The Battle of Evermore and the timeless nature of fantasy

(early metal-ish Friday)

That it is told in the language of fantasy is not an accident, or because Tolkien was an escapist, or because he was writing for children. It is a fantasy because fantasy is the natural, the appropriate language for the recounting of the spiritual journey and the struggle of good and evil in the soul.

--Ursula LeGuin, “On Fantasy and Science Fiction”

The critics who have dismissed fantasy as juvenile escapism have failed to recognize that fantasy grapples with real and eternally pressing issues, albeit wrapped in metaphor and fantastic trappings.

The same critics who worship at the altar of realism and extol the virtues of novels about average people in familiar times cannot admit their darlings have rapidly aged and are fast losing their relevance. While the classics of fantasy remain as fresh today as the day they were written.

That’s because the language of fantasy is unbound by time, or place. It deals with the big issues—conflict within and without, love, sorrow, friendship, the inevitable march of time, pain, decay and death—in poetic abstraction, and in heroic meter and timbre. Modern novels that reference an author’s time and place will confuse the modern reader with surroundings that grow increasingly abstract and impenetrable with the passing years, while the Hyborian Age or Middle-Earth remain eternally familiar and inhabitable even as their authors slip further into the past. They are distanced from the ordinary, but close to the human heart.

The Battle of Evermore will still be played 100 years from now, though perhaps never as well as this version by Heart. Because we all grasp its emotional depths, and understand the meaning of the plaintive cries.

The apples turn to brown and black

The tyrant's face is red

Oh war is common cry

Pick up your swords and fly

We’re always trying to bring the balance back. It’s the eternal struggle never won, but once in a while we experience the blessed peace of equilibrium.

The Battle of Evermore will still be played 100 years from now, and remain as unspoiled as Lothlorien, because it is the timeless matter of fantasy.

The analog kid—some reflections on music and technology and Into the Void

Spiraling into a (digital) void...

I recently finished Geezer Butler’s biography Into the Void. A fun and interesting read for many reasons. It’s mainly as you’d expect a detailed look into Geezer’s time with Black Sabbath, in which he served as bass player and principal lyrics writer. Geezer experienced a wild rock and roll lifestyle, including a roller coaster ride to the top in the early to mid-70s and subsequent plunge to the bottom in the late 80s and early 90s. But along the way Into the Void offers some interesting commentary and a glimpse into how radically the music industry has transformed from 1969-today. Largely due to the rapid adoption of new technology and the corresponding shift from analog to digital.

I am of Generation X (born 1973) and have the benefit of living in two worlds. I grew up in an analog era of tapes and stereos, but also had a front seat to the rise of computers and digital music, and later Napster and YouTube and Spotify. I rode that lightning. 

With that perspective I’ve come around to the belief that technological adoption results in both progress and regress. It is not a universal good, each step an advance toward some Star Trek utopia espoused by deluded techno-utopians like David Brin. Nor is it an evil, each advance in technology removing us further from some mythical Garden of Eden and closer to a digital Hell. 

It is just Change, for better and for worse.

Music used to be harder to access. You had to plunk down hard-earned coin to buy it. There were fewer options, no carefully curated song lists built around your mood or vacation destination. Unless you wanted to go through the considerable trouble of making a mix tape.

But analog music was (and remains, with the right equipment) of a better sound quality than compressed digital, richer and more resonant. And friendlier to the collector. With your analog purchase comes physical art, albums with foldouts and liner notes and the like.

Many things got better for music with the advent of digital. With Spotify Premium ($10.99/ month, soon to be $11.99) I have access to essentially every piece of music ever recorded. I can go to YouTube and watch any music video I formerly had to pray Headbanger’s Ball might play. I can watch hundreds and thousands of concerts I’ve never been to, and documentaries and fan videos, when before the only options were to buy a VHS copy of Live After Death or take a gamble on a bootleg.

Tapes were never a great way to preserve music, and records and CDs can warp or scratch. Digital is “forever” (as long as you pay the monthly fee).

In short, digital was great for me, the fan and consumer, in many ways. I benefit it from it in a small way here on the blog, with my ‘Metal Friday” posts where I can link to videos and share them with like-minded metal fans.

Nevertheless, I prefer the way the music industry used to work. Or at least, enough of it to tip the balance toward the analog era. I’m aware I’m a trader in nostalgia, but like Geezer Butler I believe have some legit arguments to back me up (which makes us both geezers, I suppose).

In the pre-digital age recorded music was not a commodity. It had to be committed to physical objects—records, tapes, CDs—in order to be distributed. Albums had controlled pricing and were marked up to create profitable margins. And because artists could and did make real money on album sales, that meant live shows served a different purpose. They were a way to promote new albums and drive records sales. They were cheaper. 

But for the artist, digital distribution is a nightmare. Butler in his book scoffs at the royalties he receives from Spotify, despite the fact Sabbath has sold more than 75 million albums. Says Butler:

While bands in the sixties and seventies got robbed by dodgy managers, modern artists and groups get robbed by streaming services like Spotify, who pay a fraction of a cent per play. It’s not even worth looking at Sabbath’s income from Spotify, it’s so small.

The only way to make up for the loss of album sales is through touring, which has led to exorbitant concert prices.

Some will argue that the unlimited choices offered by Spotify and YouTube are an unmitigated good for the consumer. But I don’t necessarily see it that way, even though I have found bands on these platforms. Research has found that people like choice, but from a limited, selected set of options. Unlimited choice is crippling, which is why we need curation. Kerrang or Headbanger’s Ball served this purpose back in the day, but today who are the arbiters of taste? It’s harder to find new music when there’s no curated selections in record stores. It used to be a handful of your local rock radio stations would bring you the latest bands, now you have to subject yourself to the whims of algorithms or corrupt search engines.

But access to music just scratches the surface of the massive impact of digital.

Electronic drum machines and autotuned voices massively lowered the bar for who could record an album. It undercut raw ability and negated craft gained through sweat equity, trading it out for dance moves and good looks. Manufactured music gave birth to the rise of pop performers who captivated audiences through sex appeal and dance moves. This kicked off at the turn of the new millennium with the rise of Britney Spears, N’Sync, Backstreet Boys, and the Spice Girls, and continues unabated today.

Before the advent of digital, record labels gave bands like Rush and Black Sabbath several albums to find their sound. It was a risk, but a calculated one, because these bands had paid their dues in clubs, built followings, and could perform. They were talents that then required promotion. 

Of course there were exceptions. Record labels were and are out to make money and signed many shitty bands purely because they were part of a hot music movement. But in general the labels had a longer leash and more patience for artists. When the emphasis is on the music, who cares how the band members look? 

If four ugly dudes from Birmingham England with an experimental new sound that didn’t follow pop formula (and certainly could not dance) were born in 1999 rather than 1949, could they become rock stars? Does anyone think we’d have had Black Sabbath today? Butler doesn’t:

People tend to ask me: Could Sabbath happen now? The truth is, probably not. The odds of four working-class lads coming together in a rough place like Aston, writing very heavy songs about their gritty reality and making it in the music industry are slim to none. They wouldn’t look “right,” they wouldn’t sound “current” and they’d be too much of a risk for major record companies.

Digitalization renders music into a commodity, cheap and disposable, no longer holy. We don’t have to queue up and wait for the new Guns and Roses albums as we once used. My daughters love Taylor Swift and pay big $ to see her in concert but don’t own her albums. The entire concept of an “album” is practically meaningless.

I don’t believe this is better, or healthier, for music. 

I am heartened that analog still has a place. You can still find music stores and new records for purchase. I smile when I see young kids buying records and admiring the artwork, and enjoying the look and feel of a physical object in their hands instead of a vaporware download. But buying physical music is a novelty, not a necessity.

While something was gained in the switch to digital, something was lost along the way. 

Why we need fantasy: Some thoughts from a Blind Guardian concert, May 11, 2024 at the Worcester Palladium

I'm in there! Somewhere back left...

No one ever dares to speak

It's nothing else but fantasy

It's make believe,

Make believe

No one ever dares to speak

It's nothing else but fantasy

But One day it will all come to life

--Blind Guardian, Fly

How did you spend your Saturday night? I was in a hall you might know, called … VALHALLA!

Or maybe it was the Worcester Palladium. 

Either way, I was somewhere else. And that’s a good thing. 

We need fantasy in our lives.

Blind Guardian lead singer Hansi Kuersch screams at the end of “Valhalla,” No, we can’t live without gods! He and his bandmates put to powerful music what many of us who breathe deeply of this type of thing have come to know: 

We can’t live without fantasy. It is indispensable as air or water:

Songs I will sing of tribes and kings

The carrion bird and the hall of the slain

Nothing seems real

You soon will feel

The world we live in is another Skald’s

Dream in the shadows

--Skalds and Shadows

We’re all just telling stories. Reality is what we make of it. 

Blind Guardian knows this, and takes us to other places, fair and perilous lands where magic is real. Lands we once knew, but have forgotten. As we age our fantasies wither. We prioritize work and money, and embrace conformity and dull routine. 

Stranded in the real world

Left in the world

No place for daydreams

Serious life

I fall into

I fall into a dark hole

And I can't come out

Do you know if Merlin did exist

Or Frodo wore the ring

Did Corum kill the gods

Or where's the wonderland

Which young Alice had seen

Or was it just a dream

I knew the answers

Now they're lost for me

--Imaginations From the Other Side

But fantasy calls, from the other side.

We might be lost, but Blind Guardian knows there is another world. Which can break down the walls around your heart. For a short time on Saturday at least.

Blind Guardian delivered on this stop on The God Machine tour. They were great. The setlist is below.

As always it’s a privilege to see a band of their magnitude in a place like The Palladium, which has a listed capacity of 2660. Blind Guardian plays to much larger crowds overseas.

Take a bow, dudes. 

Maybe you don’t need German power metal bands in your life. That’s OK, with a good book or a well-done movie you can get (some) of what Blind Guardian offers. Enchantment, to restore a disenchanted world.

What you don’t get in a book or a movie however is the power of being in a big group of like-minded people, all experiencing the same powerful call. Chanting, “Valhalla, Deliverance!” like Viking warriors of old.

Where was I Saturday night? The lands of Faerie, or Worcester? 

Both my friends.

Setlist

Imaginations from the Other Side

Blood of the Elves

Nightfall

The Script for My Requiem

Violent Shadows

Skalds and Shadows

Deliver us from Evil

Secrets of the American Gods

The Bard’s Song

Majesty

Traveler in Time

Sacred Worlds

Time Stands Still (At the Iron Hill)

Valhalla

Mirror Mirror

Here's a bit of "Nightfall" from my cell phone:

Metal spring (and summer) kicking off, plus metal memoir update

This spring and summer I’ve got four bands/five shows on the docket. We get started this Friday with the legendary Judas Priest, touring in support of their killer new album Invincible Shield. Time to break out the denim.

• Friday April 19: Judas Priest (with opening act Sabaton), Prudential Center, Newark NJ

• Saturday May 11: Blind Guardian, Palladium, Worcester MA

• Friday August 2: Metallica, Gillette Stadium, Foxborough MA

• Wednesday, Nov. 6: Iron Maiden, DCU Center, Worcester MA

• Saturday Nov. 9: Iron Maiden, Prudential Center, Newark NJ

Coupled with a pair of shows I’ve already seen (tribute bands Foreigner’s Journey and Lotus Land) that’s seven concerts this year. And who knows, I may add one or two yet. Not bad for an old fart.

Are you going to see any of these shows or bands? Which excite you the most? I’m sure I’ll have some after reports here on the blog.

***

The heavy metal memoir continues. This is easily the most difficult work I’ve attempted … which is not necessarily what I expected when I began. The challenge is trying to tell a well-paced, compelling story, with the right amount of detail and audience applicability. All while avoiding needless details and navel-gazing. I’ve been writing my whole life, but I’ve come to realize that journalism, academic work, and non-fiction are different disciplines altogether than memoir. 

Plus, many of the details of the book are obscured by time and the haze of alcohol.

Not easy, at all.

But I’m pushing, a few times a week, and making progress. I’m working on a second draft now. My goal remains to have it finished by the end of the year.

Of internet induced “Panic Attack” and Judas Priest’s Invincible Shield

False metal cowers before this shield.

Even as I’m feeling dragged down by the state of “reality” such as we know it, I’m buoyed, once again, by the new Judas Priest release.

The boys from Birmingham haven’t let me down, yet. Heck I even like Turbo. 

Could they do it again?

Yes they can, and they have. Rob Halford is 72 years old and this is JP’s 19th studio album. They’ve earned the right to do nothing, even coast on mediocrity… but they’re still bringing the heat.

Really, the new album is a marvel.

If you’re a true fan you’ve probably already read the reviews. Invincible Shield is about as good as the press it’s getting. I say “about” because I still perhaps enjoy Firepower a bit more, but that might be because I’ve listened to it far longer. I need a new more spins of the new disc before I decide. 

It’s way better than I hoped.

I was trying to think of how to review the album and honestly, there’s not much I can say that hasn’t already been said. Though I have said something, and you will find that below. I lack the technical music vocabulary to be a good music critic. I know what I like (classic metal) and Invincible Shield is it.

What you might not have heard so much about (at least I haven’t, though admittedly haven’t gone digging, either) is the lyrical content of the opening track, “Panic Attack.” Which to me is a brilliant critique of almost everything that’s wrong with the world today.

(note: if you don’t want to hear this semi-rant and just get the review skip to the section break)

I actually think there isn’t nearly as much wrong with the world today as we believe there is. With one massive exception. The internet.

Judas Priest isn’t necessarily known for its thoughtful lyrical content as compared to say, Iron Maiden. Priest is more apt to write up tempo rockers, songs about motorbikes on the highway, powerful metal warriors, or gay sex (I love “Eat Me Alive” BTW, no bigotry here). 

But of course Priest can write thoughtful stuff from time to time, and “Panic Attack” is one of these songs. I’m not saying it’s Neil Peart level lyrical content, but it is an on-point critique of the internet fueled panic that I believe is the root cause for the high rates of teenage anxiety and depression, and adult political division, we’re seeing today.

Really, are things actually worse today than they were in say, 1940? Or 1860? Or 1660? Do you actually believe this?

You know the answer. They’re not.

We are wealthier, healthier, in almost every measure today than we have been at every point in our history. But I don’t blame you if you don’t agree. You’ve been programmed to think that way.

So have I. So have we all. 

Yes, we have problems today. I’m not making light of foreign wars, terrorism, global warming, bad politicians, inflation, on and on.

But what you don’t hear about are the rapid elimination of poverty. Medical improvements. We’re wealthier, better fed, live longer lives, with higher IQs (YouTube comments to the contrary).

But we’ve all been deluded by the virtual reality we live in, which is rapidly becoming reality. At least in our minds.

If everyone in the U.S. had a cellphone in 1863, or 1918, we would not to be able to get out of bed. We’d be watching thousands slaughtered on the battlefields of the South, or dying in the millions from the Spanish Flu. 

Things aren’t great all over, there is cause for alarm… but the world is getting better overall. But our mindsets? Worse. 

I always say when you’re looking for an answer to a complex problem, follow the $. Bad news attracts eyeballs, it’s part of our flawed human nature, so news outlets and independent creators on YouTube focus on telling these stories and sewing division to get more ad revenue. The platforms want you to spend every waking hour on them, and reward that behavior. 

Politicians know they get airtime when they sling mud or label everything a crisis, or describe the outcome of every election with the solemn intonement “our democracy hangs in the balance.” 

We’re so reduced to soundbites that this is what passes for thoughtful discourse.

The result is an endless supply of apocalypse. On call, 24-7, on your mobile phone. A twisted funhouse mirror on what is actually real, the world outside your window. Until, as Halford sings, “there’s no way left to tell what’s right from wrong.” Unless you “disconnect the system.”

We all need to put our phones down and touch grass. I hate that fucking phrase but there you go.

Division sells. We’re doing this to ourselves, fueled by a constant stream of technology driven negativity. The winners are Google and Apple and TikTok and Facebook.

The Priest has exposed this problem with “Panic Attack.”

The clamour and the clatter

of incensed keys

Can bring a nation to its knees

On the wings of a lethal icon

Bird of prey (aside: is this a Twitter reference?)

It’s a sign of the times when 

bedlam rules

When the masses condone

pompous fools

And the scales of justice tip

in disarray

The good news is that I see some signs of people pushing back on this, booing AI for example, which is as inhuman and fake as it gets.

 

The actual album review 

As for the album? Short review: It kicks ass.

Longer review? It kicks serious fucking ass.

The first time I heard it, I was like OK, “Panic Attack” is killer. Now how about “The Serpent and the King?”

That destroys too. I like it even better. Might be my favorite song on the album. At least at the moment. The guitar behind the chorus mimics the sway of a serpent, I swear. Love it.

Now we’ve got “Invincible Shield.” Title track, so it’s got to be good… and yep it is. It’s awesome.

Surely it must let up at “Devil in Disguise.” Or “Gates of Hell.”

Nope, and nope. If you’re keeping track at home that’s five fucking straight songs of all killer, no filler, for a metal band whose first album, Rocka Rolla, came out FIFTY YEARS AGO. “Gates of Hell” might even be my favorite track on the album.

I even really like song six, “Crown of Horns.” It’s a melodic, slow tempo song, but we NEED it here, to break up the metal destruction. You can only take getting your ass kicked so much.

OK finally, things let up a bit with song seven, “As God is my Witness.” But it’s good. 

The rest of the album is uniformly good, even if it doesn’t rise to the height of the first half. But “Giants in the Sky” is wonderful, would make for a terrific coda to Priest’s career and the end of the metal era (“homage to the legends ‘til the better end, leaving such a legacy my friends.”)

Giants indeed. 

Overall, the production and sound of the album is a 10/10. Halford can still sing (and he’s not what he was circa 1974-87, but who is?). Richie Faulkner is a guitar hero. I’m incredibly pleased with it, and happier yet I’ll be seeing these guys next month and will get to hear some of it, live.

The hellscape of KISS avatars and AI art

KISS (holograms) love you!

KISS just wrapped up a 50-year career in typical KISS fashion.

Selling product.

Not content to leave the stage with a remaining shred of dignity intact, KISS left their fans with a message, and a sales pitch: “The new KISS era starts now!” And unveiled the next era of KISS.

Digitally created avatars.

The new beginning? Artificiality.

KISS presumably means to render themselves, and their income streams, immortal. “The band will never stop because the fans own the band,” explained frontman Paul Stanley.

Paying fans, with their money going to KISS in perpetuity. 

Fuck I hate the world right now.

***

Artificial entertainment is not unique to KISS. We’re being increasingly inundated with images spun out of DALL-E, text spit from ChatGPT. Fake videos with AI trained voiceovers are making it increasing harder to tell what is real.

Now we’ve got AI KISS. Holograms, programmed to move based on training data, not spontaneity.

A nightmare.

I ask, with earnestness: What is the point?

Before the advent of AI, had you asked me why I liked KISS I would probably have answered “the music."

But now I realize, it was also the band members.

People made the music. Putting aside debate about their actual talent, Gene, Paul, Peter, and Ace blended their unique backgrounds and experiences to write songs. They had several false starts and tentative steps toward their final brand image. It was a messy path of false starts, playing shows in high school gyms in front of a dozen disinterested fans, before they finally hit it big.

The end product was, almost miraculously, pretty awesome, at least from an entertainment perspective. 

Paul Stanley is a human being possessed of loves and interests, passions, faults, foibles, and flaws. As were the other members of KISS. Together they wrote great songs and terrible songs. Classic albums and awful clunkers. They did some amazing tours, limped through others, and put out some really shitty merchandise.

I love it all.

I love it because KISS is unique, and every member that served in the band, unique (especially Vinnie Vincent). It’s what makes them entertaining. This humanness is an incalculable part of what makes KISS endearing to its fans. 

KISS is easy to pick on, and mock. “They were already artificial!” OK, fair enough. But they were and are real people who against long odds, built a career most would envy.

The next era is a mockery, and its only just begun.

Will AI generated Paul Stanley paint pictures, bang groupies, have children, fight with digital Ace Frehley on Eddie Trunk? Will the band members write ChatGPT generated memoirs about their “tours”? Inspire new AI artists?

Are we supposed to go to concerts and cheer on holograms?

There is no point to AI generated art. It is soulless in every sense of the term. Because there is no soul behind it, not even a ghost in the machine. Just scraped and aggregated data, vectored and served up.

One small bit of good news is that it appears AI generated art is not copyrightable. And it doesn’t deserve to be, because there is nothing worth preserving in it. It is the pinnacle of corporate, Silicon Valley soul-lessness, a golem of circuitry built from the flesh and blood output of real artists.

If we had any sense as a species, AI would be put to use solving actual big problems like climate change and nuclear fusion. Detecting cancers unseen to the naked eye. Or automating soulless, mind-crushing tasks.

To be fair AI is being used in some of these applications. I hope these succeed. But most of the product development is being applied in the creative industries, and white collar businesses. 

Why? As with any open question about business, the answer is the same here as with any other: follow the money.

Companies are now rapidly training niche AIs and then selling them as subscription products. Businesses are already outsourcing human labor to machines, reducing overhead expense and increasing their profitability to shareholders.

This is commerce, not art.

Worse, kids are using it to write papers, teachers to grade these fake papers, “creators” to fuel their content pipeline. What are we learning? What is more impressive, a guitar virtuoso who has spent 25 years mastering his craft, a generational talent like Frank Frazetta painting with fire, or some kid putting prompts into DALL-E?

People are the losers in the AI race. As are dignity, hard work, effort, and talent.

So is the future. We’re sacrificing that, too. And we’re making a mockery of the past.

A massive part of the appeal of Conan and Solomon Kane and Kull is its creator, Robert E. Howard. Howard was rooted in Cross Plains, possessed of a voracious reading habit, writing talent, and an imagination as big as Texas. He was complex, contradictory, full of great passions, “giant melancholies and gigantic mirths.” All of it formed the wellspring of his art.

AI has none of this. There is no background to excavate, no influences to explore, no literary legacy to debate, no arguments over places in the pantheon. 

AGIs have no history. They never worked on oil fields, felt the sting of lost loves, experienced the alienation of an artistic soul in a town whose residents despised its craft.

AI generated writing is the death knell of literary criticism. How can one say anything about the output of a program, scraping and training itself on massive data sets of already existing content? A hellish, endless loop of sophisticated repetition and large-scale copying, including everything Robert E. Howard ever wrote?

To recap: AI generated art, including images and text, but also AI avatars, AI music, all of it, is void of meaning. It is shallow, empty, and purposeless.

Inhuman.

I will not be part of creating it, or consuming it. 

Neither should you.

Ace Frehley, Nashua Center for the Arts (Aug. 2023)--a review

We had good seats... up close and personal with Ace Frehley.

Wildly unexpected: Ace Frehley played a cover of Thin Lizzy’s “Emerald” at the Nashua Center for the Arts last night. But I’ve come to expect the unexpected out of Ace.

The former KISS lead guitarist has always been a loose cannon. That’s what led to his departure from the band; Ace quit in 1982 but his time was coming to an end regardless. He loved booze and drugs too much, lacked discipline and seriousness, and was unreliable. Which of course put him at direct odds with the businessmen and defenders of the KISS brand, Paul and Gene.

Ace went on to have a moderately successful solo career with Frehley’s Comet, famously reunited with the band for a reunion tour in 1996, and left again in another huff in 2002. In his wild biography No Regrets Ace sends most of his ire in the direction of the controlling, sex-addicted Gene Simmons; today he is openly quarreling with Paul Stanley, who himself stooped to Ace’s level by denigrating Ace’s playing and professionalism (despite the fact that Paul is openly using vocal tracks to cover up his shot voice).

It's rather pathetic, watching the infighting of 70-year-old men who hit the equivalent of the lottery in the 70s but can’t seem to get beyond their own egos and let the past remain there.

But to be honest, it’s also fucking fun, in a watching a train wreck from afar, guiltily, kind of way.

When you’re a deep fan of KISS--the kind who goes beyond the music and explores their crazy history, the rise and fall and glorious return, the nonsense of albums like Unmasked and The Elder and weird transient members like Vinnie Vincent, and all the merchandise spinoffs and now public beefs and shit-stirring—it’s like participating in a reality TV show spanning 50 years, with dozens of spinoffs and subplots. It’s endless and endlessly fascinating.

There aren’t really a lot of good guys.

KISS (the current incarnation) does not precisely even play concerts anymore, but put on a highly choreographed performance; everything is calculated and planned. Zero spontaneity. Yeah, Gene/Paul/Tommy/Eric put on a much bigger, brighter, and more colorful show than Ace, and KISS sounds much better, but it’s plastic. For almost 20 years now, perhaps since the “farewell” tour of 2001, it’s been essentially the same thing; the last unique show I remember KISS putting on was Psycho Circus and its ill-conceived 3D effects. 

Ace has slouched along with his own solo career since the mid-80s. He’s never had a good voice, never taken care of himself physically (though he says he’s been sober since 2006), BUT he does his brand of loose, boozy rock well, and has surrounded himself with a talented band including three dudes who can all sing, and share the vocal duties and take the load off what is clearly at this stage a very frail Frehley.

So KISS isn't great these days, and neither is Ace. But I still love them both.

Concerts have always for me been about good times with friends, and unique experiences, first, and the music, while important, is second. Last night was a fun experience, and the music was OK too. It checked the boxes for a good time. And it was.

Ace busted out a lot of old KISS tunes including “Parasite,” “Detroit Rock City,” “Cold Gin,” “Shock Me,” “Deuce” and “Love Gun.” He played many solo hits, including (of course) “New York Groove,” but also “Rip It Out,” “Rock Soldiers,” “Snowblind,” “Speedin’ Back to My Baby” and “Hard Times.”

I think I got them all, but I wasn’t taking notes, either.

Oh yeah, and “Emerald,” which was a pleasant surprise. 

Wayne and I. 

The usual weird Ace-ness accompanied all of this. Ace slagged Paul once; Ace admitted he can’t sing Love Gun, “but neither can Paul” before turning over the vocals to his drummer. He told a weirdly placed story about falling down his stairs in his own home in a sort of half apology for not being as spry on stage (he never has been). An odd fedora wearing promoter who resembled a faux pro wrestling manager lurked along the side of the stage taking pictures, and at the end of the show held open a bathrobe for Ace to step into. 

Ace shared interesting short anecdotes about old KISS songs (conceiving the riff for Cold Gin on the subway, Gene admitting not knowing what lyrics of Deuce meant, etc.). And of course he played a smoke show solo.

Nashua is a little rough around the edges but the main drag was loaded with breweries, restaurants, and pubs. We watched one overserved dude make an ass of himself before moving on.

Fun stuff, quirky, unique. Another one for the record books. 

My friend Wayne and I both remarked that this may be the last time Ace comes this way, based on his condition, but one never knows. He is after all, a wild card, and may yet have an Ace in his deck. OK, that's enough card metaphors for one day.

Railing against AI art

I hate computer generated art* and worry very deeply about what a future dominated by artificial intelligence will look like. Both for artists, consumers, observers, fans, and anyone who cares about human creativity in general.

One of the regular YouTubers I enjoy watching is Rick Beato. Rick serves up long form, in depth interviews with artists whose work I admire (recently Sting, and Billy Corgan for example). He attracts great guests because he’s not a quack, or a conspiracy theorist. His large following (3.3M) appreciates his candor, personality, passion, and sharp insights into what makes certain songs, albums, or artists great. Moreover through his talent he replicates many of those sounds in the studio with a guitar or keyboard.

But in his most recent video he touches on something that has occupied my mind more and more these days. “How Auto-Tune Destroyed Popular Music” includes a discussion of generative artificial intelligence music companies set to unleash music wholly made by AI. “The selling point of generative AI is that no musical knowledge or training is necessary. Anyone can potentially create a hit song with the help of computers that evolve with each artificially produced guitar lick or drum beat,” Beato says.

Yuck. Sounds fucking awful.

A quick recap of where we’re at:

• Humans can prompt AI programs (i.e., Midjourney, etc.) to generate pictures, for example sword-and-sorcery images that look a lot like something Frank Frazetta or Ken Kelly might have created, while also being something new. Many of these are pretty good.
• ChatGPT is authoring stories with just a few prompts. Not as good, often poor, but in some cases passable… and this technology will get better.

I fail to see how any of this is good for art.

The argument about “democratizing music” is horseshit. Yeah, let’s bypass the cost of having to pay for a studio drummer and democratize the cost of a recording studio for the struggling musician… but now let’s cut out the song writer and the singer as well, and proceed straight to entering prompts in a computer.

My best friend’s son is just starting to learn the guitar. Even though he’s just 13 he’s gotten pretty good… because he’s put in hours of practice. It’s awesome to watch him grow, but also fair to ask: Why bother, kid?

Are human beings supposed to consume computer developed art, and embrace it with our soul (if you believe we have one, and are not just flesh and blood robots)?

What about guys like Beato? Are they supposed to analyze computer generated art? Who are they going to talk to… some nerd who input the prompts, or the software engineer who designed the program? Or maybe some version of HAL 9000?

At that point, why have humans at all? Should we just accept our robot overlords?

Where is the place for high, noble art in all of this?

The real crime is that all of these algorithms are based off mass data that is taken from original work by human beings who will never be acknowledged or compensated for their efforts. Google has floated a repeated claim that all information should be “free,” and all of the world’s library digitized. But they and a handful of other large corporations are the ones getting rich from this process. Beato asks the same: “Really the only question is, who gets paid for it? Who are the songwriters? Are they the programmers that program it?”

And this is just art. No one is really talking about deep fakes, and the destruction of what is truthful through the production of fake news, and the subsequent loss of our grasp on reality.

I think AI has amazing potential for improving the quality of human lives, and in many ways already has. If an AI can detect cancers unseen by a radiologist’s eye, that’s a technology I want deployed STAT. I’m in favor of self-driving cars that reduce the human error that leads to most roadway fatalities. Let’s get cheap self-driving cars out there, even if they cost drivers’ jobs.

But art? Art is not a tool; art is created by humans and enjoyed by humans. Creating art, and putting in the hours to do so, is a meaningful act, i.e., meaning-generative. It’s one of the few refuges of meaning we have left. What’s the point of art without a human mind behind it, guiding its creation?

Call me an old fart but a world where we consume AI generated art is not one I want to live in. I’m glad I have my old CDs and will just sit in my corner and listen to them. And go see cover bands that cover the old shit I like while refusing to auto-tune their voices.

I have tried to embrace new tech, and have (laptop, cell phone, reasonably modern car) but general AI seems to me a bridge too far, and one we should not cross--at least without some serious thinking about the economics and societal impact.

Yup, first post of 2023 and I’m officially an Old Man Who Shouts at Cloud.

*I make an exception for CGI, etc. that adds detail to sets and supplements the work of human actors. 

Defending 80s KISS

Big hair, and hair shirts.

According to some "fans" (I won’t name names—yet), KISS was only good in the 70s, and once the makeup came off they were irrelevant. The same types think that KISS is entirely a gimmick, a circus act that, minus the costumes and fireworks, would be forgotten to history.

Needless to say I don’t agree with this argument, and push back hard on it. I would never compare KISS to Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, nor even the better metal acts (Maiden, Priest). But nor would KISS, frankly. They’re a party rock band who happened to do that type of music as well or better than anyone. They know this, we know this, we’re all in on it together. And having fun.

I started listening to KISS somewhere around the dawning of my interest in rock music, 1987 or so, circa my freshman year in high school. The first KISS album I ever owned was Crazy Nights. By then, KISS had long been out of makeup, shorn away two members of the original band (and a few others like Mark St. John and Vinny Vincent had also come and gone). In place of fan favorites Peter Criss and Ace Frehley were Eric Carr and Bruce Kulick. 

I knew KISS from the likes of Beth and Rock and Roll All Nite, but it wasn’t until 1987 and Crazy Nights that I became a true fan. So, I categorically reject the argument that KISS is a gimmick who roped in kids with the makeup. I’m sure that occurred in some instances, but come on, be serious—how long can that infatuation and shock stage possibly last? A year, three, 10? Surely not 50 years. A wave of trash bands with more shock and awe came along in KISS’ wake, and today no one remembers them. Underneath it all, KISS wrote a lot of good, straightforward rock-and-roll that kept the fans coming back. Simple stuff, yes. But if writing commercial rock hits were easy everyone would be doing it. 

KISS was of course awesome in the 70s, taking a rocket ride straight to the top with the likes of KISS Alive. They were on lunchboxes, comic books, even starred in a terrible made for TV film (KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park). And, underneath the limousines and seven-inch leather heels, they wrote some of their best material in the 70s. Hard rock hits like Parasite, Strutter, Deuce, and Detroit Rock City, were great then and still are. Everyone loved KISS in the 70s—how could you not?

I do too. But, I’ve always had a soft spot for 80s KISS. Maybe it’s the nostalgia of my Crazy Nights tape, which I still have by the way. Maybe it’s one too many beers in the 90s, or in general a suspect taste in music. 

Possibly, but I don’t think so.

I actually think KISS peaked musically in the mid-80s. Eric Carr was without question a better drummer than Peter Criss. Ace Frehley is an underrated talent who wrote some iconic solos and hooks, but Kulick can play, and at this point was far more disciplined in his craft than the dissolute Frehley. KISS was also facing much stiffer competition from younger, more energetic bands like Van Halen, and had to step up their game. To its credit KISS delivered with some awesome music in the 80s.

I’m going to leave one example, right here.

I love this song. Paul sounds phenomenal. In the 80s he grew fully into this voice. This was his  best decade vocally. The guitar tone is perfect. The deep backing chorus is magnificent. The lyrics are what I want—empowerment, girl you messed up when you left me ‘cuz I’m the best, stuff I wanted to hear then, and still has a place now. It’s got power and punch. It’s better than just about anything you’ll hear on the radio these days but that’s not saying much, either.

I could go on and on with further examples. A few others: Creatures of the Night, War Machine, Lick it Up, Fits Like A Glove. KISS had it going on.

KISS was undoubtedly less popular in the 80s, ceding space in the limelight to the likes of Def Leppard. By the turn of the decade they already seemed a little old, perhaps a little out of touch. And they hurt themselves with a pair of turkeys out of the gate (I like a couple songs off 1980’s Unmasked and the ill-fated The Elder (1981), but no fan would call these largely lousy efforts their finest hour). But, for those who kept listening, after some initial stumbles they soon started putting out some really good material. It started with Creatures of the Night (1982), which holds up as an outstanding example of 80s hard rock/nosing up to heavy metal. I think it’s one of their best albums, ever. KISS continued to crush it on Lick It Up (1983), which got big props from the likes of Kerrang. Animalize (1984) was a step back, but who doesn’t love “Heaven’s on Fire” and the terribly underrated “Thrills in the Night,” one of my favorite all-time KISS tracks? Asylum (1985) had “Tears are Falling” and “Who Wants to be Lonely.” (“Uh! All Night,” a song about as subtle as a Penthouse centerfold, is embarrassing, but not really). Then of course came 1987s Crazy Nights, with its rousing anthemic title track, “Reason to Live” and my favorite, “Turn on the Night.” Which still makes it into my regular rotation when I want to hear KISS. 

KISS closed out the decade with Hot in the Shade (1989), which I don’t think holds up as well as the previous albums I’ve listed, a bit of whimper to be honest, but since I danced with my wife to “Forever” at our wedding, because of “Hide Your Heart” and “Rise to It,” AND because it was the first tour on which I saw KISS, it still holds a soft spot in my hard heart.

So there you go. 80s KISS. You probably won’t find too many riding out to the defense of the band in the decade of excess. I can’t defend the most garish of Paul’s outfits (green sleeve gloves and tight white jeans?), his trapeze acts, or Gene’s hair. But their music? Yeah, I’ll defend that.

Gordon Lightfoot recap

So the Judas Priest concert was cancelled after 70-year-old Rob Halford came down with a bad cold, but 83-year-old Gordon Lightfoot powered through on Sunday with a memorable concert at the Tupelo Music Hall in Derry, NH.

Yeah, my musical heroes are aging--check that, are aged. Or, more charitably, well-seasoned. Gordon as you'd expect has changed quite a bit vocally, losing his resonance and richness, and doesn't move too fast on stage anymore. Not sure if he ever did. 

But, none of that mattered. With a good band behind him, a great venue, and my old man and brother by my side, it made for a memorable evening. It was quite cool to see this old legend still performing, after all these years.

Gordon played 90 minutes and we were out of there by 8:30--old men all around, early to bed :). But he got through (almost) every one of the classics I was hoping he would. "Sundown," "Early Morning Rain," 
"If You Could Read My Mind," "For Loving Me," "Carefree Highway," "Song for a Winter's Night," and of course the highlight and everyone's favorite, "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." The latter was the highlight, and maybe it was my imagination but Gordon seemed to channel some deep wellspring of strength for this one. It was powerful and sounded pretty darned good.

In an era where everything can be immediately captured on video and shared instantly with the world, it's interesting that this song, which became a no. 1 hit in Nov. 1976, almost a year to the day after the maritime disaster itself, outlives the ephemera, and the crisis of the day that really isn't. That's the power of art over instant gratification. We remember the doomed ship when we hear those sad opening bars, even now.

If anyone reading this is a resident of MA/NH or the broader New England region, the Tupelo is a good take. New, clean, small so the views are all great. Excellent bar with a good beer selection (I drank a couple local brews, a nice Battle-Axe IPA brewed by Kelsen). Reportedly good food too, if you want it. They open 90 minutes before showtime so you can get in and enjoy yourself, and have some cool art on the walls, acoustic guitars signed by a few of the greats, etc. 

Nice bar.

(L-R) my brother, old man, and me. The place did fill in to capacity.

S&S updates: Glass Hammer, Schuyler Hernstrom, and more

In full disclosure I'm not a big prog fan, unless you count the likes of RUSH, and perhaps a bit of Yes' back catalogue. I'm metal all the way. But I've had the pleasure of discovering the band Glass Hammer recently after hearing from one of the band members, bassist/lyricist/co-founder Steve Babb, who is a reader of this blog.

Glass Hammer was founded in 1992 and possess a deep catalog of material based on the likes of The Lord of the Rings, C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy, and sword-and-sorcery. In 2020 they released Dreaming City, an album inspired by Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melnibone stories. Glass Hammer is now about to release  “Skallagrim – Into The Breach,” the second album of a proposed trilogy, on October 15th. As Babb explains:

“The project began as a nostalgic homage to the Sword & Sorcery genre, and to a lesser extent, the stories of H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith. It’s turned into much more, however, and my story of the Skallagrim, the thief with the screaming sword, has evolved into my first full-length fantasy novel which I plan to release next year.”

“Skallagrim is a thief who lost his memory and the girl he loves,” he goes on to say. “He’s up against dark magic and terrifying monsters to reclaim both, but finds an ally in a sentient, eldritch sword. Now his fate is bound to the sword as much as to the quest to find his love.”

Sounds pretty cool, I'll be digging into the album in the coming days. Check out the official video of "Anthem to Andorath" here on Youtube. After an atmospheric intro this one rips. And sounds great.

In some other news, my review of Schuyler Hernstrom's The Eye of Sounnu is up on the blog of DMR Books. Check it out here. I'm a fan of older sword-and-sorcery material and have not kept up as I should with newer authors and releases, and am slowly trying to rectify that. Hernstrom is a first-rate talent who gives me hope for the future of the subgenre and I can't recommend this book highly enough.

In more downbeat news, we recently lost author Robert Low (1949-21) back in June of this year. You can find a Facebook tribute here and a recent piece recalling his life and works over on Black Gate. I've heard many good things about his works over the years, in particular the Oathsworn series. Another author I have to seek out. 

I hope Low's spirit is sailing on a whale road of a different sort, and I thank him for his contributions to heroic fantasy and historical fiction.

A review of Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road (Neil Peart)

Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road (2002) did not quite meet my expectations, both the book itself and in a larger sense who I believed/expected Neil Peart to be. In life Peart was such a private person that I knew very little about him, even after listening to Rush for decades, seeing them in concert some 6-8 times, and reading articles and interviews here and there. With Ghost Rider I spent 460 pages inside Peart’s head, and now feel like I know him a lot better.

The bulk of the book consists of reprinted letters to his friends written and sent while on the road from approximately 1998-2000, during some 2 years of solo motorcycling that took him across Canada, North America, and Mexico. Peart would get up early and ride his BMW motorcycle all day, stopping at hotels around 4 or 5 p.m. to eat, drink, and smoke, occasionally tour the local scenery, and write letters. He often rode through the rain or navigated unpaved roads, putting a beating on his bike which necessitated frequent repairs. Peart is revealed as a lover of nature, an aficionado of good food and wine/scotch whiskey, books including the likes of Jack London (he’s a fellow The Sea-Wolf and Martin Eden fan, I was pleased to discover), and someone who valued staying connected through letters and evening calls with a circle of friends. Peart also put a premium on staying private from the general public. He was rarely recognized during his travels and when he was, was intensely uncomfortable with the attention. Ghost Rider reveals that Peart had some low(ish) self esteem issues, and was amazingly humble given that he was/is a top 5, maybe top 3, rock drummer of all time. I’d also put him way up in the pantheon of all-time great rock lyricists.

Of course this trip was prompted after the crushing loss of his daughter and common-law wife within a year of each other, the first at age 19 in a single car accident, the latter from cancer but also depression and a broken heart. Heart-rending stuff. These experiences destroyed the former Peart and left him rootless, unmoored from his past, and severing him from what he thought to be his chief interests, including drumming, which he abandoned for more than 18 months. Certainly he lost all interest in touring and playing with Rush, which clearly he considered his work/professional life, separate from the interests that fed his soul. Rush and music are mentioned surprisingly little in Ghost Rider.

Ghost Rider is also raw at the edges.Peart is at a few points angry, even petty, in his criticism of “fat Americans,” and an inattentive waitress. Some of these passages come across as a bit mean-spirited, directed at people who didn’t seem to actually interact with him, and were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. But these incidents were most prevalent earlier in his ride/early in the book, when he was angry at the world. A few times Peart expresses (understandable) anger that loud, boorish people are alive, while his wife and daughter are dead. I can’t blame him—that’s a catastrophe that I cannot imagine enduring, and I’m sure it led to emotions spilling out of which he had no control. I give him a pass.

Peart on the road.

In short, Ghost Rider is recommended, but probably only to Rush fans. At more than 400 pages it gets a bit repetitive on the travelogues, and could have been trimmed down. I would have liked to have seen less emphasis on letters, especially letters recounting old stories with old friends that lack emotional impact and relevance to an outsider, and more self-reflection on his healing journey. Some of the passages about him going through his daughter’s effects (stuffed animals, books) were heart-breaking and will remain with me. Peart’s time wintering in Canada, fending off the depravations of a squirrel intent on his bird feeder, with a nerf gun, were good fun, and revealed surprising sides of a complex person I never knew. I was so glad to see him meet the love of his life at the end, and say goodbye to the “Ghost Rider” persona he adopted on the journey (he adopted a few others too, pseudonyms, which seemed to be an ongoing theme in his life, a coping mechanism for not being fully comfortable in his own skin, but this aspect was not as well explored as it could have been).

I find myself these days listening to more Rush than I have in a long time. It’s fueled by a love of great music of course, but I suspect it’s also nostalgia for my youth, and for my days seeing Rush in concert, which will no longer happen again after Peart passed away in early 2020 from a glioblastoma.

Farewell Neil Peart, you are gone but never forgotten. Thank you for Ghost Rider, and the music, and your life.

Some ramblings on old school tastes in music, reading

Now that's old school.

I was glancing at my bookshelves recently, as I’m wont to do when I’m in between books and scanning for the next title … or if it’s just Tuesday. And it struck me that my reading tastes are rooted firmly in the past.

My top shelf has got the collected works of Rudyard Kipling, Rafael Sabatini’s Scaramouche, and several books by E.R. Eddison and Poul Anderson. The next shelf down are the Lancer Conan Saga, Karl Edward’s Kane, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Not exactly George R.R. Martin, Patrick Rothfuss, or John Scalzi. Any of which I could be into, but am really not, even if some day I do plan to finish A Song of Ice and Fire, if Martin ever gets around to it.

I do take comfort in the fact that I’m not alone. An adherent of Anglo-Saxon literature and Icelandic Saga, J.R.R. Tolkien was of the mind that anything after the Canterbury Tales was (mostly) not worth his time. I’m glad I’m not that extreme, or else I never would have discovered The Lord of the Rings or “Beyond the Black River.” But, in another sense I’m quite like Tolkien, my eyes cast ever backwards at the literature of a lost age. We’ll never have another golden age of sword-and-sorcery, when drugstores carried Conan the Buccaneer on their wire spinners and Thundarr the Barbarian thundered through living rooms on Saturday mornings. But that doesn’t mean I’ve moved on from those glory days. Today my drugstore is Abe Books and Ebay, where I hunt down old copies of Pursuit on Ganymede and Raven 5: A Time of Dying. And I know there are many others like me, based on what I’ve seen in the Facebook groups I belong to.

My tastes in reading are analogous to my tastes in music, which is likewise the music of my youth. My favorite bands are Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, KISS, Rush, and AC/DC. Some of these guys are still writing new material—some of it damned good—but mostly they are associated with their heyday in the 70s and 80s. If you’re a fan, you’re ancient history, pal.

I would not say I’m a hopeless case, irrevocably trapped in the past. I can and do enjoy some new stuff. Battle Beast, a young Finnish metal band for example, caught my attention, and now have muscled their way into my playlist alongside the likes of Blind Guardian and Pantera. I like Joe Abercrombie, including the likes of The Heroes (2011). At this very moment I’m reading and enjoying Brian Keene’s The Lost Level (2015), which just came out in the last decade.

But on some level even these “new” finds are anachronistic, often deliberately so, which continues to prove my point that I like old shit. For example, The Lost Level is a clear homage to the likes of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Pellucidar series. Battle Beast is an unabashed throwback to the 80s. It should come as no surprise that the band draws inspiration for its sound and lyrics from that era. Even in the new stuff I consume, I’m drawn inevitably to older forms of expression.

I do wonder: Do we develop our tastes during a formative time in our lives and become part of us forever? Does some biochemical process shape our malleable brains between the ages of 8-18, and permanently alter our mental wiring? Musician and musicologist Nolan Gasser offers some answers along those lines, arguing that the music you listened to as a youth placed you within a culture that formed part of your identity:

“I actually use the term ‘intraculture’ to describe cultures that take place within a culture,” he explains, likening them to subgenres of music. “A lot of it has to do with where you grew up and what kind of musical influences are in the air, but we participate in so many subcultures of affinity, just based on what we like. Intracultures provide us with access to music just because you’re a part of a group, and that group means something to you.”

“Music becomes that stake in the ground — ‘this is who I am,’” says Gasser. “But at the same time, the music people listened to at an early age becomes their native home comfort music. When they grow up, that music will be part of who they are, tied in with memories and growing up. All of these powers are why music is so important to us.”

There is no doubt that heavy metal had its own culture and ethos, one that I participated in, and on some level still do. I may be indistinguishable from your average everyday middle-aged middle class dude, but I have a metal spirit in me, an anti-authoritarian streak and a pride in having tastes that are harsher than the mainstream, even anathema in some quarters. I’m sure that’s part of the reason why I maintain such an enduring loyalty for these bands.

Interesting is my lack of nostalgia in other areas—I enjoy the latest psychology and self-help books, for example. I delight in the latest and greatest beer from new breweries (Heady Topper is way better than Pabst Blue Ribbon). I’ve come to enjoy podcasts as a new medium for consuming information and entertainment, even though I still prefer the printed page over e-books.

It’s really only certain forms of art, in particular music and fantasy literature, where my preferences clearly lie with works pre-1990.

Another possible explanation: Were the authors and musicians of my youth simply better at their craft? Were these subgenres—heavy metal and sword-and-sorcery—more widely practiced because they were more lucrative, or more creatively vital, and hence attracted more and greater talent, producing better art than we see today? Perhaps. Some authors can and did make a living writing for Weird Tales back in the day, and of course many metal acts made a fortune in the 80s. Artists don’t enjoy the same market realities today. The bar to writing and publishing stories and music is easier than ever, but I don’t believe it’s as easy to make a living at either these days.

Who knows. Be it a matter of identity and cultural imprinting, or idiosyncratic tastes, it’s hard to say why I enjoy the old shit. All I know that is that heavy metal and Tolkien and sword-and-sorcery were my obsessions then, remain so today, and likely always will be.