Heavy metal music
Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the United Kingdom. With roots in blues rock, psychedelic rock, acid rock, the bands that created heavy metal developed a thick, massive sound, characterized by amplified distortion, extended guitar solos, emphatic beats, overall loudness; the genre's lyrics and performance styles are sometimes associated with machismo. In 1968, three of the genre's most famous pioneers, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple were founded. Though they came to attract wide audiences, they were derided by critics. During the mid-1970s, Judas Priest helped spur the genre's evolution by discarding much of its blues influence. Beginning in the late 1970s, bands in the new wave of British heavy metal such as Iron Maiden and Def Leppard followed in a similar vein. Before the end of the decade, heavy metal fans became known as "metalheads" or "headbangers". During the 1980s, glam metal became popular with groups such as Mötley Crüe.
Underground scenes produced an array of more aggressive styles: thrash metal broke into the mainstream with bands such as Metallica, Slayer and Anthrax, while other extreme subgenres of heavy metal such as death metal and black metal remain subcultural phenomena. Since the mid-1990s popular styles have further expanded the definition of the genre; these include groove metal and nu metal, the latter of which incorporates elements of grunge and hip hop. Heavy metal is traditionally characterized by loud distorted guitars, emphatic rhythms, dense bass-and-drum sound, vigorous vocals. Heavy metal subgenres variously alter, or omit one or more of these attributes; the New York Times critic Jon Pareles writes, "In the taxonomy of popular music, heavy metal is a major subspecies of hard-rock—the breed with less syncopation, less blues, more showmanship and more brute force." The typical band lineup includes a drummer, a bassist, a rhythm guitarist, a lead guitarist, a singer, who may or may not be an instrumentalist.
Keyboard instruments are sometimes used to enhance the fullness of the sound. Deep Purple's Jon Lord played an overdriven Hammond organ. In 1970, John Paul Jones used a Moog synthesizer on Led Zeppelin III; the electric guitar and the sonic power that it projects through amplification has been the key element in heavy metal. The heavy metal guitar sound comes from a combined use of heavy distortion. For classic heavy metal guitar tone, guitarists maintain moderate levels gain at moderate levels, without excessive preamp or pedal distortion, to retain open spaces and air in the music. Thrash metal guitar tone has scooped mid-frequencies and compressed sound with lots of bass frequencies. Guitar solos are "an essential element of the heavy metal code... that underscores the significance of the guitar" to the genre. Most heavy metal songs "feature at least one guitar solo", "a primary means through which the heavy metal performer expresses virtuosity"; some exceptions are nu grindcore bands, which tend to omit guitar solos.
With rhythm guitar parts, the "heavy crunch sound in heavy metal... palm muting" the strings with the picking hand and using distortion. Palm muting creates a tighter, more precise sound and it emphasizes the low end; the lead role of the guitar in heavy metal collides with the traditional "frontman" or bandleader role of the vocalist, creating a musical tension as the two "contend for dominance" in a spirit of "affectionate rivalry". Heavy metal "demands the subordination of the voice" to the overall sound of the band. Reflecting metal's roots in the 1960s counterculture, an "explicit display of emotion" is required from the vocals as a sign of authenticity. Critic Simon Frith claims; the prominent role of the bass is key to the metal sound, the interplay of bass and guitar is a central element. The bass guitar provides the low-end sound crucial to making the music "heavy"; the bass plays a "more important role in heavy metal than in any other genre of rock". Metal basslines vary in complexity, from holding down a low pedal point as a foundation to doubling complex riffs and licks along with the lead or rhythm guitars.
Some bands feature the bass as a lead instrument, an approach popularized by Metallica's Cliff Burton with his heavy emphasis on bass guitar solos and use of chords while playing bass in the early 1980s. Lemmy of Motörhead played overdriven power chords in his bass lines; the essence of heavy metal drumming is creating a loud, constant beat for the band using the "trifecta of speed and precision". Heavy metal drumming "requires an exceptional amount of endurance", drummers have to develop "considerable speed and dexterity... to play the intricate patterns" used in heavy metal. A characteristic metal drumming technique is the cymbal choke, which consists of striking a cymbal and immediately silencing it by grabbing it with the other hand, producing a burst of sound; the metal drum setup is much larger than those employed in other forms of rock music. Black metal, death metal and some "mainstream metal" bands "all depend upon double-kicks and blast beats". In live performance, loudness—an "onslaught of sound", in sociologist Deena Weinstein's description—is considered vital.
In his book Metalheads, psychologist Jeffrey Arnett refers to heavy me
MTV
MTV is an American pay television channel owned by Viacom Media Networks and headquartered in New York City. The channel was launched on August 1, 1981, aired music videos as guided by television personalities known as "video jockeys". At first, MTV's main target demographic was young adults, but today it is teenagers high school and college students. Since its inception, MTV has toned down its music video programming and its programming now consists of original reality and drama programming and some off-network syndicated programs and films, with limited music video programming in off-peak time periods. MTV had struggled with the secular decline of music-related subscription-based media, its ratings had been said to be failing systematically, as younger viewers shift towards other media platforms, with yearly ratings drops as high as 29%. In April 2016, then-appointed MTV president Sean Atkins announced plans to restore music programming to the channel. Under current MTV president Chris McCarthy, reality programming has once again become prominent.
MTV has spawned numerous sister channels in the U. S. and affiliated channels internationally, some of which have gone independent, with 90.6 million American households in the United States receiving the channel as of January 2016. Several earlier concepts for music video-based television programming had been around since the early 1960s; the Beatles had used music videos to promote their records starting in the mid-1960s. The creative use of music videos within their 1964 film A Hard Day's Night the performance of the song "Can't Buy Me Love", led MTV on June 26, 1999, to honor the film's director Richard Lester with an award for "basically inventing the music video". In his book The Mason Williams FCC Rapport, author Mason Williams states that he pitched an idea to CBS for a television program that featured "video-radio", where disc jockeys would play avant-garde art pieces set to music. CBS rejected the idea, but Williams premiered his own musical composition "Classical Gas" on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, where he was head writer.
In 1970, Philadelphia-based disc jockey Bob Whitney created The Now Explosion, a television series filmed in Atlanta and broadcast in syndication to other local television stations throughout the United States. The series featured promotional clips from various popular artists, but was canceled by its distributor in 1971. Several music programs originating outside of the US, including Australia's Countdown and the United Kingdom's Top of the Pops, which had aired music videos in lieu of performances from artists who were not available to perform live, began to feature them by the mid-1970s. In 1974, Gary Van Haas, vice president of Televak Corporation, introduced a concept to distribute a music video channel to record stores across the United States, promoted the channel, named Music Video TV, to distributors and retailers in a May 1974 issue of Billboard; the channel, which featured video disc jockeys, signed a deal with US Cable in 1978 to expand its audience from retail to cable television.
The service was no longer active by the time MTV launched in 1981. In 1977, Warner Cable a division of Warner Communications and the precursor of Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment launched the first two-way interactive cable television system named QUBE in Columbus, Ohio; the QUBE system offered many specialized channels. One of these specialized channels was Sight on Sound, a music channel that featured concert footage and music-oriented television programs. With the interactive QUBE service, viewers could vote for their favorite artists; the original programming format of MTV was created by media executive Robert W. Pittman, who became president and chief executive officer of MTV Networks. Pittman had test-driven the music format by producing and hosting a 15-minute show, Album Tracks, on New York City television station WNBC-TV in the late 1970s. Pittman's boss Warner-Amex executive vice president John Lack had shepherded PopClips, a television series created by former Monkee-turned solo artist Michael Nesmith, whose attention had turned to the music video format in the late 1970s.
The inspiration for PopClips came from a similar program on New Zealand's TVNZ network named Radio with Pictures, which premiered in 1976. The concept itself had been in the works since 1966, when major record companies began supplying the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation with promotional music clips to play on the air at no charge. Few artists made the long trip to New Zealand to appear live. On Saturday, August 1, 1981, at 12:01 AM Eastern Time, MTV was launched with the words "Ladies and gentlemen and roll," spoken by John Lack and played over footage of the first Space Shuttle launch countdown of Columbia and of the launch of Apollo 11; those words were followed by the original MTV theme song, a crunching rock tune composed by Jonathan Elias and John Petersen, playing over the American flag changed to show MTV's logo changing into various textures and designs. MTV producers Alan Goodman and Fred Seibert used this public domain footage as a concept. A shortened version of the shuttle launch ID ran at the top of every hour in various forms, from MTV's first day until it was pulled in early 1986 in the wake of the Challenger disaster.
The first
Album
An album is a collection of audio recordings issued as a collection on compact disc, audio tape, or another medium. Albums of recorded music were developed in the early 20th century as individual 78-rpm records collected in a bound book resembling a photograph album. Vinyl LPs are still issued, though album sales in the 21st-century have focused on CD and MP3 formats; the audio cassette was a format used alongside vinyl from the 1970s into the first decade of the 2000s. An album may be recorded in a recording studio, in a concert venue, at home, in the field, or a mix of places; the time frame for recording an album varies between a few hours to several years. This process requires several takes with different parts recorded separately, brought or "mixed" together. Recordings that are done in one take without overdubbing are termed "live" when done in a studio. Studios are built to absorb sound, eliminating reverberation, so as to assist in mixing different takes. Recordings, including live, may contain sound effects, voice adjustments, etc..
With modern recording technology, musicians can be recorded in separate rooms or at separate times while listening to the other parts using headphones. Album covers and liner notes are used, sometimes additional information is provided, such as analysis of the recording, lyrics or librettos; the term "album" was applied to a collection of various items housed in a book format. In musical usage the word was used for collections of short pieces of printed music from the early nineteenth century. Collections of related 78rpm records were bundled in book-like albums; when long-playing records were introduced, a collection of pieces on a single record was called an album. An album, in ancient Rome, was a board chalked or painted white, on which decrees and other public notices were inscribed in black, it was from this that in medieval and modern times album came to denote a book of blank pages in which verses, sketches and the like are collected. Which in turn led to the modern meaning of an album as a collection of audio recordings issued as a single item.
In the early nineteenth century "album" was used in the titles of some classical music sets, such as Schumann's Album for the Young Opus 68, a set of 43 short pieces. When 78rpm records came out, the popular 10-inch disc could only hold about three minutes of sound per side, so all popular recordings were limited to around three minutes in length. Classical-music and spoken-word items were released on the longer 12-inch 78s, about 4–5 minutes per side. For example, in 1924, George Gershwin recorded a drastically shortened version of the seventeen-minute Rhapsody in Blue with Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra, it ran for 8m 59s. Deutsche Grammophon had produced an album for its complete recording of the opera Carmen in 1908. German record company Odeon released the Nutcracker Suite by Tchaikovsky in 1909 on 4 double-sided discs in a specially designed package; this practice of issuing albums does not seem to have been taken up by other record companies for many years. By about 1910, bound collections of empty sleeves with a paperboard or leather cover, similar to a photograph album, were sold as record albums that customers could use to store their records.
These albums came in both 12-inch sizes. The covers of these bound books were wider and taller than the records inside, allowing the record album to be placed on a shelf upright, like a book, suspending the fragile records above the shelf and protecting them. In the 1930s, record companies began issuing collections of 78 rpm records by one performer or of one type of music in specially assembled albums with artwork on the front cover and liner notes on the back or inside cover. Most albums included three or four records, with two sides each, making six or eight compositions per album; the 12-inch LP record, or 33 1⁄3 rpm microgroove vinyl record, is a gramophone record format introduced by Columbia Records in 1948. A single LP record had the same or similar number of tunes as a typical album of 78s, it was adopted by the record industry as a standard format for the "album". Apart from minor refinements and the important addition of stereophonic sound capability, it has remained the standard format for vinyl albums.
The term "album" was extended to other recording media such as Compact audio cassette, compact disc, MiniDisc, digital albums, as they were introduced. As part of a trend of shifting sales in the music industry, some observers feel that the early 21st century experienced the death of the album. While an album may contain as many or as few tracks as required, in the United States, The Recording Academy's rules for Grammy Awards state that an album must comprise a minimum total playing time of 15 minutes with at least five distinct tracks or a minimum total playing time of 30 minutes with no minimum track requirement. In the United Kingdom, the criteria for the UK Albums Chart is that a recording counts as an "album" i
Tommy Ramone
Thomas Erdelyi, known professionally as Tommy Ramone, was a Hungarian American record producer and songwriter. He was the drummer for the influential punk rock band the Ramones for the first four years of the band's existence and was the last surviving original member of the Ramones. Tamás Erdélyi was born on January 1949, in Budapest, Hungary, his Jewish parents were professional photographers, who survived the Holocaust by being hidden by neighbors. Many of his relatives were murdered by the Nazis; the family left Hungary during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. In 1957 he emigrated with his family to the United States. Settling in the South Bronx, the family moved up to the middle-class suburb of Forest Hills in Queens, New York. Verona Estates in Forest Hills was the place where Tamás grew up and described as'Home sweet home', he changed his name to Thomas Erdelyi. In high school, Tommy played guitar in a mid-1960s, four-piece garage band, the Tangerine Puppets, with a schoolmate and guitarist, John Cummings, the future Johnny Ramone.
After leaving school, at 18, he started working as an assistant engineer at the Record Plant studio, where, he worked on the production of the 1970 Jimi Hendrix album Band of Gypsys. When the Ramones first came together, with Johnny Ramone on guitar, Dee Dee Ramone on bass and Joey Ramone on drums, Erdelyi was supposed to be the manager, but was drafted as the band's drummer when Joey became the lead singer, after realizing that he couldn't keep up with the Ramones' fast tempos. "Tommy Ramone, managing us had to sit down behind the drums, because nobody else wanted to," Dee Dee recalled. He remained as drummer from 1974 to 1978, playing on and co-producing their first three albums, Leave Home, Rocket to Russia, as well as the live album It's Alive, his final show as a Ramones drummer was at Johnny Blitz benefit event at CBGB's in New York, USA on May 4, 1978. In a 2007, interview with the BBC, Ramone said the band had been influenced by 1970s, hard-rock band the New York Dolls, by singer-songwriter Lou Reed and by pop-art figure Andy Warhol.
He said, "The scene that developed at CBGB wasn't a garage band. Tommy Ramone was replaced on drums in 1978 by Marky Ramone, but handled band management and co-production for their fourth album, Road to Ruin. Tommy Ramone wrote "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend" and the majority of "Blitzkrieg Bop" while bassist Dee Dee suggested the title, he and Ed Stasium played all the guitar solos on the albums he produced, as Johnny Ramone preferred playing rhythm guitar. In the 1980s he produced the Replacements album Tim, as well as Redd Kross's Neurotica, he returned to the producer's chair in 2002, overseeing the reunion of former Ramones C. J. and Marky for their recording of Jed Davis' Joey Ramone tribute "The Bowery Electric". On October 8, 2004, he played as a Ramone once again, when he joined C. J. Ramone, Daniel Rey, Clem Burke in the "Ramones Beat Down on Cancer" concert. In October 2007 in an interview to promote It's Alive 1974-1996 a 2-DVD set of the band's best televised live performances he paid tribute to his deceased bandmates: They gave everything they could in every show.
They weren't the type to phone it in. Ramone and Claudia Tienan performed. Ramone stated: "There are a lot of similarities between punk and old-time music. Both are home-brewed music as opposed to schooled, both have an earthy energy, and anybody can pick up an instrument and start playing." He joined songwriter Chris Castle, Garth Hudson, Larry Campbell and the Womack Family Band in July 2011 at Levon Helm Studios for Castle's album Last Bird Home. Ramone died at his home in Ridgewood, New York on July 11, 2014, aged 65, he had received hospice care following unsuccessful treatment for bile duct cancer. In The Independent, Loulla-Mae Eleftheriou-Smith wrote that "before Tommy left the line-up, the Ramones had become one of the most influential punk bands of the day, playing at the infamous CBGB's in the Bowery area of New York and touring for each album incessantly." In response to Ramone's death, the band's official Twitter account had been tweeting previous quotes from band members, including his own 1976 comment that New York was the "perfect place to grow up neurotic".
He added: "One of the reasons that the Ramones were so unique and original was that they were four original, unique people."Writing in Variety, Cristopher Morris said: "Tommy's driving, high-energy drum work was the turbine that powered the leather-clad foursome's loud, antic sound." Biographer Everett True told the BBC "there are hundreds, there are thousands, there are millions of melodies happening in Ramones songs... You hear their influence stretch across all of rock music from 1975 onwards... you just hear it everywhere." Ramones Leave Home Rocket to Russia Road to Ruin It's Alive Too Tough to Die NYC 1978 Uncle Monk McNeil, Legs. Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk. Grove Press. ISBN 9780802142641. Melnic, Monte A.. On the Road with the Ramones. Music Sales Group. ISBN 9781847721037. Tommy Ramone on IMDb Uncle Monk website Uncle Monk on Myspace
Cleveland
Cleveland is a major city in the U. S. state of Ohio, the county seat of Cuyahoga County. The city proper has a population of 385,525, making it the 51st-largest city in the United States, the second-largest city in Ohio. Greater Cleveland is ranked as the 32nd-largest metropolitan area in the U. S. with 2,055,612 people in 2016. The city anchors the Cleveland–Akron–Canton Combined Statistical Area, which had a population of 3,515,646 in 2010 and is ranked 15th in the United States; the city is located on the southern shore of Lake Erie 60 miles west of the Ohio-Pennsylvania state border. It was founded in 1796 near the mouth of the Cuyahoga River, it became a manufacturing center due to its location on both the river and the lake shore, as well as being connected to numerous canals and railroad lines. Cleveland's economy relies on diversified sectors such as manufacturing, financial services and biomedicals. Cleveland is home to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Cleveland residents are called "Clevelanders".
The city has many nicknames, the oldest of which in contemporary use being "The Forest City". Cleveland was named on July 22, 1796, when surveyors of the Connecticut Land Company laid out Connecticut's Western Reserve into townships and a capital city, they named it "Cleaveland" after General Moses Cleaveland. Cleaveland oversaw design of the plan for what would become the modern downtown area, centered on Public Square, before returning home, never again to visit Ohio; the first settler in Cleaveland was Lorenzo Carter, who built a cabin on the banks of the Cuyahoga River. The Village of Cleaveland was incorporated on December 23, 1814. In spite of the nearby swampy lowlands and harsh winters, its waterfront location proved to be an advantage, giving access to Great Lakes trade; the area began rapid growth after the 1832 completion of the Erie Canal. This key link between the Ohio River and the Great Lakes connected the city to the Atlantic Ocean via the Erie Canal and Hudson River, via the St. Lawrence Seaway.
Its products could reach markets on the Gulf of Mexico via the Mississippi River. Growth continued with added railroad links. Cleveland incorporated as a city in 1836. In 1836, the city located only on the eastern banks of the Cuyahoga River, nearly erupted into open warfare with neighboring Ohio City over a bridge connecting the two. Ohio City remained an independent municipality until its annexation by Cleveland in 1854; the city's prime geographic location as a transportation hub on the Great Lakes has played an important role in its development as a commercial center. Cleveland serves as a destination for iron ore shipped from Minnesota, along with coal transported by rail. In 1870, John D. Rockefeller founded Standard Oil in Cleveland. In 1885, he moved its headquarters to New York City, which had become a center of finance and business. Cleveland emerged in the early 20th century as an important American manufacturing center, its businesses included automotive companies such as Peerless, People's, Jordan and Winton, maker of the first car driven across the U.
S. Other manufacturers located in Cleveland produced steam-powered cars, which included White and Gaeth, as well as the electric car company Baker; because of its significant growth, Cleveland was known as the "Sixth City" of the US during this period. By 1920, due in large part to the city's economic prosperity, Cleveland became the nation's fifth-largest city; the city counted Progressive Era politicians such as the populist Mayor Tom L. Johnson among its leaders, its industrial jobs had attracted waves of European immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, as well as both black and white migrants from the rural South. In commemoration of the centennial of Cleveland's incorporation as a city, the Great Lakes Exposition debuted in June 1936 along the Lake Erie shore north of downtown. Conceived as a way to energize the city after the Great Depression, it drew four million visitors in its first season, seven million by the end of its second and final season in September 1937; the exposition was housed on grounds that are now used by the Great Lakes Science Center, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Burke Lakefront Airport, among others.
Following World War II, Cleveland continued to enjoy a prosperous economy. In sports, the Indians won the 1948 World Series, the hockey team, the Barons, became champions of the American Hockey League, the Browns dominated professional football in the 1950s; as a result, along with track and boxing champions produced, Cleveland was dubbed "City of Champions" in sports at this time. Businesses proclaimed that Cleveland was the "best location in the nation". In 1940, non-Hispanic whites represented 90.2% of Cleveland's population. Wealthy patrons supported development of the city's cultural institutions, such as the art museum and orchestra; the city's population reached its peak of 914,808, in 1949 Cleveland was named an All-America City for the first time. By the 1960s, the economy slowed, residents sought new housing in the suburbs, reflecting the national trends of suburban growth following the subsidized highways. In the 1950s and 1960s, African Americans worked in numerous cities to gain constitutional rights and relief from racial discrimination.
As change lagged despite federal laws to enforce rights and racial unrest occurred in Cleveland and numerous other industrial cities. In Cleveland, the Hough Riots erupted from July 18 to 23, 1966; the Glenville Shootout took place from July 23 to 25, 1968. In November 1967, Cleveland became the first major American city to elect a black mayor, Carl Stokes. Industrial restructuring in the railroad and steel industries, resulted in the loss of numerous
Michale Graves
Michael Emanuel, better known by his stage name Michale Graves, is an American singer and songwriter. He is most well known as the lead singer for the 1990s re-incarnation of the Misfits from 1995 to 2000, leaving in 1998. Graves grew up in New Jersey, he has released several albums as a solo artist. Graves was recording a demo with his band the Mopes in Lodi, New Jersey, when their engineer, Bob Alecca, mentioned that the Misfits were reforming and holding auditions for a new singer. Graves bought the Collection I and Walk Among Us albums to familiarize himself with the band and became an official member about a year after trying out. In September 2008 Graves confirmed. "Jerry and I do not have a dysfunctional working relationship. Him and I both know and I know he knows that I am on board, it is a phone call away. I won't step back into what I walked away from, but the problem isn't with Jerry and I; the problem is with Doyle and with Chud."On December 26, 2009 Graves appeared on stage with Doyle Wolfgang Von Frankenstein and Dr. Chud's band Gorgeous Frankenstein at the Starland Ballroom in Sayreville NJ, opening for Danzig.
While on stage the band played four late 1990s-era Misfits songs: Helena, Lost in Space, Scarecrow Man, Shining, but they were cut short from playing Dig Up Her Bones due to time. Graves' singing can be found on American Psycho, Famous Monsters, backup vocals on the 1999 single "Monster Mash" and "Cuts from the Crypt", he wrote original songs for the band, including "Dig Up Her Bones", "American Psycho", "Scream!", "Saturday Night", "This Island Earth", "Fiend without a Face", "Shining", "The Haunting","Devil Doll", "Witch Hunt", "Fiend Club". During a break in touring in 2000, Graves and Dr. CHUD formed, they played two shows before the Misfits regrouped to embark on another tour, their last tour with this line-up. The first Lost Boys show consisted of Graves on an acoustic guitar and vocals while Dr. CHUD played drums, they played Misfits songs they had written while in the band as well as songs which came to be songs used for the band Graves which Graves wrote. The second show was the same music played as the first show, only this time the lineup consisted of Graves on vocals and electric guitar, Dr. CHUD on drums and J~Sin Trioxin on bass.
On as an encore set, JV Bastard took the stage and joined the band to play guitar as Graves sang. The four played "classic" Misfits songs from the 1977 to 1983 era of the band. After Graves and Dr. Chud's split with the Misfits on October 25, 2000, they formed the band Graves which made one album called Web of Dharma. Before the band finished writing songs, recording and solidifying a lineup, Graves rejoined the Misfits, but only as a guest vocalist for a month during the M25 kickoff tour, he would perform Misfits songs written during the time of his tenure with the band to raise money for his new project, Graves. During a two-day break on their Web of Dharma 2 Tour, the band recorded what was to be new material for a second album in Ripsnorter Studios, located in Minneapolis, Minnesota; the studio is owned by members of the Minneapolis Horror Rock band, who offered the band free studio time. The recordings were never finished due to disagreements between the mixing of the songs and have never been released.
After two successful US tours and the verge of a breakout record contract, Graves dissolved due to differences between Graves and Chud, after only releasing one album. Graves formed Gotham Rd shortly after with Loki, JV Bastard and Paul Lifeless. Under the assumed name of Graves they recorded a five-song demo of redone Graves songs, three which were released on Web of Dharma and two other songs, written and demoed with the original Graves lineup, but not released. Around this time is when Graves announced via his website that he would begin producing other bands albums on his off time. One such band is Stressbomb from Connecticut who recorded their first album "Self Medicate" with Graves as producer and his drummer Quincy as engineer during January 2006. After a few months of the band practicing, they decided to change the band's name to Gotham Rd, they released one album before going on hiatus so Graves could join the U. S. Marines, his last show was to be on December 31, 2004. They went on two successful tours.
2003's Seasons of the Witch tour, 2004's Mourning Lights tour. Before their Mourning Lights tour, the band entered a studio to record three new songs they had written after their first tour. Out of the three songs only one, the song on "My Way", had been mixed; the only way it was available for listening was by requesting it on Seton Hall University's WSOU, Pirate Radio. Before going on indefinite hiatus they'd play one off shows in New Jersey when home from the Punk Rock is Dead, Graves solo tour, their second to last show to date was held at the now defunct Connections in Clifton, New Jersey, in March 2005. The band announced "The Nightmare Rides Are Back" all over the net and played a one-time-only reunion show in Belmar, New Jersey, at the Goodwill Fire Hall with Cryptovyrus, The Zombie Mafia, Johnny B. Morbid, they played a mix of material from Graves' solo works, Graves re-records, Gotham Road, as well as some Misfits songs written by Graves. In 2008 and 2009 the band contributed some songs to the German compilation-CDs Get acquainted Vol. 1 and Vol. 2.
Right before his leave for the Marines, Graves was approached by Horror High Record
Teenage Head (band)
Teenage Head is a Canadian rock group from Hamilton and was a popular Canadian punk rock band during the early 1980s. The group was formed in Hamilton by Gord Lewis, Steve Mahon and Nick Stipanitz. Stipanitz has since been replaced by Jack Pedler, Venom died of cancer on October 15, 2008; the band's name is a reference to The Flaming Groovies' album Teenage Head, which Gord Lewis had seen advertised in a music magazine, but not heard, decided that he, one day, would form a band with that name. Teenage Head was formed in 1975 when the band members were students at Westdale High School in Hamilton; the original lineup featured Gord Lewis on guitar, Steve Park on drums, Frankie Venom on drums and Dave Desroches on vocals. Frankie Venom became the new vocalist, Lewis recruited old friends Steve Mahon to play bass and Nick Stipanitz to play drums. Meanwhile DesRoches would move on to form his own group The Shakers, although he would rejoin Teenage Head for a stint in the mid-80s. Steve Park would soon leave and join another Hamilton punk band Simply Saucer.
Their first gig was on October 1975 in the Westdale Secondary School cafeteria. The band's first professional gigs happened in February 1976 with a few shows at the Town Casino at Main and Walnut streets in Hamilton. By May 1978, they released their first single "Picture My Face" on Epic Records, their self-titled debut, Teenage Head, followed a year which went gold; the band's performance at The Last Pogo concert on December 1, 1978 at The Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto, ended in a riot and was shut down by the police. The concert was made into a short film by The Last Pogo. In 2006, Brunton began a feature-length documentary film about the concert, including additional interviews and footage of Teenage Head, it was released on DVD in 2008 as a tribute to the late Frankie Venom.1980's gold-selling Frantic City was the band's breakthrough album, making them stars across Canada with the hit singles "Let's Shake" and "Somethin' On My Mind". They toured to support that album, including opening the major Heatwave festival in August.
In June 1980 their performance at Toronto's Ontario Place sparked a riot. The incident made headlines across the country, led Ontario Place to ban rock concerts for several years afterward. In September 1980, riding high on the success of Frantic City and the band's unintended notoriety, Attic Records, their Canadian label, set up a series of showcase gigs in New York City, hoping to attract a U. S. record deal. Only a few days before their scheduled departure, Lewis was injured in a car accident and the showcase was cancelled. Lewis was temporarily replaced by David Bendeth, although he was able to return in time to play on the 1982 album Some Kinda Fun, another success reaching gold status, their 1983 record Tornado was marked by controversy, with the band's new American label MCA Records demanding that they change their name to Teenage Heads to placate the more conservative American audience. The title track was the band's last big hit in Canada. During this time the band appeared, as themselves, in the film Class of 1984 and performed "Ain't Got No Sense".
In 1986, one year after the release of Trouble in the Jungle, Venom left the band to form a new group, Frankie Venom and The Vipers. Nick Stipanitz joined the Vipers as well. Venom was replaced by Dave Desroches, aka Dave Rave, who led the band for three years before departing to form his own band, The Dave Rave Conspiracy. Nick left The Vipers and did a stint with The Tennessee Rockets for a while. Frank and Nick came back to Teenage Head when the group reformed in 1988, but Stipanitz left Teenage Head shortly after the reformation and went into a professional career in drafting and engineering, he was first replaced by Blair Richard Martin of The Raving Mojos Mark Lockerbie, who played on the 1996 album "Head Disorder". Lockerbie was in turn replaced by Jack Pedler. In 2003, the band recorded a host of released material with Ramones drummer Marky Ramone at Catherine North Studios in Hamilton and Metalworks Studios in Toronto with Ramones producer, Daniel Rey; the resulting album was released in Canada on April 2008, titled Teenage Head with Marky Ramone.
In the spring of 2007, Teenage Head played in Alberta and British Columbia for the first time in more than ten years. They returned again in the spring of 2008. On October 15, 2008, Gord Lewis announced that Frankie Venom had died following a battle with throat cancer; the remaining members of the bands continued to perform after Venom's death playing a tribute show for him, performing at the 2008 Hamilton Music Awards. In 2009, longtime fan and friend of the band, Pete MacAulay joined as the new singer, to in his words "take Frankie's space, not his place". 2014 saw Canadian born internationally accredited writer/reviewer Geoff Pevere write the book Gods of the Hammer: The Teenage Head Story. In his hometown of Hamilton, Ontario a memorial statue of Frankie Venom had been planned but has been stalled because of criticism of public funds being spent to commemorate a man who used illegal drugs and was once convicted for domestic assault. 2015 marked. In November 2016, Teenage Head announced the return of Dave "Rave" Desroches as lead singer.
Jack Pedler, due to illness was replaced by Gene Champagne of the Un-Teens and The Killjoys. In late 2017, Teenage Head began performing record release parties throughout Ontario for their new remix and remastered compilation Fun Comes Fast. 1979 – Teenage Head 1980 – Frantic City 1982 – Some Kinda Fun 1983 – Tornado EP 1986 – Trouble in the Jungle 1988 – Electri
