Воскресенье 21 Сен 2008, 23:38
Slayer / Postmortem / Reign In Blood (9) / Oct 1986
Fuckin' Slayer!!
Needed to take a break from (finally) cleaning up the property after last weekend's storm, so I headed up to an area bookstore to look for a DVD I need for class, and happened across local author and Cleveland Scene Music Dude D.X. Ferris, who was there for a book signing: yet another book in the (recommended) 33 1/3 Series, this one being the story behind Reign In Blood!
Had a chance to talk with him and K-ROCK jock Matt Wardlaw for about an hour, which was well spent. Class guys.
One of the first questions I asked Ferris was whether he had had the chance to get Tori Amos's take on Slayer as he was researching material for the book, and among the interviews he did while writing this, she indeed was one of them. I asked him why she decided to do her own, strange cover of Raining Blood (previous SotD - Slayer's, not Tori's). He didn't tell me directly, not wanting to spoil the story in the book I suppose.
In writing this book, Ferris talked with all the creators: Tom Araya, Jeff Hanneman, Kerry King, Dave Lombardo, producer Rick Rubin, engineer Andy Wallace, and cover artist Larry Carroll. Plus label people and lots of others that helped make it happen. And plenty of "Fans" from Phil Anselmo to Sean Yseult. All told, about 80 interviews.
In fact, Ferris had so much material that it wouldn't all fit into the book, including this chapter about the first two legs of the U.S. tour, which was published in the April 2008 issue of Decibel magazine.
I spent about 15 hours physically laboring away my weekend, so I haven't had a chance to read this yet. However, here's a hook straight from the first page I flipped to:
"Even when the hair is gone, metalheads remain bonded by music. Some metalheads are tools, but the headbanger clique is largely devoid of the kind of hipster rivalry you find in indie-rock circles. When you look around the Hi-Fi Club and see another guy mouthing the words of Maiden's 'Two Minutes to Midnight ,' you recognize him as a brother."
Hell yeah. A shout out to us aging metalheads, and dropping Maiden in the very first quote my eyes see, so I'm hooked there. This looks to be a great read, and if you're a Slayer fan and have seen this post, you no longer can say you didn't know this was out there, so no excuses.
Oh, and Ferris also told me something provocative that I'll pass along to you: if you have a jones to write one of these yourself, you can submit your own proposal on their next open call, which could be as soon as October. (Yikes! The gauntlet is down! How am I possibly going to be able to rationalize away my slim margin of sanity in order to convince myself that I need STILL MORE to do, and actually put together a proposal to do one of these myself?)
You can see here the (not too extensive) requirements from the last time they called for proposals in January 2007. The only bad news: if you see the artist you want to cover on the list, forget it. As of now, they're publishing just one book per artist. So if you were thinking you might pen the tome on, say, Seasons in the Abyss, Ferris scooped ya.
No one's covered Iron Maiden yet, though. So I don't have that easy excuse to talk myself out of it!
\m/ (ò_ó) \m/