Week 10: Take!

Taking a drive through outer space, 

Take me to some forgotten place, 

Watching the memories of those days 

Blow by – Six of Spades

Here is the first original song by the band Six of Spades, which I mentioned in my previous blog post. These lyrics struck a chord with me, ever since I realized that graduation is right around the corner. This project is also ending soon, but if clashing schedules permit, I hope to continue promoting my bands over summer. 

Future plans

Recently, there have been a few complications with this project. These high schoolers are relatively busy with school, jobs, and AP exams. I don’t want to stress them out, and I let them do last minute cramming in peace. 

Scheduling rehearsals is difficult because of school and these musicians’ workloads. When you add pollen allergies to the mix, it’s a perfect storm of no rehearsals. During the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, many popular bands couldn’t perform live or even meet to rehearse. Many started having virtual concerts from the safety of their own homes. 

One such band was Metallica. They posted videos of their quarantine concerts on youtube, which gave me an idea. Apparently, each of the members would record their own part from home, and the videos would then be put together. I pitched this idea to one of my bands, and hopefully it will kick off. Once they agree on a song to cover, all they need to discuss is a key and tempo to play it in. Then the work is independent, and they can send in a video of their part, which can be combined with the others.  

Additional Musings

I’ve developed a recent interest in true crime, and often read about previous cases. While reading up on the story of Japanese cannibal Issei Sagawa, I saw that he became famous and even had a song written about him. The song “Too Much Blood” by The Rolling Stones essentially detailed the story of the murder he committed, and his subsequent capture. 

I dug deeper and found out that there is a quite large genre of music inspired by serial killers and murderers. The Rolling Stones have another song titled “Midnight Rambler” which was about Albert DeSalvo, aka the Boston Strangler. Popular rock bands such as The Smiths, Ghost, and Marylin Manson (whose name was coincidentally taken from serial killer Charles Manson) have songs depicting the stories of famous serial killers. 

Even Måneskin has a song (albeit in Italian) titled “Mark Chapman”, which is about (you guessed it) Mark Chapman, the man who had an obsession with but later killed John Lennon of The Beatles. This song is one of my favorites, but I didn’t realize how common the idea was. 

The idea of glorifying or romanticizing serial killers for media appeal has been prevalent for decades. While the songs about murder I previously mentioned are all under the Rock and Metal subgenres, these lyrics are common in Hip-Hop and Rap songs, too. Both overarching genres were popular in the 1970’s and 80’s, and both profited off of the serial killer, or general crime, craze. 

I’ll put a disclaimer out here that romanticizing murder is wrong. However, I do love a good rock ballad, and these bands created music that entertained the masses. 

Speaking of entertaining the masses, I’ll segway into promoting my youtube channel, which will become active very soon. Here is the link to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZRj3TFOuf66_1SoEVDuC4w 

Check out some upcoming music next week!