Larnell Lewis is sickenly talented

Michel is right. It’s unbelievable how talented Larnell Lewis is, that he can learn to play the drums to this song in the time it took him to fly to the studio:

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The first I heard about Snarky Puppy too. It reminds me of Pierre Moerlen’s version of Gong, especially their first two albums, Gazeuse! (1976) and Expresso II (1978), fusion/jazz rock with lots of mellow brass, piano and bongos. Not the most innovative music in the world in 2021, but gorgous nonetheless. Certainly deserving to be listened to in more detail.

And, sickening as it is watching Larnell Lewis hearing “Enter Sandman” for the first time and immediately nailing the drums when you yourself struggled for three years learning to play “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” on the guitar —badly–, you can’t deny the man’s talent. Not just in being able to play a song perfectly after hearing it once, but also in how he breaks it down beforehand while listening to it.

Steek aan die lont!

Een puik stukkie jeugdsentiment, dit:

From January 1987, the very first episode of Vara’s Vuurwerk, a seminal Dutch heavy metal radio show. Hosted by pop icon Henk Westbroek, always a bit tongue in cheek, outraging the real metalheads. Yet this show introduced me to so many metal acts: Metallica, Queensryche, Alice Cooper, Vengeance, Testament, Sodom, Annihilator nevertheless. A rarity in a time when there were only a dozen or so radio channels and metal was never played on them. It was either this, or the slightly elder metal fans at high school to introduce you to new bands. Especially influential were the annual listeners Top Fifty shows, one of which I turned into a Spotify playlist. It really gives an impression of what metal was like back then. Or at least what the listeners thought was great.

On new music

What do we mean when we talk about listening to new music? I’m currently listening to the album the song below was taken off, ABC’s 1987 comeback attempt, Alphabet City. I do have the vinyl of that, but this is the first time I’ve listened to it in decades. Arguable this is new music to me, but is it?



Probably not, eh? But I have never listened to ABC’s sophomore album, Beauty Stab. When I play it today, does that mean I’m listening to new music, or is there more to it? The idea after all is that you stop listening to new music after a certain age (thirty, thirtyfive, in any case an age I passed a while ago). You no longer have the mental flexibility to appreciate new things, and are forever doomed to wallow in the nostalgia of the music of your youth. A horrible fate.

But what does count as listening to new music? Ont he one hand Beauty Stab is new music for me. On the other hand it’s more of the same music from a band I already know I like. Not very adventurous. But what if you discover an overlooked artist or group in the same genre of pop music? Is that new music? Or does that still fall under nostalgic wallowing? Surely discovering an entire new (sub)genre of music does count, right?



Alcest is a French band/project driven by metal prodigy Neige, which with its first EP created a new genre: blackgaze. A hideous mutant recombination of black metal and shoegaze and I’d be surprised if you can find two more unlikely musical genres to merge. Nevertheless it’s ultimately still heavy metal, a music genre I’m well familiar with. Alcest sounds a lot different from the Iron Maiden and Anthrax I grew up with, but ultimately it’s still metal. And to be honest, it is rare for me to start listening to any kind of music that is completely alien to me. Getting into Japanese pop and rock music by way of anime was the last major discovery for me, but even that is not that alien.



Ironically, the newest sort of music I may have listened to recently is actually the oldest piece of music we know how to play, a hymn to Nikkal, the goddes of orchards and fertility from Ugarit, an ancient port city in what is now Syria. Almost 3500 years old, it’s oldest discovered song with surviving musical notation. It’s older than anything we know, a product from an almost alien world, yet put a synth under it or use the right sort of guitar and it could just as well be a modern noise or gothic song.

Good man



Pantera’s Phil Anselmo engaged in his usual tired racist provocation, Robb Flynn calls him out on it, as well as the larger metal community for allowing it. It’s no secret that metal has a bit of a racism problem, so it’s good to see people be outspoken about it and not trying to sweep it under the carpet.

Kill Me (Ce Soir) — Golden Earring



As a kid growing up in the eighties Golden Earring was just one of those old pop bands that had been around forever, who had a couple of hits everybody knew and of course there was that deeply scary video they did in 1984. It’s only later I knew how influential they could’ve been had they been British or American rather than Dutch. Even so, no one other than Iron Maiden covered this song; it turns out Steve Harris is a fan.