Cartoon Band update - Dethklok

Dethklok from the series Metalocalypse are another addition to the top 5 all time great cartoon bands.


In the Metalocalypse series, Dethklok is depicted as an extremely popular and successful death metal band, described by their adversaries, the Tribunal, as the "world's greatest cultural force." The band's fan base includes thousands of metal fanatics, who frequently endanger themselves to watch the band perform live. With their widespread commercial success and lucrative sponsorship contracts, Dethklok is ranked as the world's twelfth largest economy in the series.
In addition to their uncanny ability to command worldwide attention and effortlessly persuade masses of people, the band members indirectly cause death and bad luck to those near them. It is hinted that this is related to an as-of-yet unexplained curse beyond the members' awareness or control. They also frequently summon natural disasters, severe weather phenomena, and paranormal anomalies through the live performance of their music. As a result of this, the band's concerts are notoriously violent, often resulting in the physical injury and fatality of many or all of the crowd. Even their attempts at charity result in tens of thousands of deaths, such as when a laser light show, which was actually a Soviet laser-based weapon, butchered the entire London Philharmonic Orchestra during a benefit concert, and an attack on an entire island population by "wayward kitties."
The members of Dethklok are often portrayed as incompetent at almost everything not related to their profession. The band struggles to perform everyday tasks, including shopping for groceries, preparing food, and maintaining proper social relationships. They are often assisted by their manager and lawyer, Charles Ofdensen, who frequently attempts to prevent the band from making poor decisions. The band's actions, including the bad luck situations which comprise many plots, have caught the attention of an Illuminati-style council, known as The Tribunal. The Council is portrayed as Dethklok's antagonist throughout the series, and secretly monitor their actions in almost every episode.

Nathan Explosion
Nathan Explosion (voiced by Brendon Small) is the frontman, lead vocalist and "lyrical visionary" of Dethklok. Portrayed as a tall figure, with long black hair and black fingernails, Nathan always speaks in a deep, gravelly voice, even when not singing. He is apparently the lead songwriting force in Dethklok, and uses violent imagery or plot elements when writing and composing song material.
Small described Nathan as a "quarterback", and based his character on Cannibal Corpse vocalist George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher.
Skwisgaar Skwigelf
Skwisgaar Skwigelf (voiced by Brendon Small) is Dethklok's lead guitarist. He is described as, "a handsome guy who thinks he's the greatest thing in the world, with a little bit of Yngwie Malmsteen in his attitude." He plays a Gibson Explorer, which he often carries even when not playing. Hailing from Sweden, Skwisgaar possesses a heavy Swedish accent. He is responsible for the majority of the arrangement of Dethklok's songs, writing both the guitar lines as well as Murderface's bass lines.
Toki Wartooth
Toki Wartooth (voiced by Tommy Blacha) is Dethklok's rhythm guitarist. He typically plays a Gibson Flying V. A native of Norway, he has a distinct whisker-like style of mustache known as the Fu Manchu, long brown hair and very pale blue eyes. Small explained Toki's relationship with Skwisgaar thusly: "Toki is Norwegian to Skwisgaar's Swedish, pompous attitude. And, again, a second-class citizen in the same band."
Pickles
Pickles (voiced by Brendon Small) is Dethklok's drummer. He was raised in Tomahawk, Wisconsin and speaks with a Yooper dialect. He refers to himself as "very Irish American" and has red hair, styled into dreadlocks and a comb-over skullet. He is depicted as having an average build with a slight beer belly. According to Brendon Small, Pickles was originally conceived as "the jerk of the group."Describing the character, Small said, "I thought the drummer should be able to do a bunch of stuff, like Roger Taylor in Queen. Even though it's not based on his personality, it's what he can do in the band and what parts of the songs he does contribute to."
William Murderface
William Murderface (voiced by Tommy Blacha) is Dethklok's bassist. He plays a Gibson Thunderbird Studio 5-string. He has brown hair, lime green eyes, a heavy lateral lisp and a diastema. Murderface's father killed his wife with a chainsaw before turning it upon himself in a grisly murder-suicide. Murderface is "a self-hating bass player who's always trying to act like he's more important than he is," in part because his bass playing is usually mixed out completely. Brendon Small describes Murderface as "thin-skinned and incredibly sensitive and just wants to be accepted constantly but can’t get that because he’s such a dick and pushes people away"
Source: Wikipedia

Here are some highlights.

Dead Rock Stars

I collect dead rock stars.

No, not their ashes or body bits but their dolls.

Yes. In short I collect dolls.

I have provided a link to witty and concise collection of Rock Star deaths by the brilliant Jack Marx

JACK MARX & DEAD ROCK STARS

This is a peek at my collection, I have included some of my wishlist items as well.

Morrison............... Elvis............ ..................Randy Rhodes ..............Sid

Sid..................... Johnny Cash......... Hendrix .......Joplin

Kurt Cobain ........Dimebag ..Harrison ............Garcia ............Lennon

Joey Ramone........................... Freddy......... Buddy........... Elvis

Zappa ................Eric Carr

Lyrics & their meaning Part 14 - In-A-Gadda-Da-Viida

This continuing story of song lyrics and their meaning in some of the worlds best loved songs.

PART 14
In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (1968) - Iron Butterfly

Many people may have heard of the band and the song In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida but not many people would realise how big this band was. Like bands such as Vanilla Fudge and The Rascals. Iron Butterfly sold a lot of records while they were popular but just seemed to dissolve into obscurity as the seventies progressed. The 17-minute song that was one side of the album of the same name sold 8 million copies and stayed in the U.S charts for 3 years. It was the very first Platinum Record recipient. Most people these days would have heard it on the Simpsons, when Bart changed the sheet music at church and every one thought they were singing ‘In The Garden Of Eden’. Which by the way is what the song was originally going to be called. As history recalls, Band members Lee Dorman and Ron Bushy were paying a visit to song-writer Doug Ingle they discovered he was in the middle of a typical sixties binge and hadn’t slept for over 36 hours. When he played the others the new song he had written, he was so shattered when he tried to say In the Garden of Eden as was intentioned it came out In-A Gadda-Da-Vida. Bushy thinking this strange wrote it down phonetically and when the band met again the name stuck. As you may have guessed by now Ingle having written the song in such a state and agreeing to the wacky title the song doesn’t exactly reveal the Dead Sea Scroll secrets. Now you are probably wondering how a song that is 17 minutes long and has a drum solo in it got air play to sell so many records. The answer to that is it coincided with the birth of F.M radio who embraced it as thinking mans rock. The same F.M radio that evolved into the horrid Classic radio stations of today, who strangely don’t have In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida on their play lists.
© 2005 Shidot Prod.

Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band

This link is a lot of fun and tells the history and associated trivia relating to this classsic album.

WHO'S WHO?

Lyrics & their meaning Part 13 - Lucy in the sky with diamonds

This continuing story of song lyrics and their meaning in some of the worlds best loved songs.

PART 13
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (1967)
One of the great fallacies of Rock music is that the title of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds was an intentional reference to the hallucinatory drug LSD.
Two weeks after the release of the revolutionary Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band, the Beatles publicly admitted to taking LSD and other drugs, but by this time the public “knew” that Lucy in the sky the song and its title were obviously more than mere coincidence. A song incorporating acid trip imagery, released on an album featuring psychedelic designs, at a time when LSD was very much in the news. Every one was in on this joke. The Beatles were well known for their very wicked sense of humour.
But this was where the public were wrong.
John Lennon while never denying that the song was inspired by countless acid trips (but then again so was the rest of the album.) He quickly explained the title was in fact a mere coincidence. The title was taken from a name Lennon’s 4 year old son had given to a drawing he made at school and proudly shown his dad.
But to no avail the people were no going to buy it. They knew Lennon better.
In Phillip Norman’s Beatle biography its recorded:
Even greater was the scandal arising from the discovery that “ Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” was a >mnemonic for LSD. In vain did John explain that it was simply the name his son, Julian, had given to a picture drawn at school.
To emphasize the point, In an Interview with Rolling Stone in 1970 Lennon stated:
“Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”…I swear to God or swear to Mao, or to anybody you like, I had no idea spelled LSD…
Lennon told much the same story during an interview in 1972 on the Mike Douglas Show and in September 1980, only a couple of months before his death, He was still offering the same story about the titles origin in an interview with Playboy Magazine.
This story has also been confirmed by the other Beatle members as late as 1997 for the Anthology series the most in depth documentary of the Beatles ever.
Paul McCartney tells his story”
What happened was that John’s son Julian did a drawing at school and bought it home, and he has a schoolmate called Lucy, and John said what’s that, and he said “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”….so we had a nice title.
There is no reason to doubt John Lennon. He was always open and honest, if not always careful of what he said. He admitted to using drugs, he admitted to taking over a hundred LSD trips. Why would he bother to deny one little story about the origins of a song unless it was true. He was more annoyed he didn’t think of it.
Update -- June, 2004:
In a new interview in Uncut Magazine, Paul detailed his drug use for the first time with the Beatles, which centered mostly around cocaine and that he had tried heroin once. In that interview, although Paul acknowledged that Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds had indeed been named for the drawing by Julian, he also said "it's pretty obvious" that the song is about an acid trip.

the picture by Julian Lennon

©2004 Shidot Prod.

Lyrics & their meaning Part 12 - I am the walrus

Rock Lyrics are not what they appear to be.
PART 12

I Am The Walrus(1968) The Beatles

The Beatles are arguably one of the most influential, popular, significant, innovative (just keep adding superlatives) Rock band that the world of popular music has ever known. The type of Messiah popularity they attracted was always bring out the lunatic fringe but in the case of the Beatles they didn’t need help from the loonies they had John Lennon.

The Beatles well-documented experiments with mind-altering drugs have explained their inventiveness in the studio and with the canny ability of their Producer George Martin the band managed to record them on tape. The drugs also help explain some of Lennon’s lyrics; in this particular case I am the Walrus.
The album Magical Mystery Tour in which it was contained was released in 1967 and was smack in the middle of the psychedelic period for the group in terms of packaging and content, it was also strangely enough involved in one of the Beatles few failures.
The television special, which followed the release of the record, was dismissed by critics and viewers alike, and rightly so because it was an amateurish piece of crap dominated in production and direction by Paul McCartney who should have left it to the experts.
The Album and its packaging as it was revealed later was a gold mine of clues for the unprovable practical hoax of Paul McCartney’s untimely death in a mythical car crash.
Songs like Fool on the hill’, Magical Mystery Tour & I am the Walrus were destined to be prime targets for the word analysers.
The song I am the Walrus is very drug influenced. The opening lines “I am he / as you are he / as you are me and we are all together” – came to Lennon during an acid trip. And so too did the songs phrasing. The lyrics follow the same sound pattern as the ‘Ee Ow Ee Ow’ of an English Police siren. Many of the other verses were triggered by a fan letter the band received from a student from John Lennon’s old high school. Lennon’s good friend Pete Shotton recalled how he and Lennon were taking ‘Lucky dips” into the fan mail bag one day when out came a letter from a lad describing how his English teacher was pontificating on the real meaning behind the Beatles lyrics.
Lennon already exasperated by the often mistaken analysis of Beatle songs by journalists, critics and fans was seized by a brain wave. Asking Shotton to recite their shared boyhood rhyme Dead Dogs Eye. A listing of the kind of gross things young boys find appealing. Lennon reconfigured the words into yellow matter custard, dripping from a dead dog’s eye. Likewise the words Semolina pilchard , a nice way to say sardine custard. After scribbling down these lines, Lennon looked up with a smile and said “ Let the fuckers work that one out Pete”
John Lennon has categorically stated he wrote the words for ‘ I am the Walrus’ to trip up the critics, they meant absolutely nothing at all. Lennon confused clue seeker even more when he wrote Glass Onions ’for the White Album a song he revealed was just a lot of phrases that were popular for there suggested hints. That he embellished in response to critics whom he felt over-analysed I am the Walrus and the Paul is Dead hoax.
Other lyrics were lifted straight out of Alice through the looking glass along with other snappy phrases were perfect catalyst to the off beat tune. You have to remember Lennon wasn’t partial to grabbing whatever was available for words; don’t forget he got the entire lyrics for the Benefit for Mr. Kite from an old circus poster.
As innocent as the song seems the BBC still managed to unofficially but effectively ban I am the Walrus from T.V and radio.
Maybe Lennon knew the song was going to attract so much attention that he put in his own little message.
At the end of the song there is a falsetto chorus of screams and whoops performed by the Mike Sammes Singers a group of hired session vocalists that builds as the song reaches its climax. Nice people say it sounds like “Oompa, Oompa stick it up your jumper”. If you listen hard enough I reckon their saying what Lennon was really trying to say to the critics: “Get Fucked, get fucked everybody get fucked”.
(c) 2002 Shidot Prod.

Lyrics & their meaning Part 11 - I started a joke

Ever wondered what your favorite song was about? Probably not, which is good because a nice melody and tune are far more enticing than words. Church hymns have truly inspiring lyrics and meaningful messages but don’t really jump out of the record stores. At last a biased attempt is being made to determine what some of the best-loved tunes are really about. We will have a look at the background of these songs and see if history can tell us if any light can be shed on these cryptic verses, poignant prose or just Grade Two poetry

PART 11
I Stated a Joke - The Bee Gees (1967)

A timeless classic that reminds us the Bee Bees really were good once and maybe that Disco period thing can be just seen as when they were possessed by evil spirits. Although the songs singer Robin Gibb has claimed that the melody was inspired by the sounds he heard in a jet engine, he has always steadfastly refused to explain the mysterious lyrics.
Brother Barry has been quoted: "there was a lot of that in those days. there was a lot of pschedelia and the idea that if you wrote something, even if it sounded ridiculous, somebody would find the meaning for it, and that was the truth".
In the monstrous 2000 Unauthorized biography The Bee Gees - Tales of the brother Gibb, The authors describe I Started A Joke as ".... (the) prime example of the pure abstract Gibb lyric that everyone can read something into and, it would seem nearly everyone did"
This must of been a sixties thing, I remember growing up and thinking the song was about Adolph Hitler, because he was the only person I thought who could make the whole world cry, and everyone was happy when he died. But after an exhaustive search through heaps of Bee Gee web sites I couldn't find one reference to the songs meanings ( with the exception of the melody/aeroplane link) anywhere.

© 2004 Shidot Prod.