[KaeptnOvi] Fine Accept tracks there - love that guitar solo with the Beethoven. That's what it's all about.
But...
I think that these guys might have something to say about that. Greatest metal song ever!
Engel - Rammstein
That video has got everything - at least, it's got guys with flamethrowers and a bikini-clad woman dancing with a snake, which means it doesn't need anything else. But it's still not the greatest rock video ever. Everyone knows that that honour goes to this:
November Rain - Guns & Roses
Slash is God. Further commentary is useless!
The camera work is itself odd in that one. You can see that he's moving back and forth in one shot, and then it goes to the close-up and suddenly he's quite still. I think they must have had him perform the song more than once, with the camera in different positions, and then mixed the shots to get that effect. That might explain his expression in the close-ups - perhaps they told him to hold still for that take. But that aside, Leadbelly was a complex character. He was a genuinely violent and scary man whilst also an artist of rare sensitivity and versatility - a man who was always proud of the fact that, as a teenager, he really could "pick a bale of cotton" more quickly than anyone else on the plantation. He knew how to "Yassir" in real life just as much as in that news clip - in fact he probably exploited John Lomax just as much as Lomas exploited him, in a way. But he must also have been angry at the system that held him back. His Bourgeois Blues is a long description of the racism he encountered in Washington DC - something that shocked him, a plantation worker from the Deep South! And remember what he says at the start of Good Morning Blues - "Now, this is the blues. Never was a white man had the blues, because nothing to worry about..."
So what was he thinking in that video? Impossible to say...
I'll have a root round for anything more like that that there is on the site. They don't seem to have any other Leadbelly clips (others do exist) and I don't know if any other artists like him were recorded at such an early date, but you never know...
In the meantime, the Leadbelly one reminded me of Johnny Shines, so here are two Johnny Shines clips. Shines was the man who travelled and played with Robert Johnson for a time in the 1930s and spent the rest of his life trying to avoid having to reminisce about it. I have several tracks by him on DVD and he always seems like this: utterly detached, almost mechanical, as if he's only half-there. That's partly testament to his amazing skill - he makes it look easy to replicate Robert Johnson's techniques - but partly testament to what else, I wonder...?
Ramblin' - Johnny Shines (Acoustic)
Ramblin' - Johnny Shines (Electric)
But...
KaeptnOvi said:I think it's safe to say that Accept is easily among (if not the) best german Metal bands ever.
I think that these guys might have something to say about that. Greatest metal song ever!
Engel - Rammstein
That video has got everything - at least, it's got guys with flamethrowers and a bikini-clad woman dancing with a snake, which means it doesn't need anything else. But it's still not the greatest rock video ever. Everyone knows that that honour goes to this:
November Rain - Guns & Roses
Slash is God. Further commentary is useless!
Rambuchan said:Rare to see these work songs performed. Nice find! That was quite an astonishing performance. But it wasn't the finger work, nor accelerating guitar work that caught me. It was the steely, deadpan, lifeless look in his eye throughout, which didn't change at all. I'm wondering what you saw in that expression? Seemed to me a kind of shutters down approach, going through the motions whilst remaining numb and a kind of mechanical work ethic. No emotion, no emphasis, no embellishment, just working on the song. I'd like to see more of these if you can dig any out.
The camera work is itself odd in that one. You can see that he's moving back and forth in one shot, and then it goes to the close-up and suddenly he's quite still. I think they must have had him perform the song more than once, with the camera in different positions, and then mixed the shots to get that effect. That might explain his expression in the close-ups - perhaps they told him to hold still for that take. But that aside, Leadbelly was a complex character. He was a genuinely violent and scary man whilst also an artist of rare sensitivity and versatility - a man who was always proud of the fact that, as a teenager, he really could "pick a bale of cotton" more quickly than anyone else on the plantation. He knew how to "Yassir" in real life just as much as in that news clip - in fact he probably exploited John Lomax just as much as Lomas exploited him, in a way. But he must also have been angry at the system that held him back. His Bourgeois Blues is a long description of the racism he encountered in Washington DC - something that shocked him, a plantation worker from the Deep South! And remember what he says at the start of Good Morning Blues - "Now, this is the blues. Never was a white man had the blues, because nothing to worry about..."
So what was he thinking in that video? Impossible to say...
I'll have a root round for anything more like that that there is on the site. They don't seem to have any other Leadbelly clips (others do exist) and I don't know if any other artists like him were recorded at such an early date, but you never know...
In the meantime, the Leadbelly one reminded me of Johnny Shines, so here are two Johnny Shines clips. Shines was the man who travelled and played with Robert Johnson for a time in the 1930s and spent the rest of his life trying to avoid having to reminisce about it. I have several tracks by him on DVD and he always seems like this: utterly detached, almost mechanical, as if he's only half-there. That's partly testament to his amazing skill - he makes it look easy to replicate Robert Johnson's techniques - but partly testament to what else, I wonder...?
Ramblin' - Johnny Shines (Acoustic)
Ramblin' - Johnny Shines (Electric)