery, from bands like Graveland who are out and out Nazis and have a more political agenda. My book deals with these questions in much more detail...

New Jewish Music blog

The author of a new Jewish music blog called Teruah contacted me today.  Like me, he juggles an interest in Jews with an interest in extreme music (in his case, punk). He did a nice post on me and on his punk interests here .

Music and torture

.This from Boing Boing

Ethnomusicologists against music as torture

In 1989, US Psy Ops troops blared odd songs like "Shut Uppa You Face" and "These Boots Are Made For Walking" "Voodoo Child" and "I Fought The Law" at Manuel Noriega's compound as an effort to induce surrender. The same kind of "acoustic bombardment" occurred at Waco and is reportedly used during POW interrogations too. According to this BBC News article, tunes from Sesame Street, Barney, and Metallica were popular Psy Ops picks in Iraq. Here's a paper on the subject by New York University music professor Suzanne Cusick that was published last year in Revista Transcultural de M�sica. Last week, the Society for Ethnomusicology published a position statement "against the use of music as torture." From their document:

The U.S. government and its military and diplomatic agencies has used music as an instrument of abuse since 2001, particularly through the implementation of programs of torture in both covert and overt detention centers as part of the war on terror.

The Society for Ethnomusicology

* calls for full disclosure of U.S. government-sanctioned and funded programs that design the means of delivering music as torture;

* condemns the use of music as an instrument of torture; and

* demands that the United States government and its agencies cease using music as an instrument of physical and psychological torture.

UPDATE: Joe Dolce, who wrote the excellent song Shaddap You Face, emailed me and said he had never heard that his song had been used in the Noriega situation. I swear I remember reading or seeing that in news reports at the time, but I did a bit of Nexis digging and couldn't find mention of it. However, according to a Washington Times article from December 29, 1989, the US Army Special Operations Forces' Panama playlist did include:

    'Beat it' by Michael Jackson
    'You're No Good' by Linda Rondstadt
    'Nowhere to Run' by The Marvelettes
    'Voodoo Child' by Jimi Hendrix
    'I Fought the Law' by Bobby Fuller Four

And a post at WFMU's Beware of the Blog lists Nazareth's "Hair of the Dog," Ann Peebles's "Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down," "Judgement Day" by The Pretty Things, and "Bruce Cockburn's "If I Had A Rocket Launcher" as part of the mix.

Metal Israel Seeking Artists for Compilations

This from Metal Israel :

I’m proud to announce that Metal Israel, well, got a record deal. Kind of.

I’ve been asked to produce two compilations for a label with major distribution.

1. A compilation of the best songs/bands Israel has to offer. It will be called Best of Metal Israel.

2. A compilation of hannukah songs written by artists from Israel and chul. It will be called “Hard and Heavy Chanukah” or something less gay. We’re doing this because we’re sick of Jewish artists doing Xmas albums and want to represent. We are seeking traditional Chanukah songs done in QUALITY metal…this is open to all nationalities but the Israeli scene being much more talented than most, I am hoping to see Israeli representation ba tiruf.

Some rules.

Unsigned bands only.

No heresy.

No girl singers.

If anyone is interested in the first compilation, please email me at metalisrael at gmail with the best song you feel you have. If anyone is interested in either compilation but doesn’t have anything ready, I give you all a month and a half to get yourselves together, because that is when I am going to Los Angeles, Bezrat Hashem.

Get to work, people. This could be a tremendous opportunity for the right bands.