Monday, October 19, 2009

Gadjo’s Heavy Half-Hour

(DISCLAIMER: Gadjo would like to state that many of his best friends are Greeboes, that he appreciates the valuable contribution they make in terms of IT support services, and that none of what he's about to say applies to them personally)

It seems Mr Lemmy Of Motörhead (2:48 into this classic comedy clip):



was the star of the previous post; everybody’s interested in him, and (in the John Lennon sense) he may very well now be “bigger than Jesus" (though his trademark habit of setting his mike higher than his gob - see right - tends to make him look smaller). Anyhow, this doesn’t stop me thinking that Heavy Metal is all just, well, A Little Bit Silly*, and for reasons I still don’t fully understand I feel required to issue this Ten Point Plan to deal with it.

#1 Identification
Metal fans often try to avoid persecution by subdividing themselves into smaller groups so they’re more difficult to catch: “Thrash Metal”, “Death Metal” and “Doom Metal” are examples. However, one thing unites them all: they all wear black t-shirts with Poland tour dates printed on the back.

#2 Divide and Rule
Disillusion may be generated by inventing some more Metal subdivisions which are rubbish: (A) Deaf Metal, like Death Metal but you can’t hear the lyrics; (B) Thresh Metal, like Thrash Metal but more agriculturally orientated - basically embittered folk singers with a crate of Jack Daniels; and (C) Green Metal, like Black Metal but instead of Satan they’ll sing the praises of The Universal Earth Mother.

#3 Systemization
In case they grow wise to our strategies in #1 and #2 we’ll require them to wear at all times a lovely, colourful, Paisley blouse.

#4 Acne Tax
This speaks for itself, but as with any fiscal policy it must be set out clearly and fairly. To this end a complicated algorithm has been devised which calculates the surface area, pustulance and predicted vulco-acnic activity.

#5 Unsubtle Make-Up Tax
Mainly just for Kiss fans. (Covering up acne with makeup turns you into a Goth, which is a whole other post entirely.)

#6 The Heavy Metal Lyrics Entailment Law
All Gadjo’s heroes walked the walk: Jagger spent the night together with many people, and Hendrix really kissed the sky. Metallers must now accept the implications of their own grandiose statements. For example, Iron Maiden’s Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter..... does the band’s singer have any female progeny? He does?? Great! “Get your coat on, poppet, your mother and I (gulp) have got to take you somewhere today”.

#7 Free Shampoo
Ok, I’m sure Headbangers wash their hair as much as anybody else, but this shampoo is different - it makes your hair fall out. Headbanging’s no fun without half a yard of Laboratoires Garnier-ed wedge to wave about! Admittedly this policy creates a lot of angry teenage skinheads, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

#8 A Moratorium on Death
Metallers name their bands after things that kill you and love to play with images of death, helping them feel “grounded”. To wean them off this I’m devising an elixir of life (still only in the ideas stage, admittedly) which’ll mean nobody’ll die, just for a while at least, and death will no longer be interesting - think on!

#9 Resettlement Policy
Metal fans love the darkness, where they can incubate their inverted ideas of happiness. Many are quite sedentary and may spend all their time in one place - e.g. Knebworth or Germany - where over the course of any calendar year they enjoy 50% of their time under the cloak of night. To stop this we’ll establish resettlement camps in Greenland and Tierra del Fuego: April-September in the former, October-March in the latter.

#10 Parody
When I think about it Metallers do have redeeming features, foremost being their good-natured acceptance of having the (Metal) Mickey taken out of them. Here’s Bad News:



So, there’s the plan for the brave new metal-free world. Are you thinking that it seems a bit, like, unnecessary? A bit over-the-top? A little heavy, perhaps?? Yes folks, it is! It’s treating like with like, akin to a homeopathic remedy. Rock on!

* Don’t fret, Metal fans, by way of balance there’ll be forthcoming posts entitled “Classical Music is for Poofs”, “Jazz is Totally Up Itself” and “There’s Nowt as Queer as Folk”.

11 comments:

  1. Do they place their guitars over their groins because of a castration complex? Or do they just like the vibrations?

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  2. Don't fret
    *Groans appreciatively*
    Sx

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  3. Gadjo - I am much in sympathy with you, having grown up in a severely metallic area. Without wishing to detract anything from your excellent ideas, I would humbly propose that the lyric law be extended to all forms of popular music. I recall, for instance, a disco lyric which included the line "Every night is a Saturday night", which we should legislate to be changed to "One night in seven is a Saturday night". I rest m'case. The song "I can fly" should be changed to "I can jump up and down waving my arms around and giggling when off my face on illegal substances", while "I am the walrus" should be changed to "I have failed to shave my upper lip for a couple of weeks, and I'm off my face on illegal substances so it's probably better if I shut the **** up and go and lie down for a bit."

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  4. Thank you for reminding me of the word 'greeboes' and also illustrating to me for the first time how it might be spelt.

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  5. I'm all for setting up a heavy metal band as long as I can call it "Binky Sunshine and the Fluff Bunnies".

    Where's ma axe?

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  6. Thanks for this useful primer into the young and strange ways of our newer members of staff.

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  7. "basically embittered folk singers with a crate of Jack Daniels" -- you are hilarious! And what about "Blue Metal"? Or is that just a given?

    eagerly awaiting your Jazz post...

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  8. Friends, I really don't know what came over me there, I'm usually so tolerant and not given to advocating totalitarianism even in response to musical genres I don't enjoy overly. I have now remembered how much I used to enjoy Rainbow's "Long Live Rock and Roll" at the skool disco (but then that had positive, life-afirming lyrics.)

    Bananas, I dunno, I guess it must be a great feeling, and maybe it does the job for both reasons.

    Hi Scarley, yes, please don't, this was just a bit of a laugh - like I say, many of my best friends...

    Gyppo, good point, advocating hard drug use is no better (actually probably much worse) than suggesting over-theatrically that death is really good idea. I should remember that next time I listen to Hendrix :-) Similarly, there was "The Only Way Is Up" by Yazz, but after that we never heard from her again, so it wasn't entirely true.

    Gaw, I knew the word 'greeboes' from the early 80s when it meant leahter=clad bikers and the like, but web dictories indicate that it's denotation has broadened somewhat.

    The Jules, yeh, count me in, I can do 5 minute solos on me electric bassoon!

    Kevin, I'm as unsure as you are about the ways of the young these days, so it would probably be the blind leading the blind.

    Ana, Blue Metal? I dunno, does it already exist as a genre, and with 'blue' meaning 'porn' or 'a bit sad'?? We must know! Jazz is also asking for it, and I'm going to have to do it now as I promised.

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  9. Loved this Gadj and I eagerly await the jazz version.

    I'm quite keen on legislating out daft song lyrics too, although I remember seeing Wizard's song miswritten as "see My Baby Die" in the NME pop chart - brilliant - a lovely jolly tune that made the dying sound such fun.

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  10. What Hendrix actually said was "Scuse me while I kiss this guy" - another one to add to my list.

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  11. Lulu, thanks for the confirmation, I was worried I'd alienated half my audience, on the asumption that there's quite a large intersection between Internet users and heavy metal enthusiasts - though now I can't escape the Trashing Jazz post, which will be a little more painful for me ;-) Similarly, I remember The Four Seasons' "Rhapsody" sounding a lot like "Vaseline".

    Daph, yes, Hendrix probably did say that at some time: apparently he wangled his way out of the Air Force by convincing the authorities he was gay - a claim not corroborated by his later activities!

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