10/9/2020 Release and Mourning two Titans of Metal

 Last week was a pretty great week, release-wise.  Dolly Parton, Bon Jovi and Queen with Adam Lambert’s releases were all amazing, with Dolly having good duets with Jimmy Fallon and Miley and Billy Ray Cyrus, Bon Jovi tackling a lot of current issues and Queen and Adam Lambert bringing new versions of old classics.  I particularly loved the versions of “Don’t Stop Me Now” and “Who Wants To Live Forever,” the latter dedicated to the victims of the Pulse Nightclub Shooting on June 12^th, 2016.  I honestly felt Hillary would’ve been swept into office in response to that tragedy because Republicans have always been and will always be homophobic.  I was wrong.  Moving from that, K-Pop girl group BLACKPINK released an album last week and it’s a fun listen with American singers Selena Gomez and Cardi B guesting.  I’m hopeful they will last longer on the American charts than Psi did.

 

So, here are some releases I’m looking forward to coming at 9:00 PDT tonight.  I hope these will be as good as last week’s were.

 

Linkin Park-Hybrid Theory 20^th Anniversary: 20 years ago, an alternative rock band from the L.A. area made it big, achieving chart/radio success before their music appeared in the first three movies in the live-action Transformers film series.  This features their well-known song “In The End,” famous for the lyric “I try so hard, I come so far, but in the end, it doesn’t even matter.” This would be quoted by artists who post their work online after Chester Bennington (who sang the line) ended his live in 2017, edited to “in the end, everything you did mattered.”  “New Divide,” which the band wrote for the second Transformers movie, is one of my favorite songs of theirs and I agree, Chester Bennington was a force of positivity even when his music was dark.

 

The Doors-Morrison Hotel 50^th Anniversary: The main thing I know of this release is this is the album The Doors’ famous song “Roadhouse Blues” comes from.  This song has been covered by Blue Oyster Cult, Deep Purple and Sammy Hagar with Joe Bonamassa and Doors’ guitarist Robby Krieger.  Alice Cooper has also stated the line “I woke up this morning and got myself a beer” was inspired by his own alcoholism at the time.  A great rocker with a nice riff, and there’s probably good music throughout.

 

John Lennon-Gimme Some Truth: Timed so the physical copy will be available on the artist’s 80^th Birthday.  The title track has had three covers released in the last year because it started as an anti-Nixon anthem.  It was released by Cheap Trick, Pearl Jam and Cherie Currie, who was the lead singer of The Runaways.  Beyond that are more tracks from Lennon’s solo career, like the first digital release in quite some time of his 1972 Madison Square Garden performance of “Come Together,” which he prefaces by muttering “Here Come Ol’ Flattop, that’s all I know.”  Another track with recent covers is re-released, “Isolation” from his 1970 solo release, “Plastic Ono Band,” about the struggles of being a celebrity and trying to create change when so few people are interested in your values and just want to be entertained.  It was recently covered by Ann Wilson of Heart and Jeff Beck with Johnny Depp.  More about John Lennon and his music tomorrow.

 

I’m sure you can tell from my post yesterday that I’ve lost all faith in the United States doing the right thing.  People around me are not masking up, when I’ve given Political rants on another website, Republicans effectively say “shut up, your life is good, who cares about f**s and n*****s?”  and on that website, someone posted a picture of Kamala Harris and some Republican behind a T-P 2016 podium, and the white Republican woman had 30 more likes.  I know that when you’re online, you act as you would if no one was watching, just read all the damning articles of conspiracy theories against the Bible.  As such, I have no confidence this country will make the right decision, even though their lives depend on it.

 

Another reason for my stress is that in the last week, I found that two giants of the Hair Metal genre, Frankie Banali (drummer of Quiet Riot) and Eddie Van Halen (guitarist and namesake of Van Halen) are now gone.  As such, it feels the Hair Metal genre is dead.  I’ve seen a picture on Ozzy Osbourne’s Twitter from the 1978 Black Sabbath tour of him and Eddie Van Halen having fun and it looked like the man was a fun-loving, laid-back rock and roller.  I also saw Frankie Banali perform five years ago and he was an intense, crazy-strong drummer whose heart ached for his lost friends Randy Rhoads and Kevin DuBrow.  Eddie Van Halen and Randy Rhoads’ guitar tones created the Hair Metal genre and since both are gone, the genre is, too.