Post by RIP on Dec 11, 2003 6:05:24 GMT -5
In the beginning, there was rock ‘n’ roll, and the Lord did look down upon creation from on high and He did shrug, because rock ‘n’ roll was okay, all things considered...
And there was much rockin’ round the clock, and sh-booming and wang-a-dang-ding-donging, and there were Big Boppers and Dukes of Earl, and silly men with names like "Buddy" and "Smokey." And the Lord was not much bothered by this since, quite frankly, He had been dozing...
And, in the year of Himself, nineteen hundred and sixty-nine, He did glance down once again and was consumed with much displeasure, for the people were listening only to folkie whiners like Bob Dylan (whom the Lord really couldn’t stand) and hippie types in velour pants and Nehru jackets and poor psychedelic groups with asinine appellations like "The Electric Twit," and the Lord was peeved but good.
"Foolish mortals," the Lord did say, "Do they not realize that I created rock ‘n’ roll simply as a means to an end? That rock ‘n’ roll was meant merely as a stepping stone to heavy metal? Even the tedium of opera is preferable in my sight to this swill. And did I not give the erring sheep Deep Purple, that they might be shown divine felicity in this age of ‘Sugar, Sugar’ and Jefferson Airplane?...
But, unbeknownst to the Lord, Deep Purple had become mired down by ill-chosen musical directions, and they had accomplished the mind-numbing feat of becoming both a Vanilla Fudge clone and a rich man’s Moody Blues. And the Lord did forgive them these transgressions, for it was the Sixties and stupid ideas were all the rage and, anyway, "Hush" and "Mandrake Root" were better than ninety-eight percent of the refuse on the radio at the time. "Maybe I’ll give them a year or so, just to get the bugs out," proclaimed the Lord. But still, He was not pleased...
"Did I not provide the world with Cream, the band that walks it like The Who talks it, so that all might partake of the communion of metal?" But the Lord was astonished to find that Cream had broken up, despite a firm mandate from the firmament; and the Lord was surprised at his own astonishment, since there were some egos in that band that rivaled the Lord’s and the split within it was surely predestined. "With whom shall I replace my beloved Cream?" cried the Lord, "Is there none but knob-twiddlers and Beatle wanna-bees and Country Joe & The Fish? Is there naught but Marianne Faithfull and Herman’s Hermits? Is there none within the kingdom of the cosmos who want to rock heavy?"
And the Lord’s attention was jarred away, for, at that moment, in Birmingham, England, the world’s loudest racket was starting up, an uproar that sounded like bumper cars played with steamrollers. And the Lord did grin, for this had all been foreseen, and he did look down upon those four dimps who had been named as the messiahs of metal, and he did proclaim, "Thou art my favorite sons and for this I will set you up high, and all that is good in metal shall come first from you. And you shall be dubbed Black Sabbath, and you will take up where Cream left off, and you will sound all gloomy and medieval and just plain evil, so that weak-minded dickheads might assume that you work for my Opponent. That way, no one may accuse Me of favoritism on your part. And your road will not be an easy one, for management will screw you over repeatedly, and your individual personalities won’t help the situation one bit, if you catch the drift of the Lord. But no one ever said that being the forefathers and pioneers was easy." Thus sayeth the Lord...
And the Lord was not yet finished, for there were some butter-spines that would never be able to comfortably accept Black Sabbath. "Whatever became of my beloved Yardbirds?" said the Lord, "Is it possible that, in these dim times, their cacophony has been quenched as well?" And the Lord did gnash his teeth and become really bummed out, because some days the humans seemed to screw everything up and it was tough to be the Lord. But again his attention was stolen away, this time by a river-deep, spark-spitting ultra-blues that was being spewed from the speakers of four yahoos who were calling themselves The New Yardbirds. And the Lord did proclaim "Well, you are not The Yardbirds that I remember--"
"I was in the original group," said Jimmy Page, "And we’re just fulfilling some contracts that were signed when The ‘Birds were still together."
"Pipe down," spake the Lord, "I know this already - I am the Lord, after all - and I’m in the middle of a soliloquy here. As I was saying, I can tell by the glorious sound you produce that you will be worthy successors to The Yardbirds. But that name really sucks, so you shall be Led Zeppelin from here on out. The masses will adore your every twitch, and no ridiculously high level of album sales shall be denied you, and you shall be hounded only by laughable motion pictures about you and poor album reviews by jealous critics. For all this, however, the Lord doth declare that there will be a price. Neither your talent nor your importance shall be questioned, but there shall be those who criticize you for your lack of commitment to, and disdain of, the one true rock and roll that is heavy metal. And you shall be vagabond amidst the true believers, and their relationship will be one of love/hate. But, as rich as you’ll be, it probably won’t concern you all that much." Thus sayeth the Lord...
And the Lord was not yet finished, for a year had passed and it had become time for His prophecy of earlier to be fulfilled. Truly, it was so! Because now, in the record racks next to the first Black Sabbath album and Led Zeppelin's both 'I' and 'II,' there was Deep Purple’s 'In Rock,' and it was what the Lord had intended for them from the very beginning, an intricately raucous beauty that was both graceful and urgent, with cool organ solos that sounded like a UFO landing and guitar work that resembled an air-raid siren with a few shorts in the circuit. And now all that had been going wrong had been put right by the wisdom of the Lord, and in His glory He had decreed that the Age of Heaviness was to begin, and He decreed that many would follow the Holy Trinity of Metal that He had nudged into beginning the revolution, and that there would henceforth be no lack of killer riffs, power chords, and prominent distortion. And the Lord did look down from on high, to survey his metallic creation...
And He saw that it was very, very good...
And there was much rockin’ round the clock, and sh-booming and wang-a-dang-ding-donging, and there were Big Boppers and Dukes of Earl, and silly men with names like "Buddy" and "Smokey." And the Lord was not much bothered by this since, quite frankly, He had been dozing...
And, in the year of Himself, nineteen hundred and sixty-nine, He did glance down once again and was consumed with much displeasure, for the people were listening only to folkie whiners like Bob Dylan (whom the Lord really couldn’t stand) and hippie types in velour pants and Nehru jackets and poor psychedelic groups with asinine appellations like "The Electric Twit," and the Lord was peeved but good.
"Foolish mortals," the Lord did say, "Do they not realize that I created rock ‘n’ roll simply as a means to an end? That rock ‘n’ roll was meant merely as a stepping stone to heavy metal? Even the tedium of opera is preferable in my sight to this swill. And did I not give the erring sheep Deep Purple, that they might be shown divine felicity in this age of ‘Sugar, Sugar’ and Jefferson Airplane?...
But, unbeknownst to the Lord, Deep Purple had become mired down by ill-chosen musical directions, and they had accomplished the mind-numbing feat of becoming both a Vanilla Fudge clone and a rich man’s Moody Blues. And the Lord did forgive them these transgressions, for it was the Sixties and stupid ideas were all the rage and, anyway, "Hush" and "Mandrake Root" were better than ninety-eight percent of the refuse on the radio at the time. "Maybe I’ll give them a year or so, just to get the bugs out," proclaimed the Lord. But still, He was not pleased...
"Did I not provide the world with Cream, the band that walks it like The Who talks it, so that all might partake of the communion of metal?" But the Lord was astonished to find that Cream had broken up, despite a firm mandate from the firmament; and the Lord was surprised at his own astonishment, since there were some egos in that band that rivaled the Lord’s and the split within it was surely predestined. "With whom shall I replace my beloved Cream?" cried the Lord, "Is there none but knob-twiddlers and Beatle wanna-bees and Country Joe & The Fish? Is there naught but Marianne Faithfull and Herman’s Hermits? Is there none within the kingdom of the cosmos who want to rock heavy?"
And the Lord’s attention was jarred away, for, at that moment, in Birmingham, England, the world’s loudest racket was starting up, an uproar that sounded like bumper cars played with steamrollers. And the Lord did grin, for this had all been foreseen, and he did look down upon those four dimps who had been named as the messiahs of metal, and he did proclaim, "Thou art my favorite sons and for this I will set you up high, and all that is good in metal shall come first from you. And you shall be dubbed Black Sabbath, and you will take up where Cream left off, and you will sound all gloomy and medieval and just plain evil, so that weak-minded dickheads might assume that you work for my Opponent. That way, no one may accuse Me of favoritism on your part. And your road will not be an easy one, for management will screw you over repeatedly, and your individual personalities won’t help the situation one bit, if you catch the drift of the Lord. But no one ever said that being the forefathers and pioneers was easy." Thus sayeth the Lord...
And the Lord was not yet finished, for there were some butter-spines that would never be able to comfortably accept Black Sabbath. "Whatever became of my beloved Yardbirds?" said the Lord, "Is it possible that, in these dim times, their cacophony has been quenched as well?" And the Lord did gnash his teeth and become really bummed out, because some days the humans seemed to screw everything up and it was tough to be the Lord. But again his attention was stolen away, this time by a river-deep, spark-spitting ultra-blues that was being spewed from the speakers of four yahoos who were calling themselves The New Yardbirds. And the Lord did proclaim "Well, you are not The Yardbirds that I remember--"
"I was in the original group," said Jimmy Page, "And we’re just fulfilling some contracts that were signed when The ‘Birds were still together."
"Pipe down," spake the Lord, "I know this already - I am the Lord, after all - and I’m in the middle of a soliloquy here. As I was saying, I can tell by the glorious sound you produce that you will be worthy successors to The Yardbirds. But that name really sucks, so you shall be Led Zeppelin from here on out. The masses will adore your every twitch, and no ridiculously high level of album sales shall be denied you, and you shall be hounded only by laughable motion pictures about you and poor album reviews by jealous critics. For all this, however, the Lord doth declare that there will be a price. Neither your talent nor your importance shall be questioned, but there shall be those who criticize you for your lack of commitment to, and disdain of, the one true rock and roll that is heavy metal. And you shall be vagabond amidst the true believers, and their relationship will be one of love/hate. But, as rich as you’ll be, it probably won’t concern you all that much." Thus sayeth the Lord...
And the Lord was not yet finished, for a year had passed and it had become time for His prophecy of earlier to be fulfilled. Truly, it was so! Because now, in the record racks next to the first Black Sabbath album and Led Zeppelin's both 'I' and 'II,' there was Deep Purple’s 'In Rock,' and it was what the Lord had intended for them from the very beginning, an intricately raucous beauty that was both graceful and urgent, with cool organ solos that sounded like a UFO landing and guitar work that resembled an air-raid siren with a few shorts in the circuit. And now all that had been going wrong had been put right by the wisdom of the Lord, and in His glory He had decreed that the Age of Heaviness was to begin, and He decreed that many would follow the Holy Trinity of Metal that He had nudged into beginning the revolution, and that there would henceforth be no lack of killer riffs, power chords, and prominent distortion. And the Lord did look down from on high, to survey his metallic creation...
And He saw that it was very, very good...
