Monday 29 October 2007

Punk and Metal

As part of my nightclass on Popular Music I've been writing an essay on subcultures in music. This has led me to watch some interesting documentaries such as The Punk Years, Metal: A Headbanger's Journey and The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years.

From that last film comes this piece of video below. WASP's Chris Holmes floats in his pool, drunk out of his head, as his mother watches. It's horrifying yet compelling to watch.

4 comments:

Graeme said...

The Decline of Western Civilization Part II is hilarious and the Chris Holmes scene is great. I know that I'm into the metal, but I'm glad all that rubbish has more or less gone by the wayside.

Have you seen Heavy Metal Parking Lot? It should be easy to find on the internet (which certainly beats watching it on a fifth or sixth generation bootleg, which is how I first saw it) and it's another hilarious metal documentary, but this time about the people hanging about in the parking lot outside of a Judas Priest show in, I think, Virginia in 1985.

I've been meaning to watch Metal: A Headbanger's Journey. How is it?

Tom said...

I have been watching bits of Heavy Metal Parking Lot. It was you that told me about that a couple of years ago.

I haven't been able to find the whole thing on the net, even although it's only 16 minutes.

A Headbanger's Journey is really good. You'd like it. He knows his stuff and there are lots of good interviews with folk like Ronnie James Dio. You can find the whole thing on You Tube, although the 2 disc DVD looks excellent.

Graeme said...

Tom, try this:

http://www.planetkrulik.com/showtime2.html

It seems to have the whole of HMPL.

Tom said...

Well done G. It has all the Parking Lot films on there.