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February, 2010

Searching for the Riff

A DECADE OF MUSIC NERDERY
By Kevin 'Spoiler' Alen

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Wrecking Crew, meddling with metal

The many lives of Celtic Frost’s “Dethroned Emperor” riff

I’ll always remember the day I walked into my best friend Tom’s room about a decade ago, and he held up an album called Balance of Terror. He looked at me with an excited glance and said, “Dude … just listen”. He put the needle on the record, and the next minute was pure bliss in the form of ridiculous, ignorant, hard riffing. It was a harder intro than anything I’d ever heard. It sounded like it was written specifically to blow up your mind, to rile up your senses and get your body to fill up with adrenaline, forcing you to go outside and punch someone in the face for doing you wrong. It was “Why Must They” by Wrecking Crew, Boston’s late-80s answer to Agnostic Front. I had never heard the band, but right then and there I knew I’d never forget them.

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True Scene: Rollins Band

Matt LaForge flies the friendly skies with Phils MVP shortstop's mom-dukes

Monday, February 1, 2010

To the list of things I have in common with Jimmy Rollins, one may add the fact that, Saturday last, we were both of us on Grand Cayman’s Seven Mile Beach: he at the Ritz Carlton, on the occasion of his wedding; I at the nearby Ocean Club, trying, vainly, to my and my dad’s chagrin, to convince the bartender to make me a milkshake. I didn’t come to know of this coincidence until two days later, when, while seated in the holding area adjacent to GCM departure gate 3, waiting to board a Charlotte-bound USAIR flight, there occurred the following:

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    Footnotes

  1. Name altered, artlessly.
  2. Slightly less surprising was that [speedy Phillies outfielder] flies commercial.
  3. "Like this one here — 'Are you carrying diseases or foreign agents?' If you're the kind of guy who carries guns and diseases on a plane, are you rewarded for your honesty?"