Sunday, September 30, 2007

heavy metal knitwear

At some point in the early 1990’s the jumper seemed to become the must have item for any self respecting metalhead, I don’t know if this was just a south east of England thing or if it was more wide spread. One friend of mine believes this was inspired by the biker look but I disagree. While the biker look has had major influences on the heavy metal look I believe the whole jumper thing was more of a grunge influence, I do not remember seeing any jumpers before this point and then suddenly every body was into knitwear, like all the aunties in all the world went mad.
One thing my knitwear opponent and I agree on is the strange phenomenom of detecting somebodys music taste by their choice of knitted garments.

Chunky heavy misshapen and black – male metalheads
Loose baggy cardigans – indie fans (pre Britpop)
Long black or dark green baggy cardigans or long loose (netlike) knit jumpers – Goth male or female (occasional female metal fans too)
Fitted green (dark) or black cardy usually worn with long skirt and docs – female metallers (some Goth influence here methinks)
Tight knit jumper or cardigan sometimes striped but almost any colour usually worn with a wasted stoned expression – grungers
Striped (and I mean seriously striped) many coloured (Joseph would have been proud) of almost any shape but preferably made from hemp – crusties

I still have my(second) black shapeless jumper (my first was disposed of by my wife when I said I would wear it for the births of all my children) and I also have a back up jumper just in case. In fact I have a lovely grey and white jumper that looks like a Britpop influenced heavy metal jumper, it looks a bit naff but its lovely in its own jumpery sort of way (and it was a Christmas jumper and that makes it special).

To be honest I think the very first time I came across heavy metal knitwear was probably 1989 on the alpha metalhead in Stanford , I think he wore it in his getting shitfaced capacity and seeing as he almost fitted in the Goth category it did not seem out of place, but I swear it was not until late ’92 that knitwear really made an impact( if you can describe it as such).

Written with the aid of Bells scotch.

p.s. 56% of readers of this blog prefer jumper to (44%) cardigans

Thursday, September 20, 2007

RIP Pepsi

Having a bit of a trawl this evening I have come across the sad news that Pepsi Tate of Tigertailz has died after losing his fight with pancreatic cancer.
While I have a good laugh listening to the Tailz I still enjoyed their music and metalvillage would be a much duller place without them.

My condolences to Pepsi’s family and friends.

Monday, September 10, 2007

Some little fuckwits broke into my shed last night and stole my mountain bike, they will probably sell it for something ridiculous like £30, but it’s going to cost me £350 to replace it plus another £50 or so to replace the extras. Bastards.
I hope they get terminal boils on their collective arses the wankers.
I use my bikes like most people use their cars, I get very attached to the them and this is the second one I’ve had stolen in the last few years.

Farewell old friend

Friday, September 07, 2007

I have been very busy of late, not only have I finished a lot of home brew (I have something like 6 bottles of black berry wine, 6 bottles of kit red, 3 bottles of apple wine and 10 bottles of cider sitting in my shed) I have recently come into the possession of the diary of my great great grandfather whilst he was a love struck 25 year old on board HMS Raleigh in 1874. I am transcribing the diary and hope to stick on another blog. Like many other people I have caught the family history bug and have so far managed to trace some lines back over two hundred years. The diary is supposed to one of three but over the years the other two have gone missing.
Genealogy is very addictive so beware.

The kids have finally gone back to school, my eldest son starting secondary school a few days ago and already suffering stress from the homework overload. Poor sod. However, my daughter is happy with our new digital package because she can now watch kerrang TV, this is causing several conflicts within the household (cartoon network v kerrang v cbeebies v eastenders), personally I would rather read a book.

Back on the kerrang TV thing, I noticed that when they show the video to Greenday’s Jesus of Suburbia they pixel out all the cigarettes but openly show teenage sex, vandalism, domestic violence and drug use, how does that make sense?

For your education and entertainment the full on version

this did inspire me to try to figure out the whole "concept" behind the album, after several hours of rereading the lyrics and listening to the album I came to the conclusion its about disaffected youth and rebellion, well thats a no brainer, its a punk album.