Tenacious Disney

Insight comes from all kinds of places. Yesterday it came from a poster, I believe it was for one of the Disney High School Musical's or clones or some such shite. Anyway it had some clean looking kid kicking out a foot and some tagline that featured 'ROCK' prominantly. That's when I thought, what the fuck does that image have to do with rock?
This question caused some chemical reaction in my brain and within less than a second I finally appreciated the place and purpose Metal serves in our society. Coincidence or no, I had been listening to Tenacious D's pick of destiny and on it was 'The Metal' an inspiring track about the longevity and dominance of metal.
Metal perhaps has always made sense. It was the music that wanted to harness percussion and electricity and craft it into a high energy aggressive form, as opposed to the well crafted easy on the ear compositions of the classical masters and schoolboy pop.
Face it, if Wagner, Beethoven, Bach and perhaps even Mozart where around at the time, they wouldn't have opted for stale standardised classical music, they would have been some of the forerunners in Metal. They wouldn't have wished for a piano. They would have begged and screamed for a fender stratocaster.
But now, I think more so than ever, Metal is needed. Because just like in its origin, it is...
something different to look at.

I was thinking about my daughter that I don't have, and whether I would actually want her watching something like 'High School Musical' as a young impressionable teenager.
And I thought, no. I wouldn't because crazily enough the kind of guys that are going to try and emotionally pressure her into giving them a blowjob in the bikesheds, and the kind of girls that derive their self esteem from the ability to give good blowjobs in the bikesheds, are the kind of kids featured in the cast of highschool musical.
Good looking, clean cut hitler youth. All my life experience tells me that these are what truly nasty, coniving, ruthless and stupid people look like. They look like manufactured products.

In this frame of mind I went to seek out the closest thing on my ipod I had to Heavy Metal, I had System of a Down. 'Chop Suey' was the only song of theirs I ever came close to enjoying, so I chucked on Toxicity and rode home, listening to the album like 1.4 times.
This reminded me that if you were ever to enter someone in a beauty pagent who was gaurunteed to lose it would be the band members of SOAD. And this led me to realise that probably the least sex obsessed, wholesome genre of music, is SOAD.
When I think about it, my experience of most Metal Fans, and rarely do I come across true metal fans that listen to metal and nothing but metal, most of them are the nicest friendliest people I've ever met.
Generally well adjusted, self assured people.

Toxicity is quite beautiful by the way, I'm probably last to know but they may even be the closest album I've heard to a Faith No More offering (not like any of them are the same) and just a little to the Mr. Bungle side of the spectrum.
Infact, I also ponder how one becomes a vocalist for a metal band, beatboxing for example offers one really famous guy, Rahzel who probably came closest to having a successful album release in the US. Yet heaps of people line up to take beatboxing classes, workshops and even restructure their identity.
They practice all sorts of tricks and line up for Australian Idol auditions. But you never see anyone battering down doors to sign up to be a metal singer.
And I doubt its as easy as its made out to be.
I can't think of other genres that switch quite as much, from shouting and screaming, to melodic operatic singing to shouting 'Pogo' over and over again.

Metal must live on, its too vibrant, too good, too different to be lost. And I want my daughter to have somebody safe to hang out with.