Ever wanted to hand out band-aids to Tom Cruise and Mel Gibson on movie sets for $50-an-hour? Get in line, cause you'll have to join the stage hands union and compete against moonlighting firefighters and EMTs. Read my report in today's Boston Herald.
Also did a spread on the Worcester Metal Fest, which rolls into The Palladium Friday and Saturday. Best quote: "It’ll be totally fun and totally metal as fuck!” - Admiral Nobeard, also known as Pat Henry, bassist for New Jersey "pirate metal" band Swashbuckle.
New York hardcore kings Sick Of It All filmed their latest video, for the song "Death or Jail," in Boston and as a publicity stunt claimed they had a run-in with Boston cops on the shoot.
Disturbing news out of British Columbia - Devon Clifford, drummer for dance-punk band You Say Party! We Say Die! collapsed and died onstage during a show in Vancouver. He was 30. In a statement posted by his band's record label, Paper Bag, his family said he died of a massive brain hemorrhage. Here's an excerpt from the family statement:
"Devon Clifford was an extremely gifted drummer and determined character. He loved his family, loved his band, loved traveling, loved being on stage and loved meeting people around the world. He was smart, witty, passionate, and music meant everything to him. He was also incredibly generous with his love and respected everybody he came into contact with."
RIP dude. Here's "There is XXXX (Within My Heart)," a slowly-building banger from their latest disc, XXXX:
In honor of the late Peter Steele, here are a few off-beat, yet somehow infectious, covers that kick ass in one fashion or another:
Type O Negative - "Cinnamon Girl" (Neil Young)
This is what a cover song should be - ballsy, true to the original's spirt and yet original enough in its own right to make it an entirely new song.
Biz Markie - "Benny & the Jets" (Elton John)
The Beastie Boys combined forces with the golden age of hip-hop's clown prince and made one of the funniest fucking tracks ever. Biz Mark knows about four of the words . . .
Machine Head - "Message in a Bottle" (The Police)
The Burning Red is widely considered a low point for Machine Head but I don't give a fuck what anyone says, this cover kicks ass.
With his diminishing skills and knack for landing in shady deals, how long will it be before Papi will be broke as hell and become a sad, cautionary, rags-to-riches-to-rags tale a la Leon Spinks?
How long 'til we read something like this:
Stuffed into a tattered easy chair in a dust-strewn shanty in this rural Dominican Republic outpost, the once-iconic slugger and star of the 2004 and 2007 world champion Red Sox looks weathered beyond his years and blames the steroid scandal and "bad business dealings" for his current predicament. And so on and so forth . . .
Peter Steele was a lot of things but dishonest was not one of them. This interview below gives just a small snapshot into the complex, tortured Type O Negative frontman. RIP dude . . .
The rock star dream apparently faded long ago for Pete Steele.
"I just wanted to have enough money to have a house, wife, maybe four kids. I'm not at that place right now and I really don't see things changing very much," said Steele, the hulking, vampiric frontman for Brooklyn goth metallers Type O Negative.
"That's the main problem, is what am I doing here? I'm 41 years old, and rock is for youth."
While many bands spend interviews gushing about their latest albums, praising their bandmates as their best pals or thanking their lucky stars to be playing music for a living, Steele is brutally disenchanted and blatantly depressed. A former New York City Parks Department worker, he said he rues the day he gave up the salaried job to front the brooding metal outfit.
Now 10 years and five albums into the Type O experiment, he still lives in the same basement apartment, has no girlfriend and describes his life as one of disappointment and frustration. He claims he stays in the band only because of contracts and because he made a promise to the rest of the group: keyboardist Josh Silver, guitarist Kenny Hickey and drummer Johnny Kelly.
"I do it because I made a commitment to my so-called friends in this band that we would see this through to the end. I didn't realize it would be a life sentence," he deadpanned.
Formed in the bowels of Brooklyn's early 1990s goth scene, the group slithered out of the shadows and made its mark on the black- metal underground with 1993's "Bloody Kisses," a spine-tingling offering that went platinum. The group, which headlines the Worcester Palladium tonight, followed up with 1996's "October Rust" and 1999's "World Coming Down," neither of which lived up to "Bloody Kisses" commercially or in the eyes of fans.
Their latest, however, the aptly titled "Life Is Killing Me," is an instant classic, bursting with hypnotic, melodic hard rock, tongue-in-cheek potty-mouth speed punk and their signature dead-to- the-world metal. Brimming with bleakness and unflinching honesty, the album is burning up college radio and metal charts, but Steele isn't impressed.
"I wouldn't buy it," he barked.
While some songs, such as the mind-numbing "Anesthesia" and the crushing title track, portray Steele as a tortured intellectual on the brink of suicide, others, like the homophobic "I Like Goils," use black humor as a weapon. Musically, the disc sounds like Pink Floyd and Black Sabbath unleashed at an Irish wake. Lyrically, shrinks could write volumes analyzing the subject matter. Fresh off a miserable, if slightly profitable, European tour, Steele is candidly unexcited about heading out in a bus with his three brethren for a U.S. tour.
"It's like four people being married and all of them having their period all the time," he said of the band. "There's an old saying about husbands and wives getting on each other's nerves, like fighting about stupid things, like leaving the cap off the toothpaste. Well, let's just say the cap is always off the toothpaste."
Beyond the bus, he said, he detests playing the same songs every night: "I can't imagine how Ozzy (Osbourne) does it. I mean, how many times has he had to play `Paranoid'?
"I really hate being onstage," he continued. "It's usually a balmy 130 degrees onstage and I've got these french fry lights burning on my back. I don't like traveling. I just don't get anything out of it."
Fed up and angry? Yes. Giving up? Never. In fact, there's a clear, revenge-driven method to Steele's madness.
"I feel like I've been disillusioned," he explained matter-of- factly. "But it's no one's fault but mine. No one made me do this. Now my goal is to complain, annoy and irritate everyone around me until I get out of this band, die or someone kills me. My motivation is aggravation."
And check out a live performance for "Anesthesia" from 2003's Life Is Killing Me:
I'm a journalist who's covered news, mayhem, hacks, gender-bending killers, rock stars and tragedy, among other things, for the Boston Herald since 1999. I also write for DigBoston.com, SocietePerrier.com, Esquire.com and Lambgoat.com and have been a contributor to Revolver and Boston magazine. My first book, called "Boston Strong" (with co-author Casey Sherman), will tell the incredible stories of heroism and survival at the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings. It will be out in fall 2014.
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