Videorecording of Classic Metal Class Session #5 - British Mid-Late 1970s Metal

We held Session 5 of Classic Metal Class several weeks ago.  This time, we intended to return to a focus primarily on music history, but we ended up going into a lot of discussion about technological and sound development aspects of the period we were discussing.  I won't say "strayed" or "digressed" because all of that discussion - led primarily by my co-host Scott Taruli - was both very well-informed and extraordinarily useful for understanding the development across the sound vectors that we call "heavy metal".

The official topic for this session was mid-late 1970s British heavy metal - so all the major bands,  developments, tours, continuities and changes in sound in England, Scotland, and Wales.  I used whether or not a band managed to bring out at least one more-or-less metal album in those years as a proxy for whether to include them in the discussion.

Those years were a time, of course, in which the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) was coalescing, growing, and getting ready to burst forth.  Saxon did manage to get their first album out by 1979 (as did the somewhat less favored Samson), but some of the other really key players in the scene - like Iron Maiden - hadn't yet got to that stage.  So 1979 winds up being a good cut-off year.

We'll be revisiting some of these bands in later sessions - particularly Motorhead and Judas Priest - and we'll also be devoting some sessions to the NWOBHM movement.  But it was really worthwhile to focus in on those 1970s years in the development of British heavy metal.  Here's the videorecording of the session!

Our next classic metal class session will be coming up later this month, on Saturday, October 10.

Classic Metal Class - Session 1 This Saturday!

Classic Heavy Metal - the stuff from the 70s and 80s - has been a major part of my life since I was a kid, and before I even knew what that kind of music was called.  I've also been either studying or teaching philosophy for three decades now.  Those areas have bled over into each other from time to time, and I've been fortunate to have friends and colleagues - including Scott Tarulli, Blitch 66, and (my wife) Andi Sciacca - with whom I could "talk metal" in deep, detailed, and animated conversations.

In addition to enjoying heavy metal as a fan, I've also long been researching the history of the genre.  I've been wanting not just to engage in writing about classic metal, but also to engage in some teaching and interactive discussion about it.  So I'm starting that up this weekend with a the first 1-hour session of Classic Metal Class - and you're invited!

I'll be hosting the class on Zoom at Noon Central Time, Saturday April 25.  Here's the signup page (our Zoom is capped at 100 people).  I'm planning on presenting for the first 20 or so minutes, and then we'll open it up to discussion and Q&A - and guitarist, bandleader, and professor Scott Tarulli will also be there as a special guest, participating in the discussion!

The topic I've selected for this first session is a basic but also controversial one:  the early years of metal (1970-1974).  "Controversial?" you might ask?  Yep!  There's quite a few "origin stories" to heavy metal, and the simpler they are, usually the more wrong they turn out to be.  We'll be discussing the "it was just Black Sabbath at the start" narrative (usually coupled with "and then it was Judas Priest"), and showing how much richer, more complex, and more interesting the real story of metal's early years is! 

We'll also be touching on some more explicitly philosophical issues like how and whether we can define music genres; what the essence of heavy metal is (if there is one); what makes a band "important" or "influential"; and why this music caught on in the first place.

So join us this Saturday for what promises to be a lively discussion of this music we love!

Judas Priest, Saxon, and Black Star Riders at the Riverside

Earlier this week, my wife and I went to a metal show we had been anticipating for a long time.  Judas Priest was the headliner, with Saxon and Black Star Riders as the opening bands.

The Riverside here in downtown Milwaukee seems like a somewhat unlikely venue for a metal show at first.  It's self-described as "opulent," not inaccurately, given the furnishings and decor. It was somewhat comical to see it filled up with metalheads dressed the part, guided to their seats by ushers who seemed a bit confused by their guests.

I took a few shots with my phone.  Black Star Riders came on first.  They're basically the latest incarnation of Thin Lizzy - a band with no original members left (a topic I've previously written about) - but under the Black Star Riders name, they create and perform new music as well.

Saxon followed them, and put on what I can - with no hyperbole or qualifications - say was an amazing performance!  There's a lot to be said about Saxon as one of the major early NWOBHM bands - and I'll do that in much greater detail in a post next week - so I'll just write this for now.

I never really understood how early Saxon - on their first, self-named album, and then on Wheels of Steel, and on Strong Arm of the Law - rocketed to the top of the bills for so many metalheads.  Their stuff is not bad, but - with a few exceptions - not really great either, particularly when you compare it to the other British bands they were often classed with at the time - Motorhead, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, and Def Leppard.  (They do get better on Denim and Leather and The Power and the Glory, I'd say, and through a good bit of Crusader)

Saxon's later work - especially the albums from the last decade - displays a marked development in musicianship.  Sloughing off certain of their weaker original members - in particular, bassist Steve Dawson in 1986 and guitarist Graham Oliver in 1994, who would go on to form their own version of the band - improved the band considerably.

Seeing them in concert helped me understand their popularity.  They put on a hell of a show now, and I imagine they did so back in their early days.  Biff Byford - at 67, an age when many singers have long since lost their volume and high end - belts the songs out with a voice that could be from 30 years ago.  And the present line-up of musicians takes their classic songs and performs them as they could have been played - that is, better than they were originally composed.

The main attraction, of course, was Judas Priest, arguably one of the greatest and most influential classic metal bands (who else would I include at their rank? that's a topic for another post!).  We had seen them twice at previous shows in the last decade, and were excited to go to another Priest show literally just down the street from where we live.

My wife had asked me what songs I hoped they would play, and I mentioned a few that we hadn't heard them do in concert yet.  They played several of them, including "Saints in Hell" - as Rob Halford noted, this is the 40 year anniversary of Stained Class!

You know which song this one was from - right?  "The Green Manalishi"!

And it wouldn't really be a Priest show, without Halford riding out on a motorcycle, would it? (especially with Harley Davidson just down the road here in Milwaukee!)

For me, an amazing highlight of the show came not long after that.  It was one of those moments that impressed itself upon me so deeply that I'll be reminiscing with fellow metalheads the rest of my life.  I have been listening to the song "Painkiller" for decades now, and I've seen Priest play it in those two previous shows.  What Halford did with it this time around was simply amazing.

Halford is 66 years old, and he has maintained the superlative range, the strength, and the sustain of his voice down to the present.  His rendition of Painkiller this time around can only be compared with the performance of a world-class athlete who, decades past his youthful years, not only manages to match - but through sheer force of will and talent shatters - one of his early records.  It was as metal as one can get.  An inspiration.

As I write this, we're getting ready to head off to a repeat show tonight with Saxon and Black Star Riders at the local casino.  Now that I've seen how good the present-day Saxon actually is, I'm super-excited to hear a longer set - expect some writing about them next week, here in Heavy Metal Philosopher!

Fan Mail From A Philosopher

Last month, for the first time, I did something I'd long and often thought about -- but never actually decided to do -- to write a fan letter.  Or, really, since it's on a relatively small card, I suppose one could call it a fan note.  To many metalheads -- even among those who know me well -- it might appear a rather odd gesture, not so much in its origins or its expression, but rather in its object.

I wrote what is in effect a kind of note of appreciation -- on the same embossed "Dr. Gregory B. Sadler" stationary that I normally reserve for expressions of gratitude or friendship, confined primarily to academic and institutional recipients -- and I mailed it off back in October to a Mr. Ian Hill, Bassist, of Judas Priest. 

Metal Origins: Some Key Early Bands

There's been a tendency in recent years -- one I see particularly among fans into more recent "genre" metal (all the stuff ranging from "black" to "sludge" to "viking" . . .) -- to accord the origins of heavy metal primarily to on band, Black Sabbath.  This claim has been given considerable weight by a key practitioner and early innovator, Rob Halford, for whom it's become somewhat of a party-line that first there was Sabbath, and really nobody else doing it, and then there was Judas Priest.  My aim, in this and some follow-up posts yet to come, is to argue that this is far from the case -- that the story is much more complicated and interesting than that.

Don't get me wrong -- in the narrative as I reconstruct it, Black Sabbath certainly gets given their rightful pride of place.  They possess a napoleonic status of "first among equals."  I'd even go so far as to say that without Sabbath, metal might have coalesced rather differently -- and perhaps less powerfully, less coherently -- as a genre.  But it's a mistake to portray them as the sole seminal band.

Inaugural Post: A New (but Old) Metal Renaissance

This new blog represents a project that those who know me well also know I've long been thinking about -- and talking about -- a forum where elements from my public and professional persona and my more private passions can be brought together, juxtaposed, integrated.  More than half my life at this point, I've worked as a philosopher.  And, nearly all of my life, I've been a metalhead.

Until now, with exceptions of a few posts in my main blog, Orexis Dianoētikē -- where I've reflected on heavy metal music in terms of memory, affectivity, temporality -- I've maintained separation between these two equally vital, similarly important spheres.  But today -- which marks my 43rd birthday -- I'm embarking upon something novel for me as a public philosopher, bringing my longstanding love for heavy metal out of the shadows, away from the periphery, and into the limelight, onto the stage.  I've decided that I need a place to write down -- and work out further -- thoughts, reflections, realizations, puzzles and paradoxes that I've partly and privately shared with friends, family, colleagues -- and with my wife and partner, in whom I'm fortunate enough to find someone who enjoys both classic metal and philosophy as passionately as I do.