In Which I Review Classical Music
I’ve been listening to a lot of music lately. It’s normal when the only two things I do these days are game development and home renovation, but somewhere in the middle of painting my walls pink (or “rouge-beige,” as if that makes it sound any better,) it occurred to me that I should shut off my iTunes, shut off the radio, and expand my horizons by revisiting some of the classics through the magic of YouTube’s flexible music laws, and the even better magic of grooveshark.com. I already knew a fair bit of the REALLY popular songs from some of history’s greatest composers, but with all my free time, now was as good a time as ever to actually listen to every single thing they ever wrote and develop a real opinion on their works – as an experiment, of course.
So that’s what I’ve been up to. Queuing up music playlists, studying the classics by year, exploring the artists’ history, and otherwise becoming a scholar in the fine arts. Granted, my experience of listening to every composition back-to-back couldn’t compare to experiencing the music firsthand at the height of it’s popularity. Times were different and society has changed since then, so the meaning of the music itself is somewhat of a novelty to me. Still, I thought I’d share my experiences with you, my friends, as well as give my impression of ten famous artists of old.
Black Sabbath
This experiment was already off to a good start. I was only familiar with songs of theirs like “Paranoid,” “Iron Man,” and whatever popped up on the “Brutal Legend” soundtrack, and it was nice to find out that quite a lot of their other songs were just as awesome to listen to. What I really liked is that with every album, there was a sudden leap in the band’s style, as if they were always trying to invent new kinds of music. I ultimately prefer the Ozzy years (‘70-’78), but the band had their moments throughout the 80’s.
Favorite Album(s): Black Sabbath, Paranoid, Master of Reality, Never Say Die, Mob Rules, Headless Cross
Led Zeppelin
Okay, so holy crap. Apparently I’ve been listening to Led Zeppelin for years – I just didn’t recognize most of their music on the radio because nothing else they write sounds like “Stairway to Heaven.” Good to know! Much like Sabbath, they liked to experiment with music for the first few years. They also had this crazy thing for making every other song 10 minutes long. That got a little annoying whenever they started up an extended jam session of some generic blues-inspired rock later in their career. As it turns out, I’m not a big fan of blues rock, and this was just a taste of things to come.
Favorite Album(s): Led Zepplin IV, Houses of the Holy, Physical Graffiti
Deep Purple
Okay, I get that these guys are supposed to be really, really popular and are considered pioneers of heavy metal, buuuuutttt… they really only have about three or four great songs, a few good ones, and a whole lifetime of them just backing down from the metal scene and playing bar music. Rock, blues, rock blues… lots of blues rock. Kind of disappointing, really. They were inventing heavy metal for a while, and then stopped and did the other kind of music for the next thirty years. I could have stopped listening to their music anytime, but that would defeat the purpose of this experiment.
Favorite Album(s): Machine Head
Motörhead
This is one of the bands I was COMPLETELY unfamiliar with, as none of their songs ever hit radio around here. I couldn’t even identify a hit from them, unless it was a cover of another popular song. Still, there’s something appealing about their balls-to-the-wall approach to music. In the early years, all their recordings sounded like they were piss-drunk on stage, and they’d just jam incoherently about women, booze, and cars. Then, in the course of 30 years, they almost never changed their style. In fact, about 95% of their songs all sound the same (like a motorcycle engine trying to learn our language, making it the manliest form of music in existence.) Still, as awesome are they are, listening to their entire discography from beginning to end over three days of renovation can be very mind-numbing. And they have A LOT OF SONGS.
Favorite Album(s): Motörhead, Ace of Spades, Orgasmatron
Iron Maiden
If you would excuse me, I need to kick myself 666 times in the head for not listening to every single one of Iron Maiden’s songs before. This is the kind of music I’m always cycling through the radio stations listening for, and apparently, it’s all comes from one band. I could fall asleep to any of these albums and wake up feeling like a million bucks. And I did. They were awesome then, and their new music is awesome now. Much like Motorhead, they rarely changed their style, but who’s complaining?
Favorite Album(s): Iron Maiden, The Number of the Beast, Piece of Mind, Powerslave, Seventh Son of the Seventh Son, Brave New World
Judas Priest
I just realized these last six bands are all British. Between Monty Python, Doctor Who, and all this music, that’s one hell of a country! Their chief export? AWESOMENESS. “Judas Priest” rocked too. Not as much as Iron Maiden, but they still made me want to tear down the establishment. They had a great run with albums too, up until Rob Halford left the group and they re-invented themselves as a generic death metal band. Then for the first time, I actually skipped over an album (every song was about blood and pain or something like that, with nothing catchy. At this point, my experiment had failed.) Then Rob came back and everything was awesome again.
Favorite Album(s): Sin After Sin, British Steel, Turbo, Nostradamus
Metallica
So… just a heads-up, it turns out I really, really don’t like thrash metal. Nothing against Metallica, of course – I think they’re awesome now – but when I started listening to them, the first four albums were nothing but thrash metal songs. After the first hour, I couldn’t take it anymore and I found myself skimming through the songs, listening for anything that didn’t damage my ears. Then the “Black Album” finally came along and I fell to my knees and cried. It was one of the most beautiful things I had ever heard. Well, maybe beautiful compared to having my eardrums ground into mulch, but their leap in quality was nothing short of a miracle.
Favorite Album(s): The Black Album, Load, ReLoad
AC/DC
Remember when I said I didn’t like blues-rock? AC/DC is the exception. They’ve ALWAYS been the exception. All they ever play is blues-rock, and every song still turns into the best thing ever. I’d already been a big fan of theirs for years, so listening to all of their albums was a nice musical reprieve. It also made me sit down and watch “Maximum Overdrive” again, for good time’s sake.
Favorite Album(s): T.N.T, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, Let There Be Rock, Highway to Hell, Back in Black, For Those About To Rock We Salute You
Best Album Cover Ever? This one.
Pantera
I didn’t even know who Pantera was, or that they were considered to be a classic band. Yet they end up on just about every top ten list of great heavy metal bands – so I had to check them out. And guess what? Thrash metal. Practically nothing but thrash metal (if you skimmed ahead to this part, I don’t like thrash metal.) I honestly liked Pantera’s earlier work a lot better, back when they did *dramatic sting* GLAM metal. Hey, it had better energy, catchier riffs, and didn’t sound like an angry homeless guy stuck in the dryer. I’m entitled to my opinion, even if it does get me crucified by metal fans worldwide.
Favorite Album(s): Projects in the Jungle, Power Metal
A Side Note: I’m aware of the hypocrisy between me liking Motorhead and not liking thrash metal. The only explanation I can come up for this inconsistency is that Lemmy Kilmister’s awesome mustache has healing powers.
Ozzy Osbourne
Don’t ask why it took me so long to get back to Ozzy. The important thing is, I did. After noticing a certain lack of all my favorite songs while listening to Sabbath, I’d made a mental note to catch up on Ozzy’s solo career to find where they had gotten off to. And as it turns out, Ozzy is an even bigger musical genius than I expected. Fans aren’t exaggerating when they use terms like “Godfather” or “Prince” to describe his role in heavy metal – he is what they say he is. The Beatles, Elton John, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Queen, Weird Al – all geniuses in their respective styles as Ozzy is in his. While his signature voice stayed the same, he was always trying to re-invent his music and make every song sound unique. His winning awesomeness almost makes me feel half-bad for never watching his reality show, but at least I can appreciate movies like “Little Nicky” on a whole new level now.
Favorite Album(s): Blizzard of Ozz, Diary of a Madman, No More Tears
So there’s the big ten I’ve been listening to for the last while. I’ll probably look into more later on – and any good recommendations are welcome since I want to hear all the essential artists eventually.
A fun note: for just about EVERY song I listened to on YouTube, you could always scroll down and see people complaining about Justin Bieber in the comments. I have nothing against complaining about Justin Bieber, and I’m certain I will hate him too if someone makes me listen to his music – but isn’t it a little nuts that I can listen to almost a thousand songs on YouTube from over a hundred different albums by ten different artists, and the one name that appears in almost every comment section is “Justin Bieber?” I don’t know why all these metal-heads feel so threatened by this little kid. I’m pretty sure I could take him in a fight.
September 02 2010 | Music | 2 Comments »
