Electric Wizards, JR Moores (Reaktion Books)
Like, wow. “The ensuing pages offer my own version of the evolution of heavy music” says the author on the second page of his Preface, before making it clear this heavy tome isn’t going to be, thank goodness, about heavy metal but about music that, well, is heavy. You either know he means or you don’t. Gotta be good I thought, nestling down into my bean bag.
Pretty soon the book turns to shit though. JR Moores tries to make a case for The Beatles’ “Helter Skelter” as the first heavy track. Well, sorry, but it’s not heavy and I doubt if it’s the first. I mean, The Beatles are the most overrated pop band in history. With the worst drummer ever. Having got off to a crap start he then digs himself deeper by devoting a whole chapter to pantomime dames Black Sabbath, those Birmingham pensioners who still think writing about vampires and demons is scary. Like hell it is. I mean, I’m hiding behind the sofa man. Crying.
JR Moores is great at dissing bands he doesn’t like, trouble is I like a lot of them. He prefers to be hip and obscure, championing the underdog. I wonder if he has ever heard some of the “music” he champions? It’s all pretty indiscriminate and personal here. Nu metal and grunge gets short shrift in the main, as do bands like Led Zeppelin, but he likes Steve Albini, and is obsessed by The Melvins and TAD. (No, me neither. And I don’t intend to.)
Most progrock gets kicked into touch, along with punk. JR Moores prefers krautrock, industrial rock (though he seems unsure what that is) and acid rock. Then he invents Noise Rock, and starts listing post-genres, as well as championing The Jesus Lizard. I mean, The Jesus Lizard!!! Get a life man. We are definitely post-Jesus-Lizard. Possibly post-post.
Look, I agree on some things here, and it’s always easy to offer alternatives, but sometimes it’s just too much. REM’s Monster album is not a heavy-sounding monster. (Just listen to their early albums.) Where are Pere Ubu, Chrome, Radiation Sunshower or the Nosebleeds? What about some of the far our and heavy jazz albums of the 1960s that John Coltrane made? Has Moores ever listened to the first Suicide album he disses at full volume? And why all the praise for lots of stoned-out ineptitude and repetition?
At least he hates the Grateful Dead and Britpop, that we can agree on. And he quite likes Sonic Youth, though you can tell he’s suspicious of their artiness. But this book feels like a sleight of hand, not magic. Most of these bands aren’t musical wizards, they’re inept drug addicts who were or are intent on amusing themselves in a recording studio and convincing idiots like JR Moores how experimental and heavy they are. “Helter Skelter” my arse. “When I get to the bottom I go back to the top”: round and round and up and down and round and round… JR Moores is going round in circles and making himself dizzy.
Johnny Head-in-a-bass-bin Brainstorm