Sunday I spent seven hours in a minivan driving from New Jersey to Boston. Monday I spent seven hours at Ozzfest 2007. My seven hours at Ozzfest were definitely more enjoyable, but it was a close thing at some points.
The boy, as I've mentioned before, is a big Ozzy fan, and what with tickets being free this year and all, I figured, well, what the hell. What could possibly be a better spot for some family-friendly father-son bonding than an all-day metal fest?
Well, there were three corporate sponsors, and only one sells a product the boy is legally permitted to purchase. And that was Monster Energy Drinks, and I would probably give him a shot of Jagermeister--another sponsor-- before I would give him that much caffeine. The third sponsor was Hustler. Hardcore since '74. They were giving out DVDs at one point. The boy and I are both big fans of free stuff, but we avoided that particular giveaway.
We arrived close to 4 o'clock, only to find that we'd missed the band I was most excited about seeing--Cthonic, a Taiwanese band that features a traditional Chinese instrument and apparently sings about Taiwanese independence. (For reasons comprehensible only to the Chinese government, it's perfectly fine if the Taiwanese government asserts, as it did when I lived there, that it is the rightful government of all of China, but it's an affront punishable by annihilation if the Taiwanese government asserts that it is the government of a country separate from Mainland China, which, um, it is.)
So some crap Polish band called Behemoth was playing, and we wandered around looking at the people, the varieties of merch for sale, (a booth occupied by the Vagina clothing company was a crowd favorite.) and the people standing in long lines to meet the bands. For all my complaints about metal, and there are a bunch coming, I have to say this for the Ozzfest--it was free, and, with the exception of the Ozzman himself, you could meet and get an autograph from pretty much any performer you wanted. I have never seen this kind of access and fan respect in a venue this size before, and I have to give the organizers and performers a lot of credit for it. Another thing--I have also never been to a music festival where the load outs, load ins and sound checks were accomplished so quickly and efficiently. Normally you don't notice the roadies except when you see a fat guy in a satin jacket with a bunch of badges on lanyards around his neck, but this crew was a model of efficiency and professionalism that every road crew should strive to emulate. Again, I felt like it showed a lot of respect for the fans--we were there to hear music (or, in most cases, something approximating music), and they made sure they delivered the product without a lot of waiting. Everybody hit the stage at exactly the posted time, which is kind of miraculous in a rock and roll show.
Okay, now for my complaints. Over there at the second stage, the MC was some meathead guy who filled the interval between bands by saying "Get up on your boyfriend's shoulders and show us your tits! Yeah, nice ones! Why don't you go give that other girl a kiss!" etc. Yeah, the sexism was bad, but the stupidity was I think even worse. And I felt a particular responsibility hauling an eleven-year-old boy through this thing. Not because I think the sight of drunken breasts is going to ruin his mind (he was too short to get a glimpse of the above-shoulder proceedings, as, it should be pointed out, was I) , but rather because I don't want him adopting the sexist idiocy going on there. Yeah, I know, I brought him to a metal show, what the hell did I expect. Well, I have to say the whole thing probably would have been appalling even if I had been there on my own.
And then there was the music, which was the ostensible reason for the show. We caught a couple of songs by Hatebreed--the boy was bored and wanted to go stake out a lawn seat. Fine by me. Now let me say as to what's going on in metal today that I have heard from metal's defenders about the scene, and the release of aggression, and this kind of stuff, and it echoes a lot of what people said about punk in the 80's, so I went in with an open mind when Hatebreed, Static X, and Lamb of God played. I tried, people, but this music is just shit. Partly there's the fact that melody has been completely dispensed with, so what you're left with is rhythmic pummeling of the guitars with vocals growled or screamed amelodically over the whole thing.
What strikes me as ironic is that the scene seems to revolve around a rejection of society's norms--it seems to be about rebelling against the idiotic conformity of school, church, and work, and yet the music follows such rigid rules. It may be that Hatebreed, Static X, and Lamb of God represent different subgenres of metal, but they basically all followed the same rules--no melody allowed, identical crunchy guitar sounds played in a variety of prescribed rhythms, and any solos must be of the high-speed, way up on the neck deedly-deedly-deedly variety, and again, the lead guitar has a prescribed sound. It was just so boring, and, worse than that, joyless. It's all about deadly serious head banging and moshing, and don't anybody crack a smile, except between songs, when you're bellowing at the crowd about the joys of being drunk or high.
Hatebreed's vocalist said at the end of their set that the music saved his life, and that it kept him away from doing a lot of bad stuff. Given that the day appeared to be dedicated to the disrespect of women, the abuse of alcohol and marijuana, and violence (we saw four fights, one in the french fry line.), I had to wonder exactly what the music kept this guy away from. Heroin and murder, perhaps.
I just felt like there was a fascist undertone to much of this music. Follow the rules! React in prescribed ways to our joyless, regimented rock! Bow down before our cool logo projected on the giant scrim behind us! (Static X played in front of a giant skull with cutlery sticking out of it projected on a giant scrim, and it looked cool as hell but somehow made me think of the Nuremburg rallies.)
Having said that, watching sweaty drunken shirtless men mosh to these bands was the single gayest thing I have ever seen. And I watch Project Runway.
Okay. On to the music that didn't inherently suck. Black Tide opened the main stage with a set of competent, melodic, 70's-style metal. The boy and I both liked them; the rest of the crowd was indifferent. Oz himself...well, the man is still a good performer, and his musicians are very talented. This may or may not be due to the throat infection Oz claimed to have, but he simply cannot sing. He opened with "Bark at the Moon," and while, on the one hand, it was an incredible relief to hear actual songs after two hours of being grunted at by Static X and Lamb of God, the boy and I still spent most of the song wincing as Ozzy reached for notes that simply weren't there and ended up flat or off-key. This happened throughout the night; in marked contrast to the professionalism of the road crew, Ozzy's vocals were strictly amateur hour. He would have been booed off the stage on a Monday night in a club with this kind of crap. Still, the boy and I can now say we've seen Ozzy, even if seeing Ozzy now is like when I saw Sinatra in '87--yes, it's the same human being, and he knows how to work a crowd, but the magic is gone because he just can't sing anymore. Ozzy's set came to a screeching halt at the end of "Suicide Solution" when guitarist Zakk Wilde spent five minutes playing with himself. Sorry, I meant playing by himself. I mean, what's the point of a five-minute ersatz "Eruption" ending with "The Star Spangled Banner"? I mean, the guy can obviously play, but his best solos of the night were note-for-note renditions of Randy Rhodes solos, and his big showcase was a Hendrix cover. Yippee.
I've saved the best for last, even though the organizers didn't see fit to do the same. The day was saved by the demented Finnish genius of Lordi. I think this might be my new favorite band. They performed in latex monster masks and played a gloriously melodic brand of 80's-style hair metal. And they put on a fantastic performance. The costumes, the graveyard set--fantastic. The pyrotechnics on nearly every song--also fantastic. (They had pyrotechnics on the guitar and drumsticks too!) The chainsaw--loved it. The skull with smoke pouring out--likewise. The gigantic KISS boots on the lead singer, and the bat wings that sprouted from his back--O, it was all glorious. I just loved everything about this band. They closed with "Hard Rock Hallelujah," which was the winner of the 2006 Eurovision Song contest. (To the uninitiated, this contest is about the least cool thing in the world--the only previous winner you've ever heard of is ABBA. The fact that they even entered something so dorkified it makes American Idol look edgy is definitely a "so uncool it's incredibly cool" move.) I also liked "Deadite Girls Gone Wild." Ah, you ask, but a band with horror-movie personas and props must take a position on Satan--what's Lordi's? Well, I have to say it's confused. On the one hand, they gave us "Who's Your Daddy?" ("Satan's your daddy!") but on the other hand, they also gave us "Devil is a Loser" ("He's my bitch!"). How can you possibly not love a band fronted by a man who asserts that the devil is his bitch? (I think this was the number where the giant bat wings came out.) Well, I suppose you can not love them if you are there to see one of the rule-followers. The Static X and Lamb of God fans were downright hostile to Lordi because they were true rock and roll rebels, breakin' the rules. It was funny--some of the hostility seemed to come from the fact that they were wearing costumes, but then Static X came out, and their vocalist was also in a costume of sorts. Well, judge for yourself. 
Fist-pumping, sing-along choruses, props, pyro, it was all glorious rock and roll showmanship, and the fact that it was so offensive to the fans of the shitty bands that followed made it all that much sweeter.
I read something to the effect that the bands aren't getting paid for this tour, so everybody's pretty much doing it for merch money and exposure. Given that Lordi probably spent tens of thousands of dollars on pyrotechnics in order to put on a beautiful rock and roll spectacle, I'm rewarding them by downloading the CD The Arockalypse if I ever finish this freaking entry.
Lead singer--yes, he actually sang--Mr. Lordi asked from the stage during one song, "Would You Love a Monsterman?" My answer is an unequivocal yes.
And now, you, too can love a monsterman. Check out Lordi's fabulous website and enjoy this video, featuring Lordi in all their glory as well as some zombie cheerleaders.
