The Mosh Pit 11.28.08: Do Sales Equal Success?

Posted by Dan Haggerty on 11.28.2008

On the busiest shopping day of the year, the Mosh Pit looks at the adage that success is equal to how well an album sells, and answers the debate once and for all. Plus it’s week two of the free CD giveaway and we look at the heaviest album of the 70’s: Motorhead’s Overkill!











Welcome back again everyone. I hope you had a great Thanksgiving, and got plenty stuffed. Well, for our American readers. Everyone else is scratching their heads wondering why we would sit around on a Thursday and watch the Lions loose. But hey, I'm from Michigan so it's not like I haven't done that most my life.

Before we more on with the show, I want to remind everyone that we're in the middle of a contest to give away a FREE CD. And the best part is, you get to pick from four choices. Each album a classic in it's own right:

1. Boston -Boston [Revolutionized production standards and stadium rock] Classic 70's Rock
2. Megadeth - Killing Is My Business… And Business Is Good [Original pressing with the uncensored version of "These Boots"] Bay Area thrash/speed metal
3. Carcass -Heartwork [Slipcase addition, and it comes with the slipcase] Death metal/melodic death metal
4. Emperor -In The Nightside Eclipse [One of the corner-stones of the original black metal movement] Black metal (First generation. Yes that is important)

All you need to do is take a stab at naming the bands or people in my banner. For more details, you can read it in last weeks column HERE.

OK then, good luck and on with the show!

Sales =/= Success



One of the more curious arguments I have heard in the great debate of music is that somehow the sales of an album are proof of that album's quality. This argument has been highlighted wonderfully in the comments section of recent reviews and especially the Music Zone's Top 5 feature. Evidently, the fact that writer A doesn't like album X is just crazy talk since that album sold millions of copies. I've decided that, it being one of the busiest shopping days of the year, it would be fun to finally address this idea. So let's take it from the top…


50 Million Elvis Fans Can't Be Wrong

Yes, the sheer argument by numbers. You are one, and they are many. Yours is insular while theirs speaks of mass popularity. After all, how can one person be right when millions seemingly disagree?

Well, honestly that argument flat out annoys me from a philosophic perspective. After all, when did right, wrong, or even opinion become mathematical? Marx would be proud, sure, but when you get into the real world things obviously change. If it all comes down to the popular vote being the right, with no room for disagreement, then I would like someone to explain the last 8 years of politics. I mean the people in the Whitehouse and Congress received the most votes, right? Yet both bodies also seem to house the worse approval rating in history as well.

But the real absurdity comes into play when you take the line of thinking to its logical conclusion. For example, Metallica's "Black" album is 15x platinum, which means it is better than Ride The Lightning, Master Of Puppets, or … And Justice For All which comes in at 5x, 6x, and 8x respectively. In fact, if popularity is equal to quality then the "Black" album must be two and a half times better than Master Of Puppets!

Huh?

But it gets better my friends, and this is where the argument gets really silly…

Metallica's St. Anger has sold over 2 million copies in America alone. So you know what that means… Since quality is a matter of popular opinion, then St. Anger is better than:

Black Sabbath – Black Sabbath (yes, the debut!)
Black Sabbath, each Dio album
Judas Priest - Sad Wings Of Destiny, Sin After Sin, Stained Glass, Killing Machine, and Painkiller

Ahem…

Megadeth - Peace Sells… But Who's Buying
Megadeth - Rust In Piece
Pantera - Cowboy's From Hell

EVERY FUCKING SLAYER ALBUM
EVERY FUCKING IRON MAIDEN ALBUM

Breathe Dan… Breathe…

…

Get the point. Good, because from here it gets even dumber, like Ozzy is a better singer than Dio because his solo career has sold better than Dio, or Madonna is better than Diana Ross… I'll stop before I blow a heart valve.

Oh, and for the record, if you read this part and think that St. Anger is better than Rust In Piece because more people have bought it, so it must be true, then I want you to hit the back space button above and GET THE FUCK OUT.

Thank you.


R-E-S-P-E-C-T

OK. So now we're done playing with that, the real argument people might get back to is the simple fact that they don't actually mean it literally, but figuratively. It's not that your saying album X is automatically better than album Y because more people bought it, but only you have to recognize that it must be doing something right for so many people to like it.

This is the argument that basically says I need to respect an opinion simply because a large number of people hold it. It's a soft sell of that previous argument, a rear door attempt to make you soften your opinion. After all, how can YOU think X when so many people think Y. It's basically the same argument as above, just nicer. The trick is, we all can respect each other, but that doesn't mean we need to tolerate something we disagree with. In fact, in this case you just turn the argument around on them: "I respect that you like it, and you're going to have to respect that I don't."

It works both ways, after all, even if the dirty secret is the fact that that is the thing they're ignoring. They don't need to respect your opinion at the same time they demand you respect theirs. The corollary in modern politics, again, is amusing I might add.

In other words, if you like Hysteria by Def Leppard. Cool! Play it loud and have fun. But there is no way in hell you're going to make me think it's a good album (Something i said in spades in this week's Top 5). Enjoy yourself, but if you get the chance pick up the bands first three albums which where infinitely better. I respect that you like it, but you're going to have to live with the fact I consider it to be the greatest trashing of a good band in the history of music.

In many ways, my belief is that this goes back to the whole "Fanboy" and "Hater" issues we've gone over previously, where the real issue is that people just can't handle someone who has an opposing opinion. Maybe it's the benefit of age, or at least 20 years of marriage needing musical compromise, but I just don't get what the big deal is.

Either that, or the simple fact that I listen to music featuring men in furry underwear, white make-up, road warrior outfits, and/or cookie-monster growls taught me long ago to not take it that serious. I mean, I take my music very serious, but I can also step back and just laugh at the whole thing once in a while too.


But It Has Received Critical Recognition!

This pops up once in a while too. And all I have to say is…

And?

St. Anger has a Grammy and a Juno attached to it, while the same bands first three albums have a combined award total of ZERO.

Enough said.


Putting It Together

It's cool to disagree, and it's such things that are the spice of life. Trust me when I say even the writers here on 411 are very diverse in our interests and take fun shots at bands, or even each other. But it's all good, in the end we know that we have more in common simply by our love of music than a pet peeve or two.

But if you are going to disagree with someone, at least have the decency to use an argument that is based in something respectable. Even if it comes down to personal taste and a shrug of the shoulders, it has more merit to a music fan (who will understand since we all have those moments as well) than some silly argument that 50 million Elvis fans can't be wrong. If politics has taught us anything, they certainly can be and praise to the individual who chooses their inner voice in the face of the mob.

Motorhead - Overkill



As the 70's rolled on, a burgeoning new sound called heavy metal burst onto the music scene, but still in its infancy. For the most part what could be called "pure" metal would involve only a handful of bands. Most bands were tagged with the metal moniker simply because they either occasionally hit the sound or simply raised more noise than what people accepted as the norm. In fact, most bands avoided the term metal. Deep Purple has always avoided it and even Sabbath called themselves a loud blues rock band at first. So with all this hard rock, heavy progressive, and loud rock bands of many hues mixing it up the idea of metal was diverse and mostly mashed in the public psyche. The confusion even persists today when people debate whether Led Zeppelin or AC/DC should be considered metal. I myself have gone back and forth on this debate, but that is a future column.

The problem is, as rock persisted into the 70's, it along with metal did what it always does, becomes mainstream and even a little bloated. Saying metal was those things seems odd considering the actual real metal bands we're talking about, but when you realize that it has ties to hard rock then you can see the issue. As always, the music had reached critical mass and started to "Lose its street cred".

Punk was the reaction to that. In essence it was new music from the underground, for the underground, that brought back rock and rolls attitude and street cred. You can draw your own parallels to grunge a decade and a half later.

So with punk being the standard carrier of dangerous music, metal and the other forms of music started to wane. In a few year in fact, the death of Bon Scott and Bonham would make many people think the scene had a nail shoved in its coffin. Unfortunately for the pundits, they were ignoring a little resurgence in the UK that was taking the no nonsense street attitude of Punk with the duel metal sheen of Judas Priest. A large portion of that new scene was to become the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal. Although a few bands certainly took their own tangent as well. One was a loud ruckus of a rock and roll band called Motorhead. But instead of NWOBHM, they absorbed a little more of that punk attitude, some grease and booze, and hit you with a speed attack that was it's own special riot between metal and rock and roll.

After a dirty loud debut album, the band got real serious in 1979 and into the sleeping freeways of mainstream music came Overkill, Lemmy and company taking to the streets like road warriors of the post apocalyptic outback, rough dudes from somewhere else caked in sweat, smoke, and leather. I've always said it's Germany's answer to NWOBHM in a sense, much to the confusion of people (Motorhead being from England and the heart of NWOBHM), but that is because of the clear nasty guitar riffs that just rip fast. There is none of the NWOBHM dueling (in fact, there's only one guitarist) and Lemmy's bass is up front and part of the action. So what you get is a bunch of bikers playing punk/metal on traditional rock riffs, Teutonic in tone, without the muffler on, all during a high speed bar fight.

Net result: The heaviest slab of metal in the 70's. Yes, even heavier than Sabbath and Priest. This put a fist in the face of punk and a much needed foot up the rear of metal. And while those groups had better albums, there is no denying the lung clogging sizzle that Motorhead's Overkill brought to the party, literally upping the ante on all things loud and bottom-ended.

Also, inadvertently, you get the album and group that was the bridge between punk, metal, and the coming thrash scene indecently.

The title track, literal legend and concert closer to this day, a song a band would eventually name itself after, is the perfect illustration of this principle. It's just drills at you with speed peddling guitars, the boys lined up like soldiers on the front line showering the enemy with machine gun fire, ripping solos bombing the audience while fat skin drumming fires mortar shells into enemy lines. I mean, this is 1979 and we're getting a double bass here folks!

"Stay Clean" turns around and embraces the concept of melody more, Lemmy churning in a line with axe-man Eddie Clark to rewrite the rippling sounds of the three man power trio. In there is the secret of the Motorhead sound, Lemmy's bass up front and loud, not part of a rhythm section but the whole damn show, drums added to just beat the beast along and rain disaster, and an axe man to deconstruct the concept of rock and roll and rebuild it in the image of a motorcycle equiped with artillery.

Check out the intro to "I'll Be Your Sister", with Lemmy using his bass to turn the distortion and volume up on what is essentially Chuck Berry 101. When the man walks out on stage, puts his cigarette out and says "We're Motorhead, and we play rock and roll" - Tat's no joke. They do play rock and roll, they just add the heaviness of metal and the aggression of punk to it. The only difference being in thirty years is the quality of alcohol they mix with it.

Excuse me guys, but can I subscribe to your news letter?

But let's not forget we have a guitarist who knows what he's doing. "Capricorn" being a case study in leads and solos, Clark all over this thing raining showers of sparks in passionate solo after passionate solo, hooks echoing off the rafters to bounce back on a generation quickly drawing mascot Snaggletooth on their jean jackets; there is a lot of depth in these songs once you set the cruise to match the speed and debris the band is moving at.

You want hooks, turn on "No Class" to see Lemmy castrate someone vocally while he joins Eddie in another rocking rhythm that proves sometimes the best path is the simple one, the joy coming from the trip and delivery. Somewhere, ZZ Top is wondering how their version of the blues can be blasted into the stratosphere. Listen to this song, and you'll see what I mean. See if you can guess the bearded one's song I'm refering to.

Metallica would do a good fun cover of "Damage Case", but here is the original. Maybe not the finesse of that cover, likely do to production, but this one owns due to sounding like the band is rocking out in the bar after that bar fight has ended. I can picture the dust still settling and the lights still swaying. Someone needs to get us another round of what they're having.

Even closer "Limb From Limb" features more straight up rock and roll riffs, all loud and hung over, Lemmy separating into a more metal rolling rhythm while Clark lights the sky. Through this song and the rest Kilmister's choked smokers voice shooting out the stories of the road, more gravel than anything else. Between him yelling through the crowd, smashing his bass to get people out of the way, Taylor blasting away on the skins like they're going out of style, and Clark providing enough raw power to run the town, you just realized you're in the presence of history.

Take a deep breathe, for it's a grand thing indeed. But then cough it back out.

Burnt rubber and exhaust fumes can kill, you know.

The Set List
What's Playing In My Head Phones

1. Uriah Heep - Wake The Sleeper: Damn fun album. Sound like Uriah Heep minus the psychedelic of their 70's sound, and with modern production. Cool stuff.

2. AC/DC - Black Ice: Yes. I'm hopeless. Get back to me when you wait half a decade for an album!

3. Guns N' Roses - Chinese Democracy: I've listened to it a couple of times… And I'll likely talk about it next week. Fun reading the reviews on the site and the reactions however...

It's a wrap folks. I need to go into carb crash and sleep off how I brutalized the dinner table today.

Listen to what you love, no matter if the album sold millions or ten, and always play it on 10.