A delightfully heavy cover of the Edgar Winter classic to start the day:

Dave Grohl discusses Voivod.



Thrashing Rage

Let's not forget the album that in 1989 beat out Metallica's "...And Justice for All" for the first-ever Grammy Award in the category of Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance, Jethro Tull's "Crest of a Knave."

The 1989 Grammys incident was rather unfortunate all around, in hindsight I feel bad for Jethro Tull even being associated with the debacle since it was not their fault in any way of course.

Many may know the story, but just for context, Metallica at that point was a very different band than they would become in the 90's. They had formed in late 1981, doing demos and appearing on a metal compilation album in 1982, and then finally starting to release full albums in 1983. Besides being one of the early and eventually most influential bands in the establishment of the thrash genre, they were particularly remarkable for their defiance of releasing radio singles or MTV videos. They were quite simply this hard working band that recorded and toured, and with each album just seemed to keep getting better and better and growing a large fanbase through word of mouth.

By 1986, everything seemed to be going right with their 3rd album Master of Puppets being a huge success and supporting Ozzy on tour for a good part of the year. Then horrible tragedy struck, and their bass player Cliff Burton died in a tour bus accident while they were playing over in Sweden. They were all on the bus, it was Cliff though who didn't make it through, and it could have ended the band. But they picked themselves back up, recruiting Jason Newsted as their new player, and released a covers EP in 1987, and then their next full album ...And Justice for All in 1988.

It was a much anticipated album, I was in high school when it came out, and already a huge Metallica fan. I can tell you at that time very few people complained about the production and lack of bass in the mix compared to how the internet has perpetuated that gripe, it was a different day and age. In fact, the EP the year before had "not very produced" in the credits, which fit the spirit of the band at the time, they were a scrappy hard-working metal group. No, AJFA was a killer album, they really reached deep on the songwriting.

And then they broke one of their biggest rules, but in the case that they did it, it seemed special. They released a single, the song "One" which was based on a WW I soldier who has been wounded to the point his life is an absolute horror unable to see, speak, or move. They also released their first video for this song with band footage mixed with scenes from the movie Johnny Got His Gun.

So now we get to the 1989 Grammys, and they finally create a new category for Best Hard Rock/Heavy Metal performance. Metallica is not only nominated for AJFA, but they perform the song at the show earlier in the evening. So taking all of the above into context, it somewhat sets the stage for the perception that the overwhelming momentum was with Metallica to win.

And then Alice Cooper who was presenting read the winner as Jethro Tull, himself looking surprised, and the audience actually didn't even believe it. The audience after initial silence then started to laugh, and Alice had to say "No, I’m not kidding. Jethro Tull." Jethro Tull themselves weren't even in attendance because they didn't even believe they would win that award (and again, this is not a knock on their album, more the realization of what the more "hard rock/metal" genre was and how Metallica was trailblazing at this point). Alice ended up having to accept the award for them.

In the end, regardless of interpretation of genre, it was more a reflection of the disconnect the Grammys voting had with modern day. Alice's theory was that they didn't recognize the younger bands nominated and were so oblivious to the Metallica phenomenon, they just picked an older band they recognized. It was a very bad look for the Grammys, but at the end of the day again it wasn't like there was a real competition between Metallica and Jethro Tull, two totally different worlds really and why I say it wasn't fair to Jethro Tull.

And despite fan uproar, the groups seemed to take it in stride, with Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich saying "I think the real victory was playing live and being part of the telecast. The visual and audio aspects of that will stick far longer than all the who won or lost business. People will remember the song and, in the end, who walks off with a gold-plated gramophone really isn’t that important." On the Jethro Tull side, their record management had some fun and put an ad in Billboard magazine that said "The flute is a heavy, metal instrument."

And then the Grammys next year split the hard rock and metal categories and Metallica actually won, though I think a lot of damage was already done. I know I never watched the awards ever again. And Lars did have a little fun in 1992 when the Black album won the metal Grammy and thanked Jethro Tull for not releasing an album that year. And therein lies the fundamental problem with the heavily insular voting for awards shows or things like the (not) Rock and Roll Hall of Fame...most of those folks are way, way out of touch.

Yeah, Alice tells it a little different here, but doesn't seem to quite synch up with the video!

www.loudersound.com/features/what-happened-the-night-jethro-tull-beat-metallica-to-a-grammy-award

S.O.D.'s Live at Budokan has nothing to do with Budokan despite having a cool Godzilla-inspired cover. In reality, it was a one-off reunion gig at the Ritz in New York. S.O.D was a spinoff project of Anthrax's Scott Ian and a pioneer of crossover thrash. I'm a big fan of hardcore punk, especially the Japanese hardcore scene, but lyrically, Anthrax and S.O.D. don't really jell with me. Fun record, though.

Watchtower's Control and Resistance is a fairly well known metal prog album. I listened to it last night along with the demo EP, Instruments of Random Murder. Good stuff, though I wasn't entirely onboard with the vocals or lyrics. I sometimes find that when I concentrate on the vocals or the lyrical content with metal it lessens my enjoyment. Instead, I prefer to focus on the drumming and guitar work. I don't know if I'm alone in that regard. 

Dark Angel released some solid LPs after Darkness Descends. I prefer Leave Scars to Time Does Not Heal mainly because the former is closer to the thrash sound of the 80s whereas by the early 90s most thrash bands were struggling to figure out which direction to take their sound in, and death metal had replaced thrash as the sound of the metal underground. The same struggle is going on in Anthrax's Persistence of Time record. It's interesting to hear the band stretch itself, but personally if i compare it to Anthrax's early records where thrash was this raw, new sound, it's incomparable. 

As I type this, I'm listening to Death Angel's The Ultra-Violence, where is easily the best record I've played in a while, but I'm questioning why I stuck this on first thing on a Sunday morning. I can only attribute that to Supercat and impulse starting this thread. What a great record, though. The guitar work is giving me blisters!

Power and prog metal genres are always a little challenging to me, there are elements I tend to really like but if the music doesn't stay heavy enough (prog problem sometimes) or the tempo never slows down with interesting breakdowns and slower riffing (power problem sometimes) I tend to get bored.

But there are bands that seem to incorporate elements of both and really mix it up, and those I tend to like more. Swedish band Dragonland fits this category, and this is my favorite song by them off of their 2006 Astronomy album: