Music of White Zombie

         White Zombie


This last week end a ton of old music hit the streets like it was brand new again.  I love it.  Probably my favorite of all of these was an album by a little band called White Zombie.  The album is La Sexorcisto :Devil  music volume one.  This was probably my favorite album as a kid.  I have bought this album at least five times.  It was one of the first cds I bought and probably the last.  And now I can buy it again.  You know how everyone has that one record that they say changed their life.  Well, for me this is it.  I had never heard anything like it.  I listened to it until it wouldn't play anymore.  Thats how I lost my first copy.

The album was released in 1992.  Unfortunately I didn't buy until around 1994. (the first time)

The record is full of audio samples from older horror flicks like the original Texas chainsaw massacre, Night of the living dead and the Exorcist.  Just to name a few.
Some songs on the cd were made to sound like they were being played on vinyl anyway.  So I could imagine what it sounds like on real vinyl.


Track Listing:
1. Welcome To Planet Motherfucker / Psychoholic Slag
2. Knuckle Duster (Radio 1-A)
3. Thunder Kiss '65
4. Black Sunshine
5. Soul-Crusher
6. Cosmic Monsters Inc.
7. Spiderbaby (Yeah-Yeah-Yeah)
8. I Am Legend
9. Knuckle Duster (Radio 2-B)
10. Thrust!
11. One Big Crunch
12. Grindhouse (A Go-Go)
13. Starface

Record store day 2012

April 21, 2012 marks the fifth annual record store day.  You will be seeing lines form around your local record stores.  Cities all over the country will be participating.  I know most of you probably find it more convenient to listen to digital downloads.  But you really are missing out on a great experience.  I am not bashing mp3 or itunes or anything like that.  In fact I think they're cool.  Especially to get music that would otherwise be hard to find.


  Tomorrow is like Christmas to music lovers.  Its a great day to get the old experience of searching through tons of albums to find the one thing you were looking for.  The best part of it is you usually end up finding tons of stuff you forgot was even out there.  Most of you should remember the first album you bought on vinyl, and the feeling you got when you brought it home.  Pulling that sleeve open, checkin out all the art work on the cover, playing it repeatedly.

   For those of you that have kids or friends that have never been to a record store.  Shame on you   Its a great way to support your community and your local artists.  Its a lot of fun and its good for people of all ages.  So go out and make a day of it.   Im headin to Nashville tomorrow to check out everything going on there.

Layne

Layne Staley was a mastermind of our generation.  Arguably the greatest vocalist of all time.  Definitely one of my top five, if not my number one.  Now, I realize I should do a ton of research before I write about him.  Just like all the other bloggers do.   But, I decided to speak to you more from the heart.  I gotta tell you even though some people may decide not to read anymore because of this.  I feel Layne's pain even still today.  This man was a tortured soul.  He struggled with demons far beyond drug addiction or fame or anything you or I could understand.  The difference is he wrote about it.  He described his pain even if Jerry was the one writing a lot of the lyrics.  Layne said what he had to say through his voice not always his words.  Please don't be mistaken there is a lot in his words as well.  Just listen to "nutshell."  Some might say that he and Kurt were plagued by by the same disease.  The same inevitable doom of "selling out."  I'd say that Layne struggled with writing serious lyrics and writing what record companies told him would sell.  Of course these days most bands not all but most, bands would sell out.  But, the musicians of yesteryear felt differently.  Unfortunately we have all paid the price for their decision.    You have to understand that music like this is just not made any more.  Sad but true.  In future posts I will write about Layne a lot.  Maybe a lot more than you all care to read about.  This is to encourage you to learn more about the man, his music, his life.  I challenge all of you to search for artist you don't know much about.  I know for a  fact you will find something you like, something you didn't know.  And more than likely something that inspires you.    When you do I hope that you will all take a minute to pray for them and their families.  And also to take a minute to reflect on the pain they endured and the sacrifices they made to give you the gift of unforgettable music.

metallica

I remember being like 14 or 15 when the load album came out.  I was the first one at the record store to buy it from them. I had only heard one track off the album Until it sleeps.  Which I thought pretty good nothing amazing but it was the new Metallica.  And I wanted  to hear more.  but, in the weeks previous to its release the DJ's at the local radio station where I lived in Jacksonville, Florida were complaining about playing the Black album.  They were considered an alternative rock station so I guess they felt like Metallica was too old.   Which I did not understand because I thought the black album was great.  But this was the nineties and flannel shirts were every where and grunge was big.  There just wasn't a lot of  heavy stuff on the air waves back then.  So when they actually started playing this style of music I was naturally ecstatic.

So of course the first thing I do is go home and play the album.  I was really blown away.   These guys had figured out a way to blend the mainstream type of  alternative music and the heavy stuff.  They came back with hair cuts gave the songs almost a blues type feel and took out all the major guitar solos, which were not popular for some reason back then.  It seemed to me that they had brought metal back into the mainstream.  Whether you agree with me or not that is exactly what they did.  You just weren't hearing that kid of music on the radio stations then.  In a way that had done exactly what they did with the black album.

But still everyone called them sellouts.  Say what you will about them, their lawsuits their haircuts, their loss and changing of band members.  No matter what you say about them they found a way to evolve and they still kept it heavy.  Granted sometimes it was heavier than others, I still give them the props they deserve.  So I think you should to go listen to it again.  By the way track 3 "the house that Jack built"  maybe the best song on the album.

1. "Ain't My Bitch" James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich
2. "2 X 4" Hetfield, Ulrich, Kirk Hammett
3. "The House Jack Built" Hetfield, Ulrich, Hammett
4. "Until It Sleeps" Hetfield, Ulrich
5. "King Nothing" Hetfield, Ulrich, Hammett
6. "Hero of the Day" Hetfield, Ulrich, Hammett
7. "Bleeding Me" Hetfield, Ulrich, Hammett
8. "Cure" Hetfield, Ulrich
9. "Poor Twisted Me" Hetfield, Ulrich
10. "Wasting My Hate" Hetfield, Ulrich, Hammett
11. "Mama Said" Hetfield, Ulrich
12. "Thorn Within" Hetfield, Ulrich, Hammett
13. "Ronnie" Hetfield, Ulrich    
                                                                                                                   

Proud Father

My son wrote this Essay for school.  When I read it I was not only impressed by his skill but felt overwhelming pride in him and wanted to share it with all of you.  I know you will enjoy this as much as did.

                                                      Leonard Bernstein
                                               http://cloutier-bernstein.webs.com/    
Leonard Bernstein (August 25, 1918-October 14, 1990) composed,conducted,and played music for the piano in the 20th Century.He was born in Lawrenceburg,Massachusetts on August 25, 1918 and died in New York City,New York on October 14, 1990.Bernstein lived in America all of his life.He lived in many different cities and went to many different schools in Massachusetts. He also lived in and did a lot of his work in New York.Leonard Bernstein went to many school and had many teachers including Helen Coates.He attended the schools of,Garrison Grammar School and the Boston Latin School.After he graduated Boston Latin School in 1935, he went to study at Harvard University where he studied music with Edward Burlingame Hill and Waltor Piston who wrote many harmony and counterpoint textbooks.After studying at Harvard University he went to Philadelphia to study at the Curtis Institute of Music.At the Curtis Institute of Music he studied conducting with Fritz Reiner and studied orchestration with Randall Thompson.He also attended Berkshire Music Center after he left Curtis Institute of Music.At the Berkshire Music Center he studied conducting with Serge Koussevitzky.Leonard Bernstein was born as Louis Bernstein but he changed it to Leonard when he was 15 years old.In 1943 Bernstein was appointed assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic.The first signal of his soon-to-come success came on November 14 1943 when he was unexpectedley to be a substitute for  the conductor Bruno Walter.The beginning of his brilliant career was marked when he conducted the New York City Center orchestra (1945-1947). From 1958 to 1969 Bernstein was a conductor for the New York Philharmonic becoming the first American-born holder of these posts.One of his most famous works was West Side Story originally produced on broadway in 1957.West Side Story was set in New York to tell the story of two members from rivaling gangs,The Sharks and The Jets.Two teenage street gangs containing members of different ethnic backgrounds.The members of The Sharks are people from Puerto Rico.The Sharks are taunted by The Jets who contain members of the white working-class group.The young boy,Tony,one of the jets has fell in love with Maria,the sister or Bernardo,who is the leader of the sharks.West Side Story was originally written as a broadway musical and has ran for 732 performances before going on tour.The famous musical has no movements.The tempo for the piece was slow at the beginning and towards the middle it sped up to fast and stayed that way toward the end.The dynamics varied from different parts,at the beginning  it was soft and the middle was fast and the end was very fast.The mood for this piece was like action or something that kept you on you toes the entire piece of music.Another one of his famous works was The Rhapsody in Blue.It is a musical composition written by George Gershwin in 1924.Rhapsody in Blue was written for keyboard.It has no movements but two main parts.Parts one's tempo was a mixture of fast and slow.At the beginning of the piece it was slow or medium-slow and varied from medium-slow to medium-fast at some parts of the musical.Part 2 of Rhapsody in Blue's tempo was mainly fast.The mood for both parts of this piece was either sad or depressed or like a romantic sort of mood.The third piece I'm gonna include is Candide which is a piece that Bernstein conducted.It was originally first published in 1759 but has been translated(1947). The piece is about the lifestyle of a young man who lives in a sheltered life in an Edinic Paradise and is being indoctrinated with optimism by his mentor Pangloss.The piece of music describe the abrupt stop in his life, followed by his slow pain and disillusion as he faces the hardships of the outside world.Candide was written as an opera.The Candide Overture was fast paced from the very beginning and stayed like that through the whole piece.The piece was also very loud at the beginning but,got lower towards the middle and towards the end it got a lot louder.The mood for this piece seemed excited or like a determined sort of mood.I would like to list the sources that i used to help me with my project and give me knowledge on my composer Leonard Bernstein.I went to ask.com (http://www.ask.com/?o=0&l=dir) to answer the little questions i had and to find out what some of the words in the description meant.I also used wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org/)  which gave me a lot of information on my composer and is entire life and gave me the information i needed on the musical pieces like,West Side Story,Rhapsody in Blue,and Candide.I also went to biography.com http://www.biography.com/ and searched my composers name and found a bunch of pages about information on him and all the musical pieces he played,composed,and conducted.Lastly to finish up my research i went to Leonard Bernstein.com (http://www.biography.com/) and found even more information on his life his music and his life around him

Read this backwards

Okay Kiddies I'm ready to tell you about something that really urks me.  I'm sitting at home on Easter Sunday flipping through the channels and I see something that grabs my attention.  Its a reporter standing in front of a protest and its not an occupy wall street thing.  These people are actually protesting music and entertainment again.  Its like I traveled back to the nineties or something.  More specifically they were protesting Heavy Metal, which is by far my favorite type of music.  So I decided I had something to say about all of this.  I want to to talk to you about the link between Christianity and this so called devil music.  First of all I wish people would find something else to do rather than hate on someone that worked hard on his art form and found a way make a profit from it.  And believe me those people are only mad because they cant express themselves and get paid for it.  Christians and headbangers, I hate that these two communities can't seem to get along because  both are important in my life.  Its like when you two best friends are fight and you feel like you have to choose one or the other.  Well I'm not.  I think that the reason for all of this B.S. is that for the most part neither one understands the other.  That's right I think most headbangers don't understand Christians just as much as Christians don't understand this music.  Maybe both are equally scared of each other?  I could understand if you were forty years old and brought up in church by your parents your whole life.  Then all the sudden Junior walks in with Marilyn Manson tickets and your world shifts slightly.  I get it.  But, I don't think those people understand that this music doesn't stand against God or spirituality.  In fact in most cases the songs that they hear and get offended by are the ones that are simply asking for an answer.  They don't understand that a lot of us weren't brought up in Church and we don't understand organized religion.  All we know is we go to church to gain knowledge about our God and some preacher passes the offering plate around five or six times.  To us this is the same thing as junior walking in with those tickets.  I only know that today is much different than it was when I was growing up.  Today you have bands out there taking the time to give a positive message instead of just trying to shock the audience.  Don't get me wrong I love all those bands that try to scare the crap out of me.  But, we needed a voice one that everyone would listen to.  I know this may have been badly written and maybe I should say a lot more on this subject, and I will.  I guess my main goal was to get those of you that read this to be a little more tolerant.  This is 2012 and we still have people fighting over entertainment.  Get real man.  I also want to point out that there are Churches out there that aren't scared of music just because its loud.

Well this is my very first time writing a blog. Im sure the grammar, punctuation, & over the all layout will be sloppy to say the least. I have spent about two and a half months wondering and procrastinating over what I should write about. Whether it be to tell you all of my latest business ventures, the newest girl in my life, the craziest girl in my life, or maybe tell you about the newest or craziest (?adventures?) I've had. Then i figured I could tell you about the times when I conquered troubles in my life that made mountains look like anthills and hell seem like ice bath in the middle of an oasis. And then there were the times I couldn't seem step over a speed bump without smashing my face into the asphalt while my feet dangled over the back of my head.
ahh..good times.
Even as I'm writing this now I have yet to figure out what I want to say. I do know however that I want to say something, a lot of something. I know that I like to write and I hope that a lot of people will like reading what I write. At this point, I figure I'll blog about whatever seems to float my heavy fingertips across this moching keyboard. I'm sure that at some point I will tell you of new jobs and old friends, Fast cars and new girls. (hopefully new cars and fast girls too.)
I hope to write about things that some of you can learn from and/or laugh at. I know that some of your blogs have and will continue to do the same.
I'm Christopher that was my first time, my blogger cherry, my two cents from pennyanny