Richard Meltzer | |
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Born | New York City, U.S. | May 10, 1945
Genres | Rock |
Occupation(s) | Music critic, author, songwriter |
Richard Meltzer (born May 10, 1945) is an American rock critic, performer, writer and songwriter. He is considered by some rock historians to be the first to write real analysis of rock and roll and is credited with inventing "rock criticism". [1]
Meltzer claims that as a young man he was influenced by the pop artists Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg and by the artists Paul Cézanne and Marcel Duchamp. [2] Meltzer's first book, The Aesthetics of Rock , evolved out of his undergraduate studies in philosophy at Stony Brook University and graduate studies at Yale University. At school, he developed a reputation as something of a prankster, although his actions were closer to the spirit of performance art happenings promoted by one of his professors, Allan Kaprow, than to fraternity hijinks.[ citation needed ] One of his actions involved sending a tape recorder to class with his comments for the day on tape. Fellow student Sandy Pearlman was responsible for pushing the button. Meltzer also dabbled in art, including "detourned" comic books in the style of the situationists, which had various objects added to the pages.
Meltzer, along with Pearlman and several other students, earned money on the side as booking agents for the big musical acts that came to Stony Brook in the 1960s. Following that, the two started writing lyrics and arranging gigs for a musical group they were promoting, Soft White Underbelly, later renamed Blue Öyster Cult (BÖC). Meltzer wrote the lyrics for many of the band's songs, including the hit "Burnin' for You".
BÖC guitarist and keyboardist Allen Lanier is often credited with coming up with the umlaut over the O, but Meltzer claims to have suggested it to producer and manager Pearlman just after Pearlman came up with the name: "I said, 'How about an umlaut over the O?' Metal had a Wagnerian aspect anyway."
Meltzer started his career in 1967 writing for Paul Williams's Crawdaddy! magazine. That year, he also taught a class in aesthetics at the Maryland Institute College of Art. He went on to write for Rolling Stone , the Village Voice and Creem .
During the punk rock era, he formed a band called VOM (short for vomit) and released a four-song, 7-inch EP that included "Electrocute Your Cock". Meltzer also produced a movie, directed by Richard Casey, who later directed several Blue Öyster Cult videos. Clips were filmed in Casey's apartment; in Malibu, California; at the Pike in Long Beach; and at a beach-side sewage treatment plant in El Segundo, with future Mau Maus guitarist Mike R. Livingston pantomiming rhythm guitar along with Gregg Turner and bonze blayk (known at that time as Kevin Saunders), who were then organizing the Angry Samoans with Mike Saunders, the drummer for VOM. The film for "Electrocute Your Cock" shows Meltzer in the shower, clad in a T-shirt reading"Halifax, NS", with jumper cables attached to his crotch and sparks hand-drawn onto the film cels simulating electrocution. Also included was a beach-side clip for "Punkmobile." The videos are included in the Angry Samoans' 1995 VHS compilation, True Documentary. [3]
In the 1980s, Meltzer dabbled in architectural criticism, writing a series of articles for the L.A. Reader alternative weekly on the ugliest buildings in Los Angeles; these pieces were later published as a book. He moved to Portland, Oregon in the 1990s, but continued contributing to the San Diego Reader . He was also a regular columnist for Addicted to Noise , and by 2004 he was a contributor to a new weekly, Los Angeles CityBeat .
In 2002 he released the CD Tropic of Nipples along with Smegma, VOM, Antler and Robert Pollard of Guided by Voices.
He has also performed and recorded over the past decade with the improvisational music group Smegma.
In 2012, Meltzer contributed spoken-word parts to Spielgusher , a musical collaboration with bassist Mike Watt, drummer Yuko Araki and guitarist Hirotaka Shimizu. Meltzer and Watt had originally hoped to collaborate during Watt's time in The Minutemen, but it was not completed before the death of Minutemen guitarist D. Boon. [4] [5]
Blue Öyster Cult is an American hard rock band formed on Long Island in Stony Brook, New York, in 1967. The band has sold 25 million records worldwide, including 7 million in the United States. The band's fusion of hard rock with psychedelia, and penchant for occult, fantastical and tongue-in-cheek lyrics, had a major influence on heavy metal music. They developed a cult following and, while achieving mainstream hits like "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" (1976) and "Burnin' for You" (1981), their commercial success was limited. Both songs, and others such as "Godzilla" (1977), remain classic rock radio staples. The band were early adopters of the music video format, and their videos received heavy rotation on MTV in its early period.
Michael David Watt is an American bassist, vocalist and songwriter. He co-founded and played bass guitar for the rock bands Minutemen (1980–1985), Dos (1985–present), and Firehose (1986–1994). He began a solo career with the 1994 album Ball-Hog or Tugboat?, he has since released three additional solo albums, most recently in 2010 with Hyphenated-man. He is also the frontman for the supergroup Big Walnuts Yonder (2008–present), a member of the art rock group Banyan (1997–present) and is involved with several other musical projects. From 2003 until 2013, he was the bass guitarist for The Stooges.
A metal umlaut is a diacritic that is sometimes used gratuitously or decoratively over letters in the names of mainly hard rock or heavy metal bands—for example, those of Blue Öyster Cult, Queensrÿche, Motörhead, the Accüsed, Mötley Crüe and the parody bands Spın̈al Tap and Green Jellÿ.
Dennes Dale Boon, also known as D. Boon, was an American musician, best known as the guitarist, singer and songwriter of the punk rock trio Minutemen.
Secret Treaties is the third studio album by American rock band Blue Öyster Cult, released on April 5, 1974 by Columbia. It features the same band members and production team as their previous album.
Tyranny and Mutation, the second studio album by American rock band Blue Öyster Cult, was released in February 1973 by Columbia Records. It was produced by Murray Krugman and Sandy Pearlman. On May 12, 1973, the album peaked at No. 122 on the Billboard 200 chart.
Club Ninja is the tenth studio album by American rock band Blue Öyster Cult, released on December 10, 1985, in the United Kingdom and on February 11, 1986, in the United States. The album was intended as a comeback for the band, whose previous album The Revölution by Night failed to attain Gold status following the success of 1981's Fire of Unknown Origin and 1982's Extraterrestrial Live. Club Ninja sold more than 175,000 copies, falling well short of gold status again, and because of its high cost, Columbia Records executives deemed it a commercial failure. The album was re-issued on compact disc on March 10, 2009, by Sony-owned reissue label American Beat Records, which had also reissued the band's 1988 album, Imaginos.
Paranoid Time is the debut EP by American hardcore punk band Minutemen. It is also the second ever release by the SST record label, founded by Black Flag's Greg Ginn and Chuck Dukowski. The album cover is a drawing by the American artist Raymond Pettibon.
Buzz or Howl Under the Influence of Heat is the sixth overall release from American hardcore punk band Minutemen. It was released by SST Records in 1983. It is noted for featuring tracks with greater depth and more conventional song structure than on the band's previous releases.
Donald Roeser, known by his stage name Buck Dharma, is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He is the sole constant member of hard rock band Blue Öyster Cult since the group's formation in 1967. He wrote and sang vocals on several of the band's best-known hits, including "(Don't Fear) The Reaper", "Godzilla" and "Burnin' for You".
We Jam Econo: The Story of the Minutemen, is a full-length documentary about the influential 1980s punk rock band Minutemen, created by director Tim Irwin and producer Keith Schieron in association with Rocket Fuel Films. The film premiered on February 25, 2005 at the historic Warner Grand Theatre in San Pedro, California, after two years in production.
Contemplating the Engine Room is a punk rock opera by Minutemen veteran Mike Watt. Released in 1997, the album is a punk rock song cycle that uses navy life as an extended metaphor for both Watt's family history and his first band, the Minutemen. The album was greeted with a positive response. The cover art features a picture of Watt's father in his Navy uniform.
White Noise Records was a record label founded in Los Angeles in 1978 by artists Ronn and Louise Spencer, writers Nicole Panter and Jim Bickhart, attorneys Gordon Rubin and Peter Paterno, and publicist Bob Merlis.
Flat Out is a solo album by Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser, lead guitarist and vocalist for hard rock band Blue Öyster Cult, released in 1982. Although Roeser penned and sang BÖC's biggest hits, the band operated as a democracy, and some of the songs he brought to the band were deemed too poppy by the others, so he released many of them on this solo record. "Born to Rock" was the first single, and "Your Loving Heart" was also released as a single, but neither charted well.
Michael Earl Saunders, commonly known as Metal Mike Saunders, is an American rock critic and the singer of the Californian punk band Angry Samoans. He is credited with coining the music genre label "heavy metal" in a record review for Humble Pie's As Safe as Yesterday Is in the November 12, 1970 issue of Rolling Stone. Six months later in 1971, he used the phrase again while reviewing Sir Lord Baltimore's first album, Kingdom Come, in the pages of Creem magazine.
Joe Baiza is an American guitarist, vocalist and songwriter. Most of Baiza's music touches on a fusion of punk rock and jazz. Eugene Chadbourne cites Baiza as one of the most noteworthy guitarists to emerge from the Southern California punk rock milieu.
VOM was conceived in 1976 as a self-described beat combo featuring the renowned writer and critic Richard Meltzer on vocals, with Gregg Turner on second vocals and "Metal" Mike Saunders on drums. The band also featured Dave Guzman on "tuneless rhythm guitar", Lisa Brenneis ("Gurl") on bass guitar, and Phil Koehn on lead guitar. The name VOM was an abbreviation for "vomit", as their early live act was said by Meltzer and Turner to have included throwing various viscera, cow parts and food substances at the audience to provoke a reaction.
"Burnin' for You" is a song by American hard rock band Blue Öyster Cult. It was released as the lead single from the band's eighth studio album, Fire of Unknown Origin, released in June 1981, where it was the album's second track. The song was co-written by guitarist Donald "Buck Dharma" Roeser and rock critic songwriter Richard Meltzer, who wrote lyrics for several of the band's songs. Roeser sang lead vocals on the song in lieu of Blue Öyster Cult's usual lead vocalist Eric Bloom.
Minutemen were an American punk rock band formed in San Pedro, California, in 1980. Composed of guitarist/vocalist D. Boon, bassist/vocalist Mike Watt, and drummer George Hurley, Minutemen recorded four albums and eight EPs before Boon's death in an automobile accident in 1985; the band broke up shortly thereafter. They were noted in the California punk community for a philosophy of "jamming econo"—a sense of thriftiness reflected in their touring and short, tight songs, and for their eclectic style, drawing on hardcore punk, funk, jazz, and other sources.
The Angry Samoans is an American punk rock band from the first wave of American punk, formed in August 1978 in Los Angeles, California, by early 1970s rock writer "Metal" Mike Saunders, his sibling lead guitarist Bonze Blayk and Gregg Turner, along with original recruits Todd Homer (bass) and Bill Vockeroth (drums).