Music N' More: November 2020

Sunday, November 15, 2020

Athlete rockers

Who knew that musicians are also accomplished athletes? These rockers prove that you can not only play music but sports as well! And some of them even have kids who turned to sports!

Mick Jagger

-Before becoming the front man for The Rolling Stones, vocalist Mick Jagger was on his high school's basketball team. His father was the PE teacher and basketball coach. His years of playing sports and training have kept him in top physical condition, even into his 70s

Prince

-Prior to "Little Red Corvette" making him famous, this musician rocked hard on the basketball court

George Thorogood

-He was an avid baseball player in school

Al Jardine, Brian Wilson

-These Beach Boys members both were teammates on their high school's football team

Clarence Clemons

-The famed saxophone player for The E Street band played semiprofessional baseball before dropping the bat and ball and picking up a saxophone

Alice Cooper

-He spent time doing cross-country running for his high school in Detroit

Bob Seger

-Like Alice Cooper, Bob Seger ran cross-country-type running for his high school

Joe Strummer

-A member of The Clash, he was on his school's cross-country running team

Roger Waters

-The bassist for Pink Floyd, he took on a more grueling sport. The future Pink Floyd bassist made a somewhat name for himself playing rugby

In some cases, rockers gave up their sports dreams to take up music, but they still partake in it just to keep sane and fit

Steve Harris

-Before he found music, he wanted to be a professional soccer player (footballer) for his beloved team, West Ham United. After discovering the rigors of training, he gave it up. He still plays soccer in his spare time. He organizes impromptu soccer matches, which included, at one time, Bob Marley

Rod Stewart

-He dreamed of being a famous footballer (soccer player). He captained his school's team. His father was an amateur coach and player, encouraging him to try out for the local league, Brentford F.C.

Billy Joel

-Before he found fame as "The Piano Man", Billy Joel learned to get fast hands on the piano from boxing. He was a teen amateur boxer in New York, winning his first 22 bouts and even managed to compete in the state's Golden Gloves tournament. He gave the sport up after having his nose broken in his 24th match

Bob Marley

-Soccer was a sport he was passionate about. He would regularly play in pickup games on tour and at home in Jamaica. Neville Garrick, a friend and art director told The Undefeated "Even though Bob wasn't a big, strong man, he was aggressive. On a big field, he was a very offensive-minded player, always looking for an opportunity to score." He was so obsessed with the sport that he even played when fields weren't available. He and his staff developed a game called Money Ball, which they played inside hotel suites. "If you broke anything, you'd have to pay for it. That's why we called it Money Ball."

Ginger Baker

-This man dreamed of becoming a professional cyclist before drumming lured him away. In his teens, he would compete in cycling races, time trials, convincing himself he would make a career out of it. He told The Calgary in 2013 "One day I had a smashup and the bike was a write-off. I had to earn some money, and this mate of mine said "why don't you play drums?" It's funny - they all knew I was a drummer and I didn't."

Marvin Gaye

-High school or college didn't see sports for this man. This man dreamed of sports even when he had become a star musician. He met Lem Barney and Mel Farr of the Detroit Lions in 1968 and became fast friends. They met by playing golf. Gaye even had the NFL players provide spoken lyrics in his trademark 1971 hit "What's Going On". To Barney and Farr's surprise, Gaye requested to tryout with the Lions. He was 31 then and had never played football before. He reportedly said he'd "rather catch a pass and score a touchdown in Tiger Stadium than rack up another gold record." He put on 30 pounds of muscle weight and ran miles a day to prepare. He even went through a full day of contact-free training with the Lions. Despite his effort and hard work, he wasn't invited. "Coach just told him "I love you, Marv. I love your attitude"" Farr told ESPN later. "But it wasn't enough to push him over the level where Coach would want to put him in pads."

Bruce Dickinson

-This one is obvious, lol. Anyone who knows ANYTHING about Bruce Dickinson knows his main sport of passion is fencing. This is sometimes seen as a sport for those with a lot of $$$. Long before he found fame as the vocalist for one of the world's top heavy metal bands, he was passionate about fencing. Starting at age 13, he represented his school in competitions. He even became the captain of the fencing team. At one point, he ranked #7 fencer in all of Britain. Despite the fact that music consumed his whole focus, he found time to fence. He continues this sport to this very day. In an interview with Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten, "For me, fencing is training. I fence because I enjoy it and the by-product is that I end up getting in reasonably good shape. Actually, fencing is very similar to the way I run around on stage. Or maybe I run around stage like that because I fence. Either way, it works for me."

Robbin Crosby

-As a guitarist in 80s hair band Ratt, he strongly considered a career in sports before pursuing music. At 6'5'', he already has the height and build for athletics. He spent his youth pursuing many sports, including baseball

Thursday, November 12, 2020

The Knockout Queen by Rufi Thorpe

This book, like Under the Rainbow by Celia Laskey, and others, came out (no pun intended) at the local library during LGBTQ Appreciation Month. The books under this title celebrated and/or concerned people in this large community. The Knockout Queen is just one of those many books. I thought it was excellent. In a way, it sort of represents the massive homophobia that those who are gay face every day, especially in the days after that college student Matthew Shepard was tied to a fence and beaten nearly to death, only to die from his injuries because of one thing-he happened to be gay. People who are LGBTQ seem to often face hatred and discrimination based on who they love. I can say that anyone in the LGBTQ community is fine with me. I don't hate or judge; I can't. It's A.) not who I am and B.) hypocritical of me to think bad of anyone in the LGBTQ community when I listen to Elton John, who's gay, Judas Priest, whose front man Rob Halford is gay, David Bowie, who's bisexual, Queen, whose then front man Freddie Mercury is bisexual but current front man Adam Lambert is gay.

Summary

-North Shore. Modern day. North Shore is a small town just outside Los Angeles. It's one of those everyone-knows-everyone type towns. It's dominated by an oil factory and mostly industrial work. Bunny Lampert is the star player on her high school's volleyball team with Olympic dreams in mind. Her dad, Ray, is one the town's most successful real estate agents, though he has some skeletons in the closet and is a raging alcoholic. Her next door neighbor is Michael Hesketh, a teen struggling with his homosexuality who is caught smoking in her back yard one day. Rather than yell at him, they become fast friends. He even comes out to her and straight up tells her he's gay. They spend evenings watching RuPaul's Drag Race and become fast friends. Then one day, everything changes. A bullying classmate finds out something about Michael and spreads vicious gossip around the school. Bunny smashes the girl's head in and she's put into a medically-induced coma, only to later die. As Bunny is put in prison for manslaughter, Michael and Bunny drift apart until years later. They reconnect and discover that Bunny is a championship MMA fighter who's starting to suffer from memory problems after taking many hits to the head while Michael is working on a doctorate in evolution.

Wednesday, November 11, 2020

Geezer Butler among many who don't like new Cardi B song "WAP"

Not surprisingly, this song is considered nasty to a lot of people, including Geezer Butler.

Among those who don't like the new hit song "WAP" from Cardi B, Geezer is among them. In an interview with Kerrang! Magazine, Butler stated "It's disgusting! A friend of mine who didn't know what the song was about but his 10-year old girl was singing it. I was like "what?!" To put it on an album, fair enough. But to put it out as a single? That's...a bit much."

The song's title more or less means "wet ass pussy". This phrase is repeated several times through the song, in addition to descriptions of sexual acts. This single was released by Cardi B in August and features Megan Three Stallion, an up-and-coming rapper on guest vocals. This drew the attention of conservative people because of it's highly illicit lyrics. Despite this, it stayed for four weeks at #1

In the same interview, the Black Sabbath bassist/lyricist further explained. "I remember when Elvis came out everybody said he was Satan. And then in the '60s and '70s he became America's national treasure. It happens with every new wave of music. Like metal, obviously. The Christians were going mental when Sabbath came about. And then when rap came about, people were up in arms about that and certain words rappers were using."

Fans of Cardi B claim the song is about female empowerment, a message supposedly lost on Butler. He's admitted he's probably not among the target fans of the song, noting that at age 71 he's "a bloody old goat."

Monday, November 9, 2020

Iron Maiden guitarist Adrian Smith says Iron Maiden merchandise works "too well"

As the title suggests, Adrian Smith, one of the veteran axe slingers from Iron Maiden, suggests that Iron Maiden merchandise works too well.

I can safely say that I am one of those people who, when seen wearing an Iron Maiden shirt, is wearing one for the legit reason of actually liking their music. I wear band shirts because I listen to the band on the shirt. And in this case, I wear Iron Maiden shirts because I like their music

He remarked the pros and cons of people recognizing Maiden's iconic mascot and that it resulted in people wearing the iconic logo and Eddie without having some sort of connection or knowledge of the music

In a recent interview with Louder, Smith recalled "No matter where we go, we always see our merchandise around. A great thing about this band is that we go and take our music to the people, wherever that may take us. Doing that also means people stick with you. Having said that, I've walked by people in those shirts who had no idea who I was! I think our merchandise works a little too well like that."

He did, however recall a moment when the band's high visibility amused him. "I was out fishing in Ireland with my dad. Word had got out in the local village, and these kids started turning up, all wearing Eddie shirts, just watching us from the banks for a while. I went over and they asked if we could sign their things, and just as I did, two nuns walked up! They looked at the album, looked at me and thought it was hilarious!"

In the same interview, he also mentioned the downside of being part of such a big-name act. "In places like Italy and Mexico, I've found the police escorts can be a little...enthusiastic. Too much you might say! People think it's glamorous getting this escort, but it can be very stressful, especially when you get a bit carsick and your driver thinks he's in an action movie, speeding through the night at 100 mph with his sunglasses on!"

Despite everything, the guitarist and his band mates have no plans to retire in the near future. "Even now, there's still a little bit of insecurity and wanting to prove things to people, do things we haven't before. It's like fishing - there's always bigger fish and new places to explore., always something to look forward to. It's what keeps me going. That and things like playing tennis with [bassist] Steve Harris to keep me fit. I don't think any of us feel like slowing down - we still want to get out there!"

Sunday, November 1, 2020

Iron Maiden makes Eddie downright scary for the cover of The X Factor

There's no way to make Eddie the 'Ead, as he's affectionately known, any scarier than he already is. WRONG! Iron Maiden managed to do it. They took their affectionately-loved-by-the-fans mascot and gave him a total overhaul for their 1995 album The X Factor. Something creative to know about this is if you know anything about Roman numerals, X is 10 and this was their 10th studio album

Created by Hugh Syme, he outdid himself on this outlandish cover, showing the famed Maiden mascot as a victim of the electric chair amidst other tortures. He was and is known for creating covers for some of the biggest names in metal. It was a common occurrence for Syme to encounter strange, creepy things around his family home. It was only a matter of time before he came up with the grotesque Eddie that would grace the cover of Maiden's 10th studio album in 1995

"My daughters benefitted [by knowing] that anything remotely unsettling or horrific that they saw in the movies was the product of models and art direction," he tells Ultimate Classic Rock. "They grew up with the torso of Eddie in plain view in our basement, where they would often play. It wasn't lost on them that there was a thing called "special effects"."

Illustrator Derek Riggs created the original Eddie for the band's 1980 debut album, as a brain-wasted youth with longer hair. This mascot has adorned tons of merchandise for the band over the years and in the 1990s, when metal was being swept under the rug by a short-lived movement called grunge, Maiden wanted to get a fresh take on Eddie. For their 1992 album Fear of the Dark, they sought out Melvyn Grant to create a sort-of Nosferatu tree Eddie. They recruited Syme to create the cover for the follow up, which was to feature one Blaze Bayley, formerly of Wolfsbane, on vocals

"[the band's] manager at the time, Merck Mercuriadis, introduced me to [bassist] Steve Harris," says Syme. Mercuriadis was known for working extensively with Rush. "I remember asking why they would want to deviate from Derek's pretty well-established [style]. I was sensitive to that-if Rush's art director was replaced by somebody else, I know how that would feel. It's a sad day for everybody, I presume-particularly the loyal and protective fans, so unique to Rush. So when the band started talking about taking Eddie to a place with a bit more realism, I said "Where is this coming from? You have such a long history with an illustrative, graphic novel feel."

The band was blown away by Syme's work with another famed character, Vic Rattlehead, the famed Megadeth mascot and how he'd used the scary skeleton in more subtle ways than one on two of Megadeth's albums- 1992's Countdown to Extinction and 1994's Youthanasia. "They said "We like that Megadeth deviated from the norms of their Vic-centric world.", says Syme

Iron Maiden certainly gave Syme a blank slate to work with, which worked out perfectly. It allowed him creative freedom to create the cover we know of today. "They didn't say they wanted torture or evisceration or disembodied torsos," he says. "I was talking a little bit about trepanning, the ancient Neolithic curiosity of removing the top of the skull, or drilling a hole, to see what makes us tick-the very early, crude days of surgery. And I'm a huge fan of the art direction in movies like Blade Runner and Terry Gilliam's Brazil."

Syme says he entered the project free from expectations. He was sensitive to the legacy of Iron Maiden's Eddie but "eager to make it work". He took this as a personal challenge. He sculpted and painted the figure, created a torture table and hired a local friend who did hunting and trapping to "introduce some actual entrails at the bottom of the photo". Syme also states he gave this friend credit as the "entrail wrangler".

Making all of this digital was a challenge in itself, given the mid-90s technology. Syme says "It was the early days of digital medium transferring-you couldn't upload files at the time, the Internet was in its infancy. We were doing counter-to-counter shipments from my studio in Indiana to London. We would have a guy show up in the middle of winter at my place and pick up a disk which then held a maximum amount of 200 megabytes of data. That would be driven to the Indianapolis airport, put on a plane and picked up at Heathrow. It was something like $400 a trip. It was getting ridiculous and cumbersome.

"Merck said "Come on over. I'll set you up with the best digital suite in London." I spent two weeks meeting with the band almost every day. It was great to be able to hang -and drink - with the guys, present the daily work-in-progress and have them come over to the graphic studio to see my progress."

The end results, a torture chamber, exposed brain of the victim, vampiric teeth, was seen as fairly dark, even by Iron Maiden's usual standards. Steve Harris stated he was going through a lot of personal trouble at the time, such as going through a divorce from his high school sweetheart-turned-wife and the mother of his four kids and the band's previous singer quitting and the darkness of his personal troubles was finding its way into the music. Some feel that the personal demons he was fighting at the time found their way into the music and the artwork. The image on the back, however, shows Eddie strapped into an electric chair, getting ready to ride the lightning

Syme explains "The electric chair was created as an ancillary image for the back cover, or interior panel within the CD Digipak or booklet, but never as a front cover." He notes he's "unaware" of online commentary that some retailers banned the primary image and used the rear one instead. Though he never worked with Iron Maiden after that, he fondly remembers his brush with Eddie. "That was a fun project. That cover was an effort at bringing some palpable reality to the otherwise more fantasial illustrative style that preceded. And we still have Eddie laying in state in my studio, by the way."