Nike might be an awful money grabbing child labour using multinational, but they do know how to make a great commercial capturing the essence of both football and the various stars on display. Ronaldo dreaming of a giant Michael Jacksonesque statue of himself? Perfect.
video
Metal Monday: unleaded is not an option
There ar e quite a few metal bands whose name starts with “l”, but there’s only one band that counts, those archetypical rock dinosaurs: Led Zeppelin. With Black Sabbath and Deep Purple they were one of the founders of hard rock, influencing zillions of bands, if not with their music, then with their lifestyle…
Musically you could say their work falls into two categories: their earlier, blues inspired songs (where “inspired” sometimes meant “shamelessly stolen from”) and the much more bombastic (some would say indulgent) rock songs they performed on their later records. The first video is one example of that style – Kashmir:
Dazed and Confused is a good example of their earlier style:
This song comes from the first Zeppelin album, creatively called Led Zeppelin. I had that and the second album, even more creatively called Led Zeppelin II as a double album and used to play them on Saturday mornings while reading Usenet. Ahh, memories.
Immigrant song was once memorably covered by Joel Veitch’s Viking Kittens. This is the original.
And of course…
Seventyfive years of fabulous writers
Women? Writing science fiction? Editing science fiction? Even *gasp* reading it? Don’t let the blurb writer of Sign of the Labrys hear about it… Sandra McDonald has put together a periodic table of 117 women in science fiction, available at her website as well as a youtube video. Below is the list of featured writers, authors and others. I’ve bolded the ones I own books of, italicised, the women I’ve read something of (short stories count) and starred those I never heard of. How many of the following do you know? And who do you miss? Myself, just looking at my own books, I don’t see Liz Williams, Patricia Wrede or Josephine Saxton.
- Andre Norton
- C. L. Moore
- Evangeline Walton
- Leigh Brackett
- Judith Merril
- Joanna Russ
- Margaret St. Clair
- Katherine MacLean
- Carol Emshwiller
- Marion Zimmer Bradley
- Zenna Henderson
- Madeline L’Engle
- Angela Carter
- Ursula LeGuin
- Anne McCaffrey
- Diana Wynne Jones
- Kit Reed
- James Tiptree, Jr.
- Rachel Pollack
- Jane Yolen
- Marta Randall
- Eleanor Arnason
- Ellen Asher
- Patricia A. McKillip
- Suzy McKee Charnas
- Lisa Tuttle
- Nina Kiriki Hoffman
- Tanith Lee
- Pamela Sargent
- Jayge Carr
- Vonda McIntyre
- Octavia E. Butler
- Kate Wilhelm
- Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
- Sheila Finch
- Mary Gentle
- *Jessia Amanda Salmonson
- C. J. Cherryh
- Joan D. Vinge
- Teresa Nielsen Hayden
- Ellen Kushner
- Ellen Datlow
- Nancy Kress
- Pat Murphy
- Lisa Goldstein
- Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
- *Mary Turzillo
- Connie Willis
- Barbara Hambly
- Nancy Holder
- Sheri S. Tepper
- Melissa Scott
- Margaret Atwood
- Lois McMaster Bujold
- *Jeanne Cavelos
- Karen Joy Fowler
- Leigh Kennedy
- Judith Moffett
- Rebecca Ore
- Emma Bull
- Pat Cadigan
- Kathyrn Cramer
- *Laura Mixon
- Eileen Gunn
- Elizabeth Hand
- Kij Johnson
- *Delia Sherman
- Elizabeth Moon
- *Michaela Roessner
- Terri Windling
- Sharon Lee
- Sherwood Smith
- Katherine Kurz
- *Margo Lanagan
- Laura Resnick
- Kristine Kathryn Rusch
- Sheila Williams
- Farah Mendlesohn
- Gwyneth Jones
- *Ardath Mayhar
- Esther Friesner
- Debra Doyle
- Nicola Griffith
- Amy Thomson
- Martha Wells
- Catherine Asaro
- Kate Elliott
- Kathleen Ann Goonan
- *Shawna McCarthy
- Caitlin Kiernan
- Maureen McHugh
- Cheryl Morgan
- *Nisi Shawl
- Mary Doria Russell
- Kage Baker
- Kelly Link
- Nancy Springer
- J. K. Rowling
- Nalo Hopkinson
- Ellen Klages
- Tanarive Due
- M. Rickert
- *Theodora Goss
- *Mary Anne Mohanraj
- S. L. Viehl
- Jo Walton
- Kristine Smith
- *Deborah Layne
- Cherie Priest
- Wen Spencer
- K. J. Bishop
- *Catherynne M. Valente
- Elizabeth Bear
- *Ekaterina Sedia
- Naomi Novik
- Mary Robinette Kowal
- Ann VanderMeer
Explains a lot
Via Phil, another meaningless yet fun meme what was a hit when you were born. According to the list he used, that would be this:
Which is a bit of a cheat, since if I actually look at what was number one in Holland at the time it would’ve been this, which is too horrible to contemplate…
Metal Monday: not so special K
As I think said before, for some reason the groups I follow tend to cluster around certain letters of the alphabet: A-C, I, M and S being the most noticable. Which also means some letters have no representation in my collection whatsoever, like today’s letter: K. In fact, of the seventyfive bands known at the BNR Metal Pages, I only recognise a few and those I do recognise I’ve never really followed, like e.g. King Diamond, which a lot of my fellow metalheads at high school used to like back then. This is Abigail:
Some others are a bit dubious. Take KISS for example. Now the line between rock, hard rock and heavy metal is of course thin and easily crossed, but to me KISS is on the wrong side of the line somebody like Alice Cooper is on the right side off, in my definition of hard rock and metal. Still, there’s at least one classic KISS song everybody, including metalheads like:
KISS – I Was Made for Loving You:
An even more odd band to be represented at the BNR Metal Pages is Killing Joke, the UK post-punk band best known for “Love Like Blood”. As the site puts it, this is one of those “not-really metal bands that kind of sound like metal and that metal fans often like”. Fair enough and it gives me the chance to show two of their best songs.
First up: “Love Like Blood”
Somewhat later and different is the next song, “Democracy”, from the 1996 album of the same name. Somebody wasn’t happy with the state of politics in Britain…