Classic Metal Class Session 8 - NWOBHM and Metal Identity

We are starting off the 2021 year of monthly Classic Metal Class sessions this Saturday with a discussion that continues delving into the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) in the early 80s.  This time the focus is on how the musicians and fans were involved in something that was not just a musical movement, but involved developments of what we can call a more and more self-conscious "metalhead" identity.

There are a number of aspects to this, and I'm sure the conversation - as always - will stray a bit past the limits of these topics, but what we plan to discuss include:

• the progressive formation of consciousness of self as "metalheads"
• the thematization of heavy metal as a type of music and experience within song lyrics
• the development of and influence on genres of metal by bands in this period
• the continuities between older British, American, and European metal and the NWOBHM

As always, I'll be joined by my cohost and special guest, Berklee School of Music guitar professor and fellow metalhead-since-childhood, Scott Tarulli (you can check him out here).  We'll kick the ideas back and forth for half an hour or so, and then start responding to questions and comments - we always get some great ones from participants!

Here's the Zoom link for the session - the session is this Saturday, 12:00 PM Central Time.  Hope you can join us for what will be a rich conversation about classic heavy metal!

Classic Metal Class #3 - Metaphysical Identity of Bands in Changes

We had our third session of the Classic Metal Class earlier in June, discussing a number of metaphysical issues that arise when we are considering what a "band " or "group" is, and whether it remains the same basic thing in the course of changes.  These most often have to do with musicians going in and out of the ensemble - changes of personnel - but we also discussed other ways that bands can change over time as well, for instance when the band shifts in its style or basic approach.

We'll be revisiting many of these topics in future sessions, and when I can set aside the time for writing, I'll be doing some posts here as well.  For now - for those who missed the session and would like to watch it (so far, over 700 views!) - here it is.

The Ship Of Theseus and Bands With No Original Members

A number of the responses to my last post here - RATT - immediately referenced the "Ship of Theseus".  That's not surprising, since what I was writing about focused on the identity of a band in terms of its membership, and the "Ship of Theseus" is a classic puzzle about a whole and its constituent parts.  But as I pointed out to those commenters, that puzzle really has to do with a different kind of case.

It's not as if there aren't some bands, though, to which the "Ship of Theseus" issue would apply.  I thought it might be useful for others - and interesting for me - to write a follow-up piece specifically discussing how and why.  Simply put, the Ship of Theseus bears upon cases where none of the constituent parts of a whole are original to it.  In terms of bands, this means we would be focused on bands that contain none of their original members.

The fundamental question then is whether they do remain the same band or not, despite all of the replacements of members.  It is always useful to consider examples, and in classic metal, we do have a number of illustrative cases we can examine - and discuss (in comments or social media).  I think it might also be helpful to consider some cases close to but not quite like the Ship of Theseus as well, where one original member of the band is left (but reserve that issue for a later post)

Reconstituted RATT And The Issue Of Who Is The Band

It's old news by now that two really key things are happening with RATT.  First, three of the original members - vocalist Stephen Pearcy, guitarist Warren DeMartini, and bassist Juan Croucier - are gearing up to tour (and here's hoping they play Summerfest here in MKE!).  Second, drummer Bobby Blotzer definitively lost his case to use the RATT name in court, and that name has now passed back to those other three original members.

Those two bits of news would be interesting enough on their own accounts - after all who doesn't like the idea of (as much as can be mustered of) classic RATT touring again, and who isn't happy to see the group name reverting back to more of the original members - but there's also a philosophical issue raised by all of this as well.

Who is the "real RATT" in this case?  Pearcy, DeMartini, and Croucier? Or Blotzer?  Both?  Neither?  Or if we think about it more generally - when a band splits up, and multiple members lay claim to the band's name, who should we consider to be the band?

Identity and Alterity: Why We Can't Really See Some Bands That Still Exist

My wife and I are always on the lookout for nearby tour dates for classic metal acts -- and we've been pretty fortunate in recent years, actually, since quite a few come to the Tri-State area.  In the last several years, we've been to a whole host of classic acts -- Iron Maiden, Judas Priest (twice), Motorhead, KISS (twice), Megadeth, Raven, Accept, UDO, Thin Lizzy, Motley Crue, and Alice Cooper.  And, back in our younger days -- our teens and twenties, before we got together -- there's a whole host of other bands which we saw independently, with our respective friends.

There's some groups -- the Scorpions for example -- who I saw back in the 1980s (at a Monsters of Rock show), but who my wife has never seen on stage, and as we were thinking about who might still be touring and who we might try to get tickets for in the coming year, she said something rather paradoxical to me.  "It's too bad that we can't really see the Scorpions."  What she meant by that isn't that we couldn't sometime purchase tickets to see them when they wind up back over here in the USA -- that's certainly possible -- but rather that it long ago became impossible to see the band whose music we came to love back in the heyday of classic metal -- the 1980s.