Mina Caputo began her career as Keith Caputo, founder of the heavy metal band
Life of Agony. In the early 1990s the band became huge in Europe, and the teenage Caputo found herself trapped in the life of a macho metal superstar when what she really wanted was to be a nice young lady attending Julliard. She performed as Keith for over 20 years, then in 2010
Niko Bikialo's quietly devastating music video for Caputo's song
Got Monsters [brief nudity] put the viewer inside the mind of a
transwoman as she struggles to find her place in the world and make a friend of the stranger she sees in the mirror. A year later, Caputo shocked metal fans when
she officially announced she was transitioning.
[more inside]
posted by Ursula Hitler
on Jan 23, 2013 -
15 comments
Meet Doctor Doom "Forty years ago, with his band Pentagram, Bobby Liebling invented a style of fiendishly heavy metal that hardly anyone heard. He spent the ensuing decades in a haze of hard drugs and big trouble. (5 arrests, 35 detoxes, more than 200 hospital visits.) Now, with the genre he spawned on the rise and a young wife and baby boy in tow, Liebling is feeling the first rumblings of success. Here's where things start to get weird."
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Apr 20, 2011 -
26 comments
Some videos: In 1985, Tipper Gore's
PMRC released a list they called the "Filthy Fifteen," detailing what they believed to be the fifteen most objectionable songs of the time, and the reason they felt each song should be censored...
[more inside]
posted by the_bone
on Jan 3, 2009 -
120 comments
"Beautiful Sunrises" is a pretty good litmus test for whether or not you like music for reasons I can get behind. If you don't appreciate "Beautiful Sunrises" as a unique and untempered piece of genuine expression, then you probably like a lot of bullshit music.
If I could spend five minutes of my life as completely into something as the vocalist of Complete is about being the vocalist of Complete, well then I'd think I had reached some sort of life accomplishment pinnacle.
-
Steve Albini (quote via this electrical audio thread) [more inside]
posted by anazgnos
on Nov 17, 2008 -
135 comments
Who you are is what you listen to: Prof. Adrian North of Edinburgh's Heriot-Watt University recently published results of what the Beeb calls "the largest study of its kind" linking music listening habits to personality characteristics. His breakthrough conclusions? Heavy metal listeners, contrary to public perception, are not a "suicidally depressed" or a "danger to themselves and society in general. But they are quite delicate things."
[more inside]
posted by beelzbubba
on Sep 5, 2008 -
65 comments
Br. Cesare Bonizzi, "the
heavy metal friar"(watch out for the volume on that last link), says he was inspired by the energy of Metallica and that he is not trying to convert anyone to Christianity, but rather to "convert [listeners] to life" and get them to live their lives "full stop."
posted by homelystar
on Jul 18, 2008 -
15 comments
In Bed With Chris Needham (
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7)
A BBC video-diary documentary from 1991 depicting the trails and tribulations of a teenage metal fan as he tries to knock his band, Manslaughter, into shape for its first gig, with many digressions into his philosophy of life along the way. Some NSFW swearing.
[more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry
on Jun 8, 2008 -
12 comments
This cheesy 1979 promo film from the group,
Blackjack, offers a glimpse into the hard rock past of balladeer Michael Bolton, which also includes a co-writing credit for a
Top 40 hit by Kiss. Similarly, Bill Joel disavows the days when he
posed in medieval armor next to slabs of raw beef on the cover of the self-titled album by Joel's heavy metal duo,
Attila, although
Julian Cope is a fan of the album and its Deep Purplish vibes (check out
Holy Moses and
Wonder Woman). To round out the trifecta, we have Tori Amos who got marketed as the metal-chick frontwoman of
Y Kant Tori Read (check out the video for
The Big Picture). On the other hand, metalheads have the opposite problem of hiding their pop past. Examples include the industrial metal band Ministry's early days as a
new wave synth act and Tommy Iommi's brief tenure as a
member of Jethro Tull before becoming lead guitarist of Black Sabbath. Meanwhile,
Bon Scott, the late lead singer of AC/DC, is probably spinning in his grave over the YouTube footage of him as an
Australian teen idol and a
bearded hippie with a recorder.
posted by jonp72
on Nov 26, 2007 -
70 comments
"To me, I've always looked upon the stage as a much-hallowed place, a place of worship for real artists, as I said just before. That doesn't just stem from rock n roll days; to me, Judy Garland was a real artist, Al Jolson was a real artist, people like that gave their all and everything for the stage and most of them finished up dying for it as well. In my view, nobody should be allowed to stand on a stage unless they can present the total professional thing, unless they really can sing and really can play. Punk was a total anti-attitude towards music."NWOBHM: How a now-little-known nostalgic reaction to punk called the New Wave of British Heavy Metal changed the world.
[much, much more inside]
posted by koeselitz
on Jan 10, 2007 -
40 comments
The New Wave Of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM to cognoscenti) one of the lesser known but most influential movements of the past quarter century. After the
innovators of Metal ran out of steam in the late 70's and were stampeded in the maelstrom of punk, heavy metal (and testosterone-soaked delindquents everywhere) found itself in a quandary). A number of UK acts took some cues from the punks, shortened the songs, reigned in the self-indulgence and speeded up the tempo, and upped the relevance and intelligence of the lyrical content, while still retaining the vocal prowess, instrumental pyrotechnics and young warrior energy that makes it Metal in the first place.
Some groups became world famous. Others only
big in Europe. Some great ones
missed stardom by just a
notch. Many of these acts have been cited as inspirations by Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Napalm Death and the thrash/death metal hordes, and even many post-punks. An interesting summary for fans, and a good introduction for non-mans who may have to recalibrate their opinion of the genre after checking some of these bands out.
posted by jonmc
on Dec 17, 2003 -
17 comments
POWERSLAVES: An Elektro Tribute to Iron Maiden A record label in Amsterdam has assembled 14 electro-fied covers of classic tracks by the British metal band. Vocoders, drum machines, and analog synths galore, plus influences as diverse as industrial, synthpop, and Miami bass. Loving tribute? Unholy abomination? Entertaining genre cross-pollination? You decide -- the entire album is available as streaming audio from
this Dutch radio station.
posted by Artifice_Eternity
on Nov 5, 2003 -
20 comments
