NPR this morning, and more MOTORHEAD!

Anyone else listen to NPR this morning and get more confused, rather than more informed? Seriously - I think it was intern day or something. Half the stories made no sense, and the other were about "dire" issues, like the rise in the rates of "Shingles" amongst older Americans. Brutal.

But back to the ROCK! Check this out:

You want to know how hard these guys rock? Just check out Lemmy's teeth - yeah, the ones that ARE MISSING! This guy is the real deal. I mean he is downright UGLY. That's some real ROCK for you. If these guys aren't the inspiration for Spinal Tap, I don't know who is.

But what about this centuary? Who's carrying the ROCK flame today? Hmmmm - well, the younger guys of Wolfmother aren't bad, but if you see them play, you'll note the kid has all his pearly whites perfectly in place. Dude had braces as a kid. Now there is nothing wrong with a fine set of chops, but I refer you back to the footage above. Motorhead had FOUL TEETH, and this contributed to their hard edge. Look at Zeppelin back in the day. With the exception of the footage from the concert at Royal Albert Hall where Jimmy Page is wearing a fancy CARDIGAN SWEATER that his mom gave him, (c'mon - you're a rocker - no cardigans on stage pal), they tended to look the part of modern (well, low-tech 70's anyway) Saxson warriors. This is a plus when you're singing 'songs of the ancient times' and such - lends some credibility. The sweater aside, the version of Dazed and Confused at the link above pretty much *owns* as far as ROCKIN' goes. (side note - I think in the interviews that are included with the live concert footage Page says that his Mother found out that Led Zeppelin was set to play the Royal Albert Hall, so she went out and got a nice sweater for him to wear so he would look nice on stage. I don't think she had ever heard one of his albums previous to this).

But check it - you want Metal made in 2008? you want METAL? Check out "The Sword"! (the s-Word?) With songs like "How heavy this Axe", and "Iron Swan", these dudes know how to ROCK! In fact, they rock so hard, they are supporting Metallica on the upcomming summer tour. How sweet is that? Man - Metallica kind of took a shit in my opinion about 10 years ago, but then they were kings when I was in High School. What's cool/weird is that I still see kids rocking the same Metallica T-Shirts that dude's like Joe Bryseth were rocking back in '89-'90. One upshot to the shameless never-ending marketing scheme is that the band is re-releasing its older material on vinyl. This is the stuff that was still mastered in Analog on big-assed AMPEX equipment and reels of tape. At the time, the albums probably released on both vinyl (limited quantaties) and cassette, or maybe just cassette. I only am in the mood for Metal infrequently these days, but you better belive I'll be grabbing the remastered "Master of Puppetts" when it comes out next month here. That album HOWLS, and I bet the vinyl pressing will bring out some of the thunder!