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Let's bitch about stupid "learn to rock" books

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MadassAlex:
If you're a musician, you're probably familiar with these. They basically give an intro to the elements of rock music in a theoretical sense and then push off and go into detail about different styles of rock.

Whenever you turn to the metal section, these books are stupidly inaccurate; KISS? AC/DC? Jethro Tull?

But, hey, it's mostly forgivable. At least most of the bands satisfy the genre of hard rock and don't neatly fall into sub-genres that remove them far from traditional metal. Except Jethro Tull. Goddamn, what was everyone smoking?

A few days ago, however, I witnessed a true abomination.

In the metal section, it had these bands featured:

- Iron Maiden
- Motley Crue
- Metallica
- Bon Jovi
- Nirvana
- Guns 'n' Roses

If that wasn't bad enough, apparently Iron Maiden is "incredibly simple music that relies on its stage performance to generate attention", and I learned that "Nirvana was a revolution in simple heavy metal". Plus, this guy's wisdom is a bottomless well, because he managed to convince me that "Bon Jovi is considered one of the best heavy metal groups ever".

I mean, what the hell. Which person did they employ to write about movements of music that knew so little of so many genres of music? Let's count: NWOBHM, thrash metal, glam metal, glam rock, grunge, hard rock.
Even ignoring that the list and descriptions are a disgrace to metal, it's just a disgrace to anyone who likes any of those bands, full stop. Goddamn.

Second bitchfest: speed metal. All these books seem to refer to it. Thrash metal does not exist, apparently. Only speed metal. Are the publishers not allowed to say the word "thrash"? Do they think that somehow, the term "thrash" is going to lose sales?
Or do they just not know what the fuck they are talking about?
I have not yet seen a single book that actually refers to thrash metal while explaining the concepts behind it. Which are usually very shallow and pretty wrong explanations.

So, who the hell is it that's employing music authors, who all seem to be high graduates from various prestigious schools, that not only don't know anything about musical movements the mainstream doesn't fellate, but know nothing of musical analysis?

END TRANSMISSION

The Viz:
Man, when my friend was taking this rock history class last year, we had this conversation every fucking day.  If I were gonna do a section on metal, I'd probably start with early, almost proto-metal, like Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, and the like, go on to NWOBHM stuff like Iron Maiden and Judas Priest, get into hair metal like Twisted Sister and Poison and the thrash metal of Megadeth, Slayer, early Metallica, touch on sleaze metal with Guns 'n Roses...Nirvana, as much as I enjoy them, don't belong in the metal section at all.  They were a revolution in alternative rock, taking influences from bands like the Pixies and the Melvins and giving them a rougher edge to help define the new genre of grunge.  But in no way are they fucking heavy metal.

As for Jethro Tull, they get considered metal a lot because Aqualung won the first grammy for a heavy metal song.  The song itself is pretty heavy, and along with a few of their other songs might be able to be placed with some early proto-metal, but if you've ever listened to a total album by them, it's pretty fucking obvious that they're a prog band.  The majority of their songs are more folk-influenced than metal-influenced anyway.  But yeah, that one grammy sort of skewed public perception about who they were.  But somebody writing a fucking book should damn well know better.

Nodaisho:
I say we send Manowar and Immortal after anyone that fucks it up. Yea/Nay?

The Viz:
Yea.  Definitely yea.  Better invite Lordi though.

MadassAlex:
"Anyone who fucks it up" is pretty much made of everyone who's tried to write an instructional book on heavy metal, ever.

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