Classical Vocal Instructor Analyzes Five Metal Singers

The list doesn't surprise me much and it explains why I am a fan of most of the singers that she has good things to say about.

The "she" is question is Claudia Friedlander, a New York City vocal teacher who specializes in opera. Her opinions were solicited from Invisible Oranges a few months ago, a summary of which appears below.

The two vocalists she seems most enthralled with are Ronnie James Dio and Bruce Dickenson.

Of Dickenson: "There is a visceral dramatic intensity driving this singing. Many rock and metal singers are tenors who sustain much higher, much longer than operatic tenors are ever required to." and for Dio, she compares him to Queen's Freddie Mercury, stating "This is another very fine singer. His voice is so naturally resonant...Like the first singer, he performs with perfect legato, clear diction, and a consistent, organic vibrancy."

She offered praise for Rob Halford, but admitted he was "the only one I really wish I could get my hands on. He demonstrates several mad skills, but they aren’t well-integrated. It doesn’t matter so much because he is so committed, expressive, and musical, but I could have helped him do it easier and better."

Ha! The metal god needs a vocal instructor!

Actually, the vocal part she listened to is from Sad Wings Of Destiny, probably Priest's best album, but one that was recorded very early in their career.

I'm sure Halford has been through a few vocal coaches since then when money was hard to come by for food, let alone vocal instructors.

But she offers a bit of hesitation for King Diamond, one of metal's premier screamers, suggesting that some of his technique benefits from studio trickery.

And then there's Ozzy Osbourne, a vocalist she's not familiar with and not a fan of. She exclaims how it made her throat tight when she listened to "War Pigs." "The entire range of his singing is contained within a single octave," she observed, "with the exception of the moment when he yells “Oh Lord!” a little higher, in my opinion the only quasi-free vocal sound on the entire track."

While technically misguided, "War Pigs" is pure, throaty brilliance.

I would have loved to hear her take on "Changes."

A nod to Cousin J for the lead and Invisible Oranges for the article quotes.

Up The Irons, Take A Chill Pill, and Pass The Coin

In an indication that there are too many artists named after bears, I totally spread misinformation by suggesting that Iron Maiden was badmouthing my man Panda Bear. First of all, let me say that I love both, what with “Bros” hovering around as one of my top ten played tracks according to Last.fm and the fact that I had a dream about Nicko McBrain just last night.

I’m not kidding.

I gave him a cherry pie.

But the truth is that Iron Maiden supposedly bad-mouthed Grizzly Bear, which turned out to be some weird rumor and not true at all. All I can say is that it would have been awesome if Iron Maiden did in fact bad mouth either one of those bands, and it would have been even awesomer if the next slam-this time directed at Metallica-was also part of this make believe press release.

You can read about the “incident” here and you can believe every word of it even it is a total lie.

While I was upping the irons at the Maiden show in Chicago on Sunday night, the hipsters arrived for the Pitchfork Music Festival, which included a shitty performance by Panda Bear, according to the bros at GloNo and the chubby guy that used to write record reviews at the Chicago Sun Times.

Panda Bear fans attacked DeRogatis with a level of such intensity that you could almost see the sand in their vaginas. The comments usually incorporated the words “fat,” “old” and a bunch of cute internet abbreviations that unsuccessfully masked the reality that they truly didn’t know how to spell.

And they didn’t acknowledge the idea that maybe DeRogatis was right. I mean, since Jim is considered an old dude, one has to admit that he’s probably been around long enough to know a shitty show from a decent one, and since when has it become a crime to let others know about a bad concert? Never mind the venue in which he does it, or how poorly his choice of words may have been, if the dude thought the show sucked then he has a right to voice his opinion.

My money is on DeRo, Jake Brown ("Play 'Bros, hippy!") and any other honest attendee that had the balls to admit that Panda Bear’s set sucked. My money is also on that every person who got bent out of shape over an honest opinion is probably pale, skinny, and too much of a pussy to ever admit that Panda Bear didn’t deliver.

The same could not be said for the Iron Maiden show.

Sure it was hot, filled with dudes who hydrated themselves with $9 beers, but everyone was cool and I didn’t notice one bit of hassling-unless you call the 19 year-olds patrolling the parking lot and telling the tailgaters to head into the venue for said $9 beers an example of “hassling.”

While we watched this, we concluded that it was things like not being able to hang out and get drunk before a heavy metal show that is directly contributing to how uptight our nation has become. Sure, we get that there are things like liability involved and the need to turn a profit, but there was also a time when live music made memories-and sometimes those best memories came before and after the performance, particularly if the show sucked.

Luckily, Maiden was good enough to create some nice memories, but it burns me a bit that my son or daughter will never be able to really experience a live concert the way I have. Now I’m not suggesting that it would be ok for my daughter to get loaded before a show and become one of those obligatory boob flashers. What I am suggesting is that I would rather that she has a good time and let the event provide her with some release where she could escape from the rules and regulations of everyday life for a few hours whenever a band comes to town.

Because if she doesn’t, she’s more inclined to suppress it and let it come out in other, more dangerous situations.

I’m also willing to bet that if she finds the right music, she’ll want to experience it without the help of substances. I can tell you of countless shows that I purposely went without as much as a drop to drink (or anything else) because I wanted that event to be clearly burnt into my mind for years of reflection.

And then there are nights like before an Iron Maiden show where the bonding and building of the community entails sharing a bottle or offering a cold beer to the dudes in the Focus next to your car in the parking lot.

But Live Nation doesn’t care about our collective experience. They only care about the bottom line.

The fear is that this and future generations will grow up believing that going to a live show means walking into another location of crass commercialism instead of place of worship. The fear is also that they’ll walk away from that live show with little leftover in their pocketbook and with the only memory being “How am I going to pay for this?”

On that topic, I wanted to offer an epilogue on the challenges that my cousin and I experienced in trying to get these tickets.

Firstly, let me say that the seats we ended up getting were awesome. We paid a price for them, of course, and that price totally eliminated nearly any possibility for a similar show for the rest of this year.

You may recall, the story ended with a positive letter of explanation from Ticketmaster/Live Nation and a vague offer from a contact within that organization to call the venue and see if there was a possibility to get a hold of some decent seats at the face value. The gentleman committed to looking into it-no promises, and none expected either-with the understanding that he would get back to me. I believe the conversation ended with a declaration of “Let me know, either way.” On my part, suggesting that I would take it up the ass and pay scalper prices if he was unable to deliver.

We had the tickets as soon as we discovered that Live Nation was ass fucking us on the same day tickets went on sale. That should show how much faith we had in getting any sort of progress from a company that is regularly ranked as one of the worst companies in America.

But still, I thought that a follow call, email, or letter (they had all of those contact options) would have been the stand-up thing to do, to again, let me know either way.

Live Nation/Ticketmaster is not a stand up company. I received no correspondence whatsoever, another example of how that company does not believe in the power of music or the passion of its customer. Hell, it doesn’t even believe that this power and passion that I’m speaking of is significant enough that it could build such an unbelievable relationship with its customers that it could easily be ranked as one of the best companies in America instead of ranking down in the cellar.

Let me give you an example of how this could be done.

First Avenue in Minneapolis will always be one of my favorite venues of all time, and a lot of that reason has nothing to do with the layout, the bands that stop by, or the venue’s history. Sure, all of that is important to some extent, but one of the things that I will always remember about it is how I was treated there.

There were several times when I went to First Avenue to see a band, and even a few when I just went there to have a few drinks and hang out. I’d go up to the bar, order a drink, not act like an asshole and tip the bartender when my drink arrived. That simple act of respect would often lead to a “Hold up…” while the bartender would go and grab a complimentary ticket of a mid-week show that maybe wasn’t selling as much as they’d like. At the time, I lived about three hours away, so I wasn’t able to attend most of these shows-even though some of them featured well-known national acts and I would have totally checked them out had I lived a little bit closer.

The point is that my little offering, that little bit of investing in their business wasn’t taken for granted-and with their little offering to me, I would be as loyal as I could to this venue because of how I was treated.

I understand that there was a financial incentive to do this-more people=more drink sales=more profit-but the way in which they set out to make that profit was completely different than the reaming that I received from Ticketmaster/Live Nation.
Finally, there’s another thing that Ticketmaster/Live Nation is doing that I saw as plain as day during the Maiden show. It kind of relates to my First Avenue story, but it doesn’t amount to any comp tickets.

Instead, I notice a couple of Live Nation staff members walking around the merch and food area with signs offering Ozzfest tickets for $10 and other shows of interest at dramatically reduced pricing.

Great, huh?

But imagine how pissed you’d be if you’d already shelled out $60, plus all of those bullshit service fees, and after you’ve paid all of this you learn that your seats are kind of crummy because the douchebags sold all the good seats to a ticket broker that’s probably on the Ticketmaster/Live Nation payroll anyway.

I’d be pissed.

I’d also learn to never fall into the same trap again (unless it’s an act that I simply must see, regardless of the price) and I will condition myself to wait until those prices fall so that I can get to the show on the cheap.

Which is exactly what I plan on doing when the Scorpions roll through the area for their final show.

After all, I’m too broke to pay full price after the Maiden ticket fiasco and I’ll be damn sure if I even consider a $9 beer if I do end up going.

An Open Letter From Live Nation.....er, Ticketmaster

I didn’t think a response would come this quickly.

I know-some of you are surprised I even got a response, but not me.

You see, I work for a large corporation and I talk to a variety of different people every day. From the rude and wealthy to the poor and illiterate, and I speak to them using a variety of different ways. No matter how rude, stupid, or incomprehensible their correspondence is to us, we reply back to them.

So why should my letter to Live Nation Entertainment be any different?

Here’s the weird thing: the response came from Ticketmaster, not Live Nation Entertainment.
What, do you guys have to get rid of the old letterhead?

And the other thing that isn’t so weird, but they could have addressed it: my original letter was addressed to, but the response came from Terry Lilly, the Assistant Consumer Support Manager. You heard right, I wrote to the CEO of Live Nation Entertainment’s ticketing division-Nathan Hubbard-and I got a response back from the assistant manager. I’m sure Terry is likeable enough and is competent at what he/she does, but couldn’t they acknowledge that I went from the top of LNE’s food chain to someone down to the first rung of salaried positions in like two seconds?

Not even a phony baloney “Mr. Hubbard asked me to attend to your letter personally…” could do?

The good news is that they are apologizing (which is all I was really asking for) and have even asked me to call them to see if there’s some way they can make it up to us.

So whaddya think…Should I call them?

Keep in mind, we already have choice tickets and I strongly doubt that Mr. or Mrs. Lilly can do much better.

But why not try, right?

Here’s the reply back with my calls of bullshit in red.

"Thank you for taking the time to share your feedback about your bad experience on Ticketmaster.com. We really are concerned with the satisfaction of our customers and appreciate that you are a dedicated fan of live music. I’m sorry to hear that you weren’t about to get the tickets you wanted for the Iron Maiden show. I’ve got to say that I was sincerely touched by the simplicity of that sentence for some reason. If you give Consumer Support a call at 304-XXX-XXX, I or any of my team, will be happy to reach out to the venue on your behalf to attempt to obtain the tickets you were looking to secure. Allow me to explain contributing factors to the difficulties you described.

Ticketmaster distributes tickets for live entertainment events to the general public as an agent on behalf of Ticketmaster’s clients, who are venues, promoters, entertainers and sport franchises. I don’t live under a rock, sir. Thanks to the recent merger, there is no difference in many cases between Ticketmaster and the venue as some are owned by Live Nation. The venue in question for Iron Maiden is one of those facilities. As an agent and ticketing services provider, Ticketmaster does not determine the number of tickets available for any event, nor does it determine the pricing of the tickets that are available. How about all of those bullshit add-on charges on top of the ticket prices? The pricing and availability of tickets is determined by those with the responsibility of presenting the event such as the artist, the event promoter, and/or the venue. We know what kind of tickets the artist had-and it wasn’t much-and since you own the venue, well that means you’re responsible for the availability, doesn’t it. And the promoter? Look, I know most promoters are complete douchebags, but I know for a fact that the promoter isn’t sitting on all those tickets. Are you suggesting that they’ve worked out deals with Ebay brokers before they’ve secured a deal with Ticketmaster? Does that mean that Ticketmaster has absolutely no pull in negotiating with the promoter before tickets go on sale so that they can sell decent seats to their customers? That doesn’t sound like you’re the “master” of tickets at all! That sounds more like Ticketstowardstheback or Shittyseats.

When a popular event goes on sale there are literally hundreds and sometimes thousands of customers simultaneously attempting to purchase tickets across all distribution channels. There’s more to this paragraph, but essentially Tilly is trying to suggest that a bunch of people camped outside the venue and called Ticketmaster right when tickets went on sale at 10:00am. You know, like it was 1982 again.

The next paragraph says that sometimes the artist is so big that everyone tries to get tickets to it and not everyone can get them. This paragraph assumes that I’m retarded and didn’t know this fact.

Ticketmaster does whatever it can to make the ticket purchase process as fair, efficient, and user-friendly as possible. Tickets sell out extremely quickly for high-demand shows like this. We understand how frustrating this can be for fans looking to purchase tickets to high-demand
events. When Ticketmaster sells tickets via a fan club pre-sale or to the general public on behalf of its venue, promoter, or sports team clients, we do not give preferential or favored access to ticket brokers. To the contrary, we are always working to improve our software and policies to thwart unfair consumer practices. Here’s where it got interesting. I thought that they were going to address my biggest complaint: how did a broker secure tickets for the best seats at the Iron Maiden show and then turn around and sell them on Ebay in literally five minutes? There is no way! Those tickets were acquired beforehand, which to me demonstrates preferential treatment at
some level. Never mind the broker had tickets for not just this show, but other cities and bands too.

Again, please reach out to my department to let us know the number of seats you were looking to purchase and any other applicable criteria. I wanna meet Nicko McBrain! I can’t make any guarantees, but as a good gesture would be happy to do everything in our power to provide you exceptional service. "

All in all, a nicely worded letter that apologizes, offers a half-assed explanation, and offers a form of severance. Honestly, I’m not one to ask for anything for free. If I had waited until later on that night to buy tickets and then noticed all of the good seats were gone or that the event was sold out, I wouldn’t have even complained.

But this thing was rigged from day one.

The Midwestern in me wants me to just take it up the ass, relent that I overpaid a broker for tickets, and then up the irons in July. The greedy part of me-the same one that sees people trying to take advantage of everything, work the system in their favor, or just think they’re entitled to everything-wants to call Ticketmaster up and see how they’re able to compensate.
Because we know there’s no shortage of Maiden fans out there and a lot of them are willing to spend top dollar on good seats to see them.

Present company included.

Bruce Dickenson Joins Iron Maiden

On this day in 1981, the members of Iron Maiden quietly excused lead vocalist Paul DiAnno and replaced him with with none other than Bruce Dickinson. Dickinson had been the vocalist of Samson before agreeing to front a band that featured a huge, walking mummy as a mascot.
And the world was good.
The decision not only worked, it produced the band's finest moment right out of the gate: The Number Of The Beast. But what became of Paul DiAnno? He went on to front a bunch of band's you never heard of (Lone Wolf, Battlezone, and the aptly named Killers) but left a pretty good (albeit brief) track record with Iron Maiden. In fact, the first Maiden album I ever got was a cassette copy of Maiden Japan, the live release just prior to Number. I stole it from K-Mart and played it until the little pressure pad fell out.
So while this may be the day in which Maiden gained additional notoriety for sacking their original lead singer, I'm giving a nod of respect to DiAnno.



Now take a look at DiAnno today. Looks like someone needs some extra royalty points and a good dental plan.

Iron Maiden-A Matter Of Life And Death

True story: I was driving around with the little dude in the car seat, listening to Iron Maiden’s Killers. The song that grabbed his attention was “Wrathchild,” which he thought was pronounced “rockchild” because he understood the track is pretty rockin’. So he’s doing the obligatory head-nodding, throwing up the horns like I taught him, and trying to get my attention in the rear view mirror buy saying “Look at me! I’m a wrathchild!” It was one of those bonding moments that make you think the kid will turn out all right.
Later on, we were watching “Full House” together (his choice, he has a thing for toddler-era Olsen twins) when John Stamos appeared in a scene. Stamos was dressed in black, had an electric guitar and that silly looking mane on his head, which prompted the little one to declare “He’s a rockchild too, Daddy.” I had to correct him, of course, because there’s a huge difference between Iron Maiden and John Stamos.
I’ll admit to not following Maiden too closely for quite some time; I lost track of them during my obligatory “purge everything metal” phase, which I’ve thankfully realized was a completely stupid thing on my part as I’ve come to terms with my metal influences. Maiden was one of them, of course, but by the time I reconciled with the genre, Maiden had replaced vocalist Bruce Dickenson and who wants that?
Two albums ago, the rest of the band brought Dickenson back and guitarist Adrian Smith, providing fans with a reunion of the classic Maiden line-up of the 80’s. But riding a wave of nostalgia is not the sort of thing that the band is apparently content on doing. Their latest release, A Matter Of Life And Death, finds the band forging ahead while keeping their enormous influence and bravado completely in tact. It’s reassuring that this, their fourteenth album, not only manages to complement their existing catalog but also add some range to it.
The opening track, “A Different World,” is a great example of this. Leading with that famous Maiden trademark sound, the song begins by focusing on those who are unwilling to change and unhappy that they can’t stop change from happening. The song then suddenly opens into a wonderful, lower register chorus, preaching tolerance (“tell me what you can hear/and then tell me what you see/everybody has a different way to view the world”) without the use of Dickenson’s famous operatic vocal scalings.
It’s also the shortest track, clocking in at a hair over four minutes. The rest of the album approaches epic qualities with three tracks going over the eight minute mark, four over seven, and the rest over five; like the Iron Maiden of old, there is a slim chance that any of the songs will be provided commercial exposure.
A Matter Of Life And Death feels like a looser effort than albums past. Drummer Nicko McBrain limits the fills and focuses more on playing in the pocket while the band’s three(!) guitar attack is clearly defined and fluid, including some acoustic flourishes that appear on a few of the songs. Surprisingly, the band seems to have made an album that was conceived, recorded, and released fairly quickly. This approach works for them; Maiden has been at this thing long enough that they can be tight without the help of studio gadgets and obsessive perfectionists manning the control room. I’m looking at you, Bob Rock.
There will be a few fans that miss the operatic bombast of Dickenson’s voice on every track, and they may be a little dismayed at a more progressive rock direction the band appears to be taking with this release. The reality is that Maiden have has some progressive tendencies in their leather armbands. Now they seem comfortable enough to demonstrate it rather than roll over them like they’ve already perfected.
A Matter Of Life And Death won’t be the album that gets you to suddenly appreciate Iron Maiden (you get them or you don’t) and it’s not the “return to form” album that existing fans probably want them to make. In their minds, they’ve made those records and you’re welcomed to pick them up (The Number Of The Beast, Piece Of Mind and Powerslave are where you should start) and watch them prove their worthiness in a live setting where, apparently, they still have the ability to rule. Instead, it’s a very credible example of a band that understands if they’re content with simply holding on to nostalgia, they’re as good as dead. Or Ed, as the case may be.

This review originally appeared in Glorious Noise