More Fun Than A Flaming Yule Log; My End Of Year Blog

I'm going to be 42 years old in two days. That makes me older than almost everyone who reads this Blog. How do I know? Google stats, bitches. They see you when you're sleeping, they know when you're awake, they know when you've been looking at my blog and touching yourself so stop that. Uh, for goodness sake.

So I was going to write my usual "Ten best records of the year" shit sandwich, but I care not for such ass-clownery at this point. I couldn't find ten new records I liked, really, so I decided to just prattle on about stuff that I did like this year.

Now, forgive me, because it's been a rough year and I could possibly be a bit grumpy. My Mom died this year, I embarked on yet another life changing move to yet another new city (Chicago, land of subway crappers and drive by shootings, not sure if I like that yet), I got a new job that I absolutely hate, have had no time to write or record any new music at all...eh, whatever. You've probably had it rough, too. Nobody's had it rougher than Justin Bieber, who has grown people plotting to kidnap and rape and kill him, all on account of the fact that his music is the equivalent of warm, stuck together gummy bears.

"So what DID you like this year, Chuck Matthews?" I hear you saying out there in the night like a bunch of rude grasshoppers rubbing their hairless leg-stalks together.

As the great Gene Vincent once sang, "Weeellllllllllll....."

NATIONAL TREASURE #1: The GREAT EL VEZ. You may have noticed the photo at the head of this blog post of one very pretty girl, one El Rey De Rock And Roll, and one very drunk guy in a stripey shirt. That's my wife Faith, El Vez "The Mexican Elvis", and me, your humble procrastinating genius. This was taken the other night in Chicago after yet another life affirming X-Mas extravaganza performance by El Vez, his band the Memphis Mariachis and his lovely backup singers, The El Vettes. This man has improved my outlook on life every single time I've seen him play (this was maybe the fifth or sixth time, can't remember). How does he do it? He uses a complex gumbo of political satire, Mexican pride, a mental library of every great song, move, joke, look and sound in rock'n'roll, and of course, the legendary coat tails of Elvis Presley. It's not Xmas until this guy pulls his bag of spangled jumpsuits into town. His show has not changed much in several years (he could probably benefit from including some more recent references musically), but it is the most fun holiday rock and roll show ever. One that doesn't skimp on the jokes, the theatre, or the actual rock and roll.

NATIONAL TREASURE #2: THE GREAT JD McPHERSON. I've been championing this cat since I first heard his record a few years back. Those of you who actually read and pay attention to my rantings here (and Google stats tells me that there's several thousand of you drooling internet weirdos) know that his disc "Signs And Signifiers" was my fave record of the year 2011. His combo of Little Richard/Larry Williams style vocals, jumpin' blues and rockabilly and "aw, shucks ma'am" nice guy-ness has been blowing people away all over the country while he and his band tour their many asses off playing every dive in the nation six times a year. This has all worked out very well for him, as he is now getting rave reviews from national big wigs like Rolling Stone Magazine, and appearing on every talk show in TV land (Leno, Conan, Letterman). JD and his amazing Chicago based band (who don't have a name, and probably should...) are an inspiration. His record, "Signs And Signifiers" is a couple years old now, but it never gets old for me.

GRAVEYARD: "Lights Out"
Everybody knows I'm a big fan of everything from the golden age (you'd call it "retro"), but most of you may not know that for me that includes not only the 50s and 60s, but the 70s as well. Graveyard are a Swedish rock and roll band that combines the best of obscure 1970s occult rock with howlin' blues riffs, a very bleak lyrical outlook and a singer that can shriek and howl like a wide eyed, straining, male Janis Joplin. alot of people say he sounds like Soundgarden's Chris Cornell but I don't give a crap about that. "Lights Out" is their new record and it's amazing. It rocks, it rolls, it's a bit of a downer, but in a great way. It's kind of like listening to Black Sabbath in Jimmy Page's recently renovated 1,000 year old castle in the bleakest of Swedish winter time forests while high on the pot drugs. You like that, don't you?

COCK GREASE POMADE:

I first saw advertising for this stuff on the walls of a bathroom in Austin, Texas at the Continental Club while I was taking a hurried pee-break in the middle of an awesome honky tonk set from Junior Brown. There were stickers that said "Cock Grease" on the walls and mirrors, and being the modest sort of old fashioned fella that I am, my cheeks sort of reddened in slight embarrassment. Then I laughed, then I peed. Then I went on with my life. Later I realized that Cock Grease was indeed a brand of pomade, and having spotted some in Chicago's "BROKEN CHERRY" shop, I bought a tin of it. My verdict? It's the stiffest pomade I've ever tried, in fact a little too stiff if you use the amount you'd normally use of another brand. If firm hold is your thing, look no further. And also, it smells AMAZING. Like honey and sugar cookies and candle wax. Mmmmm. Screw putting it in my hair, I'm going to put it on toast and eat it.

DOCUMENTARY OF THE YEAR:

"Color Me Obsessed: A Film About The Replacements"
This is a long awaited fan made doc about one of the greatest rock and roll bands of all time. Minneapolis power pop/rock/punk/alternative band the Replacements have influenced pretty much everyone who picked up a guitar since their reign as indie rock kings in the late 80s and very early 90s. This documentary features 1)No Replacements music 2) No Replacements live footage and 3)No interviews with actual band members. Despite that, it does have a lot of famous faces and many hilarious and awe inspiring stories. After watching it, you'll want to listen to their music, though, or better yet, just play one of their records while the DVD is playing. Essential.

DIG THE BRAND NEW BREED: Kurt Baker's new record "Brand New Beat" on Jolly Ronnie Records is a modern day revisionist history of power pop that favors the populist (Rick Springfield, Butch Walker, The Knack) as well as the cult (Big Star, Paul Collins, The Jags) sides of the genre. A new classic and you heard that here first.

That's my year end wrap up. I can't think of anything else right now that I actually liked this year. There are a few things I could mention like LAURIES PLANET OF SOUND RECORD STORE in Lincoln Square, Chicago. They're my new fave record store in my new fave neighborhood in Chi-town.

Let's kiss this year goodbye as it shimmies it's rotten stinking way out the door, and hope the next year is better, shall we? Toodles, kids.

Heavy Doom Coming Down: My Secret Love Of Doom Metal

I love a ton of different styles of music. If it has loud guitars, I like it. In fact I think that if I had to sum up what I like, I'd say "guitar music". Everything, and I do mean everything that I like has the electric guitar as it's core element. To look at me, though, you'd probably think I was a rockabilly, or a punk, or one of those greaser hot rod dudes. Most of that sort of fits. I do love classic country, rockabilly, psychobilly and all forms of punk rock, power pop, etc. Occasionally I'll shave my head and people will think I'm into Oi, Soul and Ska. I like those things alright. Another passion of mine is probably my earliest one: classic Heavy Metal. When I was 16 or 17, in the late 1980s, I had nipple length hair and listened to a ton of thrash metal, power metal, pop metal, glam metal, you name it.

When I cut all my hair off and "went punk" in my very early 20s, I started denying my heavy metal heritage. Certainly by the time that the vomit stinking tide of "Nu-Metal" (an abomination, for those of you lucky enough to have escaped the knowledge: A cross between rap, metal and funk. It was awful) took over the world of heavy music, I had entirely lost interest. I was off discovering rockabilly, hardcore, country, post-punk, and all the other delicious morsels of guitar music I could get my red and sweaty ham-fingers on.

In the mid 2000s, though, as Nu Metal's sickening testosterone fart-grunts faded into the distance, I started getting curious about what was going on in Metal again. There were some really young kids at my job who wore Iron Maiden shirts and talked about how great King Diamond was, and I wondered how these young bucks knew about such glorious forgotten gold-nuggets from my rock'n'roll past. Turns out, metal was getting big again. With good reason. These youngsters turned me onto new (not "Nu") metal bands such as Municipal Waste, Mastodon, High On Fire, 3 Inches Of Blood, Toxic Holocaust, etc. younger bands that remembered the ancient ways of good ol' forged in fire heavy metal. Thankfully, my good pal Damian started getting re-obsessed with the genre right around that same time, and began buying truckloads of new and old metal CDs and sharing them with me. Metal was back, and i was back into it, and could not for the life of me think of why I'd ever left the fold. Damian and I went to a buttload of metal gigs and got to see some serious greatness.

In the last five years, the scene has only gotten better. Especially the Scandinavian chapter who have produced such perfectly thrilling and chilling bands as Ghost, Graveyard, In Solitude, etc etc. The metal sub genres are endless. Your traditional Thrash, Crossover (which is hardcore punk + metal), Death Metal, Grindcore, Black Metal, Stoner Metal, Power Metal, plus your innovative Death N' Roll, Black 'N'Roll, Blackened Thrash, Blackened Death Metal, etc etc I could go on and on.

For me, metal is great when it's simple, raw, brutal and ugly. Early Bathory and Celtic Frost are good examples. I also like it when it's slow, heavy, atmospheric and spooky. Which brings me to a fairly new-ish obsession of mine. Doom Metal.

Doom metal starts with the Blues. Howlin' Wolf Epics like "Killing Floor" and "Goin' Down Slow" have the heavy rhythms, desperate, fatalistic lyrics and wailing guitars that would inspire English kids like Led Zeppelin and the Yardbirds to pick up guitars and start livin' the hard life. The blues was also obsessed with the Devil, and warnings of the evils of sin were as common as celebrations of the joys of same, sometimes by the same artist in the same song. Robert Johnson was said to have sold his soul to the devil in exchange for the frantic guitar genius that possessed him before he was murdered in 1938.

One of Howlin' Wolfs' heaviest riffs was "Smokestack Lightnin'". Does this sound like doom metal to you? Not yet. but if you bear with me it'll all start to make sense in a minute. Witness the blues.



When four British kids from the tough industrial wastelands of Birmingham , England finally heard the blues in the mid-1960s, they wanted to play it too. When they did it, it sounded like this. And Doom Metal was born.



Black Sabbath were, without a doubt, the first heavy metal band. Which makes doom metal the first heavy metal. The Sabs single handedly invented metal by playing the blues harder and louder than anyone had before, and adding black magic, hippy anti-war sentiments, a cloud of pot smoke and horror movies to the mix. Metal soon innovated itself away from some of these precepts. It got faster, harder, uglier and ditched most of the hippy sentiments entirely, embracing the hard, cruel urban decay of hardcore punk. Doom Metal, however, evolved from fans of Black Sabbath that didn't want change or innovation. They wanted to embrace the doom and darkness and the death of the hippy ideal. Just as Sabbath ended the 1960s with their storm clouds of heavy doom, these bands helped to end their respective decades with batwings, heavy chunks of riff destruction and reefer smoke. The next great doom band was Pentagram.



These guys were so doom, they couldn't even make a full length record for the first ten years of their existence. Frontman Bobby Liebling was so doom, he couldn't stop doing drugs and trying to end himself long enough to put down a whole lot of music in the band's original 1970s incarnation. Fortunately for him though, and for us, what he did put down ( a couple of fly by night singles and rehearsal tapes that were collected and traded by the doom elite before they ever saw wide release)was so good that it became legendary, and led to the first of the bands' many comebacks, in the 1980s. This time they did release an album, the absolutely legendary "Relentless". This thing is the modern doom touchstone. It is depressed, drug addled death-blues of the highest (lowest) order. This time, a harder, 1980s style metal sheen was present in the guitars, and the Ozzy like vocals. The atmosphere of claustrophobic doom and anxiety was palpable in the sounds and the depressed hippy lyrics.



After Pentagram, another band of throwbacks in bellbottoms came shuffling along, scowling and howling into the wind. Witness the mighty SAINT VITUS.



They were so doom, they signed to a hardcore punk label (SST, home of Black Flag) and toured with mostly punk bands, whose audiences mostly hated them. They were so doom, they liked being hated. Punks despised hippies, and Vitus, like Sabbath and Pentagram before them, LOOKED like hippies, despite being more like punks in reality than most punks were, if you're pickin' up what I'm puttin' down. So the very clique-ish hardcore kids of the 1980s were horrified and angered by Saint Vitus' slow, dirgey, doomy songs and satan-hippy image. For awhile. Before too long, punk and metal crossover was pretty common, and you could be a punk with long hair or a metalhead with short hair. But that's a whole other blog. After Vitus taught the punks about Iommi, lots of bands started popping up all over who took the leaden, ominous, Frankenstein stomping tempos of Sabbath and brought them forth into the modern age. Trouble from Chicago were one, as were Candlemass and Cathedral from Sweden and the UK, respectively. Witchfinder General, also from the UK, were part of the "New Wave Of British Heavy Metal" in the early 80s. They took a Sabbath obsession to punky places and replaced the fatalistic doom message with day-glo comic book schlock-horror. As a result, they were pretty damn great. The 1980s and early 1990s were full of great examples of mid period doom. Also being born (again) in this period was stoner metal. Stoner metal is basically doom metal WITHOUT the horror, death and gloom themes. I like some of it, but it's not as interesting to me without the macabre, spookhouse, death-hippy acid flashback element. One "stoner" band who has delved more and more into the murky blood-waters of pure doom is England's ELECTRIC WIZARD. They are perhaps the greatest doom band the world currently has to offer.



Japan's CHURCH OF MISERY are one of my newest favorites in the heavy death-hippy genre. They have HUGE rollicking riffs, a great 60's LSD murder-hippy image, and all their lyrics are about serial killers. Pretty much genius. They remind me of Japanese Misfits worshippers Balzac in that they take all the best elements of their genre and distill them into a perfect product. probably the best solid example of a doom band going right now.



Also amazing are San Fran's ORCHID. They are so Black Sabbath sounding, that I imagine their newest record is a better Black Sabbath record than the original Sabbath are capable of making these days. Witness the pretty much perfect late 1960s stoned and satanic vibe they've got going in their new vid:



I would be remiss if I did not mention ex-Pantera vocalist Phil Anselmo's band DOWN. Possibly the biggest ever doom band after Sabbath themselves, these guys took Doom to a whole new, punky, thrashy, scarily aggressive level. Their first album "Nola" is a classic of the "southern doom" chapter of the genre.



One thing that almost all doom bands have in common, and I really can't find many that don't share this element (besides Pentagram, who favored Les Pauls and Down, who can afford to use different guitars for every song), is the Gibson SG. The SG is THE guitar of doom, having first been adopted by Sabbath guitar god Tony Iommi in the late 1960s.

Here's Saint Vitus Dave Chandler with his SG.

Here's Electric Wizard's Liz Buckingham with hers.

If you want to be Doom Metal, you pretty much need to have a Gibson SG.You also need to see a couple of movies. Below are just two examples.


And lest we forget the one that started it all:"Starring the personable Mark Damon, and lush and lovely women. Even though one of them is from the netherworld!"


Well sir, I'm running out of time here, but I hope I have hipped you to the gloomy thundercloud stomp of doom metal. It's a fun and funky rock'nroll sub genre that more than puts the black in your sabbath.

You Too Can Have The Stamina Of The Cavemen!

Here I am, updating this piece of duck vomit again, like, 6 months later. I suppose Google would send me a check every now and then if I turned the ads back on. They bugged me something right and proper.

As some of you may know, I cannot stop listening to music. I use it as a drug of sorts, influencing and reflecting moods and anxieties and as a general emotional barometer and stabilizer. I get bored very, very quickly, and as such, I listen to about a thousand different kinds of music. Well, essentially everything I listen to falls under the "rock and roll" banner, at least to me. But the variations are endless.

Although I am certainly known in most elite circles as a Rockabilly/Punk kind of guy, with certain Mod and power pop leanings, I must confess that I have long been into heavy metal. It was the first music I listened to back in my pre-teen and teen daze,in the ahem, 1980s, not to date myself, wink-wink-nudge-nudge. I have followed it with varying degrees of interest ever since. My lowest point of interest was the mid 90s "Nu Metal" phase of the genre, which was, as you know, ridiculous. I'm not even going to get into the jock haircuts, white person dreads and blow dried chest hair patches, let alone the turgid non-songs of this era. My interest in Metal was at an all time low in my 20s. While I was discovering rockabilly, 70s punk and new wave, power pop and post punk, the rest of the world was wearing red baseball caps backwards and rapping over poorly played Metallica riffs.

Within the past few years there has been a resurgence in interest, and an overall raising of the quality of, Heavy Metal music. As a result, lots of hipster kids and old jaded vets alike are jumping back on the metal bandwagon, myself included. My interest usually peaks in difficult times. For instance during a break up or a rough patch in a relationship. During a depression. When my job is killing me. When I'm broke. During a particularly vicious bout of gas. It dovetails with my interest in horror movies. In bad times, I need the escapism. I need the full body work out that the violence of the music serves up. I need the "I'm a bad ass Satan worshiping kind of fellow, indeed sir" chest puffing machismo. I also imagine that the music reminds me of the comfort and safety of my teen years, when I listened to almost exclusively metal.

Of course Heavy Metal as a genre is patently absurd. But that's the point. Metal is over the top. It is ridiculous. It is sometimes borderline retarded, if you'll forgive me the use of that word. The bottom line here is that metal helps us, it does not hurt us. And in this last year, the quality of Swedish Heavy Metal in particular has been astonishing. Below I'm going to thrust my gilded sword into a few new records that almost anyone can get into,even if you're not a metal maniac. If you are already a metal fan, you'll consider these classics in the coming years, mark my words and heed them well. Let's hold hands and discover, shall we?

GHOST- Opus Eponymous (Rise Above Records)
This is the year's big splash, the "it girl" of metal bands. Six anonymous Swedish musicians, faces hidden behind masks and hoods, got together and recorded one of the catchiest retro-70s pop metal records of all time. Is it even metal? There are some metal riffs, for sure. Is it pop? Well, it's catchy. Who are these guys? Members of Swedish bands Repugnant and In Solitude, if you're asking me to guess. In fact, the scary masked pope guy who sings is rumored to be extremely cute and snuggly Repugnant vocalist Tobias Forge, aka Mary Goore. That's kind of disappointing, as that kid is about as dangerous as a side of curly fries. Aside from his metal projects, he also has a Swedish "dream pop" solo project. Hence the super catchy and well written songs on this album, I would say. This is faux-Satanic Scooby Doo pop-black metal at it's finest. Really well played, catchy riffs married to lush pop harmonies and a super creepy, King Diamond influenced B-Movie horror atmosphere. It is really, really, really good. A work of actual genius I would say. I can't stop listening to it. (Note: above pic of Ghost Pope is by my pal Damian Saiz.)




GRAVEYARD-Hinsignen Blues (Nuclear Blast Records)
This record is so steeped in 1970s Sabbath/Blue Cheer/Mc5/Pentagram hairy white blues man sludge that it's hard to get into at first. On second or third listen, the songs start to peek out from under the greasy long locks of hair, and you're stunned at how good they are. A very, very retro affair, not a note on this sounds as if it was recorded after 1973. And it's brilliant. The lyrics, the vocals, the guitars, all perfect. The album title refers to Hinsingen, Sweden, which is apparently Sweden's version of Detroit. That is to say, a burned out once-proud factory town that is as depressed and decaying as our own American Motor City. Hence the darkness and hazy half drunk/stoned desperation of this record. "Got no friends/ Only people that I know" sings vocalist Joakim Nillson (who should pick up a stage name, like Hairy Stardumpster, or something similar)on the opening track "Ain't Fit To Live Here", while the band clatters around him like tupperware dishes thrown by the Mc5. This record sold 1,000 copies in the US the week of it's release. Not one to follow trends am I, but I find myself listening to this record quite alot these days.



IN SOLITUDE- The World. The Flesh. The Devil. (Metal Blade Records)
I am an unabashed fan of early Iron Maiden and Mercyful Fate, two bands whose shrieking vocalists, acrobatic dual guitar noises and schlocky satanic imagery has long inspired the imaginations of pimply teenage boys the world over. When I heard this record by Sweden's In Solitude, I was instantly transported back to my teenage, metal loving, trying to grow a mustache but failing miserably days of olde. Except these young Swedes actually write better songs. It's like King Diamond without the annoying falsetto vocals, and like Maiden without the annoying history buff, check your thesaurus lyrics. The overwhelming vibe here is creepiness, Satan, fog drenched moors, magic, human sacrifice, evil old black castles in the rain, leering demons and most of all, solid catchy metal riffs and melodies. The singer is only 20 years old as I write this, but it's his rich, gimmick-free vocal delivery that makes this record, along with the perfect Maiden/Fate style dual guitar riffing of the guitarists. It is rumoured that some of the guys in this band are also in masked mystery band GHOST, and it would not surprise me. The guitar styles are very, very similar. Both bands pay homage to Mercyful Fate quite impressively, but even the writing style seems similar enough that it could be true. A great record with great songs. A metal band so good that non metal people might actually take notice.



ELECTRIC WIZARD- Black Masses (Rise Above Records)
The only non Swedish band on my little metal hit parade. These long running Brits are a Doom/Stoner/Sludge Metal institution, and this record, which is their lucky seventh full length release, boils the whole doom rock mess down to a finely crafted selection of real songs. It's definitely not pop, but it is catchy. Black Sabbath is (obviously) the reference point here, the only reference point really. If you doubt this, know that lead singer/guitarist Justin Osbourne (yes, really) actually cut the tips of his fingers off a few years back ala Tony Iommi. It was "an accident". Justin has "fully recovered". The over the top Sab worship doesn't stop there. In fact the only goal here seems to be to out Sabbath Sabbath, and they do, on several occasions. The thudding, lumbering, cumbersome beat is like zombie dinosaurs dancing in a graveyard, if you can dig that, and Jus Osbourne's vocals are very much like another person whose name also happens, by "accident", to be Osbourne. Downtuned, fuzz toned, funeral dirge guitars emit noxious clouds of death-funk while the lyrics spin their B-Movie horror tales of Satan, monsters, drugs and decadence. In short, quite a good little record. In my humble opinion this is their best record, along with "Witchcult Today". It's their most focused release(which is saying alot for a stoner band)to date, and it doesn't meander and wander as much as previous records tended to. Here we have a stoner band whose ADD meds are doing wonders. Electric Wizard also features Metal's very own version of Lux And Ivy, cute married couple Jus Osbourne and his lovely wife, guitarist Liz Buckingham. They play matching Gibson SGs, they both love Sabbath and 70s horror flicks and weed, and they're married. Adorable! Buy this record if you like damp moldy graveyards, Anton LaVey, and Karen Black. Oh, and Black Sabbath.

So that's my Metal Hit Parade. I now have a playlist consisting of just these four records that I listen to on my iPod constantly. These last couple of weeks have been kinda tough on all fronts and if not for my Metal, I don't know what I would have done. Until next time, fiends!!!!!!