The Music Banter Members' Journals Monthly Update Thread

[Pet_Sounds]

Thank-you, Trollheart! I'm curious, ws The Scrap Heap featured by random selection or personal choice? My objective with it was to produce something between Urban's Journal of Stuff and Classic Albums I Have Never Heard, but it seems to have gained a life of its own, and who am I to interfere?

And Batty… that's impressive work right there.

[Trollheart]

` ` `Underneath the noise was a faint whisper. Frantically, the witch held the head up to her ear and listened. She remained motionless for long seconds, but eventually she lowered Varg's head and cradled it protectively to her chest. With pure hatred that eclipsed even her former loathing, the witch fixed her burning stare on me, and spoke with quiet rancor...

` ` `"It was you who murdered the Prophet. He gave you his aid to slay the dragon Fafnir. He bestowed upon you the sword which you have wielded against his chosen people. And you repaid his kindness with betrayal. You are truly the most loathsome insect to walk this Earth. If I had my way I would flay the skin from your body inch by agonizing inch and then leave your meat to the rats. But the Prophet has decreed a different fate for you. He is magnanimous, and will give you the chance to fight for your worthless life," and she addressed our guards, "Throw the Zionist poseur into the pit."

To Be Continued...

[/QUOTE]

Ah yeah, but when Batty? You left us all on the edge of our seats, hanging over a precipice and you're not appearing to offer a hand. Will the Kings of Metal escape the witch? Will Batty ever get a cigarette? Will Joey ever understand anything that's said to him? Will Kerry attend thos anger management classes he's been sentenced to? All this, and more, may never be revealed if The Batlord don't get off his fat, game-playing arse and leave the porn for a few days and write the final chapters of this epic! Come on Batty: Hollywood is calling (she's a nice girl, lives just down the street and has the biggest pair of ... eyes ... you've ever seen)



Has anyone seen DJ Chameleon recently? When I went searching for Batty's journal I came across his, stuck also on page five and not updated since March of 2013 --- that's a year and nine months now --- and I miss it. He had some grat reviews and some great comments. If anyone knows where he is, can you get a message to him and ask him to come back? We miss getting http://www.musicbanter.com/members-j...chameleon.html and we want him back! Here's a sample of what he used to write:

Originally Posted by djchameleon

Razor’s Edge 8/13



K. Michelle - Rebellious Soul

I first heard about K. Michelle through plug. I believe it was Arya playing her hit single that she has out or I’m assuming so. I don’t listen to the radio much these days. The song that gets played is V.S.O.P. and it has hit written all over it. So if it’s not getting radio play then that’s a crime in and of itself. This album was so so for me. Out of 11 tracks I ended up liking five of them. Can’t Raise A Man spoke so much to me because it’s a situation that a large majority of my female friends go through when they are messing with these ****boys(immature dudes that aren’t about ****). In the lyrics she says:
Listen,
He got older, but never grew,
For his life he can't tell the truth.
How to love he ain't got a clue,
Playing games like he'll never lose you.

Try to talk to him, can't get through,
Every day he's a different dude.
These are the signs of a grown ass boy,
Better run for the hills, I'm just trying to keep it real.

You can't raise a man, he's already grown, what you gonna do?
You wonder why he acts like a boy. If he wasn't raised right before you
Girl, you ain't never gonna change nobody, if he don't wanna, you can't make nobody.
'Cause you can't raise a man, no, no.

V.S.O.P. , Pay My Bills, Ride Out and When I Get A Man were definitely my songs. When I first heard that one of those tracks was called pay my bills. I was like oh brother not another female singing about having a dude pay her bills while she’s pretending to be independent. Thanks a lot Beyonce. When I heard the hook though :

I'mma **** you
Like I'm tryna pay bills
Georgia power
Cable bill
Baby sitter
Tonight you will

I sighed in relief that it wasn’t the typical direction I thought it was going to go. It actually turned out to be pretty raunchy. I love it. She spends a majority of the album trying to work through her issues with different failing relationships but she brags about how she toys with men and makes them their bitch essentially.

Time to choose a journal at random and go back to where I stopped being a part of this forum for several months, and pick up the entries that were made during that time. My sabbatical began in the middle of May, 19th to be exact, so it's that date, or as close to it as I can get, that I begin

This week I've chosen http://www.musicbanter.com/members-j...seur-cave.html, not just because Briks is a mate but because he puts a whole hell of a lot into his work, and I'm curious to see what he was up to while I was off sunning myself. Sorry, it's Ireland: staring out the window at the rain. But anyway...

Just before I threw my hands up and shut down my journals, handed back my swipe for the door of the forum and retired to my expensive beachhouse, Briks was looking at an outfit called Kaizer Orchestra, who had a trilogy called “Violeta Violeta”, and had intended to continue with Nickelback Week solo. However, just as this very special was the catalyst for my withdrawal from MB, so too did Briks announce he was, quote, sick of Nickelback. Who could blame him? It's all very well poking fun, but to do that, at least authoritatively, you have to first listen to the albums, and that's a big drawback. So he forced himself to listen to one more --- “All the right reasons” --- then turned onto the true path with Metal, and a look at Dissection's “Storm of the light's bane” (one of the recommended albums I never got to to feature in Metal Month II, later) then an emo kick with “Rites of spring” before returning to Metal with Finntroll and Mercyful Fate.

Well into June by now ---unlike me, and probably like about 90% of the rest of you who are somewhat sane, Briks does not update every day --- he derided Kiss's live album and was similarly scathing about Mayhem, while as June turned to July he put forward the idea of a Pierce the Veil week. Knowing nothing about the band, I would not have been in, but anyway by then I was a free man, skipping over meadows and picking flowers --- well, you know. Next up was The Ramones and The Descendents, but after listening to one PTV album he decided to knock it on the head. I should learn from this guy! Empire, empire (I was a lonely estate) is apparently a band name, and he reviewed an album by them, then went on to do Quorthon's solo album (or was it the other way around? Anyway he did both) and as August turned to September he reviewed Exhorder and Jets to Brazil, and as I made my triumphant, ticker-tape-through-the-streets (well I remember there being ticker-tape! Yes, in my mind. What of it?) to the forum he spoke of “Death to false indie” and reviewed Myrkur's self-titled, something I would later come to recommend to others.

October saw him look at “100 hits: Punk and New Wave” (rather you than me mate!) with Blondie, Deutche Americanische Freundchaft or something, Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks and The Stranglers. Then he had a squint at My Chemical Romance, Four Non Blondes and others, then, with Metal Month II in full swing he decided to try some (gasp) grindcore, with Xysma, then more Mayhem. Off to talk about Weezer's new album due, about which he was very excited, and then taking a look at the movie Van Helsing. In November he began his journey into folk, kicking off with Dylan, then threw in some albums he had listened to recently --- Slayer, Slipknot, The Cleaners from Venus, Timbuktu --- in haiku format, a style he would develop later, and then stumbled over an album he and Ki both seem to love, from Kairon; Irse! Yeah, that's the name of the artiste. Ki has sent it to me as a present to go Under Trollheart's Tree, so I'll be listening to it soon enough.

More haikus with Boduf Songs, Judas Priest, McLars, Quiet Riot and that Kairon;Irse! Album, then for his 2000th post he reviewed Ozzy's “The ultimate sin”.

Which brings us up to Bowie Week, and the point at which I began the Monthly Update again. Well done, Briks! Lots of very decent entries and some great ideas. A journal to be proud of. Next week I'll choose another at random for “A Retrospective”. If you want it to be yours, shout!

[Trollheart]

The idea of the Classic Journal is simple really. I choose one journal which I believe has enriched the section, which is regularly updated and whose author has a lot to say and says it well, and I go through it in depth from beginning to where it is now. Obviously I can't be expected to do all this in one sitting, so each journal will cover weeks or maybe even months, depending on how large they are, and when I've finished with one I will choose another.

For the first foray into this new section I'm choosing, as I have already mentioned, http://www.musicbanter.com/members-j...y-history.html

I can I think claim partial credit for at least the genesis of this journal, as I believe it was me who encouraged Unknown Soldier to begin a journal, and since it debuted back in September 2012 it has become not only one of the most consistent and informative journals in the section, but is now the go-to reference for anything related to hard rock/heavy metal of the last thirty or forty years. Here's where it all began, over two years ago now.

Originally Posted by Unknown Soldier

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

I’ve finally decided to put together an album by album history of hard rock and heavy metal. I’ve decided to do this on a year by year basis, with what I feel were the ten best and most essential albums for each year. The journal will be written with fairly in-depth album reviews, insights and the type of impact that these albums had if any at the time and in the future. I decided that I would do this from 1970 to present day (so a hell of a lot of albums here) but I quickly realised that the real birth of this music, probably started a year earlier in 1969 which was such a pivotal year, so for that reason my reviews will start there, despite sounding an odd place to start number wise.

The motivation for the journal actually comes from various friends of mine, who often ask me how should they get into metal and heavy music, and where should they start. As always I often say at the beginning, where it was more melodic and less heavy by today’s standards, as a I know chucking them a Sepultura or Slayer cd will have them running for the nearest exit and swearing never to listen to anything heavy ever again! So this journal will hopefully be educational and interesting to any reading and possibly even nostalgic. For me it actually allows me to put all the stuff that I’ve listened to, finally down in a cohesive list once and for all, I also hope to sneak in some albums that I may have forgotten or overlooked as well. Also for some of the years for me, it will be almost impossible to choose just ten albums, but I’ll worry about that when the time comes. The format may well change slightly as I go along but that depends on how the journal goes. So I’ll kick of position 10 for 1969 on my next entry, after inserting a 'pre-listening list'.

The first person to comment in the journal was Janszoon, who rather prophetically but accurately described this as “quite an undertaking”, and indeed it was and is. Rather more poignantly, a few posts down we have the late Howard the Duck, who quipped “Give me Manowar or give me death”. A few months later he would die of a heart attack in his native Malaysia. Sadly missed.

But to return to the journal entries themselves, the first real post by US was “Ten influential albums worth listening to”, in which he namechecked Jimi Hendrix Experience's “Are you experienced?”, Creams' “Disraeli gears”, Jeff Beck's “Truth”, Vanilla Fudge and Gun's debut self-titled, Head Machine's “Orgasm”, Blue Cheer's “Vincebus eruptum”, Steppenwolf's “Steppenwolf the Second”, Iron Butterfly's “In-a-gadda-da-vida” and Coven's “Witchcraft destroys souls and reaps minds”. Interesting collection.

The real work then got going as Unknown Soldier visited 1969, looking at the roots of hard rock with Deep Purple and Bloodrock's self-titled debuts and Grand Funk Railroad's “On time”. He then introduced his “Album of the year”, and for '69 this was “Sea shanties” by High Tide. I'd never heard of them, but he spoke very highly of them. Well he would have to, wouldn't he, to have picked this as his AOTY? Grand Funk Railroad, however, figured prominently in his picks for 1969, with their second album, “Grand Funk”, making a decent showing at number 6 and MC5's “Kick out the jams” at the next spot up. What would be his top pick for 1969? Well, before we learned that we would hear about Humble Pie “As safe as yesterday is”, Free's “Tons of sobs” and taking the second position the second Led Zep album. But at the top? That spot was reserved for their debut, making Zep one of the most influential and successful rock artistes of that year.

Before moving on into the 70s, he checked one more album that could have been included but had overtones of other subgenres and so precluded him putting it in the top ten. This would be a recurring feature throughout his journal, and still is. The first, then, of “Also check this out” became King Crimson's prog epic, “In the court of the Crimson King”. He also then ran off a list of albums that had not made the cut, shown below:

Originally Posted by Unknown Soldier

Albums that missed the cut.........
Other good albums worth checking out that were also released in 1969, but weren't quite good enough to make the top 10 and are listed below in no set order, So the best of the rest:

Humble Pie
Town and Country 1969
Almost entirely acoustic based and shows a different side of the band, with some great work by Peter Frampton. The band really wouldn't do anything like this ever again. It pains me to leave this off the list.


Free
Free 1969
More subdued than than the debut set as Paul Rodgers would assert greater control over the band and in "Free Me" they put out one of their best ever tracks. This is great rock music for a Sunday afternoon drive.


Jeff Beck Group
Beck-Ola 1969
This album is certainly nowhere near as essential as his debut solo album, but Beck-Ola does have some good material on it and great guitaring as you'd expect from Jeff Beck.


Leslie West
Mountain 1969
Often thought of as the first ever Mountain album but this is officially classed as a Leslie West solo album. The album is highlighted by Leslie West's throaty voice and his bluesy guitar playing.


Spooky Tooth
Spooky Two 1969
Early Pacesetters, whose thunder would be stolen by Deep Purple (who beat them to the list as well) Bassist Greg Ridley would soon jump ship to Humble Pie and go on to greater success in Humble Pie.

Finally, there was “Hard, Heavy and a Classic”, with The Stooges' debut self-titled before he rushed headlong to embrace 1970.

This began with an overview of the year, listing the type of music that either faded out or became popular or dominant in this year, some of the bands and any other tidbits of information that seemed appropriate. It was a great introduction to each year, and would become standard throughout his journal.

Here's the original entry, made at the end of September 2012:

Originally Posted by Unknown Soldier

1970

If both 1967 and 1968 were the years of heavy fondling, it was 1969 that finally saw hard penetration and the baby being conceived, but it was in 1970 that the baby would truly be born and it was one hell of a birth! Led Zeppelin had already in 1969 set the yardstick of excellence for all heavy music with their two groundbreaking albums and they along with Grand Funk Railroad had become two of the biggest heavy acts around (they were already selling millions in the USA). Other talented bands which I've already mentioned in 1969, were now starting to get more acclaim amongst music fans and were becoming far more cohesive with their overall sound, despite the fact that huge sections of the music media were still deriding a lot of music at the heavier end of the spectrum. As for 1970 the year that will now be looked at, this would now see 'heavy music' gain even more momentum as the already established 'heavy acts' were now two and three albums down the line, and the heavy blues and psychedelic influences of most of these bands were now being fused into a more tighter hard rock sound. The year would also see, a whole host of very interesting new bands with some truly great albums and whilst some of these bands would never achieve the popular acclaim that they were surely due, their future influence would be highly noticeable to anybody listening to these albums. But 1970 would truly be remembered as the arrival of Black Sabbath, who would of course go on to become the most revered band in all metaldom and also be the first band to try and break out of the heavy blues and psychedelic inflluences of most of their counterparts. As a year 1970 produced even stronger albums album for album than 1969 did, with Black Sabbath's first two albums easily making the cut.

The top ten albums of 1970 then featured three self-titled in the lowest positions, with the debuts from May Blitz (who?), Stray (again..?) and Lucifer's Friend. Then came Free's “Fire and water” and at the number 6 slot, one of the most influential albums of the hard rock/heavy metal generation, as Black Sabbath unleashed their (also self-titled) debut. Album Pick of the Year was at number 5, “Kingdom come” from Sir Lord Baltimore (?) while number 4 saw Deep Purple's coming-of-age “In rock”, with the top three made up of Trapeze's “Medusa”, Zep again with their third album and at the number one spot, Sabbath's seminal “Paranoid”.

In “Also check this out” he had the Flower Travellin' Band's “Anywhere” and another slew of albums that didn't make the cut, including James Gang, Uriah Heep, Mountain, more Free and more Grand Funk, as well as others. Speaking of Grand Funk Railroad, they were to introduce a new section, the “Live Album section”, and for 1970 we had their “Live album”, while under “Hard, heavy and a Classic” this time we had “Funhouse” by The Stooges featured, as well as “Death walks behind you” by Atomic Rooster. We were now deep into October, and 1971was looming on the horizon. I''ll be looking at that and 1972, in the next installment.

[Trollheart]

And so we come finally to the reinstigation of my

which comes from

one of our newer members, who has this to say about “Dark Side of the Moon”. Sure, we all love it (well, most of us: those of us with taste!) but what I like about this is the idea of handing the album on down the generations, father to son, and maybe to his son's son in time, and the universally positive reaction, proving that this album is, indeed, a timeless classic.

Originally Posted by Chula Vista

You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon
1973

Almost hard to believe there was a time when nobody had heard of this album. Back when it was released no-one I hung with knew who or what Pink Floyd was. When the song Money started getting played on the radio a lot and ears perked up, but in all honesty, we actually thought that the band was a black funk group based on that track.

Listening to the full album for the first few times was a pretty mind blowing experience. Especially since pot had made the scene in a big way in our group. DSOTM was the first "concept" album for me. The lyrics were deep and really struck a chord - especially since my life was crap at the time. Here was a group of songs that spoke of despair, loss, dreams, war, insanity, regret, anger, greed, and ultimately, hope. Really heavy stuff for this 13 year old kid.

About 6 years ago (35 years after it was released) I gave a copy of this to my son and asked him to spend some serious time with it. He was absolutely blown away and ranks it as one of his faves to this day. Gotta love that.

They say some records will never be broken. DSOTM spending 741 consecutive weeks (over 14 years!) on the Billboard charts is one of them.

Do I really have to post samples? Actually I won't since the album is really meant to be listened to as a whole anyway.

So we come to the end of another exhaustive edition of the Update Thread. Hope it's been fun reading. If your journal wasn't featured, well I'd be surprised but do let me know: anything published between the deadline for last week and this should definitely be mentioned here, but oversights do happen occasionally, especially when you have so much work to get through. If you feel jealous about all these guys and girls getting the limelight, you know what to do: get writing, start a journal. It doesn't take much and it can give you a great sense of achievement, plus it's great fun. Youre not in any way restricted as to how you run your journal once you don't stray outside the basic forum rules, so make a thread today and start your adventure! You'll be glad you did .
Probably.

Until next week,
Toodles!

[The Batlord]

Yeah, those weren't even close to the final chapters. I'm not even sure I was halfway.

[Trollheart]

Originally Posted by Pet_Sounds

Thank-you, Trollheart! I'm curious, ws The Scrap Heap featured by random selection or personal choice? My objective with it was to produce something between Urban's Journal of Stuff and Classic Albums I Have Never Heard, but it seems to have gained a life of its own, and who am I to interfere?

And Batty… that's impressive work right there.

It was a personal choice. I know that you also have the folk journal but to be honest it's not something I'm that much into and I haven't read much if any of it. The Scrap Heap is more varied, and I think reflects both your musical taste and your writing better.

[Isbjørn]

Man, thank you for featuring my journal! It's much appreciated.

[Urban Hat€monger ?]

Originally Posted by Trollheart

I have to say: Urban, we've showed you ours, now show us yours! Where's the review man? Bowie Week is over and we've all played our part. Waiting...

I do all my writing on Thursdays & Fridays.
Last week I was in bed with flu, the week before something came up and I didn't have access to a computer.

It's coming.

[Oriphiel]

Thanks for mentioning my journal in the weekly update! I really appreciate it!

[Trollheart]

Originally Posted by Urban Hat€monger ?

I do all my writing on Thursdays & Fridays.
Last week I was in bed with flu, the week before something came up and I didn't have access to a computer.

It's coming.

That's fair enough. Sorry to hear you were sick: maybe stay off the ice floes?

Originally Posted by Oriphiel

Thanks for mentioning my journal in the weekly update! I really appreciate it!

Well, everyone gets mentioned as long as they update that week. It's getting it featured that's the prize...

Originally Posted by Briks

Man, thank you for featuring my journal! It's much appreciated.

You're welcome. It was the obvious choice. You've done good things in there...