Alice Cooper helped bring concert theatrics to rock and roll, making it a staple. It’s one thing I love about a good rock, especially metal, show. Sure it’s nice to hear them play live, but it’s even better to also see a show. Something for your eyes as well as your ears.

This live version of Alice Cooper from 1971 doing “It’s My Body” is also refreshing to hear because there are mistakes. Alice will slip off key and sing so loud that he overdrives the mic. The guitarist screws up a few times. It’s so refreshing from the uber-slick production that’s the staple of music production today.

Here’s “I Love the Dead” showing off the macabre theatrics:

Truth and honor, faith and pride
All convictions surely died
Honesty’s time has passed
Time for lies is here at last
Truth is false, I’m so fed up! How did we come to be so fucked?

Lady Liberty rots away. No truth, no justice. The American Way.

Having just caught Megadeth (along with Testament and Exodus) live on their 20th anniversary of Rust In Peace tour, here’s “Rust In Peace” performed live in 1992:

What happens when Iron Maiden is forced to mime and lip sync on some German TV show?

They have a lot of fun playing “Wasted Time”.

heh.

This week is the famous SXSW festival in Austin.

Premiering this week will be the Lemmy documentary.

Looking forward to that, here’s Motörhead with a great “later day” song and one of my favorite Motörhead songs, “In The Name of Tragedy”:

You can debate if they’re metal or not…. and no, I don’t think they’re strictly metal. But hey… would metal be what it is if The Ramones didn’t exist?

The Young Brothers. What would rock and heavy metal be if not for them?

“Let There Be Rock”. Listen to that opening guitar… just a dirty, driving guitar riff.

Under “rock anthem”, this song is listed:

And my favorite AC/DC song, “Walk All Over You”

I know. I probably sound like a shill for the new Overkill album, Ironbound, but I’m just really loving the album! Since buying it on its US release date it’s about the only thing I’ve been listening to.

Here’s the video for the first release off the album, “Bring Me the Night”

A great choice for a first release. It’s a strong album end to end. Thrashier numbers like “Bring Me the Night”, “Ironbound”, “The Green and Black”. Then you’ll have more mid-tempo songs like “The Head and Heart”, which just has a great structure to it. Really, I think it’s a strong album end to end.

BTW, iTunes Music Store eventually got back to me. They refunded my purchase (sigh) and are going to investigate the sound quality issue… try back in a few weeks. Ugh.

Death to all but metal, indeed.

Actually since today is Valentine’s Day, I guess “Community Property” is more appropriate. 😉

“Judgment Night” was a so-so movie back in 1993. What made the movie stand out was the soundtrack album. If I remember correctly, they took rap groups and heavy metal or alternative bands and paired them together and had each pairing compose an original song for the soundtrack. It turned out some great cuts.

Whatever you think of nü-metal or latter-day rap-metal, (good) rap and metal actually do have a lot in common and can mix quite well.

Biohazard and Onyx’s duet on “Judgment Night”. One of my favorites from the album.

Faith No More and Boo-Ya-Tribe, with “Another Body Murdered”. Another favorite.

Slayer and Ice-T. A bit weak of a song, but I like the pairing of Ice-T and Slayer. Tom’s “WAR!” cries are signature Tom. When the song picks up at 2:23, it throws back to Slayer’s early punk influences. And when it really kicks in at 3:57, signature Slayer sound.

I remember one night during my college radio show playing “Just Another Victim” by Helmet & House of Pain. A couple of the other station DJ’s that did the rap shows had come into the studio to get something about the time Everlast started rapping. I recall how surprised they were to hear a rap artist on “the metal guy’s” radio show. Take that for whatever it’s worth.