The Retailer and Metallica

So some measure of interesting things have happened at the world's largest retailer. To begin with, I did give my two week notice, and I was not fired on the spot. So as far as I know at this point, I'm working the next two weeks, but employers have been known to phone their prospective quitters and let them go during their days off. We'll see, but that phase is coming to an end, either way.

An interesting thing happened over there recently with a couple of the guys. One of them is a bit of a hothead and tends to complain a lot about everything, and I mean EVERYTHING. He just doesn't like anything. I asked him once if he liked anything, and he didn't say anything. The other is a nice guy who I get along with really well, but he tends to be a bit grumpy on more than one occasion about a great many things. Well, these two don't get along, because Hothead doesn't like Grumpy (big surprise), and Grumpy doesn't like Hothead's complaining.

So one day Hothead and Grumpy debate about something, and Grumpy happens to be holding a metal rod. Grumpy holds the rod over his head and then throws it on the ground in front of him. I don't know what this conversation was about, but apparently, Hothead didn't like what Grumpy did, and decided Grumpy threatened his life ... so he called the police to get Grumpy arrested.

The next evening, the police come over to the store and talk to Hothead and Grumpy and want to see the store's security tapes to see if this was captured to be certain as to what happened. The problem here is that the manager was not told about this whole altercation, and should have been before the police were even called since it all occurred on company premises during company time. Of course, nothing came of it from a legal perspective, but it did serve to put Hothead in hot water with management since he went around them and called the cops on a fellow associate without telling them anything.

Well, he doesn't like the mangers, so maybe that's it.

Anyway, the other half of this post is about the heavy metal band, Metallica. I'm sure you've heard of this group in one vein or another since they've been around for many years. I've been at least curious for some time and wanted to give them a listen, but in 96, when I tried to listen to an album (that based on my memory of the CD pic, was Ride The Lightning), I couldn't get through it. It didn't make any sense to me and sounded like noise. But you'll have to note that at the time I listened, the hardest music I'd heard to date was Billy Joel, and I mostly listened to musicals. This means Metallica was completely unlike anything I'd heard.

My curiosity returned in 99 when I heard that they had played with an orchestra backing them up. I figured there was still something to them if they were able to be backed by a full orchestra, so I kind of wanted to hear this orchestral album at least, but never got to it. My curiosity was rekindled after playing Guitar Hero 3 and hearing One. It didn't fit my memory of the group and might well be nothing more than a golden nugget among all the nonsense (such as Elton John, The Beatles, and Queen tend to have in droves).

None the less, I got ahold of some albums and popped them on my iPod to see what I could make of them. As I've done with other artists, I shuffled all of their songs from all of their albums for a part of a day, and while my exposure over the years to progressive metal had prepared me for the sound, I was still left with a large amount of noise, although this time I could make out all the profanity as well, especially in between songs on the live album, Live S**t Binge and Purge, which was the first victim of the delete button.

Frustrated, I remembered that some guys at the world's largest retailer listened to them and so I asked about which songs they recommended among all the noise. I got nine titles: Master of Puppets, Until It Sleeps, Fuel, Seek and Destroy, Whiskey in the Jar, The Unforgiven, Battery, One, and Enter Sandman. The latter two I was familiar with as One is on Guitar Hero 3 and Enter Sandman is on Rock Band. The others, I popped on an impromptu playlist and listed. Sure enough, the gems were there.

One thing I noticed though, was that one of the songs sounded a bit more symphonic than the others, and I discovered the album that I'd grabbed that song from seemed to have almost all of the others as well, like a greatest hits album. It had the unlikely title of S&M, but since it had most of the songs, I figured I'd give it a listen. I noted on the album cover before I listed that Michael Kamen was somehow associated with it. I recognized the name from the soundtrack of License to Kill as well as some other movie soundtracks, so I was getting hopeful.

The San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. That was the name of the backing orchestra for that album. And the album was S&M. It's a live performance of Metallica playing with the orchestra, and in listening to this, I found me a new favorite. One is a good song. One with an orchestra is 1000 times better. In fact, any Metallica song backed by an orchestra is 1000 times better. All their little hit songs were on this played live with the orchestra as well. The orchestrations were layed over the existing instrumental parts that the band played, and it worked very, very well.

I may, at some point, go back and listen to the original recordings of these songs, but given that they are gorgeous in this version, I'll wait a little while.