// 012 // SLAP BASS HAPPY // JOHN THE FISHERMAN // PRIMUS

"You should never meet your heroes" or so the saying goes.  By now I was going to lots of gigs and was over-joyed to learn that Primus were playing in Bradford.  The venue was downstairs at the Queen's Hall (I'm not even sure that it's still open) which had all the charm of the bar from Star Wars, and was a perfect enviornment to see various scuzzy metal bands.

My friends and I were hanging out at the bar, trying to look cool and nursing our pints of cider when we spotted the guitarist from Primus looking puzzled at an arcade machine.  My freinds and I looked at each other, not quite believing that one of our idols was standing right next to us. We were a little bit awe-struck.  Until we realised he was kinda stoned and couldn't figure out how to work the machine and was just standing there slightly hypnotised by the flashing lights.  And then we realised that our idol had feet of clay...

 

Primus were often lumped in with funk metal, mainly because they had a very bass driven sound, but in reality were a lot more weird than that.  Their songs often featured strange characters inhabiting weird worlds.  They had a lot more in common with Tom Waits than Red Hot Chili Peppers (and Tom Waits would guest on their 'big' hit single Tommy The Cat')

They also seem to be a love-or-hate-them band, probably due in part to Les Claypool's idiosyncratic voice and strange lyrical subject matter. Also, they sounded a world away from bands like Iron Maiden, Slayer and Metallica.  Maybe I was getting kind of bored with metal, but what would take it's place?

// 011 // SLAP BASS HAPPY // HIGHER GROUND // RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS

There's a moment in 'The Mighty Boosh' when Vince says "Jazz-Funk?  That's Funk's retarded cousin,"  The same thing could easily be said about Funk-Metal.  There was a whole movement toward crossover (witness Anthrax teaming up with Public Enemy to produce a tune which was less than the sum of its parts) as if metal was slightly ashamed of itself and seeking to gain legitimacy but melding with other, more respectable genres (Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit et al would do something very similar ten years later with similarly dreadful results)

The prime movers of this genre were the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who, unlike most of those who came after (I'm looking at you Urban Dance Squad, Freaky Funkin' Wierdos and many more) were actually really cool.

 

My copy of Mother's Milk - the album that first broke them - was ill-gotten.  It was stolen from a party at the house of someone we didn't like.  There are dim memories of being drunk on cheap cider, petty vandalism,  booze being stolen, the whole thing.  And when I got home I had this tape in my pocket.  I could never listen to Higher Ground without feeling vaguely guilty.  I could take this opportunity to confess, but rather sadly, I can't remember the name of the kid who's party it was, so my deed will have to go unpunished, apart from my whole self loathing thing.

The first 4 Chilis albums were a lot different to the ones that came after their big hit 'Blood Sugar Sex Magik' and are a lot more funky, often sounding like a different band.  I was much more of a fan of this early stuff, which was my first real taste of musical snobbery - when everyone else was raving about 'Under The Bridge' and 'Give It Away' I was acting like a proto-hipster, quietly remarking that I'd been into them for years and their early stuff was way better.  Sometimes I can be such a jerk...

// 010 // SLAP BASS HAPPY // FROM OUT OF NOWHERE // FAITH NO MORE

Faith No More's album 'The Real Thing' was another one of those hot tapes that got passed around from person to person.  It sounded kind of different to the usual metal stuff we were listening to - almost poppy, which as you will recall was a no-go area for us - but it was okay, because Metal Hammer and Kerrang were writing about them.  They even *gasp* sang love songs.  

This album is one of those super-nostalgic records - one that sound tracked an exact moment in time - the summer between finishing my GCSEs and starting my A - Levels.  Without coming over all 'Stand By Me' it was a great summer, filled with great friends with stupid nick-names (Bod, Bish, Bobo, Crip, Taff...) my first (unrequited) crush and that time we went to see a dead body but got hassled by Keifer Sutherland...

Also, hanging out watching Headbangers Ball and 120 Minutes and being exposed to music videos for more or less the first time - ones that you couldn't find anywhere else and certainly weren't shown on Top Of The Pops, which never showed any metal anyway (apart from the odd Iron Maiden track) and suddenly VHS tapes were being traded as eagerly as C90s.

// 009 // IS IT GETTING HEAVY? // SECRET GARDEN // THE BEYOND

One of the things about getting into any kind of music is how cool it is to explore the genre.  Someone gives you an Iron Maiden tape, you head down to the local Morrisons to snap up Powerslave and Stranger In A Strange Land.  Soon you have the entire Iron Maiden back catalogue, so you scour the pages of Metal Hammer looking for news of a new Iron Maiden release.

And in the mean-time, you start to explore the other big names of the genre.  Soon you are inahbiting the basement of Crash Records, flicking through the Thrash section for the other big names.  Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Anthrax.  Vinyl is bought, tapes swapped and soon you have a pretty comprehensive collecton of the more well known works.  But it's still not enough.  The reviews sections of magazines are scrutinized even more for things like 'if you like Metallica, you might like this band' and then the more obscure bands, the ones that never make the charts - not even the Heavy Metal Chart on The Chart Show - are part of your ever expanding collection.

By this time I was going to see gigs, stage diving like a proper mosher, with my long hair and my leather jacket.  But because the big bands only toured once in a blue moon - and the usually only playing huge venues that involved coach trips - I started going to see any metal band that came anywhere near Leeds or Bradford.  And once I saw a band called The Beyond, and fell in love.  As far as I know, they only made one album before disappearing, which was a shame because they were great.  And pretty obscure too, which gave them a certain aura of cool in my record collection.  They were also, perhaps a sign of the fact that I was growning out of my metal days as they were pretty subtle by comparison to a lot of the other stuff I was listening to.  Plus they didn't sing about death and the devil all the time.