Listen to your elders

Sometimes it pays to listen to your elders when it comes to music.

Tonight at a social gathering I bumped into a gentleman by the name of Bones, someone I've known for a long time who also happens to be the singer of the Australian EBM band Novakill. Bones is older than I and has heard and seen a ridiculously large number of bands. He and I spent much of the night talking music, which is always great. He's like me; full of passion, industrial music is his life (but not his work), and believes that everybody else is wrong about everything. We often have good music talks. We had a really good one tonight. He'd mentioned previously that his favourite industrial album of all time is Nail by Scraping Foetus Off the Wheel (that is one of the very many names that the band Foetus has gone by over the years). I have that album on vinyl, and it's a really really good album. If I had a vinyl player in my room I'd listen to it a lot more. I also only happen to own this album because Bones mentioned to me years ago how this was his favourite industrial album ever.
Anyway tonight, after discussing my recent Top 10 EBM albums EVAR blog post (he strongly agreed with the last five but didn't know or like the top five; what can I say, he's old school) he told me that his number one album (but not industrial album!) is actually Systems of Romance by Ultravox. What the fuck? Ultravox? Systems of Romance? This album is better than Nail? Better than Solitary Confinement? Better than... dare I say it... Revelations 23? Better even than the musical bombshell that is Non-Recycleable? Or Dreamweb? Is this even possible?

Maybe. I of course may have a very different opinion of it to his. However I am definitely going to check out Systems of Romance by Ultravox. (Some of you may remember them as the band that had the odd orchestral-styled 80s hit "Vienna").

The fact is, Bones was going to industrial gigs when I was pissfarting around with Transformers and watching the Goodies at 5:30pm on the ABC. We don't have to agree on everything. In fact there are many thing we don't agree on, and that's fine. But he is an elder statesman of industrial music and I respect his opinions, even if I don't agree with them.

Sometimes we need to take time out from our schedules and listen to an opinion from an elder. We can learn much from them. In fact it was a very fateful day in 1995 when I walked into Sector 7, a Sydney music and fashion store staffed by Bones, and he recommended a CD purchase that changed my life more than any other: the Colours of Zoth Ommog compilation. That CD not only introduced me to industrial music, and Zero Defects, but another band, one that would shatter everything I thought I knew of and believed about music. More of them soon. In the meantime, here is one of the songs off Nail by Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel. What can I say? It fucking rocks. It doesn't sound like any other industrial song or band I can think of, but it's brilliant.