The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #299

#299: "Shake Your Blood" (2003) - Probot

When I was a teenager, I loved watching MTV's 120 Minutes and TBS' Night Tracks late at night, as they'd broadcast videos of songs that mainstream radio rarely played (in the early '80s): new wave and hard rock (and on Night Tracks, occasionally a rap or R&B song). Eventually (in 1987), MTV started airing heavy-metal videos in the late-night weekly show, The show was hosted by (at first) Adam Curry and (a year-or-so later, on until the show's demise) Riki Rachtman. The air was live and loose, and the atmosphere was most decidedly un-glossy. The show aired videos by the glam bands--Poison, Motley Crue, Cinderella, Def Leppard, etc...--usually during the first hour, and during the second hour, Headbangers Ball would (often) showcase heavier metal such as Motorhead, Dio, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Krokus, Slayer, Helloween, Scorpions, Ozzy, Slayer, Megadeth, Metallica, Celtic Frost, Venom, Saxon, Anthrax, etc....Back then, some of the imagery in those heavier videos disturbed me a bit, more so than the music. I thought the music was cool, but I had a hard time (at first) watching the videos because I was scared my parents would come in the living room (I didn't have a television in my room), think I was turning into a Satanist, and ban me from ever watching MTV (and I already knew better than to buy a heavy metal album/tape).

My dad tossed my Prince 1999 LP because he'd heard the uproar over sexist and Satanic* lyrics on that double album. Alas, my dad sometimes confuses minute details. He must have heard the criticism of Purple Rain (derided for its "masturbating with a magazine" line in the song "Darling Nikki"), went to my album rack, and pulled out the Prince record with the freaky cover, thinking this surely must be the one Christian radio and the newly-formed, Tipper Gore-led PMRC (not to be confused with 1999's "DMSR") were ready to burn. Unfortunately for me, no it wasn't (though if the PMRC were going to denounce a Prince record, they should have picked a more sexually explicit one, as Purple Rain was the tamest of all the Prince records up to that point in time; 1999 itself contains far more lewd and vulgar lyrics). See, I made a weekly allowance (though I don't remember now what it was), and I only had so much money to spend on records. It took me a month to save up enough cash to buy 1999 because 1999 was a double album, and the price reflected that. Once Dad trashed it, I could either wait another month without buying any records, hoping that Wal-Mart would still carry it after the controversy, or I could buy two entirely different albums I hadn't heard before. It wasn't until a few months after I took my first job before I was able to replace 1999, and even then, I had to buy it on tape ('cause it was easier to hide a tape than an album)...and you know how long it takes to rewind a double album on cassette? Fifteen years, that's how long it takes.

Anyway, short story long, I was very cautious when I watched Headbangers Ball because I didn't want my parents going through and destroying** my case of heavy metal cassettes I'd recorded from my friend Eddie Smith's albums; so, I sat up close to the television with the volume down and my hand near the knob (to change the channel when I heard footsteps), head turning at every little hallway sound, changing the station if even the house creaked. Living the metalhead life in the utmost of paranoid fashion, I'm not sure if I ever heard any of those songs in their entirety until much later, and therefore I still find most of them fascinting if not a little bit creepy, no matter how silly the costumes or subject matter or lyrics were. Metal was (in my mind) forbidden, so metal was exciting.

New heavy metal doesn't elicit the same response in me. I'm having a hard time learning to appreciate it. I think I can't hanker to it because most of the singing is of the low-pitched, gutteral, shred-your-vocal chords variety, but it could be just because I've grown old and lazy (though my wife'll tell you I've been lazy for a good-long while now). I can still dig the old-school stuff, though, even when it's new, and apparently so can Dave Grohl. Five years ago, he wrote, produced, and played (nearly) every instrument on an album he called Probot.

In the liner notes, Grohl stated how much he loved heavy metal growing up, that after he heard Edgar Winter's instrumental "Frankenstein" on a K-Tel album, he searched for years, looking for the perfect riff (actually, he said he went looking for whatever rock riff he could find, but you--or at least Afrika Bambaata--get my drift), and developed a life-long love of heavy metal. He decided to give some of the love back, so he wrote twelve tracks with specific singers in mind. He recruited these singers for this one-shot, and he--along with the singers from Venom, Sepultra, Motorhead, Corrosion of Conformity, D.R.I., Napalm Death, The Obsessed, Celtic Frost, Voivod, Trouble, and Mercyful Fate--produced a nostalgiac heavy-metal masterpiece.

My favorite track here (I hesitate to call it best, because for an album of this type, best is truly in the ear of the beholder, as it depends on your mileage as a fan)--and the only one that might be considered a single, that might have had a chance on Modern Rock radio (though it didn't), the only one with a video--is "Shake Your Blood." Motorhead's bassist and lead singer Lemmy wrote the lyrics, plays bass, and belts out the song in tried-and-true Motorhead fashion. He makes it his own, and it's the best Motorhead song released this decade (and Motorhead have released great records this decade). The song chugs and drives relentlessly; it rocks and it rolls, and Grohl's drumming is superb, showcasing madder skills than he ever put down on any Nirvana record. It grabs the heart, and it shakes the blood. And--perhaps most importantly--I can now sit down at home and play it as loud as I want.

PARENTAL ADVISORY: the following video features implicit content. The erotic images might be deemed pornographic by either Tipper Gore or my father. Beware both.

NOTES

* Neither 1999 nor Purple Rain contain any Satanic lyrics, nor do I believe they were ever accused as having such. Again, my Dad sometimes confuses minute matters, such as the the Satanic accusations thrown at Ozzy Osbourne and W.A.S.P. and KISS (though, strangely, never at Ronnie James Dio)

Another example of my father confusing matters was when--during the same time period--the furor was raging over the corrupting forces of role-playing Dungeons & Dragons. I didn't play D&D (and still to this day have never played it), but I owned the first edition Monster Manual and the Fiend Folio because I loved the artistic depictions of the monsters. I also happened to own the Dungeons and Dragons electronic labyrinth board game

that my parents had given to me for Christmas. The game involved no role-playing whatsoever; you just maneuvered your token around the board, running into invisible walls (which you'd then mark with the little red tiles shown above), trying to find the invisible treasure before the invisible dragon found you. I loved this game. Because it was electronic, the dragon's position changed each time the game was reset, and so would the position of the walls and the treasure; so, each new game was a truly new game. My dad threw this game away because the box said Dungeons and Dragons in bold letters; he never read the words underneath the heading, the words that stated computer labyrinth game. He also never read the subheadings--role-playing game--on the two D&D books I had on the closet shelf right next to the D&D board game, because those books remained unscathed. He left them right on the shelf. Unlike the Prince double album, I never saw the D&D electronic game in a store again.

**I wasn't exagerrating about my parents trashing my tapes. In 1986, my friend Eddie bought us tickets to see Motley Crue in Jackson. I'd devised an elaborate scheme to trick my parents into letting me go to the concert: lie to them. I was too wracked with guilt over the thought of deceit (I should have been born a Catholic), so I told my mom about us going to see them. She said I could. Wow! I couldn't believe it! Did she know who the Crue were? Did she know they recorded an album entitled with a song (though it's not really a true song) called, "God Bless the Children of the Beast"? I didn't know, but I sure wasn't going to tell her. I was as giddy as a fifteen-year-old closet metalhead. I drove around in my 1970, two-door, blue Ford LTD for the next couple of weeks listening to the (unmarked) Crue tapes I recorded from Eddie's albums. Day of the concert: Eddie drives over to my house to pick me up to go to the concert, and my mom tells us that I can't go. I asked her why, and the only thing I remember her saying was something about Satan. She tore up my ticket, and Eddie said, "Sorry, bud," and he left.

The next day at school--the concert was on a Thursday night--Eddie and all of my other friends that went raved on and on about how totally awesome the band was. I initially hung my head and slumped my shoulders, feeling sorry for myself, but then someone told me it wasn't Motley Crue that was so great; in fact, they didn't play well at all. What band were they talking about then? Oh, some new band that's going to have a record out in three or four months. They didn't have one out already? No. Okay, then--that's alright. Who cares if I missed out on a band nobody's ever heard of, even if they had the coolest tee shirts and the coolest name: Guns N' Roses.