Too Much Metallica

Sonisphere Festival 04 July 2009 at Hockenheim Ring, Germany

Metallica

Die Toten Hosen

The Prodigy

In Extremo

Down

It was an inferno of beer-guzzling metal fans. The sun beat down on us without mercy. Thousands were gathered as if in worship of the black hole in front. Defenders of the faith took to the stage for the 1000th time. But could they still inspire revelation?

There was only one band people were really here to see. The posses of sun burnt beer guts and jaded biker couples in black were all waiting for one thing.

Sure as clockwork Mesa Boogie amps were racked up and a special stage constructed. Out came Hetfield and Co. and ripped into some ear-bleeding riffage. It was LOUD. It was FAST. It was MONSTROUS.

Have Metallica just become another Great American export? Just like a MacDonalds or a Starbucks they roll up into town and present their wares. Here we are. We are Metal Gods. Jump up and down like monkeys and we'll play Master of Puppets. Job done.

The word is BLOATED. Hammett mashed the solos. Looked like he hadn't picked up the guitar since the last concert. Hetfield spouted shit about 'Lovin' Germany'. Where's the originality? Sorry guys, but your show was a total cheeseburger with fries.

The Prodigy were the highlight of the day. Here was real energy and passion. Keith Flint was jumping around in fluorescent pink pants like a mad jack-in-the-box. The strobe lights they brought in pounded to the sick electronic beats as our rib cages throbbed. This was a show with colour and razzmatazz.

In between The Prodigy and Metallica, all the other bands were pretty uninspired. Die Toten Hosen aren't bad if A. you like radio-friendly punk and B. are German.

Maybe heavy metal and summer just don't belong together... More original bands like The Prodigy and it could have been a real party.

Photojournalism

Reporters hate photographers. Reporters painstakingly gather the facts, write gripping articles and bold headlines. They bring people the news. They should be the stars of a newspaper. But then someone with a camera takes a picture - suddenly nobody is interested in reading anymore.

"A picture tells a thousand words." Rarely has a saying been more accurate or more used.

Witness the photo here: 'Migrant Mother' taken in America during the 1930s depression.

The Farm Security Administration (FSA) sent out a team of photographers to document rural poverty and the attempts to solve it.

[The US Library of Congress recently released an amazing set of these images on Flikr.]

Documentary photography was never the same again. Dorothea Lange's photo, here, was the beginning of a more compassionate style. One which took a humanitarian view and attempted to influence world opinion.

Some argue that photographers of this style are too biased, forcing their own beliefs onto the situation. But isn't a photo always subjective to some extent? Covering human stories needs a degree of human feeling.

Perhaps this is what infuriates reporters. How can their words ever capture the raw emotion expressed in a brilliant snapshot?


Sources:

Excellent blog post by BBC photo editor Phil Coomes

Further reading:

New York Times article "When a Picture Is Worth a Thousand Debates, Give or Take"

No Rules!

Hey All! Don't worry SZ is back. We're dropping the rules for now and going for short sharp comment on all that is NOW.

Here's a Japanese proverb for the road:

"Better to write down something one time than to read something ten times."

[Unless, of course, you're reading Spooner's Zeitgeist]

Awesome Writer Dies

J G Ballard has died aged 78.

If there is one book you should read before you die, it is his autobiographical novel 'Empire of the Sun'.

It is a fictionalized account of his internment, at the age of 12, inside a Japanese prison camp in China during WWII. Surrounded by violence, starvation and death, Jim's spirits never fall and neither does his iron determination to cling onto life.

Self-pity is not in Jim's repertoire. Flies clog his sick gums and pus oozes from the sores that cover his body, but his black humour and ability to barter favours sees him live off a single mouldy sweet potato a day.

The Collins English dicitionary may define 'Ballardian' as 'dystopian modernity', but Ballard's writing in 'Empire' thrives on the man-made catastrophe of war.

Prostate cancer may have taken him, but I look foward to exploring his 15 novels and many short stories further.

• 'Empire of the Sun' was made into a film by Steven Spielberg in 1987
• 'Crash' was made into a film by David Cronenberg in 1996 and tells of a group of people who take sexual pleasure from car accidents
  

The Reader

1950s Germany: a teenage lad ends up knocking around with a sultry blond tram conductress. For some reason she gets him to read classics to her before she teaches him a new position. Although the reading is a bit odd at first, he enjoys it.

The affair lasts the summer and then she disappears. By the mid 60s the young man is a law student attending a special seminar on a war crimes trial. Who should be sitting in the dock, but his first love. She was a guard at Auschwitz.

The Holocaust and German guilt are major themes, but it is essentially the tragic love story which drives the film. We follow Michael’s relationship with Hanna throughout.

German actor David Kross is utterly convincing as the nervous besotted youth. But Michael holds his own and is soon rutting Hanna in bed with growing confidence. This is not child porn as some critics have argued. This is a fully consensual adult relationship. As with any relationship the power balance is in flux.

Kate Winslet is outstanding as Hanna Schmitz and fully deserving of her Best Actress Oscar. She’s hot, but at the same time mysterious and rather coarse. Her voice is dry with a hard edge – no cheap German accent here. The way she always calls Michael ‘kid’ is brusque yet affectionate.

Hanna is accused of letting 300 Jews die during a death march in 1944. She has a piece of evidence that may help her defence, but she is so ashamed of it that she keeps it a secret to the bitter end.

Are we supposed to feel sorry for Hanna? Most of the film is shot from Michael’s perspective so his point of view offers a guide. He cannot forgive her for what she has done. But is it more the betrayal of his trust or the fact that she was complicit in the Holocaust? It is certainly a mixture of both and her betrayal becomes even more enormous given that she hid her terrible wartime past from him. Think about it, what if your first ever lover was a death camp guard? Wouldn’t that make you complicit?

Ralph Fiennes plays the grown-up Michael and is a perfect match for Kross. The make-up artists do a very thorough job of making Winslet look old as her character ages, maybe too thorough, since she looks like a decrepit zombie. But the overall artfulness of the cinematography lets them get away with it.

Ironically, the book by German author Bernhard Schlink is too cluttered by words. Director Stephen Daldry reads aloud with a clear voice and the emotionally heart of the story shines through.

April Rule of the Month

No rules this month! Anything goes!

Suggestions welcome for a killer rule in May.

‘Raising Sand’ by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss

I’ve only listened to ‘Raising Sand’ once, but I love it. How many new albums can you say that about?

Call it Country, Folk, Bluegrass or Rock. Whatever you call it, this is sheer musical genius.

The laid-back vibe is tantalizing. Only two artists with such rich pasts could have assembled thirteen such amazing songs about love and loss to create a fresh new entity.

Plant leaves the rock star exaggeration behind to deliver perhaps his most rich and mature vocal performance to date.

Krauss arguably leads proceedings. Her beautiful clear voice shines out. She leads love songs that were originally written from the man’s perspective. There’s something exquisite about this.

Plant clearly learnt a lot from her. After all, this is more her musical territory than his.

T Bone Burnett’s backing band provides the perfect spaced out country vibe for the singers to shine. Instrumental highlights are songs with banjo by Riley Baugus and those with fiddle played by Krauss herself no less.

The magic really happens when they sing together. Their voices are distinct yet perfectly harmonious at the same time.

INTERVIEW WITH MUSICIANS