What's always made heavy metal sound hot is the technology and pandering to the low I.Q. drug culture. Even Ozzie had to submit to his manager/wife and move to The States to continue his commercial success as only video. Super-loud amplification, then artificial distortions becoming effects of all kinds, guillotines and fire, now seven-string bass heavy guitars, screamo vocals, invitations to vomit, detuned guitars, hideous special effects costumes and gold stereo wires for strings. It never was about music, just bombast with the occasional reprieve.
I'll admit to being influenced by Deep Purple in 1970, seeing them when "Deep Purple in Rock" was just released, their faces done like Mount Rushmore, a nice British takeover. Ritchie Blackmore was an acrobat onstage, running up to his amp with two roadies standing behind bracing it while he did a backflip. He'd aim his guitar at you like a sword and dance on his heels while he played flamenco style, and Jon Lord made some amazing organ sounds, sticking knives between the keys to sustain notes, stabbing the cabinet for emphasis, and getting into difficult organ-guitar harmonies. It was an odd combination at the time, an equal rapport between Hammond organ and Strat w/Marshall stack, not sounding like Procul Harem.
Old Man Ron! If you see this in time, find
www.youdiscover.ca, a Niagara Falls online band contest, and give a listen to DAME or pillar8, and hear what some bad young Canadian girls sound like, and what your next heavy metal turn-on is going to be. Unless those rumours I've heard about New York strippers using guitars as props is true. Now that the C.I.A. has weaponized heavy metal, that influence will be upon us soon. I think I'll find an old Mosrite guitar and hide in the garage with an old Ventures album, and long for a surf sound I've never heard. Oh yeah, even the Ventures became a theme song for a t.v. cop show.
