Monday, April 27, 2009

"They should have sent a poet"


My brother and I had unusual childhoods. While we were devoted to metal from an early age, we were also pretty nerdy kids. That word, "nerd" is highly overused these days. Everyone is a "nerd" now, but this was back when it meant something. You see, our idea of fun was watching re-runs of Carl Sagan's Cosmos over and over again. If you're not familiar with Cosmos, it was a TV series devoted to astrophysics, exobiology, physics, astronomy, chemistry and science in general...topics that are usually like kryptonite to kids. Sagan was a Ph D in astronomy and astrophysics. He taught at Cornell. Makes me wonder if he ever met or hung out with Alex Perialas while living in Ithica NY. As I've told you before, Alex lives there, and teaches at Ithica college (Cornell's retarded brother).



What a meeting of the minds of minds that would have been! Can you imagine? Sagan would discuss his work at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, while Perialas would go on and on about how he recorded the snare drum in Pro-Pain's album, versus his early work with Flotsam and Jetsam. My god...to be a fly on the wall!

But back to Sagan. anyone that knows me well will tell you that if you speak to me about a serious topic for more than ten minutes, I will end up quoting Cosmos sooner than later. I'm not necessarily proud of this, but as always, I try to be honest with our beloved readers. Actually, a few years ago, my brother bought the entire Cosmos series...and we watched the whole thing in one sitting. That's 13 hours in one sitting. Now that you know this about me, it should come as no surprise that from the moment I heard Nocturnus and their pseudo-scientific lyrical content I was hooked. You know that Death song "Cosmic Sea"? I love it.


Time travel? Droids entering? Sign me up!


Why am I telling you all this? Well...because I simply just wanted to. But also because I want to explain the title of this post. It's a line from the movie Contact, which Sagan wrote. In that movie, Jodi Foster's character is chosen from all of humanity to travel aboard a spaceship, so she can get back and tell the whole world what she saw. She travels and sees either outer space, or heaven or something..it's unclear. Whatever it is, she feels she's ill-prepared to describe it to the rest of the world, because of its unbelievable beauty...since she's just a scientist. Her response to seeing such beauty and feeling like she's unable to describe it, as you can probably guess is:

"They should have sent a poet."




Sometimes, I see great metal-related clips or pictures online...and I am just as humbled as Foster's character was in the movie Contact. I too, wish they would have sent a poet, since I am unable to describe such beauty to all of you. If you feel I oversold this clip...so be it. Enjoy.



If you want even more, check out the remix.





*Closing note: Credit goes to comedian Artie Lange, from the Howard Stern show. He reminded me of this quote, when he dropped it during the show, as he watched ex-Death and Iced Earth drummer Richard Christy get his balls and asshole waxed.

29 comments:

  1. I'm sorry Mr. Sagan never got to light up and take in The Humungus' fancy fingerwork and robo-drum kit. I'd wear a mask too.

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  2. Is that an ammo belt draped over his kit? I was expecting Kane Roberts to burst out from the cornfield and lay down a blistering guitar solo as covering fire.

    That video raises a lot of questions.

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  3. i think cosmos was before my time. i am a huge fan and supporter of NOVA, however!

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  4. Mike,
    you made me laugh with the Kane Roberts thing...I'm so bummed I didn't think of it!

    Can you imagine him setting up his drumset in the corn field, carefully placing the amunition over the drums...and then putting on the mask? oh boy.

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  5. Man, I can think of so many occasions in life that the phrase 'They should have sent a poet' would work...

    I'll bet you have have ration yourself so it doesn't lose it's power, no?

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  6. the other day, just last week, i saw something amazing...and once again thought that phrase to myself. i saw a black metal dude, bathory shirt and leather pants, hitting on a middle aged black lady, who completely ignored him. it was amazing, and thankfully i took some crappy pictures with my phone as it was happening. maybe i'll post them.

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  7. I love Carl Sagan. My wife and I got married in a planetarium. I'm reading "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark" right now (talk about a metal title!). It, like everything Dr. Sagan wrote, is truly wonderful. I also very, very strongly recommend "The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God," a posthumous collection of essays published a couple years ago.

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  8. glad to see the video left you speechless.

    metal is a team effort. now billy milano just needs to belt out united forces and we can all sing along and feel good about our metal brotherhood.

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  9. thank you for the recomendation mr bucket (hope its okay if i call you "bucket").
    i just bought a copy of that that sagan book right now on amazon, based on your recommendation!

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  10. ben,
    if milano showed up mid-video...by crawling out from behind the cornfield...i would just die. the beauty of the whole thing would be so severe...that i would just have to go through the rest of my life knowing that i would never again see such beauty. ah...if only.

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  11. Excellent. You'll love it. The man's crystal-clear command of prose is unmatched.

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  12. Also, I'm ordering this t-shirt right now:

    http://www.wrongtees.com/shirts.php/listen_to_carl_sagan

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  13. nice shirt. sorry to continue down the sagan path...but you should check out this episode of the show Radiolab, with his widow. great stuff.

    http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2006/05/12



    okay...now we can all get back to discussing things like Forbidden's thanks lists or Nocturnus lyrics.

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  14. The Carl Sagan / metal discussion makes me think of the times I've explained Darkspace to people. "Think... black metal... but IN SPACE."

    Try as I might, I can't avoid looking like a gigantic dork when I enthusiastically describe what it's like to listen to them while watching 2001: A Space Odyssey.

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  15. Sagan and Perialas wrote together an astrophysics treatise about the recording process of "When the storm comes down" by Flotsam & Jetsam. Guitars were actually recorded on Mars for that record.

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  16. Lucho. I can 1up the Kane Roberts, thing. Imagine if he came into the cornfield, prepared to pyrotechinally KILL... burrowing pests. Hed bring The Rodenator, which looks alot like his signature gun guitar with that heat shield on the top.

    They use this thing to pump a mixture of methane and oxygen down burrows and detonate it to instantly detonate anything down in those holes. pretty fucking metal.

    The hummungus could blast beat to the blasts and it would be pretty rad....

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjdky7hBp-E

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  17. If you get Kane Roberts there I'll get the Laaz Rockit guy (is his name Laaz Rockit or what?) and they'll battle it out while Steve busts out some sick techno shit.

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  18. this seems like as good of a place as any to plug Kuhn's "The structure of scientific revolutions" and a similar behavioral critique of the naturalistic paradigm, Taleb's "the black swan." both good reads, i like taleb a little better in terms of entertainment.

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  19. I always thought Hawking was far more interesting than Sagan. That being said, I think this is the best performance I've seen by Rob "Wacko" Hunter since Ravens essential "On and On" video.

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  20. This weekend I picked up a copy of Raven's "Live At the Inferno," which was mixed by Alex Periales at Pyramid Sound. I bought it at a used record store in Ithaca, which leads me to believe that it was his copy. Nobody in that town would own a Raven record - they're too smart for that kinda shit.
    Just goes to show that one washed up man's trash is another idiot's treasure. Thanks Alex!

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  21. Hey! "All for One" and "Wiped Out" kicked ass. Plus, Rob produced metal legends "Buckshot Lefonque" featuring Branford "Wacko" Marsalis.

    Show some respect man!

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  22. Yeah, wtf? Raven might not have been virtuoso speed demons or anything but they deserve some respek! after all, they were part of the NWOBHM and hailed the 'athletic rock' banner high... oh well, they came from a different time and place. 'On and On' kicks ass. I'll take RAVEN over most worthless generic glam and heavy metal acts of the 80s fo sho. Hockey equipment over eye-shadow!

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  23. Yeah sure, Raven's first couple records beat mediocrity by a nose length. I'm just saying that most Ithaca types are more into the Windham Hill catalog than athletic rock. And Alex Periales must have had a rough electricity bill that month, cuz I only paid 4 bucks for that record so you know he didn't get shit for it!

    By the way, the price tag is dated March of last year, so let's hope his financial condition has improved since then.

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  24. Lucho,
    If Milano showed up coming out of the corn field, he would be eating ears of corn...all salty and buttery and dripping grease everywhere....

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  25. I fully support the Carl Saganing of Metal.

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  26. If any shirt was the official shirt of Metal Inquisition, this would be it.

    http://cgi.ebay.com/NOCTURNUS-shirt-CYNIC-OBITUARY-MORBID-ANGEL-PESTILENCE_W0QQitemZ320363989095QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUS_CSA_MC_Shirts?hash=item320363989095&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1205|66%3A2|65%3A12|39%3A1|240%3A1318|301%3A1|293%3A1|294%3A50

    If you'll excuse me, I have to get my stuff together for the Kreator show on saturday.

    I can't believe Mille is a supporter of Peta, and aparrently Kreator's music is featured in a Peta online virtual game.

    I'd rather he just stuck with complaining about Evil D's SS uniform he wore on their coheadlining tour.

    P.S. I'm also seeing Evil D next month at a morbid angel concert. Hope cameras are allowed so i can catch an evil muffin top pic.

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  27. When this guy isn't absolutely DESTROYING the cornfield with his sick chops, I can envision him either ridin' some Moto-X or sporting one of his many, many Affliction T-shirts at one of the local "rock clubs."

    This "song" he's playing over is the soundtrack to fingerbanging a sleeping girl. A.K.A. Friday nights at this dude's house.

    ...good drummer, though.

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  28. This is an amazing post . SO lot of thanks for this here .

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