Otter Disaster #42: Bass-ically

A goofy little strip testing a new feature at Bitstrips:

Otter Disaster #38: Acceptin' to the Beat

Bitstrips Theme of the Day: Acceptance from July 14th:

Memories and Thoughts as the VHS Format Turns 33!

Today the VHS format turned 33! I was only four years old when VHS was introduced to the world in 1977. We wouldn't have one for about five more years, but I remember when we first got a VHS VCR in my house, we hooked it up and one of my sisters had rented an American Werewolf in London.

It must have been 1982,  I was only 9 at the time, but I remember watching that movie with my family, all the nudity, and violence intact from the theatrical release.  I was used to watching movies that had been cut to pieces, edited for content and length and appearing on network television.  We did not have cable so we had to drive 20 miles from Selden to Oberlin, Kansas to rent movies.  I don't remember too many of the films we rented, but I recall seeing Trading Places, one or two of the Friday the 13th films, and 16 Candles.  I specifically remember watching the George Romero/Stephen King comedy-horror masterpiece, Creepshow while a friend was over for a sleepover, and that we stayed up pretty much most of the night scared out of our young minds!

We didn't rent a whole lot in those days due to the distance involved in obtaining and returning videos, but mostly used the VCR for it's most revolutionary aspect, time shifting television, and allowing us to record one channel while watching another.  It's sometimes difficult to remember what a life-changing concept this was in the 1980s given the current age of DVRs and streaming web video.

As the youngest child of four it became very apparent that this was a tool designed for me.  I was often low man on the totem pole when it came to choosing viewing material, so the VCR guaranteed I'd never miss Automan, Misfits of Science, or Manimal, shows that my Knots Landing, Dallas loving sisters despised.

Once we moved to Oberlin in 1986 I had my first crack at Cable TV, and the VHS once again proved to be a world changer for me.  For whatever reason when we got cable we were not given a cable box for the channels beyond 13, but I quickly discovered the tuner in our VCR went up to 188, so all those upper tier channels became available.  I found the Discovery Channel (16) and Nickelodeon (33, I think).  Nickelodeon at the time featured the awesome, You Can't Do That on Television (check out the Pythonesque intro), Mr. Wizards World, and the surreal animated French adventure show Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea. I wish they'd release that one in an English language DVD set, but alas, no.  Check out the awesome opening credits:

Check out some Spartakus episodes HERE!

I also remember using the VCR to record NBC's Friday Night Videos, and Night Flight on USA Network. We didn't have MTV in my home town (not even on the upper channels) so those two shows were my only real outlet to view music videos. Here's some Night Flight video about the movie Krull if you've forgotten this awesome 80s show:



Night Flight featured all kinds of video weirdness aside from music, and was my first exposure to the Church of the Subgenius.

I used the VCR to sample and save all kinds of shows and movies and I still have a collection of movies on tape, as well as three working VHS players (one is a DVD combo).  Somewhere in my stacks of old tapes I still have the pilot episode of Twin Peaks from the night it premiered, commercials and all.

VHS tape is truly a buyers market these days.  Thrift stores often have movies on videocassette for as little as $1 each, not just junk either, but major releases.  There is also a lot of stuff that was released on VHS that hasn't made the jump to DVD, so visit those thrift stores.  You can probably pick up a standard definition TV and VCR while you're there.

Last year the awesome website/podcast The Retroist did a great show on the VCR. You can listen to that show HERE.

Happy Birthday VHS, I'll never forget you!

Schoolhouse Rock! Fan Portal: Lolly, Lolly, Lolly Get Your Adverbs Here!

Cafe Press, home of Otter Disaster Designs, is continuing the ABC/Schoolhouse Rock promotion, allowing Cafe Press Shop owners to create designs based the beloved educational cartoons of the 1970s. Here is my offering, a two-sided shirt advertising Lolly's Inc. the Adverb selling establishment in Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, Get Your Adverbs Here:

Here is the Original Video:

Cafe Press Fan Portal: Schoolhouse Rock!

Occasionally Cafe Press, home of Otter Disaster Designs, partners with certain media outlets to create fan portals allowing Cafe Press Shop owners to create designs based on existing media properties. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that a fan portal had been opened featuring the much beloved Schoolhouse Rock!

I put together this design based on my all time favorite School House Rock! song, No More Kings:

Purchase Here!


Here's the song and video:


I also did this design for another personal Schoolhouse Rock! favorite, Interjections!:

Purchase Here!


Here's the song and video:

Heavy Metal Heritage: Metal as Religion? Part 2

I posted last week about British Metal fans trying to get 'Heavy Metal' recognized as a religion in the 2011 UK Census.

According to this article the UK census does not 'officially' recognize any religions and does not define what is or is not a religion, it only lists the percentages of respondents to a given religion, which is how Jedi Knight ended up 'recognized' in the 2001 Census.

The notion seems to be gaining steam though. There are almost 17,500 fans on the movement's Facebook page (as of this posting).

If any band embodies the notion of Heavy Metal as religion (or at least as lifestyle) it's the incomparable Manowar.  Here's Battle Hymn, from their 1982 debut album Battle Hymns:

I'd be willing to bet no other band has done as many metal songs about 'metal' than Manowar: Metal Daze, Gloves of Metal, Kings of Metal, Brothers of Metal, The Gods Made Heavy Metal, Metal Warriors, Die for Metal, and any number of songs about swords and steel.

 This blog post at the UK Guardian suggests some other musical forms that might also qualify.

Heavy Metal Heritage: Metal as Religion?

Via the always awesome Neatorama comes this item from the UK Telegraph:

Fans campaign for heavy metal to be recognised as religion
From the article:

They are being asked to officially register their faith as ''heavy metal'' while filling in the next Census questionnaire...Rock magazine Metal Hammer launched its campaign last week and has already attracted nearly 10,000 followers to a Facebook group...

It has even gained the backing of a metal figurehead, Saxon frontman Biff Byford, whom the magazine says will become the proposed faith's ''world metal peace ambassador'' if the campaign proves successful.

If you are unfamiliar with Saxon or Biff Byford here's the video for the 1981 New Wave of British Heavy Metal Anthem, Denim and Leather:

This movement is partly inspired by the recognition of Jedi as a religion by several English speaking nations in 2001.

Of course Metal has a long history of viewing itself in quasi-religious terms. A fine example is Judas Priest's 1984 album, Defenders of the Faith.

The album had this quote on the back cover:

"Rising from darkness where Hell hath no mercy and the screams for vengeance echo on forever. Only those who keep the faith shall escape the wrath of the Metallian... Master of all metal."

Sounds biblical, in a metal sort of way...

You also have the examples of bands with religous sounding names like Metal Church, Armored Saint, Iron Savior, and of course Black Sabbath. Sabbath is largely responsible for a lot of the religious imagery in metal. Ozzy Osbourne wore large crosses from the very earliest days of Black Sabbath.

There is also a metal obsession with angels, particularly fallen ones. You have bands like Death Angel and Angel Witch as well as albums like Angel of Retribution (Judas Priest), Angels Fall First (Nightwish) and Angel Down (Sebastian Bach). I'm sure there are literally hundreds of other examples of fallen angels in lyrics, song titles and artwork throughout the history of metal.

Here is a rather lengthy piece on heavy metal and it's similiarities to and odd relationship with religion.

If they're successful in their attempt to have metal officially recognized as a religion, maybe this could be the official uniform of the faith.

Heavy Metal Heritage: Hit Parader Magazine

As a high school headbanger I had no internet for keeping up with my favorite bands and the town I lived in was so small it didn't have MTV, so there were few ways to find out about new bands or even what was up with the bands I followed.  I actually used to bring videotapes when I visited my sister Traci in college because she had MTV, and I'd record Headbanger's Ball to see videos of my favorite bands.  I'd play those tapes over and over.


With no access to MTV, and living in a part of the country where the odds of hearing my kind of metal on the radio was impossible, I had two outlets remaining for learning more about 'my' bands.  The first was the very reliable 'word of mouth'.  If you had a buddy who liked a band you could always borrow the records and sample their music for yourself.  If a group was good, you could then go out and buy the cassette or you could fire up the dual cassette deck and do a little peer to peer music sharing, analog style.  The other information outlet I relied on lived on the racks of the local grocery and convenience stores, the heavy metal magazines.  They had names like Rip, Circus, Creem, Metal Edge and my rag of choice, Hit Parader.

I never subscribed to any of these mags, but I would pick them up off the newsstand at the grocery store or Stop 'N' Shop (later C-Mart), if one of the bands I liked appeared on the cover. Hit Parader was always on the stands, where Rip and Circus were only occasionally available, and Metal Edge was expensive if I recall.  I don't think I ever saw more than one or two issues of Creem in my life. So Hit Parader was usually it.


Hit Parader heavily focused on the 'hair bands' of the era, and I read the magazine in hair metal's heyday from about 1987-1991.  I think they were legally obligated to put Brett Michaels (of Poison), Jon Bon Jovi, or Vince Neil (of Motley Crue) on the cover 9 months out of 12.  When Iron Maiden or AC/DC made a cover you could bet I'd buy it.  In fact I specifically remember having this issue featuring Angus Young of AC/DC on the cover:

I loved the magazine for being the only source of music news I could get my hands on.  My sister Pam had a subscription to Rolling Stone, but it rarely featured metal even when metal was extemely popular, so it wasn't good for my needs.  In a addition to news, Hit Parader had lots of filler in the form of pinups.  My bedroom was plastered with pictures of AC/DC, Iron Maiden, Tesla, and of course the lovely ladies Doro Pesch, and Lita Ford.


The magazine was also well known for intellectual debates, like 'Who Rules Heavy Metal?':

These debates often played out in Hit Parader's letter page where a metalhead would write in and explain in very passionate terms why Dio 'rules', and Ozzy 'sucks'.  The editor of said letters page would then usually make fun of the writer.  Poison vs. Motley Crue and Metallica vs. Megadeth were also extremely popular in these diatribes, and seemed to account for about half the letters published in the magazine in any given month.  


My other favorite thing about these metal mags were the ads for upcoming releases.  I'd often see some horrific image coupled with a scary band name, and a release date.  I bought at least a few albums based on these ads alone, music unheard.  One album I specifically remember buying was 'Another Return to Church Hill' by Artch.  I remember the ad being a black and white image of the albums cover, and I thought it looked totally cool, so when I saw the cassette shortly after seeing the ad I bought it immediately. It was a decent power metal record, and while I don't have it anymore I do have an MP3 of the title track.


I just learned today that Hit Parader  ceased publication a little over a year ago, Circus and Rip are also gone, but Metal Edge still seems to be in publication.  Maybe those high prices paid off after all.

T-Shirts from Otter Disaster Designs at Cafe Press

I've recently opened a Cafe Press Shop to sell original graphic T-Shirts.
I was doodling a few days ago and created a lovely little brain in a jar. I present to you the original doodle and the finished design (click picture for larger):



Here are links for Sci-Fi, Monsters, & Robots, Rock & Metal, and Comics & Humor themed T-Shirts. Their are permanent shop links below the Otter Disaster header at the top of the page. Check 'em out and if you like the designs buy one! If you think someone you know would like one of the designs, pass it on (or buy it for them, Christmas is coming). I'm hoping to post at least one new design a week.

Finntroll Friday: Final Edition

I started doing Finntroll Friday shortly after starting Otter Disaster, so that I would have an easy topic to post about at least once a week. It was really easy at first but as the weeks have worn on, this weekly post has become more and more work, just to keep it remotely interesting.

Finntroll is a really cool band, I love their music, and hope I've given you a reason to like them as well. I have a few new ideas that will likely replace Finntroll Friday on this blog. Here is a link to all 11(?) Fintroll Friday Posts.
It seemed like it was a lot more than that. . .

And here is a kid playing Trollhammaren on a violin:

Heavy Metal Heritage: Apocalypse Imminent!

In the 1980s it was a foregone conclusion that atomic war or a nuclear accident was going to plunge the world into apocalypse.
Iron Maiden's Two Minutes to Midnight tells the story of how it happened.

After the world as we know it ends, fascists were almost certainly going to try taking our heavy metal away from us, but not without a fight.
The struggle is detailed in
The Wild and the Young by Quiet Riot
The Right To Rock by Keel
Rock N Roll Children by Dio
And Tormentor by W.A.S.P.

Those that escaped the fascists would find themselves in strange worlds of mutants,freaks, assorted weirdos and Patty Smyth.
Stories like these are found in Dio's Last in Line
Lita Ford's Out For Blood
The Great Kat's Torture Chamber
And Alcatrazz's Island of the Sun


Once the metalheads emerged victorious, almost certainly led into battle by Manowar, we were going to spend lots of time in factories and warehouses with small fires burning everywhere.

Luckily there would be tons of scantily clad women(some of them in cages!) wearing animal print and leather. They would also wear lots of makeup(some Kabuki, some catlike, others demonic), and their hair would be teased to the moon.

See:
Bon Jovi's Runaway
The Scorpions' Rock You Like a Hurricane
Dokken's Into the Fire
And the Citizen Kane of post-apocalyptic metal videos:
Motley Crue's Looks that Kill


Nothing lasts forever though, and even the Free Metalheads of the Apocalypse could eventually find themselves enslaved by the Queen of the Reich.

There is a bright future ahead though, as we find out via Zebra, Who's Behind the Door.

Fintroll Friday: AMV!

You already know what Finntroll is, but what is AMV?
AMV is:

An anime music video. . . consisting of clips from one or more anime television series or movies set to songs; the term usually refers to fan-made unofficial videos. Most are not official music videos released by the musicians, but rather amateur fan compositions which synchronize clips with a musical track.

Finntroll has more than a couple of AMV's using their songs. Trollhammaren, as you might guess, is far and away the most popular Finntroll song to get this treatment. Here is a cool Street Fighter vid with Trollhammaren as the music:



Here is Naruto,
Hellsing,
and Grenadier,
Trollhammaren one and all.

And, while technically not anime in the strictest sense, here is Adult Swim's Dethklok, in a Trollhammaren video.

Here is a very nice Finntroll AMV using the song Grottans Barn, and video from Princess Mononoke.

Matthew Sweet's video for the song Girlfriend, might be the first AMV(from 1991), using video from the anime Space Adventurer Cobra.

Finntroll Friday: Kitteldags

Time for Kettles is the English translation of Kitteldags, an ode to the culinary proclivities of Trolls.
Here's an amusing fan-made YouTube video of Finntroll's Kitteldags:



Here are the English lyrics:

Time For Kettles

Tribes of Man never feast
Grandfather dismembered
Ancient wrath and magic
Witchery ended the feast

So quickly now they shall fry
As they once fried us
They shall be salted, they shall cook
The meat shall be torn from the bone

The meal has now ended
Many full and happy troll stomachs
Young trolls now meat tear
Rivfader now takes the stand

Full of hate
Priest becomes food
He is served on a plate

Danny Boy. Oh Boy. Oh Danny.

Mrs. Disaster stumbled across this video on YouTube the other day. I laughed until I cried:


I think it's the white turtle neck sweaters that really makes the thing. Or Animal's expressive face. Or Beaker really sending it home. Or 'der peeps der peeps'. Genius.

Finntroll Friday: Without Trolls, There Would Be No Finntroll.

Finntroll the band is inspired by trolls of all sorts, but I wonder if their name came from this Rumplestiltskin-like story from the Denmark/Sweden.

From the Wikipedia entry on Fin the Troll:

The legend tells how Esbern Snare was building a church in Kalundborg. It was hard work, and a troll, who was passing by, offered his services. Esbern accepted; however, the troll's condition was that Esbern should be able to figure out the troll's name by the time the church was finished; if he could not, the troll would take his heart and his eyes.

The troll was strong, and after a few days, there was only a half pillar left to erect before the church would completed. Esbern became afraid, as the name of the troll was still unknown to him. Wandering the fields in great anxiety, he laid himself down on Ulshøj bank to rest. While there, he heard a troll-woman within the hill singing these words:

Lie still, baby mine! / Tomorrow cometh Fin, / Father thine, / And giveth thee / Esbern Snare's / eyes and heart / to play with.

Esbern returned immediately to the church. The troll was busy setting up the half pillar that remained for the church, and when Esbern saw him, he called out "Fin". The troll was so angry that he threw the half pillar through the air, and this is the reason that the church has only three and a half pillars to this day.

Fiction is rich with Trolls. Recall the three trolls from the Hobbit, Ulik, from the Thor comics, the Troll movies.

Dress Up a Troll

Finally Fintroll in a live performance of Midnattens Widunder which translates as Monsters of the Midnight. That describe trolls pretty well I guess:

Finntroll Friday: Humppa, what's Humppa?

As you well know, Finntroll incorporates elements of black metal, joik, and humppa.
Humppa is described by Wikipedia as:

. . . a type of music from Finland. It is related to jazz and very fast foxtrot, played two beats to a bar. Typical speed is about 250 to 280 beats per minute. Humppa is also the name of a few social dances danced to humppa music.

You can hear the humppa elements in this performance of Nattfödd:



Eläkeläiset, based on my Googling, is another popular Finnish humppa band that plays mostly pop/rock covers, like Europe's Final Countdown.

Finntroll Friday: Jaktens Tid and Joik

Jaktens Tid is Finntroll's 2001 release.
Here is and interview with Metal-Rules.com from 2001 detailing the creative process, recording and release of Finntrolls second release.

Here is a kid rocking out to the title track:



The rhythmic chanting at the beginning of the song is called yoik or joik. It is a traditional form of singing of the Sami people, sometimes also called Laplanders.

Here is a brief example of a more traditional Sami joik:
(I'm not sure why the image is rotated)



Joik is incorporated into other forms of popular music as well:

Yoik 'N' Roll
Reinsdyr joik
Meahcci

And nothing beats a metal band featuring a sinister looking dude holding an accordian. Here's Korpiklaani doing Tuli Kokko(which means: Came the Eagle, according to one commenter), and it features some joik.

Finntroll Friday: as Drawn by Deviants

I was looking for Finntroll inspired art and found lots of it at the very cool Deviant Art.

There were several renditions of the band:

by Wickerchild
by FrostedGhost
by *Invader-zero
and by =Illaria

Finntroll also inspires a lot of troll art goodness:

Logo with Troll by trolette
Kick Ass Troll Army by Traitorfish
Orc Berserker by Rither
and a recreation of from the Nattfodd cd booklet by sina7

And, as always, Trollhammaren!

by nehrist
and by Nee-Chee

Here's one I did in about a half hour:

My Heavy Metal Heritage: The Jacket

I was a high school headbanger. I had the long hair/mullet, the black, metal band t-shirts(lots of Maiden and AC/DC), and of course I had this totally bad ass denim jacket:

(Click all photos to enlarge)




I got the jacket from my sister Traci in 1989, early in my junior year. She found it on the back of a chair in a bar, and nobody claimed it. Not that she tried very hard to find the owner. I think she gave it to me because she was afraid someone would see her wearing it, and find out she took it.
Anyway, it was really broken in and a little big on me, but I immediately had a vision for this jacket. It would be my heavy metal canvas. When someone saw me walking down the street they would be forced to acknowledge, "That kid is fucking metal!"

I bought an Iron Maiden back patch with the Trooper scene on it:



This back patch epitomized the coolness that my jacket could be. I also stumbled across a small Iron Maiden Piece of Mind patch that adorned the lower waist band of the jacket. You can kind of make it out in the photo above. Maiden was my absolute favorite band at the time. Once the patches were in place, the Sharpie came out. I adorned the jacket with logos from the bands I truly loved then. I know I added the Saxon, AC/DC, and Zeppelin logos right away, hence their prominent positions on the sleeves:

Saxon (Click to enlarge)


AC/DC


Led Zeppelin


I also added the JP logo from Jimmy Page's Outrider solo record, and logos for the Who, Tesla, and the Doors:



The Prong trident, DRI's logo and the Cult logo from Electric and the Jimi Hendrix Experience logo from Are You Experienced, were also drawn on throughout my senior year.

Here is a Metallica logo that I had painted on a ratty pair of jeans. When the jeans wore out, the logo was salvaged to adorn my jacket:



In addition to the logos, I also had any number of pins attached to the jacket:



I think many of the pins in the picture are from college or later, but you get the idea. A couple of pins that were on the jacket from my high school years were my National Honor Society pin and a pin depicting the DCHS (Decatur Community High School) Red Devil inside the letter D.:



A metalhead with school pride. I was an enigma.


I wore the jacket every day. In the 100 degree plus days of August in Kansas or under my winter coat in the dead of winter, I wore it. It had really good makeshift pockets on the inside that would hold 4 cassette tapes on each side so I was always armed with several hours of metal, should an emergency arise. No less than two Maiden albums lived in those pockets at any given time.

I continued to wear the jacket even after I went to college, which was about the time metal was falling out of favor and the whole grunge scene was exploding. I kept my metal mullet until the spring of my sophomore year of college when I cut it all off, but I still occasionally wore the jacket. I wore it less and less as college wore on, but it always hung in a place of prominence.
After graduating college and getting my first professional TV gig I had less cause to wear the jacket and it was pretty much retired.
I pull it out every now and then, and I wore in on Halloween of 2000 or 2001, along with a vintage Tesla concert shirt, and long curly wig. When asked what I was supposed to be, I said, "Myself, ten years ago."

Finntroll Friday: MySpace

Finntroll has a MySpace page. Listen to Korpens saga from their new record, Ur Jordens Djup (translated as From the Depths of the Earth). See the video for NEDGÅNG from that record as well.