by Nicole Powers
The Pleasure Principle is an album that’s provided its maker, Gary Numan, with both instant and delayed gratification. Three decades ago, when the now classic electro album first came out, it made a massive impact culturally and commercially. The Pleasure Principle, and the iconic single it spawned, “Cars”, hit the number one spot simultaneously on the album and singles charts in the UK in September, 1979. The following year, the records crashed the US Billboard charts, making the painfully shy young vocalist, composer and musician a household name here too.
Numan’s Kraftwerk-inspired tracks, which channeled the voice of the machine, had a raw energy and DIY aesthetic that served as the bridge between ’70s punk and the early dance and hip-hop scenes of the 1980s. Indeed the bare break beats from the opening segment of “Films” (the fourth track on The Pleasure Principle) became the sample of choice for a generation of producers, thanks in part to the song’s inclusion on Street Beat’s tastemaker compilation series Ultimate Breaks and Beats (which served as the primary DJ and studio sample resource pre-CD).
Ironically, as the spotlight faded on Numan, the sounds he created proliferated exponentially through the fabric of pop music culture. As a new generation of producers sampled samples, the origins of these staple breaks escaped many. However those in the know – such as Basement Jaxx, Armand Van Heldon, Afrika Bambaataa and Dr. Dre – openly covered, used, credited and paid homage to Numan’s body of work.
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by Blogbot
It’s been ten years since Tommy Lee has made a record under the Methods of Mayhem moniker. But with Mötley Crüe on hiatus in 2010, the drummer-cum-multi-instrumentalist decided now was the perfect time to revisit his hybrid dance/rock side project. The new album, A Public Disservice Announcement, comes out tomorrow, but the fab folks at Roadrunner Records have been kind enough to give SG an exclusive preview of one of the tracks, “All I Wanna Do,” which is sexy and nasty in the nicest of ways.
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by Nicole Powers
“I’m going to write songs about fucking blowing my head off and giving in to apathy,” says Filter founder and frontman Richard Patrick during our interview. It’s not that he’s going to do either, it’s just that he understands what anger combined with a sense of hopeless can do to a person’s psyche.
In 2008 he released Anthems For The Damned, which served both as a protest against the Iraq war and a tribute to a friend it had claimed. (Anti-war, but very much pro-troops, Patrick has traveled to the Middle East twice to play concerts for those who risk their lives to serve our country.) Two years on, though our president may have changed, the status quo (or lack thereof) remains the same in the Middle East. After too many years listening to grim reports from the frontlines of a war that was misguided from the start, both the troops on the ground and the masses here at home are suffering from a severe case of fuck up fatigue. With dissent now largely falling on deaf ears, and, even worse, serving to remind the proletariat of their powerlessness, Patrick gets why it’s therapeutic to embrace indifference, shrug your shoulders and say “fuck it” to the world.
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by Ryan Stewart
April 11, 1983 was the definitive day in Dave Mustaine’s professional life. As lead guitarist and contributing songwriter for an up-and-coming thrash metal band called Metallica, he had been living out his dream of making a living at playing metal for over a year and a half. Like many at the time, he was also beginning to sense that his band was something truly special, a ferociously talented foursome that had the potential to go where no metal band had gone before. A musical virtuoso with unlimited ambition, Mustaine’s eyes were fixed on the future, but he was badly neglecting the present. A problem with drinking and drugs, owed in part to a rootless childhood, had plagued him for years, and as success drew closer his reckless behavior increased and lines were crossed. No one knows what the final straw really was, but on the morning of April 11, while Metallica was in N.Y.C. on business, Mustaine was awoken by singer James Hetfield and unceremoniously handed a Greyhound ticket home to L.A. He was out of Metallica, without so much as a warning.
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by Nicole Powers
This Sunday (9/12) on SuicideGirls Radio our very special in-studio guest will be original Guns N’ Roses drummer and Celebrity Rehab alum, Steven Adler, who recently rocked the Sunset Strip Music Festival with his new band Adler’s Appetite. We’ll be talking about his storied life, as told in his recently published memoir, My Appetite for Destruction. Tune in for two hours of totally awesome tunes and extreme conversation – and don’t let your moma listen in!
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by Pandie Suicide
Welcome to a new series of “Brief Histories”, where I attempt to tell you a little about the history of certain aspects of heavy music, condensed into 600 words or less. If you have any suggestions of further topics to discuss please leave a comment here on the blog, here, or here.
But for today’s topic: Headbanging.
That heavy metal tradition of sore necks and long locks swirling around in the air to the tune of a frenzied double kick and wailing, crushing guitars, known as “headbanging,” is described by Wikipedia as “a type of dance which involves violently shaking the head in time with music, most commonly rock music and heavy metal music.” As this instructional article, on “How to Headbang” will tell you, there are several different styles of headbanging, such as the “windmill” and the “headslam.”
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by Pandie Suicide
So you’ve been lucky enough to score yourself an interview! Whether you’re a veteran or a first-timer this can be a nerve-wracking experience, but it also could be THE interview that changes the course of your musical career forever! Inspired by a book on Rolling Stone Interviews on my reading list right now I began thinking, what makes a good interview? In part it is the interviewer and the questions they ask, but that’s only half of the equation. The rest lies solely on you, the interviewee. As someone who has conducted hundreds of interviews and read, watched, and listened to thousands more, I’ve come up with some advice on how to make sure your interview comes out in the best possible way with these helpful tips on how to approach an interview – just for musicians.
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