In a Metal Mood, Shirt-wise

I like to think I have an appreciation for most types of music out there. Might have come from growing up in the 80s and 90s when a listener had to gear their ear to a wide range of questionable styles. Might have come from having parents who played nothing but compilation tapes of 50s and 60s easy listening tunes in the car. Might have come from spending my teenage years surrounded by a world accepting (nay, celebrating) the mystique of New Country (older now but New then). Might have come from being more visually and literarily strong versus my brother's more significant aural skills. I've always maintained that I like to hear the lyrics.

I figure that music, like literature, is a cornerstone of culture and thereby, forms a basis for cultural references. Much as satirical writing requires the reader to recognize what style of writing is being parodied, musical parodies or cross-genre covers only work if one knows the source material. Jonathon Coulton's acoustic folk cover of "Baby Got Back" only elicits laughs when the listener starts to recognize Sir Mix-A-Lot's lyrics. The Arrogant Worms' "Carrot Juice is Murder" is funny in its own right but funnier when one is familiar with the protest songs of the '60s.

Also, this is a real thing:

I own the album. "Enter Sandman" is especially awesome IMHO but that's mostly because Metallica is pretty much my only real metal reference. I could probably recognize GNR (?) songs and, thanks to an obsession with RollerGames (written about back on Sept 7 on this blog), Warrant tunes but I'm still trying to figure out the differentiating elements between hair bands and metal bands. Not all hair bands are metal, I don't think. But are all metal bands hair?

My better half is a self-professed metal head and because of this, a few years back, I attended my first metal concert, Fear Factory at the Commodore Ballroom. Feeling like a bit of a poser, I couldn't really justify buying a concert tee from any random metal band to wear so I ordered this one:

... because Science is also awesome. And science + music = joy. Just ask the beautiful and talented Billy the Kid (<-- ho-lee ca-rap, she's got an actual Wiki page!) whose Twitter-feed and FB updates are a heart-warming and though-provoking blend of personal info, musical progress and scientific trivia.

I've posted her music video for These City Lights all over my digital footprint ever since it came out in 2009 so I'll post a different one here today:

Us Broken Hearts

Billy the Kid | Myspace Music Videos

And FYI, I don't actually own a Billy shirt to post about on Music T Fridays but I wear my Billy the Kid zip-up hoodie everywhere.
(Happy six months, Billy! Sending you lots of love and magical thinking!)

A Town By Any Other Name...

Fans of the Arrogant Worms know that Newfoundland has some of the most entertaining town names in the English-speaking world (the Welsh and German might contest a linguistically-generalized claim)

In my Grade 12 year, I won the Northern Saskatchewan Junior Achievement CanJAC award which sent me to Hamilton, Ontari-ari-o to represent Saskatoon & area at a national convention of young entrepreneurs and business people. I remember I shared a McMaster dorm room with a very pretty redheaded girl and a dorm floor with one of the speech finalists who was having a serious case of the nerves, pacing the halls and common room, muttering lines of her speech and gesticulating at a fast forward speed as she rehearsed for the final showdown.

I remember the night of the speech comp because I wore a similar outfit to the Asian girl who ended up winning the competition and spent a lot of the evening graciously accepting congrats and then explaining that it wasn't me they meant to congratulate.

Of all the great memories from that trip, meeting Brian Kidney from Mount Pearl, NL, was the most long-lasting as we maintain our friendship to this day. He had never heard of the Worms and thereby had no idea the song existed so as soon as I got home, I dubbed him a mix tape (!) of all the best Arrogant Worms' songs.

 

Now, today's shirt obviously came from Newfoundland. Brian and his wife Lori have sent me Newfie-loving shirts as birthday and/or Christmas gifties but (and I could be wrong) I think this one I bought for myself when I was visiting Mount Pearl for their wedding. (Crazy attack trees injuring the groom aside, it was a wonderful wedding). There's a obvious omission to maintain the shirt's "G" rating but it gets the point across. To put a finer point on said point, Brian and Lori and their burgeoning family are about to make the move to Paradise. Seriously awesome.

While on the East Coast topic, this past summer, Jeff's parents let him know that they'd be "gone camping" for a week or two. They often head out to the Rockies or down to Oregon for camping trips all through the summer months so this wasn't unusual. The email we got from NOVA SCOTIA the next week was. They'd decided to take their camping equipment and their VW Golf across the continent. It wasn't until after they'd left NL that we even knew they'd planned on ferrying over to The Rock. I love my in-laws-to-be. And they loved Blow Me Down Provincial Park, one of the few campsites they didn't get rained out of.

I've always felt very lucky to live in a country as large and diverse as Canada (which, btw, gets its name from the First Nations word for "village" or "settlement") and the idea of making my home anywhere else in the world is unfathomable but that doesn't mean I don't have a sense of humour about how a place name can sound to a newcomer. My father's favourite joke about Chilliwack (the town, not the band) was that, to find it, you needed to cross Hell's Gate and travel beyond Hope. And one of my favourite activities to give Social Studies classes is the BC Places Quiz because whether you're from a money river or the left side of a cantaloupe, you should know better than to roll a furry joint and take a cool hit without really knowing the world around you.