Carl Begai

As I get older there’s a growing tendency to dismiss the younger generation as a collective of superficial, lazy, clued-out morons. I’m talking about ages 13 through 30, who in my estimation are for the most part a legion of spoiled X-Box / Playstation brats that take too many things in life for granted.

Mobile technology. Music in your grubby eardrums at the click of a button. Research and plagiarism made possible without having to go anywhere near a library. Print-’em at home concert / movie / hockey tickets. Not having to risk life and at least one hand scoffing Dad’s copies of Penthouse (again) thanks to Bill Gates products in the privacy of your own room.

Good for them. Pass Junior another Happy Meal, then try to get him out of the fucking house. (continue reading…)

I’m an experienced traveller. I actually hate flying, but I’ve made the trek between Toronto and Germany (via Holland or Paris) dozens of times, jetted to various parts of Scandinavia, continental Europe and the UK, even risked my sanity journeying to the US, all without any major drama. Sure, there have been the occasional delays, lousy food, drink-spilling turbulence, screaming kids accompanied by their idiot “parentin’ izn’t fer us rednecks” parents, but nothing that put me into a state of wanting to cause bodily harm to the nearest airline employee.

Not until this year’s highly anticipated return home to Toronto.

Folks that know me are painfully aware of how much I love coming home. It’s my annual respite from all the things that piss me off about Germany – and there is definitely a book in there – a return to the people and places that make me feel like me. With that in mind, I’m inclined to brush off the general chaos and stupidity that’s bound to crop up on an overseas-with-a-connecting-flight trip and focus on the awesomosity that awaits me in Toronto. I realized this year, however, that when the airline loses your luggage and takes its sweet time in recovering it and getting it to you, no matter how much fun you’re having the questions of “Where?” and “When?” and “What if?” have a tendency to dampen one’s mood. Not a good thing. (continue reading…)

By Carl Begai

It’s disconcerting watching my home town going up in flames. Particularly when the people running the place invited the violence and mayhem to stop by for a visit.

I’m not particularly well-versed in politics. I can name most of the world leaders that matter, I can tell you which ones have screwed themselves and / or others in assorted financial and pull-your-pants-down-and-party scandals, but when it comes to in-depth understanding of bills being passed and assorted issues being tabled I’m painfully clued out. Willful ignorance on my part, I suppose, based on a conclusion I reached long ago that the vast majority of the suits at the top put their own interests above the average You and Me. An unfair blanket statement, true, but at the moment I’m nowhere near feeling charitable.

Case in point with the G20 summit, which landed in Toronto this weekend and turned the downtown core into a battlefield. Defined as “an informal group of 19 countries and the European Union, with representatives of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank,” the purpose of the gathering – near as I can tell – is to discuss global financial crises (a breakdown can be found here). I’m not convinced that I fully understand the purpose of the G20, but assuming I’ve wrapped my brain around the above definition correctly the morons organizing this little soirée clearly missed their own point. By a country mile. (continue reading…)

Everybody’s got those albums or songs that trigger a memory every time they hear ‘em. Doesn’t matter if you’ve heard the song(s) a billion times, those memories inevitably rise to the surface. Following is a list – in no particular order – of the music that reminds me of where I’ve been, why I was there, and in some cases acts as a cautionary kick in the teeth

Sven Gali – Under The Influence
Meeting the one of a kind metal god Ray “Black Metal” Wallace.

Ratt — ‘Round And Round’
Coolest guitar solos ever laid down by a sleaze rock glam band. Fan for life. I wanted to be Warren DeMartini. Fail.

Alice Cooper — Welcome To My Nightmare
Camping in Algonquin Park, which featured scientific experiments involving Duracell “C” batteries and open flame (lots of it), the Smirnoff flamethrower, an introduction to tequila poppers, and the truth about dry heaves being rather uncomfortable following too much of said liquid entertainment.

Sinergy — Suicide By My Side
First trip to Gothenburg, Sweden, which consisted of hitting every metal bar in town following an Ouzo-fuelled listening session at Studio Fredman. Sharlee D’Angelo (Arch Enemy, Witchery) is either the most talented or most dangerous tour guide alive. The jury is still out on that one.
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I’m not a huge goth metal fan, even less of a goth rock supporter. On the metal end of things the vast majority of goth-ick bands seem more concerned with having a hot piece of ass on stage front and center than the music, paired up with a male counterpart who wishes he was Peter Steele (Note to Doodness: There can be only one). The black #1 rockers, meanwhile, get their yeah-yeahs off playing the same three Sisters Of Mercy chords over and over from album to album, pretending they’re rejects from an Anne Rice vampire epic. It worked for The 69 Eyes and HIM, of course it’ll work for them…

How bloody boring.

That isn’t to say that all bands out of the goth realm suck – and Jeez help me, there are some knockout women to be drooled over – but very few have bent my ear for more than a spin over the last several years. Image, it seems, takes precedence over substance. Very sad indeed, especially in light of the fact that the band who gave goth metal life beyond the underground have decided to call it quits. (continue reading…)

Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to direct your attention to the kind of stupidity that gives responsible journalists a bad name. Click here and read through the Danko Jones review. Then come back to this page and watch my head spin around.

(Cue sarcasm, as I failed to provide an instruction manual and folks really believe I’m this dense. My own damn fault, I suppose, having expectations…)

For those that couldn’t get through more than a third of the steaming turd hanging on the end of that link, the “writer” received a promo copy of the new Danko Jones album (for free) notched into 88 tracks so that it can’t be copied onto computer or burned onto CD-R without Danko sounding like he has a stutter. It plays fine on a CD player without a hitch or a twitch, but it seems that isn’t acceptable for Fishboy. My guess he wanted to burn it for his girlfriend, boyfriend or favourite farm animal and found himself shit out of luck, thus deciding to take his frustration out on the artist by writing a “hilarious” review centered around the potential hop / skip / jump silliness that ensues when you put an 88 track CD on shuffle. In the end Fishboy deemed the album crap and not worth anyone’s time.

Reading between the lines of this so-called “review” – and there aren’t quotation marks big enough to illustrate the disgust I feel for even implying said tripe is even close to being a critique – it seems that Fishboy has an issue with the promo CD copy protection more than the music itself. (continue reading…)

I don’t usually get nervous before doing an interview. Fact is I’ve been doing this long enough that I know more or less what to expect going in, and I know what’s expected of me by my intended victim (something many newbies definitely need to learn). It has nothing to with being jaded or the shine on my choice of career having faded; I just happen to be very comfortable with what I do and I’m happy in this particular comfort zone.

There have been moments of nervousness and uncertainly of course, ranging from “I’m so over my head” to “I am SO going to die sucking” depending on who the interviewee happened to be. My very first interview was a phoner with the beautiful Michelle Meldrum, guitarist for Phantom Blue (may she rest in peace), a gut-churner due to the fact I had no idea how I was going to lead a conversation with a hot woman even if she was on the other side of the continent. I was a social car crash when it came to women…. as opposed to my present day status of being mildly inept. It’s an experience I’ll never forget because I not only survived, but she made me feel like a million bucks when all was said and done. Interviews with Rob Halford, Ronnie James Dio and Bruce Dickinson came with a prerequisite dose of the shakes because of who they are and what they represent, but in every case my fears of sticking my foot in my mouth or having a brainfart were unfounded. All three of them were gentlemen to the core yet very easygoing, making my job a hell of a lot easier than I ever would have expected. (continue reading…)

I first heard rumblings about e-books back in 1994 or so. The concept of having books converted to digital format to be read on a portable screen sounded like something yanked straight out of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and as a sci-fi fan it most certainly piqued my interest. Right up until the gung-ho folks in the publishing world and avid readers started running off at the collective mouth about how e-books were going to change the way we think about reading and revolutionize the literary industry. Blah fricking blah. As cool as the technology sounded I thought they were being ridiculous. Good old fashioned hardcover and softcover books had been around for hundreds and hundreds of years, so to my mind there was no bloody way enhanced videogame technology was going to do away with them just like that… (continue reading…)

By Carl Begai

Normally I shy away from doing live / event reviews simply because I suck at them. Kind of ironic given that’s how I got my start in this business. Fact is I find it almost impossible to express how good I think a show was in print without boring myself to tears. You can only use and re-word the terms “kick ass” and “awesome” so many times until you begin to sound like that idiot hack who shows up for two songs and a shot of Jack, then heads home to compose a glowing review before bed of what he didn’t see. Between bouts of World Of Warcraft and Spongebob.

All that said, I was invited by singer Amanda Somerville to attend a video shoot for the song ‘If I Had A Wish’, taken from the forthcoming Kiske / Somerville album featuring herself and ex-Helloween vocalist Michael Kiske. Also on board for the shoot were bassist Mat Sinner (Primal Fear / Sinner), guitarist Sander Gommans (ex-After Forever / HDK) and drummer Rami Ali. Amanda and I have known each other a long time (yes, I namedropped; sue me ) and Mat has been a long time friend and supporter of BW&BK, so I was more than happy to come down and play a game of hurry-up-and-wait with them.

Besides, it was a good excuse to see if Sander was the metalhead he claims to be. I wasn’t disappointed; the ‘Painkiller’ footage was priceless (a story for another day).

In the meantime, a new video report from Amanda is available here. Below are a few highlights from the experience (continue reading…)

Note: This is not a new blog. I wrote it back in 2007 in a fit of inspiration and posted in on MySpace, where I believe it was read by a total of 2.5 people. I’ve chosen to re-publish it more or less as it was because it’s a story that still makes me shake my head in disbelief. As in, this actually happened to me?! I’ve also had some people ask about the oddball Glue In The Eye that appears in my recent blog Your Boyfriend Don’t Dance, You Can’t Rock N’ Roll. Well, this is how and why the moniker came to be. Enjoy!

When I was about 20 or 21 and still living in Toronto I had a girlfriend a year younger than me who worked at a kids’ shoe store. She was rather pretty, her two most endearing qualities were located at chest level, and although she wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed there’s no question she had at least inherited all the brain cells alotted to the family gene pool. She also had a problem with her left eye that required her to take special steroid-laced eyedrops whenever it began to hurt. It was a condition that manifested itself about a year into our relationship which, now that I think about it, could well have been an allergic reaction to yours truly.

In any case, we’d been going out for a couple years and our relationship eventually hit the Girls Night Out phase. Translated: she wanted to go out unaccompanied and get plastered with her airhead friends Dipsy, Lala and Po because she was getting rather sick of me and wanted to find someone new before serving my walking papers. And, of course, there’s no better night to get picked up in Toronto if you’re female and stacked than Thursday night, otherwise known as Booty Night by anyone between the ages of 18 and married. Thus she and her gaggle of geese headed out to a well known testosterone / estrogen meat market on Kennedy Rd. in Scarborough on a particularly warm summer night, leaving me to stew in my own juices wondering just how fucked up she was going to be by the end of the night and by whom.
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