By Kevin Longrie
Is there anything less metal than Lars Ulrich? Sure, Metallica had a great run two decades ago and shaped the genre, creating imitators and tributary musical acts for years to come; but the tiny, aggressive man pounding out simplistic beats in the back still seems out of place to me. Maybe his best years were before my time. Maybe the Napster soapboxing tarnished his image. All I know is that, in a battle of the bad drummers, Ringo and Meg are at least likeable figures.
Why all the kvetching about an over-the-hill Dane? Because whatever the reported story is, I have a feeling that this whole Lou Reed/Metallica thing is puppetry orchestrated by Sir Ulrich von Dicktenstein. (Okay, full disclosure: I don’t hate Lars, nor do I think he’s done anything particularly dickish. But if there is a man with the willpower to resist wordplay featuring mostly useless drummers and the Heath Ledger masterpiece A Knight’s Tale, that man is not writing this article.)
The collaboration between the aging rockers is not particularly breaking news, but it is disappointing. Details are emerging as the group has released their terrible album for all the world to hear, wince at and cower away from. But even as the world laughs, a few brave fools insist on taking them seriously. Darren Aronofsky, out of some continued and now misguided reverence, has signed on to direct one of their music videos. Lou Reed is exited about this prospect and hopes the video will be “his Black Swan.” What he probably means by that is that he wants to go down on Natalie Portman. (Aside: Is that where they get the term “swan dive” from?) But these projects all move forward. Of course they do. Who is going to say “no” to Metallica or Lou Reed?
But those graying ex-greats aren’t the only ones being indulged. R. Kelly, a man whom fans euphemistically refer to as eccentric in order to forget that he urinated on an underaged girl, is coming back with full force after a tonsil surgery. The song was posted on the R&B singer’s Twitter in mid-November and was, by Kelly’s admission, the first song he finished after his operation. The song’s lyrics, which read like the Xanga post (that’s right, Xanga) of a shadowboxing sociopath, tell all the haters who said he couldn’t recover from the surgery to “shut up.”
But Kelly hardly needs his voice. He has a meticulously sculpted goatee, on-and-offstage hip-thrusts, and—of course—the written word. Early next year, Mr. Space Jam soundtrack himself will release his autobiography, Soula Coaster. (With a name like that, it’s a wonder that Knopf and Farrar, Straus, and Giroux are not in an escalating bidding war over the manuscript.) The book, which carries the subtitle The Diary of Me, also carries with it the unfortunate inclusion of a co-author, David Ritz. I’m not doubting Ritz’s talents, as he’s written several biographies of soul singers before from Aretha Franklin to Marvin Gaye. Instead, I simply mourn the missed opportunity to let R. Kelly have an unfiltered repository for his grandiose, hyper-religious ramblings and his messiah complex. I’m not interested in how Kelly grew up; I’m interested in how Kelly thinks he grew up. I guess we’ll always have Twitter.
Calling all 7th grade boys! Black Sabbath is getting back together. Like the Lou Reed/Metallica collaboration, nobody asked for it. And like the collaboration, I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that Lars Ulrich is behind it. (Ulrich helped induct Black Sabbath into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2006. Wake up, sheeple!) Shamelessness aside, there are logistical problems that this reunion brings up. Ozzy used to bite the heads off bats, but now he just bites the caps off bottles of anti-psychotic medications. You know what happens to metal when it gets too old? It rusts. One benefit of age, however, is that it might excuse or explain some of his past behavior, if repeated (e.g. he pissed on the Alamo; now he’s incontinent).
Sad news from the dressing-up-like-monsters-to-play-instruments world today: Cory Smoot, who played guitar in the band GWAR under the stage name Flattus Maximus, was found dead while on tour. Maggots are falling like rain in heaven now, buddy.
