Metal Jew

Sponsor my mid-life crisis!

This is your chance to make me look like a pillock and raise money for a good cause at the same time!

 You may or may not know that I have had ME for 14 years now. I won’t bore you with details of my symptoms, but it makes life difficult. I have to watch my activity level constantly and I cannot work full-time. There are many people who suffer worse than I  including people who are confined to wheelchairs. ME sufferers have long had a raw deal: disbelief from doctors, lack of research from the medical profession, denial of benefits and insurance, even sick children taken from their parents. Thankfully, things are beginning to change and there is increased understanding of the disease and its effects.

Action For ME, one of the foremost UK charities working in this area is carrying out a major fundraising drive to coincide with ME awareness week (7-13^th May). It has challenged all its members to raise £1000 or more and I have taken up this challenge. I am asking as many of you as possible to help me in my SPONSORED MID-LIFE CRISIS.

 Here’s the deal: I am 35 and I am slowly going to seed. I have a wife, two kids and a house in the suburbs. I get excited by the idea of a holiday in Bournemouth. 

Yet somewhere deep inside me, the embers of youthful rebellion still glow. I will fan those embers of youthful rebellion to forge myself anew in the white-hot flames of METAL!

 Yes, up till now I have only written about Metal (my book ‘Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge’ is still available in all good book shops), but now I will live it. For your delectation and enjoyment I will transform myself into a true Metal warrior – but only if you can help me raise £1000 or more. If you help me reach that target I will dress up as a Metal musician, complete with spikes, and video myself playing my air guitar and miming to a hot Metal track. I’ll post the results on youtube.com. I’m asking for £10 from each of you. For £20 you can vote for the song you want me to mime to. For £30 you can vote for the Metal musician you want me to dress up as.

 This is your chance to make me embarrass myself in front of the entire world. Dare you miss this opportunity?

 You can donate online here: http://www.justgiving.com/kkahnharris

Donating takes a matter of minutes and is totally secure. You can leave a message with your donation too.

I will let you know how much I’ve raised at the end of ME awareness week.

 

UPDATE: Somone has posted a comment saying they don't know what ME is. Well, ME stands for Myalgic Encephalomyelitis and is often known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or Post-Viral Fatigue syndrome. If you want to know more, have a look at the Wkipedia page on the subject or go to the website of Action For ME. 

Anal Cunt stuff

I've been fascinated for a long time by grindcore repeat offenders  Anal Cunt. Indeed, in 1999 I wrote an article on them for Index on Censorship  which never got published. Here's what I wrote back then:

Anal Cunt: How Bad Is Worse?

How far can a band go in causing offence?  That is the question to which American Grindcore band Anal Cunt appear to have spent their life's work addressing. 

Grindcore, an incredibly fast collision between Punk and Death Metal, is an underground style of music, whose rejection of conventional musical principles such as melody would be shocking already to many. Anal Cunt's latest release 'It Just Gets Worse' [Earache, 1999], has compounded this musical offensiveness with lyrics designed to cause outrage.  Most notable are songs with misogynist lyrics, such as 'I Became A Counsellor So I Could Tell Rape Victims They Asked For It' and 'Domestic Violence Is Very Very Funny', and songs about Nazism, such as 'I Sent Concentration Camp Footage To America's Funniest Home Videos' and 'Hitler Was A Sensitive Man'.

Anal Cunt's UK-based label Earache, ran into problems when they came to release the CD.  Their usual distributor in the UK, Vital, refused to distribute it and two pressing plants refused to press it.  The label also had problems distributing the CD in other countries, particularly Germany.  Earache were forced to sell the CD direct via mail order until a distributor (Cargo) could be found.  The band have also had problems finding venues for live shows, partly due to their history of on-stage violence. 

So far however, Anal Cunt have faced no legal problems.  Earache were careful to remove the title and lyrics for the 2 tracks that could have lead to lawsuits - 'Connor Clapton Committed Suicide Because His Father Sucks' and 'Easy E Got AIDS From Freddy Mercury'. Anal Cunt and Earache have been skilful in walking a fine line between a desire to shock and a desire not to provoke a destructive moral panic. Despite the distribution problems, the CD has already overtaken the 3000 sales of its predecessor 'I Like It When You Die' .

In interviews Anal Cunt portray what they're doing as a nihilistic attack on just about everyone.  A sense of humour is revealed on songs such as 'Into The Oven' - which is about cooking turkey - and they seem to be just as keen to attack a whole range of other targets other than 'PC' ones.  Previous CDs have sneered at pottery, softball, windchimes and the Grindcore scene itself.  As singer Seth Putnam was quoted as saying ('The Guardian', 12-6-99): 'If you're offended by us you deserve it - if you're not we haven't found something about you gay enough to expose yet'.

I was browsing the internet today and found something that has given me pause for thought. I've taken an indulgent attitude to their obscene offensiveness in the past but now I'm not so sure. I know that I should have kn0wn about this a long time ago (I'm supposed to be an expert on metal and racism for fuck's sake), but AC mainman Seth Putnam  has a side band called Vaginal Jesus Their lyrics cross the line from over-the-top offensive humour to out-and-out hate (albeit with a viscous satirical edge). They were signed to far right label Resistance Record, although apparently they were dropped for not being serious enough. Anyway, it's possible that Putnam may have been much more serious all along than wishy washy liberals like myself were prepared to grant.

On the other hand, Impaled Northern Moonforest , Putnam's acoustic Black Metal parody band is a blast. It's spawned an extraordinary cult of similarly silly acoustic Black Metal parodies.

As I said to Nick Terry a few years ago - what's a lefty who likes offensive Metal to do?

Music and torture

I just found this fascinating academic article on music and torture. Here's the abstract:

Music as torture / Music as weapon

By Suzanne G. Cusick

Revista Transcultural de Musica/Transcultural Music Review 10 (2006)

One of the most startling aspects of musical culture in the post-Cold War United States is the systematic use of music as a weapon of war. First coming to mainstream attention in 1989, when US troops blared loud music in an effort to induce Panamanian president Manuel Norriega’s surrender, the use of  “acoustic bombardment” has become standard practice on the battlefields of Iraq, and specifically musical bombardment has joined sensory deprivation and sexual humiliation as among the non-lethal means by which prisoners from Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo may be coerced to yield their secrets without violating US law.

The very idea that music could be an instrument of torture confronts us with a novel—and disturbing—perspective on contemporary musicality in the United States. What is it that we in the United States might know about ourselves by contemplating this perspective? What does our government’s use of music in the “war on terror” tell us (and our antagonists) about ourselves?

This paper is a first attempt to understand the military and cultural logics on which the contemporary use of music as a weapon in torture and war is based. After briefly tracing the development of acoustic weapons in the late 20th century, and their deployment at the second battle of Falluja in November, 2004, I summarize what can be known about the theory and practice of using music to torture detainees in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo. I contemplate some aspects of late 20th-century musical culture in the civilian US that resonate with the US security community’s conception of music as a weapon, and survey the way musical torture is discussed in the virtual world known as the blogosphere. Finally, I sketch some questions for further research and analysis.

Interestingly, the Serpentine Gallery and London is exhibiting an interesting installation that explores the relationship of sound, music and war.

More Jewish Mayhem

I've been having a look at Jewish Mayhem. It's an online/offline Jewish magazine for adults.  It's an odd mixture e.g.: stuff on Jewish rap and metal (mostly Israeli), articles on Jewish and Israeli porn stars ,provocative articles on Jewish issues.

I really like the idea of a Jewish magazine that takes a walk on the darker, seamier side of life. The trouble is that this includes some extreme-right Kahanist stuff. Plus I don't think porn is somehow radical and dangerous - just sexist and insidiously destructive. The problem is an age-old one of transgression turning into oppression. My book talks about this a lot.

Great blog

Someone called Valter gave a complementary comment to my last post. To return the favour here is a link to his excellent blog (much better than mine). It's a rich brew of black metal, marginal subversion and transgressive theory.

Women in Metal

There's an interesting and intelligent article on women in Metal in Stylus. The article also references an interesting female Metal website Metal Maidens.