HOW SOON IS NOW?

This post contains the words “bitch”, “grab”, “floored”, “suck”, “banging”, “right here, right now” but not necessarily in the same sentence.

This post has frequent referrals to this kind of strings, some involving eye candy. Some of the people this post refers to – including the author – are into this kind of strings, but there will be no eye candy involved )

This post is mainly about a Paradise Lost gig held in Bucharest, but some of you will stumble upon it looking for Kylie Minogue. Life’s a bitch.

Forgive me reader for I have sinned. It’s been a while since my last trivia. During that time I’ve taken your preferences in vain, prowled bars, had impure thoughts, listened to plenty of questionable music and made extensive use of fowl language. I started meeting new people and resumed hanging out with Bach more often. I recently went over to her place to corrupt her corporate soul and persuade her that life is much better with a touch of daydreaming. She’s a tough cookie but there is hope ) My idea was to get into the spirit required by a rock gig with some quality videos and relevant album selections. Instead we indulged in girl talk while VH1 presented the career of Kylie Minogue. I was strangely comfortable with it… We had quite a catching up to do as far as gossip on both sides was concerned, but, as always, our loud get-togethers lifted our spirits and ill-disposed the neighbours.

As evening approached, we put some discreet make up on, harpooned Bach’s boyfriend and headed for Arenele Romane. We were a bit floored by the fact that Greg wasn’t going to be there, but we wouldn’t have missed Nick’s performance for the world. We entered the premises with a digital camera and looked for acquaintances. We wanted to meet as much as possible of the old fruitcakes we once knew and greeted. Plenty things have happened waiting for this gig, and a lot of nostalgia was involved. Not quite the 30’s crisis as much as sorrow for estranged friends. This time we were set to grab them and find out how life has treated them over these years.

Once inside we tried to locate the motherfuckers in question, but either our sight has dramatically deteriorated since June, or they weren’t present. We stood ground in the 3rd row and constantly pushed our way upfront. The Romanian supporting acts were Luna Amara and Interitus Dei. It’s not that they utterly and completely suck, but I have a history of impatience regarding hors d’oeuvres and I rarely behave while waiting for the main course. Some of the lyrics I remember were freakishly funny: “You are what you have” (Tot ce ai e tot ce esti), and I couldn’t help but wondering: “What if I had a Trabant?” – even better: “What if I had a 3 year old?!” – That would certainly explain a lot…

Fast forward a couple of lame songs and a bitch who was headbanging her way into someone’s bed and Paradise Lost enters stage.

They opened with “Don’t belong”, a song that was described as “a competent song, drawing in the listeners rather than trying to beat them into submission” ) I know exactly what they mean, as the album itself has slowly grown into me.

Greg’s replacement for the last shows, including Bucharest, was guitar tech Milly Evans, a sweet kid who passed the test with flying colors. The sound was really bad over the first couple of tracks, especially in the front row, and Bach and I were trying to get his attention by pointing to our ears. My guess is he thought at first we were mental (which is not that far from the truth), but luckily he got the general idea and adjusted the volume properly. We also appreciated his stage jumps (in the style of Greenday) which every now and then highlighted the rhythm breaks.

Nick was kinda cold. He had a couple of feeble attempts to communicate with the crowd – to tell you the truth, not the best crowd I’ve ever seen – so in the end he just played his part and that was it.

Although the setlist included 16 tracks, the show seemed to have ended too soon. I was particularly disappointed they haven’t played “Pity the sadness” no matter how much we screamed our lungs out. And the way they left amplified my fear that another 11 years, 3 months and 26 days will have to pass until we see them again…

After the gig we went back to Bach’s place and played some Paradise Lost videos in an attempt to dilate time. When those finished we ended up seeing one of the best live concerts ever: VAN HALEN’s “RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW”. That show is magic. You have all those men giving their whole life on stage, creating a special atmosphere. And there are some short interviews with the band members. Eddie Van Halen shed light on the magic between the crowd and the band and confessed that his father, also a musician, has taught him to always play on stage like it was going to be his last performance and Sammy Hagar admitted that’s why he always gives 200% out there…

The joke for the rest of the night was: “Ummm, Nick? We have a message from Eddie Van Halen’s dad…”

YEARN FOR CHANGE

In a night of confessing about our exes and what went wrong in our relationships, I asked this confidant if my belief that “teenage relationships are more durable than those built later on in life” seemed right to him. It has always been my impression that first love is so powerful that one is more willing than ever to change and give the best into the relationship. The feedback was that growing up together molds the two characters as close as two different people can be. Opinions and habits develop gradually, becoming mutual, and helping the harmony and the longevity of the couple.

A band functions pretty close to the rules of a relationship. You have several different people that spend an awful lot of time together. It’s normal to have differences of opinion and frictions between a group. However, if it’s childhood friends gathering to do a thing that they all love above everything else, chances are they will overcome most hardships and mature together.

When Paradise Lost released their first demo in ‘88 they were all around the age of 18 and probably played together as a group long before that. 17 years later we still have 4 of the original members which is absolutely amazing in terms of friendship and loyalty to the history they all had together. Another possible explanation for this longevity comes from frontman Nick Holmes who reveals that the passion to write good music and to perform it live has never faded. More than that, they were never afraid to undergo uncharted territories and to constantly elaborate their style.

Having invented a whole new subgenre and after influencing numerous bands across Europe, they faced a whole new dilemma: “wimp out” – as critics and disappointed fans had it – or stagnate.

“We are seen as the leaders of our field, it’s up to us to do something different and not become a parody of ourselves and sound like all the bands that copy us anyway. We’re just trying to make original albums. We don’t want to fit into any scene whatsoever.” – Nick Holmes

Many older fans, such as myself, loved Greg’s mystical guitarring and his genius in writing great guitar lines that supported Nick’s “doom ridden guttural growling metal”. A lot of people felt betrayed when Greg’s riffs became more complementary rather than leading and when Nick left behind the old style and started purring. After a while, it became frustrating for the two songwriters to keep justifying their need to reinvent themselves.

“It never ceases to amaze me, to be honest. Even to me, our progression is so obvious. Unfortunately, for some reason, we seem to be a step ahead of certain other people, and maybe that’s because we don’t think about other people.” – Greg Mackintosh

In preparation for the upcoming gig, I spent the last 2 weeks playing their albums back-to-back over and over, first to last and last to first. Some of them were totally new to me. “Host”, “Believe in nothing” and “Symbol of life” I totally overlooked in the past, clinging to the glorious three: “Shades of God”, “Icon” and “Draconian times”. I also read tonz of articles and interviews for this post, and smiled at witty yet puzzled comments regarding “One second”:

“It has certainly taken a lot of time and nicotine for “One Second” to click. Many are the afternoons I have spent watching smoke clouds unfurl in a sunbeam, desperately trying to make sense of the record. Several hundred tabs closer to lung cancer, and I am still no wiser.” – Gregory Whalen and Nick Terry of Terrorizer Magazine

I can of course smile and think they probably quit smoking after “Host”… As Nick puts it, nothing major has changed in the atmosphere, the mood and everything else is there, it sounds eerie like a familiar band, it’s just presented differently. They had to do that to avoid getting stuck in the 80’s.

“We could write a fuckin’ Death Metal album – probably quite a good Death Metal album – and record it in four days. It’s not hard to do that. But we’ve been doing this for ten years now, so we want something challenging. We couldn’t have done “Shades of God” when we did the first album; no one could really play anything. We just got better as musicians and better as songwriters, so ultimately we’re not going to keep playing sloppy, and stick with one style just because a few people at the back are going ‘Fucking sell-out!’” – Nick Holmes

For one thing I am truly happy: I was able to leave all my personal preferences and misconceptions aside. I had missed them dearly so I played their last record with an open mind and very eager ears. I tried not to have any expectations, so that I wouldn’t be too disappointed. From their last efforts, they could have sounded again like Depeche Mode, or Rammstein or even Robbie Williams I was so glad to notice the guitars are back and that they have their clean metal going again.

“Paradise Lost”, self titled effort, suggesting either a comeback to their roots or their determination to evolve into stand out musicians. Contrary to the general belief, changing is good. In the past me and my best friend looked in awe at Blackie Lawless turning WASP on “Crimson Idol” into a better ballad-writing band than Mr. Big for instance… We appreciated “Before the dawn” on bad boy Judas Priest and we absolutely loved Marty Friedman’s flirt with oriental sonorities on “Scenes”, but Paradise Lost seemed cursed to be forever misjudged and unaccepted for who they were and for who they were becoming.

“When people say ‘What about the fans?’ it’s like, well, we didn’t have any fans when we started making music” – Nick Holmes

As someone who recently turned down a job because I didn’t like the person I was going to work for, as someone who never did anything just because it was expected of me, I can relate to the band’s philosophy of only getting involved in projects that give them pleasure and writing the music that first of all appeals to them. They have changed together, they have all matured into a very complex entity, and they have done it with the same passion over the years. That explains the longevity and the stability of the line-up.

“We’re still totally into the music that we do. We kind of make music for ourselves, you know? We’ve always had that sort of attitude; it’s kind of like for ourselves and hopefully other people will like it, too. When people get over the lack of the ‘twin guitar attack’, there’s so much more to get into. From my point of view, the albums that are harder to get into are better anyway.” – Nick Holmes

REMEMBRANCE

I was talking to my best friend recently about the bands that influenced our early years and the fact that most of them we’ll probably never get to see live. The ones we were fortunate enough to see in our backyard came a little too late. Sepultura without Max Cavalera didn’t seem like Sepultura. Annihilator made Bach very happy to finally see at arm’s length in 2001, but the impact would have been greater in the 90’s. Metallica was greatly appreciated in 1999, but had they come here promoting the Black album, there would have been mass hysteria. At least we got to see them before Jason Newsted left the band. Megadeth was not to be missed in 2005, but had they come here promoting “Countdown to Extinction” with excerpts from “Rust in Piece”, a stadium wouldn’t have been big enough for their fans. We would also gotten to see Dave Ellefson, Nick Menza and Marty Friedman.

One of the bands we really worshipped in the early 90’s managed to come here promoting one of their albums that is to this day perceived as an “Icon”. They were emerging fast with a new style and powerful guitar riffs that transformed every song in an anthem. I think it’s right to affirm that at the time we really would have given an eye and our right arm to see Paradise Lost live. The year was 1994.

We were extatic during the show as they also performed half of “Shades of Gods” – which remains an all time favourite with its epic efforts and Greg’s unmistakable guitar solos. I was walking the stadium talking to people I knew and occasionally checking on Bach who remained glued to the left of stage where Greg was playing. Later on I managed to squeeze in to the afterparty held in “Club 30″. To my huge disappointment, only Aaron showed up. He turned out to be quite a nice guy. He kept Vanessa entertained all night and didn’t get too annoyed of me filming the whole process of getting plastered.

He also had a number of suggestions for a healthy diet. “EAT LOTS OF BANANAS!!!” ) Some of the reasons are explained here:

The party ended around 5 am. This left me in a very delicate situation as I had sworn Greg was not about to leave Romania without me touching that awesome… ummm… long… ummm… HAIR! ) So I tagged along with the group towards the hotel where I waited in the lobby for the band to show up to the bus. Last weekend I resaw the tape with my friend Bach and laughed our heads off about failing my career as a groupie… Not that Greg didn’t look good, but I mainly wanted to hang out with them rather than screaming like crazed fans do, or anything else… So I just kept my camera rolling. They were very puzzled because one lunatic was filming them at such a cruel hour in the morning…

In the bus, escorting them to the airport, I seated myself isle across from Greg and chatted a bit. I got the band to write something down for me. The most honest one came from Matt, who felt shit, and wasn’t embarrassed to admit it…

I can recall perfectly the way I felt in their presence. Overwhelmed. I was 19 and didn’t act my age anyway. They were talented, they were charismatic and they seemed so much older. Perhaps more than ever I am convinced that age is relative, summing up one’s experiences. Nick was only 2 years and a half older than me while Greg was 4 years older.

At the airport I thought “it’s now or never” and asked Aaron to take a picture of me and Greg. I ceased the opportunity to touch that hair as I cleared Greg’s face for the picture…

Couple of weeks later, this comes in the mail: “I enjoyed my trip to Romania although I don’t remember much from the party”. Oookaaaay, to me this sounds an awful lot like “I liked my trip to Moeciu but I don’t remember much from the party”…

“I hope that I didn’t do anything to embarrass myself as I don’t normally drink”. I keep saying that, but no one believes me ) Anyway, whenever shit hits the fan, blame it on your teenage idols…

Having finished my trip down memory lane, I have one comment for myself: Girl, I know your mind was filled by lyrics and guitar solos with no interest in fashion whatsoever, but a little hair mousse wouldn’t have killed you )