Sixteen Volts

In high school at the beginning of the 90's, when I liked to listen to David Bowie and Talking Heads, I had a chum who was more into all kinds of metal music. Us guys used to tease him in a friendly fashion about listening to longhair music more appropriate for trade school students. I remember how I had surprised him one day, though, by correctly following up to his line "I got something to say" with the next line in that song, which I had for some reason learned from my best friend years before that in the elementary school.

Then one day, we decided to make a deal that we'd both make each other a mixtape of the very best songs of our preferred genres and promised to listen to these tapes with an open mind. We both did so, and I can't deny that those Metallica songs weren't half bad. My chum, in turn, was very enthusiastic about "All the Madmen", "We are the Dead" and "Candidate". (I most certainly did not put in "Rebel Rebel", that one stupid Bowie song that always comes up with old Bowie, but which must be the absolute worst song he has ever recorded.)

I understand that the image of these kings of metal has changed a lot during the more recent years, so I don't know what their current music is like, but it might be interesting to listen to earlier albums of Metallica and see what they sound like to the present-day me. I'm sure that the local library has their albums, and of course I could just use KaZaA or some other similar system to get them. I think that I read somewhere that Metallica loves it when fans share their music, so it would probably be OK.

In junior high, I was more into Dire Straits. When I recently got their major albums, their music sounded even better than I remembered. I got the impetus for getting these albums one day in the subway when I noticed that "Tunnel of Love" playing in my head while I was reading something. I thought that I had forgotten the whole song, but it just kept playing in my head. What is even more astonishing, in junior high my English skills were significantly weaker than now, so I don't think I properly understood half of the lyrics back then. But when I was thinking of the song, certain lines which I had not understood then (e.g. "It’s just a cakewalk" and "Well it’s been money for muscle another whirligig") were completely clear now.

Going back to songs of yesteryear, I also listened to some old ZZ Top (all their songs are exactly the same, so it doesn't matter which one you listen to to get the general idea) and Van Halen that my little chums used to like and I learned by osmosis. And besides, now I can actually understand the lyrics of "Pearl Necklace". Our of curiosity, I also listened to some AC/DC songs, since I remembered that at least "Thunderstruck" was a half decent piece. However, after listening I have to wonder why exactly AC/DC is supposed to be so good. Granted, I am not into metal music (just out of curiosity, as a side question to metalheads reading this, does there exist a heavy metal band whose members are black?), but I can't see why AC/DC would be good even as metal. For starters, their singer has to be one of the worst in the history of metal, considering that he doesn't even sing, but merely screeches.

"Hells Bells" was the only half-decent AC/DC song among the ones that I listened to, for the simple reason that the singer wasn't allowed to ruin it. "Thunderstruck" was very annoying in a sense that you could hear how it has potential to be a great catchy song, but it is not, so perhaps this could be a place for some nu metal band to cover this song the way it should be done. (Another song that similarly annoys me each time is "New Dress" by Depeche Mode: there must be several better remix cover versions of this song in existence.)

Posted by Ilkka Kokkarinen on Saturday, March 11, 2006 at 3:26 PM