Counter-Currents
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Right-wing music: Is there such a thing? Dissident rock, anyone? I imagine our enemies picture us sitting around all day thumbing through our well-read copies of Mein Kampf and listening to Wagner, Joy Division, and the “Horst Wessel” song — sort of Reich ‘n’ roll. But, as with the rest of culture, I have found that people on the Right tend to listen to music they instinctively enjoy, rather than what their ideological commissars tell them they may listen to. What are the Left allowed to play this week? Anyone been cancelled for a comment from 2004? Not us. We can listen to anything we want to listen to because we are led straight to music and not rerouted by ideology. But what do we listen to?
If you tend towards the rock side of music, as I do, I always imagine that the first band you see, the first single you buy (if you are from the 45RPM generation), and the first album you purchase lay down the tracks — as it were — for your future listening pleasure. In my case, that would be Led Zeppelin when I was 14, Apeman by The Kinks, and 1967-1970 (aka Double Blue) by The Beatles. (Do please leave your list in the comments section.)
I was fortunate in that I was born in 1961 (I believe I am right in saying that Jim Goad of this parish was born in the same year), and so I was in the right place at the right time for the three great musical British trends of the 1970s: Glam rock, heavy rock, and punk. I never saw any of the glam bands live, and I don’t think any of them ever cracked the States. T. Rex, The Sweet, Slade, Gary Glitter (now disgraced as a pedophile), Ziggy-era Bowie, Mott the Hoople — these were artists who mixed hard rock with a cartoonish look and feel. Sadly, I only got to see them on TV and hear them on vinyl. When Marc Bolan died in 1977, my mother came in to my room, told me the news, and said I didn’t have to go to school. I just stayed in and played T. Rex singles all day: Twentieth Century Boy, Children of the Revolution, the sleazy and brilliant Jeepster.
I did, however, see Alice Cooper, one of America’s truly great showmen, and who I deem a part of glam. He and his peak-brilliance band performed the whole of Welcome to My Nightmare (an album I was slightly surprised to hear praised by Jordan Peterson, but I suppose celebrity psychologists have their record collections, too). I saw Kiss as well, and that’s a couple of hours and wasted ticket money I will never get back. Dreadful band.
Then it was showtime, and after Zeppelin at Earl’s Court in 1975, in the following two years I saw The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, and The Who, and my love affair with rock music was on. I didn’t go for all the rock bands on display, mind you. Black Sabbath are one of the most boring bands to emerge from England — beaten only by Genesis — and I am still not sure that Yes are not someone’s idea of a joke. Anyway, just when I had settled into hard rock, everything changed. Punk had come to town.
I saw The Stranglers in 1977, and then The Clash, Buzzcocks, The Jam, Sham 69, UK Subs, The Vibrators, Adam & the Antz (when they were good), Siouxsie and the Banshees, and The Slits, and it was all change once again. But, looking back over my Damascene conversion from rock to punk (and back again), I realize that there was a band who provided the missing link between hard rock and punk (and with a dash of glam), a sort of rock ‘n’ roll Piltdown Man: Thin Lizzy.
Fans called the band simply “Lizzy,” and the classic line-up was founder Phil Lynott on bass and vocals, guitarists Scott Gorham and Brian Robertson (later replaced by the equally sensational fretman Gary Moore, Lynott’s old pal) and Brian Downey on drums. The two guitarists pioneered the twin-guitar harmonics for which Lizzy are famous among rock fans and musicians. A great example is the later single Waiting for an Alibi (I won’t link to songs until later in the piece for reasons which will become clear). They both used Gibson Les Pauls, the rock guitar as far as I am concerned (Fender Stratocasters are for the blues, in my opinion. See Clapton and Rory Gallagher).
Thin Lizzy are known as an English band, but none of them hailed from Blighty. Lynott was born there but was nationally — and fiercely — Irish. He and Downey were from Dublin (where a statue of Lynott stands in the center of town), Robertson was a Glaswegian hell-raiser who once forced Lizzy to abort a US tour as he had torn his hand open on a broken bottle during a bar fight, and Scott Gorham was a hip guitar gunslinger from Los Angeles.
Johnny the Fox was Thin Lizzy’s seventh studio album and that most dangerous of releases: the one after the hit. Lizzy’s previous album in 1976, Jailbreak, features one of rock’s most enduring and endearing anthems, “The Boys are Back in Town,” and was their first real hit. “Boys” made Lizzy, even though their first big hit in 1973, an arrangement of the traditional Irish folk song “Whiskey in the Jar,” had given them their start, sudden sales and royalties meaning that the band experienced what Byron felt when, after the publication of Childe Harold, he wrote that “I awoke to find myself famous.”
Johnny the Fox has everything great rock albums should have: sensational songs, incredibly tight and ferocious playing, and one of the great 1970s album covers. One of the saddest things about the demise of the vinyl 12” album — or “LP,” as we called them, for “long-player” — was that great album cover art didn’t work when it was reduced in size. Favorite covers of mine — The Who’s Quadrophenia, The Clash’s London Calling, In the Flat Field by Bauhaus, Patti Smith’s sultry photo on Horses — didn’t work on a CD cover and were just pointless during the reign of the cassette tape. Veteran comic fans will recognize Jim Fitzpatrick’s artwork on the Jailbreak and Johnny the Fox covers. The cover artwork on Johnny the Fox also reflected Phil Lynott’s lifelong interest in Irish and Celtic culture, most famously and musically expressed in Jailbreak’s Emerald and the audacious hybrid of Celtic martial music and funk-rock that is Johnny the Fox’s “Massacre.”
Johnny the Fox also features one of rock’s perfect singles. Singles, in my view (and that of radio station owners for the last 60 and some years), should be around three minutes long or shorter, and Lizzy’s “Don’t Believe a Word” clocks in at a mere two minutes and 16 seconds, and is worth every one of them. I am not usually a fan of wah-wah pedals, but Brian Robertson’s solo here is how rock guitar should be played. In the video, Robertson plays the solo with a lit cigarette between his little finger and ring finger. It is the little touches that make rock music so cool. Phil Lynott was also a decent lyricist, often writing about love:
Don’t believe me if I tell you.
Not a word of this is true.
Don’t believe me if I tell you,
Especially if I tell you
I’m in love with you.
Don’t believe me if I tell you
That I wrote this song for you
And you’re not just some other silly pretty girl
I’m singing to.
Don’t believe a word
Because words can tell lies,
And lies are no company
When there’s tears in your eyes.
Thin Lizzy’s 1977 live album, Live and Dangerous, was the subject of some controversy at the time because the record company put the band back into the studio with the tapes and over-dubbed some guitar parts, making it technically not a live album. Good. Lizzy cheated and that makes them bad guys, and I always wanted my rock star heroes to be bad guys, not dime-store bad guys like the execrable U2. Far more important to me is that the album was recorded over three nights in 1976 at London’s Hammersmith Odeon, and I was there on the last night. So, should you hear the album, one of those pubertal voices shouting “LIZZY! LIZZY!” is mine.
You can buy Mark Gullick’s Vanikin in the Underworld here.
The band were consummate rock musicians, and Lynott was a notorious perfectionist in musical terms, if not perhaps in the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle that would eventually kill him. He was that rare thing: a singing bassist. I am one myself, so I have a fraternal feeling towards people like Sting, Geddy Lee, Jack Bruce, and Lemmy. It is interesting to note that Lee and Lemmy played Rickenbacker 4001s (as I do), as Lynott did in the early days of Lizzy before switching to his famous black Fender Precision, complete with a mirrored scratch-plate with which, rumor had it, Lynott would pick out young ladies in the audience, using the plate as a sort of spotlight. Security guards would pay attention and ask the spotlit girl if she would like, um, an introduction to Phil after the show. He was a famous ladies’ man. A good friend of mine’s cousin had the pleasure of Lynott’s amatory company and it wasn’t his bass-playing she praised. In these gormless and homosexualized times, it is a treat to remember the blatant sexism of yore. “Any ladies here got any Irish in them?” Lynott would ask audiences to affirmative roars. Then the pay-off line: “Any of you ladies want a bit more Irish in them?”
His private life, sadly, fit the stereotype of the rock ‘n’ roll star born under a bad sign, the bad sign in that particular zodiac always being the same one: heroin. Lynott’s nemesis is the eternal killer of rock stars. A legendary boozer — and great friend of iconic Northern Irish soccer player and alcoholic George Best — after the peak of Thin Lizzy’s career with Jailbreak, Johnny the Fox, and Live and Dangerous, Lynott took increasingly to injecting the drug, and his beloved mother took him to the hospital where he died after Philomena Lynott found him unconscious and fully clothed in his own bath. Lynott is described by friends as always something of a spiritual man, and a Catholic priest arrived at the hospital when the end was near to administer the traditional last rites. Philomena was astonished and asked the man what he thought he was doing there. Philip, replied the Father, asked me to come.
Looking back into Lynott’s life now had a strange side-effect on me. You see, if you don’t know who Thin Lizzy are, and given that I have already told you that Lynott was a proud Dubliner, you would be quite right to assume that he was white. Those of you familiar with the band know better; Phil’s father was black and he was half-caste.
His mother, Philomena (who Lynott worshipped, taking her on tour to Los Angeles and buying her a house in Dublin) had a dalliance with a black sailor in Birmingham in the late 1940s and fell pregnant, as they would have said then. The man’s surname was Parris, and Philip Parris Lynott was the result. On returning as an infant to the Dublin of the 1950s and 1960s, where blacks were as rare as four-leaf clovers, Philomena (by far the most charming woman I have ever seen in a rock documentary) was to discover what racism was really all about.
The devaluation of the term “racism” that we have seen develop this millennium and which has been given an accelerant since Floyd makes us forget that, at one quite recent time, racism was very real and very nasty. Friends and family deserted Philomena because of her little brown babby, kindly suggesting that she send him back to Africa, where they might want him.
Now that we are instructed to view everything through the chipped prism of race, every singer’s color is important. If you are white, you will increasingly have to prove yourself despite your color (as Lynott and his hero Hendrix had to because of theirs), whereas if you are black or dusky nowadays, you can just turn up with a microphone and you’ve got the gig.
But still we hear the discordant tribal wail protesting against racism, even in popular music, where I believe every last trace of white music has been expunged. Phil Lynott was too young to know it, but his mother experienced racism in a form in which it actually existed, rather than being what it is now: the preserve of grifters, hustlers, and political chancers. Lynott did occasionally discuss and promote his blackness — he briefly formed an all-black band after Lizzy split in 1983 — but he was prouder of his Irishness, a keen student of Irish history and folklore, and obsessed with the legendary Celtic hero Cú Chullain.
After the split, Lynott tried to devote himself to his family. He had married Caroline Crowther, daughter of a TV impresario famous at the time, Leslie Crowther. The couple married and had two daughters who, according to every interviewee I have ever seen on the subject, he worshipped. The attractive Lizzy song “Sarah” was named for his first daughter. But Lynott had two other relationships to attend to: music and heroin.
Phil fooled around with some musical side-lines, at one point teaming up with the remaining Sex Pistols after John Lydon had jumped ship. The band was intended to make a little bit of quick money to help the group members out financially and, naturally, was called The Greedy Bastards.
But Phil Lynott had had the best period of his life, and all that remained was the terrible descent into the abyss of heroin, aided and abetted for a while by the similarly-addicted Gorham. He died just after Christmas, in January 1986, at the age of 36.
In many ways Lizzy were a nearly band, but the respect Lynott commanded from other musicians is well known. Lizzy were fooling around a hotel pool in Los Angeles when Bruce Springsteen wandered over to tell Phil he had always wanted to meet him. Bob Dylan sidled up to Huey Lewis (a friend of Lynott’s) at an awards ceremony and told him he thought Phil was a genius. Bob Geldof, Bono, and Van Morrison were all friends of the man everyone called after one of his songs: the rocker.
As a performer, Lynott was unique, with his Afro, gypsy earrings, leather trousers, and his tall, skinny frame. His bass-playing was economical but the perfect anchor to the twin-guitar melodies in which the band excelled, and the rolling eighths he often played are another connection with punk. (If you want to know what rolling eighths are on the bass guitar, listen to Dee Dee on almost any Ramones song. Lynott’s voice was also singular. Thrown out of his first band for having a weak voice, by the time of Johnny the Fox, if Sammy Davis, Jr. had voice-coached Hendrix, the result would have been Phil Lynott.
Are we any closer to answering the question of whether or not there is Right-wing music? We have not. People of the Right take the broad cloth of music and cut it according to their taste. The Left are increasingly being forced into ill-fitting suits. Like Henry Ford’s first Model-T motor car (amusingly nicknamed the “Tin Lizzie”), white Western youth can now have their music in any color they want as long as it’s black. The cancel brigade are already coming for white bands, and they don’t even have to bother with The Stones, those rebel rockers already having self-cancelled “Brown Sugar.”
But should you not know the band Thin Lizzy, and should you enjoy tough, romantic, riff-based, lyrical hard rock with a pinch of glam and a side-order of punk, hunt out Johnny the Fox.
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38 comments
Before I lost my hearing, the supermajority of my musical taste was “classical,” highly organized orchestral. “Rock” was something other people did, and reality is broad enough to accomodate both, but give room enough to avoid impingement.
From that perspective, I will suggest that the first movement of Dmitri Shostakovich’s fourth symphony is a prophecy of the decline, first of the United States, and then of the West. Existential pessimism set to music, that – I submit – is coming ro pass in our lifetime.
Hello Mr. Gullick, what a nice article. It is yet another piece of interesting history that usually remains hidden. It also reminds me of the sad fact that we just don’t know enough about people and what makes them tick, yet we can instantly come up with judgements about them based on a fact or two we read in the paper. Let me add that your words resonated with me on several personal levels as well. I love rock music, I was born in 1962 in North Suburban Chicago, I as well played/play bass, and just like you, my weapon of choice is the mighty Rickenbacker 4001 Stereo Bass, in Jetglo color. Growing up, my buddy Dave and I lived and breathed Rush. The amazing sounds that Geddy Lee made with his 4001 were beyond belief and I had to have one. When that day arrived, Dad drove me to a music store on the south side of Chicago to a music store that advertised a Rickenbacker 4001 bass for $475. Many colors were available but it had to be the black Jetglo finish, just like Geddy’s. That bass carried me through a few amateur high school and college bands and was even “instrumental” in catching the eye of my future wife who sang in a college band I was in. I still have that bass and it is still a beautiful, solid work of art and just sits right in my hands. The reasons as to why both Geddy and Phil switched to Fender basses to me is heresy but things evolve and music has certain tones that must be followed so I’ll excuse the switch. I’ve felt rhat Rush’s music is Right-wing music. At least their topics are more think pieces than the usual rock lyrics. I can only think of 2 Rush songs that speak of two typical rock and roll themes: sex and drugs. The two songs are In The Mood and Passage To Bangkok and at least Passage to Bangkok gives one a small lesson in geography. Neil Peart’s lyrics were so much deeper than the usual rock fare. I can’t imagine any other band creating a song called Free Will and actually making it good. Rock has always been rebellious, the same Dad who drove me to get my Rickenbacker disliked Led Zeppelin and even called me early one Saturday morning while I was in college to somewhat cheerfully let me know that John Bonham had died. But I think that rock has served as both a creative outlet and a stress reliever. Hip hop, rap, and whatever else passes as ghetto “art” or “the music of the streets” has a foul underlying message and is to music what black poetry is to poetry. It’s not very edifying and does nothing other than keep rhyming dictionary sales going. Thanks for this deep dive into yet another fascinating person, Phil Lynott. PS I haven’t listened to Horst Wessel in over a week.
Great comment. Rush is such a brilliant and original band. The lyrics are the best by far anywhere and poetic.
“Time is a gypsy caravan, steals away in the night to leave you stranded in dreamland..”
I would say the lyrics are certainly right wing…maybe libertarian. Ballad of the Trees is explicitly right wing and anti socialist obviously. Real poetry too.
That said, I don’t like when music becomes preachy or hortatory in any way, right or left. Rock music is an inherently Dionysian medium.
Rush is a very good band.
I guess they were accused of being fascist by rock critics after the release of 2112, due to it’s title track being influenced by the writings of Ayn Rand. Buncha wet blankets.
With right leaning music in the rock world being as rare as it is, I’m always excited to find something new. Capitalism by Oingo Boingo, White Minority by Black Flag, Der Untermensch by Type O Negative as well as the albums The Record by Fear, Speak English Or Die by S.O.D. and U.S.A. For M.O.D. by M.O.D. being favorites. The M.O.D. album has the classic Aren’t You Hungry? with the controversial line “fuck those niggers charity and let them die of thirst!” that was quite the statement at the time about Ethiopia. Not to mention their song A.I.D.S. which stands for anally inflicted death sentence. Mean, offensive fun for all.
I could tell he was black just by his voice. I had never visualized him.
I just realized the title of marks book is a play on dandy in the underworld.
Lynott may have been a good musician, I can’t help but think that these other famous musicians probably wanted to meet him and complement him because he was part black and had a somewhat exotic appearance. They may have admired his talent, but his race was part of it. Bono, really likes to fawn over black muscians and celebrities. Classical orchestras are starting to cave in to demands to diversify, which is unfortunate. Country and rock/metal aren’t at all similar, they are however very much white. One is rural and one is working class. Go to any country or metal concert and the audience is just about all white.
As I’m sure you’re aware, the song mentions “…..listening to The Hoodoo Rhythm Devils”
There’s not a whole lot out there about this group, but I have doubles of their album Safe In There Homes(as well as doubles of Johnny The Fox) and it’s well worth seeking out. The title track alone is worth it.
I’m only forty years old, but I grew up with an incredible record collection of my Dad’s. I’d say the five albums from around this era that really stuck with me at an early age would be Apostrophe(‘) by Frank Zappa, Thick As A Brick by Jethro Tull, Meddle by Pink Floyd, Larks Tongue In Aspic by King Crimson and Bridge Of Sighs by Robin Trower. On the punk side of things, both New York Dolls albums, the first five Ramones albums, The Dictators Go Girl Crazy!(if you haven’t experienced this classic, do yourself a favor and listen to it TODAY), L.A.M.F. by Johnny Thunders And The Heartbreakers, Young, Loud And Snotty by The Dead Boys and of course anything by The Stooges are the best of those early years.
One more recommendation that most people have never been made aware of is an album called Pass The Dust, I Think I’m Bowie by Black Randy And The Metrosquad. They were a short lived punk band from the first wave of L.A. punk, and they are like nothing you’ve ever heard. Needless to say, Black Randy is a white guy with a knack for being about as non PC as one could imagine. Along with having what I believe to be one of the greatest album titles of all time, each song is hilarious as well as offensive. Lyrical odes to Idi Amin, Marlon Brando’s Oscar incident(complete with the line “Indian brothers shine up your boots, show those network Jews red men have roots), the homos in San Francisco, Vice Squad narcs, sperm bank babies, as well as tongue in cheek cover versions of Say It Loud, I’m Black And I’m Proud and Theme From Shaft, it’s got it all. It will be the funniest thing you’ll hear for a while(along with The Dictators Go Girl Crazy!)
If any of you can manage to get over a deep-seated and counterproductive bias against and distaste for white American Southerners, listen to any American country music prior to 1970, before they became “outlaws” and grew their hair and started smoking weed.
They don’t ever mention being white. They don’t need to.
Some of us are white American Southerners who have an appreciation for country music, even though we mainly listen to metal.
Great column, and I shall play the single you recommend post haste. Thanks also for the Huey Lewis mention. I have been listening to his tunes a lot lately, especially The Power Of Love, and The Heart Of Rock & Roll.
The latter song’s video is great, with scenes from old rock and roll legends, including the King’s famous leg shuffle (Michael Hutchence does this dance very briefly in the video of what I believe is INXS’ first hit Don’t Change, a great 80s tune in its own right).
Heart of Rock & Roll vocals and rhymes are so catchy, hard not to sing along. There was a version of that song released for Canadian audiences where in the end when Huey is rattling off names of US cities, he adds Toronto and Montreal.
Huey is one of the Battle of the Bands judges in Back To The Future, where he ironically downvotes Marty’s band’s song which is Power Of Love.
the three great musical British trends of the 1970s
I was never a fan of sitting on my backside for a couple of hours in an auditorium. I much preferred clubs and bars where I could chat with friends or dance. For me, a mainstay of seventies’ music was “pub rock”. The Steve Gibbons Band and Dr. Feelgood did stellar work.
On the punk scene, it later became a thing to have a reggae outfit and a punk band sharing the evening. (It was an offshoot of Rock Against Racism.) The contrast was always a bit dissonant – not a surprise to readers of Counter-Currents.
First album: Judas Priest, “British Steel”
First concert: Jacksons’ Victory Tour
First single: Scritti Politti, “Perfect Way”
Great article!
First album: “The Sweet Featuring ‘Little Willy’ and ‘Blockbuster'” (1973)
First concert: Patti Smith, Tower Theater, Upper Darby, PA (1975)
First single: “Young Girl”/”Woman, Woman” by Gary Puckett and the Union Gap (1968)
First album: Fill Your Head with Rock, a “sampler” (1970). My fave tracks were Skin Alley’s “Living In Sin” (a sinner repents) and Black Widow’s “Come To The Sabbat” (an exhortation to dedicate your life to sinning). Decisions, decisions . . .
First concert: Free, Bradford, UK (1970)
First single: “Bits and Pieces” by Dave Clark Five
If you tend towards the rock side of music, as I do, I always imagine that the first band you see, the first single you buy (if you are from the 45RPM generation), and the first album you purchase lay down the tracks — as it were — for your future listening pleasure.
I guess that’s sorta true with me, although I like a much broader range of music than my answers would suggest. The first album I ever bought was Def Leppard’s Pyromania and the first concert I went to was Poison with Tesla opening. I was an early 70s baby, so I never got into 45s.
Anyway, while I still like what has come to be called hair metal, my tastes are all over the place, from Led Zeppelin (always and forever my favorite rock band), Rush, Smashing Pumpkins, Pink Floyd, Alice in Chains, Black Sabbath, Allman Brothers, Iron Maiden, Robert Plant solo, The Cure, The Smiths, Metallica, Kiss, Afghan Whigs, and yes, fucking Joy Division (how did that become white pride music anyway?)! At the risk of being ostracized and lynched in this place, I even like some old school rap, but that stopped around the turn of the century.
The only styles of music I could never handle were reggae and punk rock. Reggae because it is unlistenable garbage and punk rock because it is chock full of Phony Rebel Syndrome. Punk gets so many accolades for being anti-establishment but can anyone name a single rock critic, point to a single article in any rock magazine, or really to any arm of the dominant culture that didn’t whole-heartedly support punk rock? Has Iggy Pop ever gotten any negative ink whatsoever? Punk received nothing but support from the culture it claimed to be fighting, and even its rebellion was vague and unfocused. Was any actual member of The Establishment at the time actually threatened or even offended by punk rock? Sorry for the rant, but music is just one of those topics for me.
I think your perspective on punk rock may be limited due to being an “early seventies baby.” Sure, grade-school teachers have Mohawks now, but it wasn’t always that way. Punk rock was reviled at first, no kidding. Seen as the worst thing that had ever happened to civilization. There was gigantic cultural resistance to it. It was almost as bad as being a “Nazi” is now. There was a girl with short spiky blonde hair at my Catholic high school (Class of ’79). People called her “Iggy Pop,” and no one spoke to her. In Philly, the metalheads preyed on “New Wavers” and beat the fuck out of them. I was physically attacked three times by metal fans because they couldn’t tell the difference between rockabilly and punk rock. If you were born in, say, 1972, those music wars would have ended by the time you were 10 and too young to notice.
I’m sort of surprised no one’s ever written a history about that phenomenon, because if it was happening in my town, I assume it was happening all over. The problem with punk rock is that it set out to destroy rock and roll and wound up being the most long-lasting and pathetic rock nostalgia act ever.
And yeah, reggae blows, but I like early Jamaican ska and some dub.
You’re absolutely correct, I am basing my opinion only on what I have seen/read/experienced in the media and observance of cultural trends. The people I know/have known in my life in your age group weren’t into the punk scene, so none of this is really first hand knowledge for me. I guess I just get tired of hearing about what it means to rebel from rock writers who look like the dude in that red pajamas hot chocolate meme.
I hate that you were beat up by the metalheads Jim, most of us are not like that. Metalheads as a group have matured as they have gotten older. I’ve talked to friends who went to diffrent high schools back in the 80’s, and each had a diffrent dynamic. At some of the schools, the punk and metal crowd got along. At one of the upper middle class schools, a lot of the teens, would not wear T-shirts from concerts they just attended, it wasn’t preppy. At my school, the metalheads and the ones who liked country, actually got along. Keep in mind I’m in the deep South. We all had the same values for the most part. Also, hunting and the outdoors were something that we had in common. The teens who listened to punk were disliked by the metal and the country crowd. It wasn’t so much there taste in music. It was there nihilistic bad attitude. They couldn’t identify with rural life. Many of them wanted to be outsiders and be confrontational. I have read that the punk music scene in NYC was a response to disco and places like studio 54.
No need to apologize on behalf of Metal Nation, sir. I said metalheads beat the fuck out of “them,” not me. To clarify, I only said I was “attacked” three times. One time was outside the subway station at 69th and Market. It was on the day of my father’s funeral. We squared off, I threw one left to the guy’s nose, and he ran inside the subway station with a bloody nose. Another time was at some kind of organized keg party/cover band show at the Knights of Columbus. I was pounced upon by the entire dance floor but got out pretty quickly with only a few scratches. The other time I was getting the best of my foe until one of his cohorts whacked me in the face with a steel keg pump. Had to get stitches for that one. I wrote about all three incidents in “Shit Magnet.”
Punk and disco happened around the same time. Some of those early bands preceded disco. Punk was a response to overblown pretentiousness in rock and the seven-hour Emerson, Lake, and Palmer songs or the double-album sets by Yes that consisted of four total tracks. Otherwise, at this point, I feel like I’m enabling “music talk,” and like “movie talk” and “gaming talk,” it never ends.
Many of the bands you mention are good. It’s unfortunate that the author didn’t cut Kiss and Black Sabbath some slack. Iron Maiden is one of my favorite bands. A lot of there music is a celebration of British history, especially British military history. They are definitley patriotic, some would even consider them nationalistic. Ted Nugent is someone I identify with. Some on the alt right may consider him a little to confrontational, however his views are in line with many of the authors and readers of this site. I agree with his views on firearms, hunting, and politics in general. A few years ago he even gave his opinion on how Jews have a lot power in the U.S.
Damn, I forgot to give a shoutout to Type O Negative, Danzig, and White Zombie. I still suspect Peter Steele was “one of us,” although the evidence is rather scant.
All three are very good bands. Pete Steel had some right wing views that would occasionaly slip out during an interview. Danzig could be blatant at times, with his alt right views. He has been on Gutfeld on Fox news expressing conservative views. He is also pro white. He has a song called “Rise White Devil Rise.” It was a response to one of Farakhan’s speeches. The song is pro white.
I also would like to point out that Slayer has a few very right leaning songs such as Dittohead and Blood Red.
First record purchased: Debbie gibson.
first concert: my mom won’t let me go to concerts.
favorite groups: black eyed peas, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Gordon lightfoot, jimmy buffet(in no particular order, all are great)
Seriously, first cassette: beastie boys, licensed to ill, bought when I was a prepubescent boy
first cd: I’m not sure, but I think it wasn’t very flattering, something like Gloria Estefan
first concert: does me more credit, Robert plants manic nirvana tour
Best group, objectively probably the Beatles for quantity and musical quality, but that’s like saying you like Shakespeare or dickens in literature
lately my musical taste has been very eclectic. I’m addicted to these female indie pop girls like lorde, Lana del Rey and Billie eilish. I’m not sure why.
Favorite single record: magical mystery tour by Beatles in pop,
conan the barbarian soundtrack in classical
At the end of the day, I want to hear music that experiments and toys with melody, rhythm, harmony, and development, the latter maybe being the most important for me. You can add timbre to that, as well. Fans of White music aren’t going to be nourished with any of that in today’s tragically boring all-Black milieu. (Note: since White music has been marginalized to nothingness, mainstream Whites just kowtow to the gods of Negro tastemaking in order to be relevant. Kind of like that ugly rapper Post Malone, who is really a virtuosic guitarist and metalhead at heart.) In fact, I don’t even think rap does anything interesting with rhythm at all. The other 3 elements? Not applicable.
By the way, speaking of Thin Lizzy, maybe one of the truly sublime experimental articles on music was a 2015 piece from Vice called: “I played the Boys are Back in Town on a jukebox, until I got kicked out,” by Timothy Faust.
I just went back and reread the first 3 or 4 paragraphs, and it’s as weird and lovely as I recall. I didn’t read further because I want to remember it as the all-conquering oddity of music criticism I once deemed it to be.
Tengger Cavalry was a right-wing band (not “white”, but native orientated).
Ulytau and Altai Kai are national and native orientated band, I do not know if they could be called “right”. Türkish band Orhun is of course right-wing one.
In Germany there are many bands which could be called right, but I like Sleipnir/Raven at most.
First single: Major Tom by Peter Schilling, a 45 given to me as Christmas gift in Grade 5 class by a good Italian friend of mine
First concert: probably Rush, can’t remember where, early 90s
First record: dubbed Maxell Def Leppard Hysteria tape bought from a Chinese classmate for $2 in Grade 8.
There’s plenty of rightist music out there. It just doesn’t get much publicity.
Wow, to have the Jim Goad add to these comments has been excellent. Another excellent part of these comments has been all of the great music people have brought to our attention. I’ll add:
First album(s): I bought these two albums on the same day. I don’t remember who I had to kill in order to get two-album kind of money but…
1. Guess Who – Canned Wheat – the song ‘No Time’ had a guitar riff that radio couldn’t play enough. And the song Undun was another masterpiece.
2. Foghat – Fool For The City. The studio version of ‘Slow Ride’ was rarely played on radio and the bass is fantastic. Plus, you gotta love a guitar player name “Lonesome” Dave Peverett.
First concert: Marshall Tucker Band at Northwestern University with my pals Mike and “Rubber” Rob.
In addition to wanting to mention my pleasure of having Mr. Goad participate (more pictures of Jim Jr., please), I also wanted to thank commenter Lee for his suggestiom of Black Randy And The Metrosquad. They are everything you said. And, quite good musician’s to boot, sort of like a junior-league Average White Band. The lyrics made me laugh although Black Randy, in true punk form, is hard to understand at times. I suggest the YouTube video of that whole album, ‘Pass The Dust, I Think I’m Bowie.” I’ll post the link below. The 2nd link is to a great website that has the lyrics. I laughed and really enjoyed this and the growing number of other suggestions made by you lot.
Thanks!
Album:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=InNlLMViA9Q
Lyrics:
http://www.wastedspace.com/blackrandy/
And, so sorry, I forgot to add something I wanted to say regarding commenter Texas Chainsaw Makover’s thoughts on Huey Lewis. While I’m not sure about how this happened or the backstory, there’s a YouTube video of Huey Lewis and The News doing a concert in July of 2012. In a very classy move, Huey sang the King Harvest song ‘Dancing In The Moonlight’ with the original King Harvest vocalist, Doc Robinson. Later in the same month, King Harvest had a reunion concert. Not too long after, Doc passed away and I like to think he died happy for having his talent appreciated by Huey Lewis.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Iz1yLkS0Cr8
First album: I was so young that my mom had to buy it for me: John Barry’s soundtrack to Born Free. Sadly, I don’t know what became of that album. I left it at home when I went off to college, and I think my mother gave it away. The first thing I bought with my own money was Blondie’s Parallel Lines. I sold that and a lot of other pop lps to fund my plunge into classical CDs. But I still have a respectable vinyl collection, mostly of stuff I did not expect to come out on CD, or stuff I was just sentimentally attached to, including everything Zappa released in that medium. Zappa put out quality vinyl when he had his own companies. Shut Up ‘n’ Play Yer Guitar still sounds amazing on vinyl. I too think that the LP jacket was a great medium for designers, and too much was lost for miniaturization to CDs. I am glad vinyl is back. I even think it sounds better, at least for music recorded in the predigital age.
First single: Pretty sure it was “Take On Me” by A-ha. I still have almost all my singles. Most of them are 12-inch special releases or remixes of one sort or another. The one that mysteriously disappeared is Marianne Faithfull’s Sister Morphine 12″.
First CD: Mendelssohn’s violin concerto with Cho Liang-Lin as the soloist, on Sony. I still have it.
First rock concert: Talking Heads, Eugene Oregon, November 29, 1983.
I knew Thin Lizzy for “Jailbreak” and, of course, “The Boys Are Back In Town.”I knew the singer was a light skinned black but didn’t know he was Irish as well.
First album – Boston
First concert – Echo & The Bunnymen
First single – Silver Spring by Fleetwood Mac
Bloody Hell, Mark!
You just about like everything I like. Except for Zep. Sorry ol’ son, I hate Zep. I strongly dislike Plant. One more thing, I love the Sabs with Ozzy, but apart from that I think the party ’round at my place would be a good one.
I certainly do like the Lizzy, don’t have many of their albums anymore, but every time I open the ‘fridge door’, Phil’s looking at me (there’s a picture of him on the fridge that I ripped out of a mojo magazine).
Anyway,
First band I saw was the Stranglers,
First album I bought, Kaliedoscope : S and the B
I’m pretty sure the first single I bought was ‘Transmission’ by JD
Best Regards,
Jaded New Waver.
BTW: You forgot to mention Wall of Voodoo and Peter Hammill…and The Three Johns!
Interesting article. I was only familiar with Thin Lizzy’s hits, but listened to the entire Johnny the Fox album on the way home from work today and enjoyed it for the most part.
I had the fortunate scenario of being kept out of kindergarten when I was 5 so I spent a lot of time playing records leftover from my father and uncle on my grandmother’s old stereo. I remember hearing Billy Vaughn’s Orchestra, The Animals, Buddy Holly, Otis Redding, Iron Butterfly, and Uriah Heep to name a few.
First concert: Iron Maiden @ the Aladdin Theater, Las Vegas, March 1985.
First album: AC/DC Powerage
I never bought 45 rpm singles although I remember my older sister had The Sweet single ‘Fox on the Run’ and Elton John’s ‘Island Girl.’
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