One of the things I didn't mention in the first post is how the collection of songs got together.
On September 10, 2001 I was working at my dream job at a dot com. Yeah I'll admit it, I was making a ton of cash. It was the near the end of the Clinton economy and we were rolling investment capital. And then the bottom dropped out and the dot com crash happened. I was laid off and went home for lunch.
A year before I picked up the D&D 3.0 Player's Handbook, so I thought I would sit down and finish up my new 3.0 witch book, Liber Mysterium. Napster had just died and had a ton of MP3s.
Then I sat at home the next day, September 11, 2001 and watched TV in horror.
What began, for various reasons that I will get into on a later date (if at all) my own Sojourn in Hell.
Today I can listen to these songs and they now mean something else to me. They represent part of my life where I was deep into writing gaming material and producing it at a rate I have not matched.
One of the videos I loved the best in the early days of MTV was Peter Gabriel's "Shock the Monkey". The video was legitimately creepy and Gabriel was the only one who seemed to know how to use this new medium. The Nu-Metal band Coal Chamber teamed up with Ozzy "Prince of Darkness" Osbourne to do a cover of this song. It's good but lacks something the original had. Still though I really enjoy it.
For reasons I am not entirely sure of myself I really enjoy Eminem. It's a guilty pleasure. Kinda like listening to Spice Girls...er wait. Maybe not. But the deal with Marshal is he is actually pretty damned talented. This song has nothing to do with me getting laid off. Nothing. Really.
Plus I have to admit that Dr. Dre looking over to Eminem like he is an idiot throughout this video is great.
I know the pieces fit cuz I watched them tumble down
no fault, none to blame it doesn't mean I don't desire to
point the finger, blame the other, watch the temple topple over.
Tool is the thinking person's dark metal. Lateralus should go down in history with such albums as "The Wall". "Schism" is another song that spoke to me a lot during this time.
There is a rumor/story that when Trent Reznor first heard Johnny Cash's cover his song "Hurt" he was silent for a few minutes and then said "yeah. That's what I meant." You would have a very difficult time convincing me that Cash's version is not the TRUE version. Much like "All Along the Watchtower" is Jimi Hendrix's song and not Bob Dylan's, despite what the liner notes say.
This is, as my brother Dan says, like watching an old man slowly die before your eyes.
"Tales of Brave Ulysses" seems the odd one out here, but not really if you consider the feel I was going for in the books I working on then. I guess to say it makes sense to me.
Deep Purple was always one of those bands I felt that people either got or they didn't. A little like Uriah Heep. "Hush" is notable for being the first song to go into the "Sojourn in Hell" folder on my old Gateway.
I wanted to end the collection on an upbeat note. I figure I could do worse than the Wiseguys "Start the Commotion".
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