What is "Heavy Metal Thunder Tuesday?"

DJ Sue and one of her Harley Davidsons

For a couple of months now, my Tuesday sets at AWT have become “Heavy Metal Thunder Tuesday.”  I find myself explaining that title quite often and it seems that most people think it’s a Heavy Metal set.  This is quite understandable, not only because of the name, but I do play quite a bit of music from that genre.  Both the music genre and my set take their name from the same origin, the song Born to be Wild by Steppenwolf.

The song became a biker anthem early on and was even featured in the 1969 biker movie, Easy Rider.  The lyrics fully grasp the feeling of hopping on a Harley Davidson motorcycle and riding free.  Here is an excerpt of the lyrics with the “heavy metal” reference in bold.

Get your motor running;
Head out on the highway
Lookin' for adventure,
And whatever comes our way.
Yeah darlin' gonna make it happen;
Take the world in a love embrace.
Fire all of your guns at once
And explode into space.

I like smoke and lightning,
Heavy metal thunder,
Racin' with the wind,
And the feeling that I'm under…

“Heavy metal thunder” refers to the sound of a Harley Davidson.  If you have ever heard one, you understand what the lyrics mean.  That is exactly what my set is about each Tuesday, music to ride your Harley to.  I had noticed earlier this year that when I played a hard driving set, with few slow songs, that I got positive comments from those present, so I began doing it from time to time.  It was preparing for the Queen B’s MC 4th Anniversary that I got the idea to formalize it into a weekly set and call it Heavy Metal Thunder.”

So, what can you expect to hear at a Heavy Metal Thunder Tuesday set?

Let’s start out with a good dose of 1970s hard rock, like Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Grand Funk Railroad.  Add to this some 60s bands like Iron Butterfly and Steppenwolf.  These bands are all considered early Heavy Metal bands or precursors to Heavy Metal.  So let’s round it out with a good dose of Heavy Metal like Iron Maiden, Van Halen and Mötley Crüe.

It’s no wonder that people assume that it is a Heavy Metal set, since it does embrace Heavy Metal from its roots on forward.  It really throws people when I play a slower, mellower tune.  Remember, this set is about motorcycles, so add to the above any songs about bikes or riding on the highway, whether they are fast and hard-driving, or slow and mellow.  A great slow and mellow bike tune is Unknown Legend by Neil Young, and you might just hear it.  I also include songs that are featured in biker films or in any way associated with biker culture.  Many of these are hard driving, but some are not like the Ballad of Easy Rider by the Byrds.

I suppose I should warn you that I might include Country tunes, provided they are on topic. I have in the past included tunes by Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson.  There are also the Fryed Brothers, who are bikers themselves and sing about it a lot, yet they are a Country band.

It comes down to this.  What would you find if you went into a real biker bar and looked at the selection in the jukebox?  You would probably find Marshall Tucker, Lynyrd Skynyrd and the like.  But you can be damn sure you won’t find any Boy George or Enya.  You won’t hear either during Heavy Metal Thunder Tuesday.

So come join me at AWT every Tuesday from 2-4 PM SL time for Heavy Metal Thunder Tuesday.  Bring your bike if you want and feel free to dress the part.  Finally, remember that most motorcycle problems are caused by the nut that attaches the handlebars to the seat.

Sue has ridden since she first came to SL. Here she is with her first bike in July 2010 at Fearless Nation.

The Seattle Sound... Grunge

Nirvana

For the past few weeks, we have been looking at places and the “sounds” that have become associated with them.  We looked at the San Francisco Sound and the Mersey Sound.  Both of them sprung up naturally around those areas and became quite famous and successful.  We also looked at the Boston Sound, where a record company came in and wrestled control of a fledgling sound to capitalize on it, and we saw how disastrous that was.  This week we are going to look at sort of the opposite of what happened in Boston in 1968.  Instead of big name record label coming in and taking over a sound, we will see what happens when an evolving sound gives birth to a new record label.  The time is the late 1980s and the early 1990s and the city is Seattle, Washington, USA.  Today we will look at the Seattle Sound, or as it is more commonly referred to, Grunge.

In the mid-1980s, Seattle had an active underground music scene that was developing both its own sound and style.  Some might even describe it as a subculture.  The Grunge sound formed alongside of an underground music magazine called Subterranean Pop, published by Bruce Pavitt.  The magazine reported on independent record labels and the bands signed to them.  Eventually, the magazine’s name was shortened to “Sub Pop.”  Soon, Sub Pop began including cassette tapes of underground bands for their readers. 

In 1987, Green River, a Seattle band, recorded their first album, Dry as a Bone, with Sub Pop and they were officially a record label.  Sub Pop described this piece at the time as, “ultra-loose grunge that destroyed the morals of a generation.”  Jonathan Poneman provided operating capital for the new label and became partners with Bruce Pavitt.  Other Seattle artist soon followed, like Soundgarden and Mudhoney.

So, what exactly is the Seattle or Grunge sound?  A couple of things smack you in the face right up front, like the guitars.  They are heavily distorted and “dirty,” or the opposite of what musicians call clean.  They have their roots in Punk Rock and Heavy Metal.  The vocals are equally noticeable, being rather guttural, or even nonhuman, and often screamed.  To round things out, the lyrical content is usually dark and angst-ridden with themes of hopelessness and suicide not being uncommon.

The attitude defining the subculture was not only found in the music.  The Grunge bands didn’t look like traditional Rock music acts of the day.  Instead of fancy costumes, they dressed in rip jeans with sneakers.  On top was a tee shirt, often covered with an oversized flannel shirt.  The appearance was very unkempt and often dirty.  (See the picture of Nirvana up top.)  The stage shows were rather minimalist.

Some bands moved on to eventually sign with bigger labels, such as Nirvana with Geffen Records.  However, no one or thing influenced the Grunge Sound more than Sub Pop.  Others, outside the Seattle area would become inspired and soon bands in other places were picking up the Grunge torch, like the Stone Temple Pilots out of San Diego, California.

Unfortunately, not every band that was picked up by a major label was successful.  Maybe some record companies just were ready for Grunge.  A good example is the band, TAD.  They were picked up by Giant Records and released their first album with them, Inhaler, in 1993.  Unfortunately, the band distributed a poster to promote the album depicting Bill Clinton, President of the United States, smoking a joint.  (See the picture at the bottom.) They were quickly dropped by Giant and never saw any commercial success.

To finish up, I think it’s interesting to look at the Boston Sound in 1968 and the emergence of the Seattle Sound in the late 1980s, and how we got from one to the other.  In the late 1960s, the young generation was all about the greater good.  “Love your brother,” “make love, not war,” and “peace,” were among the mantras of the day.  A corporate, money making entity, like MGM, just couldn’t  position themselves to capitalize on the Boston Sound in that atmosphere, like we saw a couple of weeks ago.  The 1960s gave way to the 1970s, which was pretty much the “Me Decade.”  This led into the 1980s, which became the decade of consumerism, money and spending.  (Think of Madonna’s Material Girl.)  It was in this age of money that the Seattle Sound was born.  While the artists of the late 60s would never sell out to the Man, everyone in the late 80s wanted to be the Man!  Out of all of this came Generation X and their Nihilistic outlook that so shaped the lyrics of the Grunge Sound.  Sub Pop itself was rather well known for promoting this angst driven culture.  When a band would submit an audition tape, most record companies had a sugar-coated rejection letter they would use, using such phrases as, “you are not quite what we are looking for,” and “good luck.”  Sub Pop was well known among Seattle bands for their rejection letters that began, “DEAR LOSER.” There was no “love your brother” in the early 90s.

So, what ever happened to Sub Pop Records?  They eventually began a relationship with Warner Bros. Records, which also owned Geffen, Nirvana’s new label.  (Nirvana records have both the Geffen and Sub Pop logos on their labels.)  Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman disagreed on which direction Sub Pop should go.  Pavit wanted to stay close to their underground roots which he embraced in its early days.  Poneman, who saw it as a financial venture, wanted to take the label in a more money-making direction.  After a bitter fight, Pavitt left and Poneman used the Warner Bros. connection to secure a financially bright future for Sub Pop.  Today they’re a subsidiary of Warner Music Group and remain in Seattle.  They have numerous, financially successful, artist signed to the label and they promote themselves as an environmentally friendly, green company.

Tomorrow Night (Sunday, December 14) I will do a two hour special of the Seattle Sound from 7-9 PM at AWT.  All of the bands mentioned above will be featured.

TAD poster for their album, Inhaler.

The Mersey Sound

The City of Liverpool, UK, as seen across the River Mersey

This week, I’m going to write about the third of my “sounds related to places" in the Rock universe.  While the Mersey Sound may not have been the very first, it was the first place to have a sound named for it that became widely recognized by music fans.  The Mersey is a river in England that starts near Manchester and empties into the Irish Sea, north of Wales.  Near its end, is the city of Liverpool, which is really where we will concentrate our discussion.

It probably should have been called the “Liverpool Sound” but the name of the river was used when the term was coined.  We talk about this music subgenre, that started in Liverpool, as the “Mersey Sound,” or more commonly, “Merseybeat.”  Even though it is often shortened further to just “beat music,” we need to understand that this had nothing to do with the “Beat Generation” or the beatniks of the time.  The term was already in use in 1961 when a magazine, Mersey Beat, debuted.  Its owner claimed that the title should be seen as an area, much like a policeman’s beat, not having anything to do with the rhythm.  Mersey Beat magazine would cover the musical scene going on in Liverpool.

Liverpool is recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the “World Capital City of Pop.”  Native Liverpudlians have recorded no fewer than 56 number one singles, more than any other city in the world.  Of course its most famous sons were none other than the Fab Four, the Beatles, whose name is a play on words using their “beat” music genre and maybe paying homage to Buddy Holly’s Crickets, who was a big influence on the beat music of Liverpool.

So, what exactly is the Mersey Sound or Beat that was coming from Liverpool?  As already mentioned, Buddy Holly and the Crickets from Texas were a big influence.  So was Chuck Berry.  The theory is that the origin of the “beat” term had its beginning before Mersey Beat Magazine and referred to the beat of the music.  Chuck Berry, singing about Rock ‘n’ Roll music says in one song. “It’s got a back beat; you can’t lose it.”  The back beat of American Rock ‘n’ Roll, like Berry and Holly were using is a 4/4 measure with accents on the second and fourth beats, which became very common among Liverpool groups.  This back beat, or off beat, would be emphasized on the snare drum. The Beatles would later cover this Chuck Berry song.

To round out or description of the Mersey Sound, we must take the American Rock ‘n’ Roll and blend it with R&B and some Doo-wop that were common in Liverpool at the time.  Out of this sound came much of the band composition, lead guitar, rhythm guitar, bass and drums, which became common to most rock groups worldwide.  It is ironic that something that was inspired by American Rock ‘n’ Roll, would fuel the British Invasion a few years later with not only the Beatles, but bands like The Hollies, The Dave Clark Five and Gerry and the Pacemakers.  (And what does a pacemaker do?  It keeps the beat!)

Tonight I will present two hours of British Beat Music or the Merseybeat.  My previous two posts ended with song quotes, so why not once again?  Tonight I will end my set with Gerry and the Pacemakers’ song, Ferry Cross the Mersey.  It says it all…

So ferry 'cross the Mersey
'cause this land's the place I love
and here I'll stay.

Liverpool group, Rory Storm & the Hurricanes.  Ringo Starr on the far left before becoming the drummer for the Beatles