Thursday, June 23, 2011

Symphony X: The Divine WIngs of Tragedy

Symphony X: The Divine Wings of Tragedy

1999 was the beginning of a real transition in my life. This was the year things really started moving in the right direction for me. I was taking math and computer technology classes and working various temporary jobs, but living at mom and dad's to pay for it. One of these jobs was being an auditor in cigarette warehouse. It was my job to make sure that all the boxes were in the right places. Sounds dumb, but a box of cigarettes is on average worth a $1000.00 retail so they had to make sure they knew where each box was and that all incoming and outgoing shipments were correct. This was also the first year that had a CD player installed in my car. Cassettes were becoming a thing of the past (finally).

I had two more or less annual rituals going on that summer: A trip to South Carolina and a trip to a Kiss convention. (More on how these traditions started later) This was also the year when my main source of new music information had fully switched from 'radio' or 'guitar/music magazine' to 'internet message board'.

My friend Greg (former lead singer of Primal Faith and Edgar Blunt) and I would generally go to the local Kiss convention, hang out other Kiss fans and spend a little time with Bruce Kulick or Eric Singer. There were always vendors with Kiss related collectables (read "crap that makes Gene Simmons' wallet thicker") and sometimes guys selling import and or idie label metal cds. In 1999 I became aware of the band Symphony X, thanks to the internet message board for the band Fates Warning. I was really intrigued just reading what the fans had to say about them. I had even heard an mp3 because it was 1999 and downloading an mp3 wasn't going to happen because of 'dial up.' Right in front of me at the convention was a guy selling all four Symphony X discs. I went ahead and bought 3 of the 4, which a first for me. I had bought plenty of discs in my life "sound unheard" but never 75% of a band's catalog in one fell swoop that was basically unheard.

1 of the 3 totally blew me away: The Divine Wings of Tragedy. The impact is still there. The others are still great but The Divine Wings of Tragedy flat out blew me away. There is one section of the title track that borrows Bach's Mass in B minor. Now my other annual ritual came into play because a few days after the Kiss convention. I drove down to Charleston, SC to see my friend Matt and hit the beach for a couple days. Having the right CDs made the 11 hour drive totally worth it. When I was younger I could spend hours on hours listening to CDs, but as I got older and started working all the time and going back school again, I didn't have that luxury anymore. So having 11 hours to rock out with a stack of CDs was just what I needed. I made this trip many times and had memorized virtually every mile of it. At some points the scenery is so breath taking you can't help but be mezmerised. Having the right sound track just made everything that much more memorable. The Divine Wings of Tragedy was perfect more me.

Of course Charleston, SC has breath taking scenery too. Go there and you'll know what I mean, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, know what I mean. I'm still a huge Symphony X fan, and they hold the record in my book for "most spent on a single concert". (More on this later)

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Flotsam & Jetsam: Drift


Flotsam & Jetsam: Drift

1998 was a tough year for me for many reasons. It really was the point I had bottomed out and had nowhere to go up. During the first half of the year, I was in the absolute worst job I had ever had. I cannot even begin to describe how dysfunctional the boss/employee relationship was at the company I worked at. What made it even worse is the fact that these people had more or less hand selected me to work for them based on the relationship I had with them when I worked at National City Bank. This was the point that I figured it was time to rethink what I was doing for my day job. I also felt like musically things were falling apart too. The band I was in was losing its chemistry, in my opinion. It had become a 'job' and a 'place to be and a certain time every week'. The late 1990s were still a pretty directionless period of time for rock and metal. Alternative was 100% mainstream and the local scene was as dead as a doornail. I wasn't seeing a reason or a way to get ahead musically. I was also having some arm problems related to a 7 year old fracture in my elbow. So basically 1998 as a whole wasn't a great year for me.

This disc, while completey unknown outside of Flotsam & Jetsam's fanbase described what was going on with me. It was a disc written about frustration, anger, self doubt and disillusionment. Flotsam and Jetsam were pretty much known only as the answer to a trivia question, (What band was Jason Newsted in before Metallica?) and I think this was beginning to wear on them. When I listen to this disc now I remember how bad rock music was throughout the 1990s. Alternative was mainstream and metal was considered a bygone relic. Guitar solos were absent or frowned upon and technique was considered a bad thing. Alternative rock radio was milking the fad to death and many fair weather fans and wanna bees were popping up by the dozen.

Flotsam and Jetsam were also not a 1980's hair band, but they were still getting the same cold shoulder the industry was giving to hair bands in the mid 1990s. In other words it seemed like an arbritray decision for the industry to shun them. F&J had more in common with Metallica and Alice In Chains than Warrant, Winger or Motley Crue but were still treated as if they were like the latter bands. In some ways, I felt the same way about my professional life. I had a good degree, a decent GPA and looked as good in a suit as any other recent college grad, but could never land a job in my field. (I felt the same way about my dating life at this time too, but that's for another time.)

Much like Fates Warning's No Exit, F&J's Drift is about a frame of mind and an emotional state. When I am in this state of mind, this is a disc I have gone to a lot. Musically it still holds up today and would recommend this disc to anyone.

Blank Tape!


Cassette Recordings of various bands I was in:

These represent 11 years of time starting in 1987 and ending in 1998 and are mostly lost in time now. Here's some memorable moments caught on cassette.

1987 - My friend Aaron, another guy named Kevin and myself used to  play really badly in Aaron's basement after school and record it on a boombox. That's not totally a fair statement because Aaron was several years ahead of himself in the musical developement arena, Kevin and I played badly because we were really inexperienced. Aaron recorded this song on his own using multiple boom boxes to acheive multi-track recording called 'Jamaican Dreams(?)' It was as good as any novelty record ever written and I still crack up when I think up the surrealistic lyrical gems he penned such as '500,000 years have passed me by, but all I got for Christmas was a big bow tie'. For the most you had to be there to appreciate it, I was there and I still appreciate it, 24 years later. Aaron's mother always said it sounded good, but I'm sure what really sounded good was the fact that she knew where her teenage son was and what he was doing with his friends even if the music was 'music' in vaguest sense of the word.

1990 - Aaron and I did a 4 song demo on a 4 track recorder. He played bass guitar and drums and I played guitar. I still sometimes listen to this one. I was going get someone to sing on it, but it never happened. I was thinking that I could send this demo to Mike Varney at Shrapnel records and get a deal to do a solo album.

1996 - I was in a band called Primal Faith with 3 other guys and low and behold, we recorded a couple practices on cassette tape. Back then my day job was working at a bank and everyone there knew I played in a band. No one really said much about that one way or the other but at some point someone did ask if we had ever made a tape. I brought it in and got surprisingly good feedback, but none of my bank coworkers ever showed up for gig.

1997 - Primal Faith went into the "studio" on a couple Sunday nights and recorded 4 songs on cassette. Unfortunately, I don't think this recording really captured us at our best. The biggest problem in retrospect was amp quality. No matter what anyone says, bad gear can kill a band's sound, and the cheap solid state amps we had gave a raw lo-fi sound but not in a good way.

1998 - After Primal Faith fizzled out, a second band called Edgar Blunt was attempted (more on this later) We went into a studio and recorded a 4 song demo on cassette that turned out pretty good. I managed to get a copy of this tape into the hands of Savatage/TSO guitarist Chris Cafferty. I wonder if he ever listened to it or not, or if it just ended up flung out of a tour bus leaving Cincinatti.

I listened to all of these cassettes over and over again. They reprsented small victories and milestones in my musical life. I really wish I could hear them one more time, but that is fleeting nature of life. No dress rehearsals, no rewinds. You get one shot in life sometimes so you better take it. I'm glad I took it back then and committed it to tape. Who knew the day would come that everyone and his brother would be able to do their own digital recording on CD in their bedroom? Not the guys bashing it away in the parent's basements in the late 1980s, that's for sure. I still record my own stuff to this day, even if no one else will ever hear it, because that is the nature of the creative musician.

Monday, June 20, 2011

Watch this space!

Blogger's note:

2 new posts coming up shortly dealing with 1997 and 1998. These have hard years to write about in any coherent fashion, hence the lack of new posts. So, 2 new posts should be up in the next couple days.

J

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Queensryche: The Warning

1995 was the year I graduated from Ball State University with my Finance degree.  I spent my last semester of college as a suitcase student commuting back and forth from Ball State to Indianapolis on the weekends to do a couple of jobs; working as teller for a big bank and working Sunday mornings at a Little Caeser's. I was living at Elliot Hall, a 21+ dorm on college that somehow had been invaded by a bunch of foreign exchange students. Unfortunately, most of them were obviously well to do Europeans who thought they were better than us midwesterners. Arrogance and elitism became the order of the day to fit into the social scene and I wasn't going there. If you wanted to friends with most of them, you basically had to bash the US at every opportunity.

I didn't really get a professional job upon graduation. I still had the job as a teller with the 'big bank' but was looking to get into either commercial lending or branch management. I also had a second job at Pizza Hut* to keep me in luxuries, like effect pedals and more CDs. I figured in a year or two, I could get ahead at the bank and start a real life. In May of 1995 I graduated, moved out and said goodbye to few remaining friends I had at Ball State. One odd piece of trivia is that the last person I said goodbye to was a singer named Jeff, who by strange coincidence was the first or second person I met at Ball State who became a long term friend.

This was also the year that my friend Greg and I started our second band, which became known as Primal Faith. Greg was a singer/ryhthm guitarist and I was switch hitter between lead guitar and bass guitar. Greg and I were in a failed attempt of a band in 1994 that I won't get into now. He called me in 1995 and was interested in starting a band. It sounded like a good idea to me! We started out as a 'double guitar duo' writing original songs and learning covers. We spent our weekends of the summer of 1995 writing tunes in the spare bedroom of his house on the east side of Indianapolis. There was a real creative chemistry between us. More than once we found out that we had compatible parts of incomplete songs that we could put together to create something that more than the sum of its parts.

This was also the year that I moved out of the parents house for good awhile. I had my first real apartment just a few blocks away from the bank that I worked at. Sometimes, I even got to see it because I was working 40 hours at the bank, 15 hours at Pizza Hut, and working on music with Greg for another 5-10 hours per week. There will be more about Greg and Primal Faith in the future.

I bought Queensryche: The Warning because of the song "Take Hold of the Flame" which seemed to be the high point of their set when I saw them in 1988. I really felt like I needed to Take Hold of The Flame and do something with my life. Everytime I put in this disc, I am taken back to 1995. None of the events of 1995, meaning the bank, the band or Pizza Hut turned out to be my destiny. More on all of this later.

I'm also going to add that this a metal classic and was the start of a signficant period of creativity for Queensryche. It has aged incredibly well and is a 9 out of 10.

*(more on the switch between Little Caeser's and Pizza Hut later on)

Rainbow: Long Live Rock 'n Roll


"How to build a massively huge collection of CDs on a limited budget"

Back before Napster, CD burners, iPods, podcasts, satellite radios, hipsters, the best way to get music cheaply was the music club. The big two were RCA Music Club and Columbia house. If you are over 35, you probably remember the drill, get "x" number of CDs for "free" but then you have to have to buy a certain number of "regular priced" CDs. You also had to make sure to mail in the card each month saying "I don't want this months selection", or else you might end up with a copy of 'Lionel Ritchie's Greatest Hits'. I started doing the math on the clubs and determined that you were really paying about $5.00 per CD. I was a business major in college and this was one of the first places I started using 'cost analysis' in real life. Take your total expenditures related with being in one of the clubs divided by the total number CDs you get and it comes out to about $5.00 a disc.

This was a system I learned to game to an almost criminal level. There were times when I had 2 or 3 memberships going simultaneously. The best part about the clubs was that everytime you signed up a friend, or in my case an alias, you got more free CDs. At one point I had memberships under the names of John Hellert and J. Mark Hellert, both going to the same address through RCA. At one point I even added a third alias, Jon E. Helle (pronounced Johnny Hell) for even more CDs. But what really takes the cake is that every time I tried to end a membership under one of the aliases, I would get a letter back saying "Please don't leave RCA music service, we'll even give you more free CDs if you renew". Even when I tried to end Jon E. Helle's membership, this happened. Eventually after a couple hundred CDs, I left the clubs. I had complete works (or almost complete works) of Black Sabbath, Dio, Rainbow, Rush, Ozzy Osbourne, Metallica, Deep Purple, Megadeth, Iron Maiden, Van Halen, Kiss, etc, etc...

Notice I did say almost criminal level of gaming. The reason the clubs kept asking my aliases to rejoin is because I paid every invoice they sent me. I look at it this way: I liked getting cheap CDs and they liked getting checks that cleared on time. Completely win/win for everyone.

Back to the subject of this post: Long Live Rock 'n Roll by Rainbow. This is truly the best of the three Rainbow albums with Ronnie James Dio. I really wish this lineup would have recorded one more studio album together. They really had it going on creatively. Dio may be gone, but he will not be soon forgotten. Long Live Ronnie James! And yes, I did get this particular by gaming the RCA Music service.

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Black Sabbath: Dehumanizer

Black Sabbath: Dehumanizer

This disc was a reunion between Black Sabbath and Ronnie James Dio.

I bought it during the summer of 1992 while between semesters at Ball State University. That summer I was taking a math class through Purdue University at IUPUI. The class was called "Brief Survey of Calculus" and was geared primarily to business majors. I studied hard and earned an A. It was the first ever A I earned in a math class. This was my first experience with Purdue University and I left the class being significantly impressed by the teacher, who was probably a grad student looking to teach math full time. I am 100% sure that this is where the seed to get a Purdue degree was planted. There was also a young lady that I had a pretty good rapport with in this class, but she told me she had a boyfriend. It was probably true. One thing I remember most about my 20's is that 99.999999999% of the women I met had boyfriends, even the completely unattractive and bitchy ones. Sometimes it seemed like 'especially the unattractive and bitchy ones'.

Later on that year, my friend Matt Socey, a friend of his, I went to go see Black Sabbath on the dehumanizer tour. He actually scored a press pass for himself because he wrote for the school newspaper. He interviewed the opening band Exodus before the show and they were gracious enough to let me sit on the interview. It was quite and experience for me. I got to meet thrash metal legends and get in their tour bus. Their lead singer Steve Souza told us lots of tales and the history of the band and also how he used to be in the band that eventually became Testament. The most interesting thing Steve Souza told us was that he went Ronnie James Dio's 50th birthday party that summer. This blew my mind because, I knew Ronnie was a little older than your average rock star, but not that much older. This meant that Ronnie James Dio was much, much closer in age to my parents than he was to me. Holy generation gap, Batman!

Matt got to meet Ronnie James Dio and Tony Iommi after the show. I had brought a copy of Dehumanizer with me to get signed by the band because I knew this in advance. I'm 99% sure this was the last concert I had attended with Matt Socey. This was probably the most memorable one although seeing Judas Priest, Megadeth & Testament from the 2nd row was pretty memorable too. As I said before Matt has done well for himself as a music and movie critic. You can hear him deliver public radio goodness on WFYI radio in Indianapolis, IN (Check out my post on Mr. Big for more info about Matt Socey)

Musically, this disc still kicks ass and totally destroys Ozzy's 'No More Tears' disc. There is nothing on Dehumanizer that even resembles a power ballad. And the fact that neither Ronnie James Dio or Black Sabbath were pulling a fake retirement stunt gives them 100x the metal credibilty that Ozzy had in 1991.