Carl Begai

On November 27th, 2007 the Toronto metal scene lost one of the most influential people to ever champion our homegrown noise. I lost a good friend. I can’t believe three years have passed so quickly.

Ray Wallace, affectionately known as “Black Metal” by those of us that he called friend, was taken from us unexpectedly, the hand of fate having decided at random he was needed elsewhere. He was laid to rest on December 1st, but getting home to pay my respects proved to be impossible; something I still regret to this day.

It was my birthday. There was nothing to celebrate.

Instead, I started a tradition. Every year I go out on December 1st and buy an album I know Ray would approve of. Something loud and proud, neighbour-unfriendly and blatantly on-10-obnoxious. A present to myself and a tribute to Ray’s memory. If it has to be this way, I’m glad I’ll be sharing that day with him for the rest of my life.

I don’t believe that time heals all wounds, but the tears sting less.

More importantly, I’m able to look back at the good times and smile.

Loud and proud, Ray. We miss you.

\m/ – _ – \m/

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Every so often I retrace my steps and review my own writing from years gone by, patting myself on the back here and there for a clever turn of phrase, or giving myself a kick in the ass for being painfully lame and cliché. I recently stumbled across a “gem” from November 2006 – published on MySpace and read by nobody – featuring a rant against bullshit “talent” shows on television. It seems I was set off by some idiotic programming by a German network and decided it was high time that I shoot my mouth off about the world going to hell in an American Idol-manufactured elevator with no “up” button and no brakes. Enjoy…

It’s funny. When I was a teenager and Married With Children was at its peak, some critics trashed the show, saying it contributed to the erosion of the moral fibre of society. Uh-huh. Sure. Take a look around you now. I’d much rather have my moral fiber eroded by Christina Applegate’s boobs bouncing across the screen or through hearing Al Bundy tearing the sacred institution of marriage a new one every five seconds than waste an evening watching reality TV. (continue reading…)

Once upon a time music journalists walked around with an air of superiority, as if we were somehow better than the mere mortals we interact with. It was the delivery of advance music, often on a daily basis, that spawned this attitude of being bigger and better than everyone else. Visions of blister-packs danced in our heads each night before bed, the promise of promotional CDs stuffing the mailbox like a too-small Christmas turkey come morning keeping us warm with the knowledge that the game of Stroke My Ego would continue in our favour….

Not anymore.

Nope. At some point a select number of my fellow “journalists” – you motherfuckers know who you are, may you rot in Celine Dion / Kenny G. hell – decided they would offer up promotional music online as a public service to anyone with a computer, trust of the record label, promo people and artists be damned. As a result the industry was forced to experiment with ways of preventing the advance music from being posted online, or at least make it unattractive to keyboard warriors with no conscience. Mid-song audio tags, merged tracks, watermarked CDs… methods varied from label to label, each one a surefire way of annoying the living shit out of honourable journalists who were just trying to do their jobs as well as the asshole file”sharing” minority. (continue reading…)

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…)