Sex Pistols

Sex Pistols is a punk rock band. For those who don't know the difference between punk rock and normal rock. Punk is basically teenagers that rebel against everything (Parental controls, politics, religion, even war.). Punk culture is commonly popular in European countries like England, France and Germany.
The Sex Pistols is the band that started it all. Most of today's punk bands follow what their creator has left behind. But the Sex Pistols didn't have the greatest cooperation. They had to replace their bass guitarists four times!!!! And each time they switched was because the previous one died of drug overdose!!!! You would think that they would be against drugs, but they didn't care. In fact they always seemed to be high before their gigs and after. They brought out their first album "Never Mind the Bollocks...Here's The Sex Pistols" in 1977. They started out with no money at all and managed to become one of the most famous bands of all time. How cool is that. But lots of arguments and controversy started when Glen Matlock left the band. He left for his own reasons and talked about it with the band. When they officially confirmed Matlock's resignation, they started a war of words. Enough of that and back to their music. Now the second album the brought out was "God Save The Queen" which caused a lot of controversy since it was "anti-royalist" to those that supported the queen. Basically to make a long story short, they weren't the most lovable band in history. Now there is a lot more to the Sex Pistols and if you are interested in learning more, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_Pistols. that is where I got my info. Here's the song

Audioslave

Audioslave is a post-grunge genre of music. They mostly talk about how to forget how bad the world is in their song "Doesn't Remind Me" and that no matter where you go, as long as you enjoy the good times and try to put the bad times behind if you can. They also talk about a long lost love and how they will never be able to be together in the song "Like A Stone". This is one of my favorite rock bands because they use distortion sounds for their guitar solos since they are a post-grunge type of band. Personally, I prefer to listen to their songs when I feel down because it helps me bring my spirit up. They basically tell you to enjoy the little things  around you. But sometimes they will go out of that and bring out the big guns like "Show Me How To Live" where they talk about how someone wants to learn from someone close how to live their own life. Now for some little facts from wikipedia. Audioslave was made from former band members of Rage Against The Machines like lead guitarist Tom Morello, base Tim Commerford, and the battery: Brad Wilk and former signer of Soundgarden Chris Cornell. Also, they are the first american band to ever play live in Cuba. I think that is pretty amazing since Cuba and the U.S don'T really see "eye to eye". Now heres some photos and a relaxing song from Audioslave, here's "Doesn't Remind Me".

Time for change of subject...how about rock!!!!

For the next few blogs, I will talk about different rock bands. Now when I'm talking about rock bands its not these newer ones that keeps signing about their love life...Who really cares about that!!!! No, I will talk of the bands that have talent like The Who, the Ramones, Police, Jethro Tull, Foghat, Aerosmith, Audioslave, and many, many more. Right I will just summarize what i will be talking about in my future blogs. Now like heavy metal, there are different types of rock, like Punk rock, hard rock and progressive rock. Those are the top three types of rock i like to listen to. Here are a few songs to give you a taste of these three genders of rock. I shall start it off with progressive rock. Here's "Aqualung" by Jethro Tull

 


A fact that I have recently learned is that Jethro Tull played the flute and sings in all of his song "Bungle In The Jungle".But my favorite song is "Aqualung". Now here's some punk rock. This is "Anarchy In The U.K." by Sex Pistols. Now this band is what started the punk revolution in the world.


Now for the last song which will represent hard rock will be *DRUM ROLL* QUEEN!!!! Now since i made most of suffer extremely harsh heavy metal songs, I will cut you all some slack and play the song "Bicycle Race".

Fan's of Metal

Well now I will talk a bit about their fans. I, as a fan of metal, i prefer to listen to it loud. Metal is meant for pumping your adrenaline and to be less afraid of  the world. Some ways of doing that is by putting your i pod to full blast so that you can't hear the people on your school bus complain about their boring lives that no one really cares about. Now if your like me, people that interrupt the guitar solos of your favorite songs should be punched in the face.

When you  can hear the person beside you saying that your music is to loud...It sure as hell ain't loud enough. I get yelled at by people because my music is too loud but when I turn around and say their music is too loud, I get insulted in Arabic since they are aloud to do whatever they please. For any metal fan being oppressed this is my advice: Don't listen to those that complain about your music because they don't understand your music like you do!!!!!! And if they keep on harassing you about it then tell them to shove a cork in their mouth. They might think Miley Cyrus is an awesome signer but to me, someone signing about an american party is because she can't make  up a real song worth while to listen to. Now if you feel like your the only metal fan these days because of that Justin Bieber crap but trust me. as long as there is someone signing about chaos and destruction there will be millions of metal fans. What we must do is regroup and crush these new songs they call music. And get MEGADETH back together to lead us back into popularity. Most metal fans can't stand rap, hip hop or jazz. Also we do not like being annoyed with people trying to act like they are metal fans just because they know a song made by a heavy metal band. All metal fans know the history of at least  one metal band (Members, songs, albums, when they started, if they broken up etc...). Well now I will leave a song for you guys to listen to. Here is "Killed By Death" by Motorhead.

Guitar Styles

All groups of metal have different "looks" for their guitar. To give you guys ideas of what I'm talking about, I will put numerous pictures of different guitars and name them for you guys.



guitar #1: The Firebird. Its a guitar in shape of a "z" but the edges are more circular than straight. The picture below is the actual "look".

As you can see, the edges aren't really straight. Personally, I always dreamed of having a guitar like this. Now to show the " EXPLORER" which is a straighter version of the Firebird.

Guitar #2: The EXPLORER is a commonly used guitar in certain metal bands like "In-Flames" and "MEGADETH".

Now I looked for the same colored type guitar for the Firebird but they didn't have one. This is what you would call a "Vintage-Sunburst". Vintage is an old guitar that lost a bit of its color but the added sunburst gives the red a nice cherry color which I think is very nice and guitars like these ones sound much better than their newer brethren.


Guitar #3: Stratocaster is a guitar that looks like a Les Paul but instead of having only one part of the top sticking out, both side do. this will show you what I'm trying to say. Kirk Hammett from METALLICA uses this type of guitar. Also my guitar at home is a stratocaster  as well.

Now to show you another type of guitar. How about the "Flying V".

Guitar # 4: Flying V is a guitar in a shape of a "V" obviously. The band "Scorpions" has a Flying V.

It has the look of someone with two pegged legs but still looks like  "V" upside down.

And now the father of all guitar looks.

Guitar #5: Les Paul is the very first guitar to be used by rock and metal bands. It is the most famous guitar ever invented but sadly  the creator of this magnificent guitar passed away last year. But no rock or metal band that understand their history can never really appreciate what this man did for the rocking community. And for those who don't know who the creator of the Les Paul guitar is, well its Les Paul himself. He started the guitar company Gibson who made a huge variety of guitars, there are hundreds of different looks but I'm only naming the top five guitar styles. Now here is the picture of the very first guitar look.

Techniques: Hammer-ons and Pull offs

I will be more specific about hammer-ons in this blog. Hammer-ons is a technique, like sports, guitars have different ways of making sound than its traditional sounds imitating from the strings. A hammer-on is quickly moving your fingers down the string of the guitar. the video will explain it for those who need a visual image of whats happening. This is a way to speed up your song. Like I said in my previous blog, it is used both in rock and metal so don't be surprised when the man says rock "n" roll. 


It is the easiest technique to learn. It is a bit confusing at the start but you will really catch on after two or three times. I found it pretty easy to learn, but when you use hammer-ons, there are pull offs. Its the same concept but instead of going down on your string, you switch strings without hitting it a second time. here is a video demonstrating a pull off.

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I personally think pull offs are harder for the fact the you must be quick in moving your finger to the next string right after hitting the first one like in the video above.

History of Metal

Metal from my point of view, was created by rock bands who wanted something that would pump the adrenaline of their fans and make them feel relieved of taking out their emotions in a louder way. It basically formed a new type of sound on the radio waves, people started listening to something that grew from one branch of music to another. You can look at like this, Rock is the older brother trying to set an example and Metal is the rebellious little brother that like to jam out and drive everyone crazy with their loud music. To prove it personally, I, as the youngest of my family does not like soft music. I would rather make my ears bleed listening to something loud and that pumps the adrenaline super fast to the point that you can't slow down. The only disadvantage about metal is that the moment it started it was immediately taken off the air since rock bands didn't want to lose their grip on profits. And from that moment on stereotypes about heavy metal like it was "the devils work!!!!" or "It makes you want to kill yourself." and my personal favorite "Its an insult to music.". (Laugh) To think that would stop us...man you gotta be kidding me. Instead of being discouraged from comments like that, we grew stronger. We caused thousands of kids to rebel and start singing about chaos and have demonic solos that completely astonishes most rock guitarist. Because of this, the rock bands were starting to lose their popularity in a certain way. Their concerts weren't sold out like before. This started a music war. During the 70's and 80's, rock and metal were fighting one another in what would be called "guitar battles". If a group of rock had faster solos, the metal bands found ways of making solos even faster called "Hammer-On" were you slide your fingers up and down the neck really fast to make some sort of sliding noise. Every band found a way to make a hammer on different. Now here's a song from a random metal band and rock band. they both use hammer ons for their songs. I want you to judge which one is better.



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I present you "Rock You Like A Hurricane" by the Scorpions and "Heaven and Hell" from Dio. Both have hammer ons and they should be easy to find if you listen to them.