17 April 2009

Saturday Rock Show: The Rage parts 10, 11 & 12.


WARNING: This video contains explicit lyrics, hand gestures and crazy tribal rhythms which should not be viewed/heard by pregnant women or humans. This video has material that may be considered obscene by people that do not have HBO or did not go to public school.

1-900 is about what it sounds like it is about. Or at least is is inspired by what it sounds like it was inspired by. Believe it or not intronet pals, but back before the intronet single guys had to resort to paying lots of money to listen to voices on a phone and imagine what naked people looked like. It was had to believe then and it's hard to believe now.  1-900 was one of our most popular songs but a couple of club owners frowned on it's content.  Which, is kind of funny to me.  The song does not mean anything or have anything to say.  It is just a reflection of it's time.  This song was all about the Trigger Mortis drum beat.  The guitar and bass are really just impersonations of the drums.  A lot of our songs came about in that way. 


Bathroom Floor was on of our later songs and probably one of our most accessible.  (Translation: it had the least amount of screaming.)  I think it is one of my better guitar solos and I really loved that white Charvel I am playing in this clip.  I've had many, many guitars and of all the one's I've let go I miss that one the most.  


War Song is another of the last songs we worked on.  In fact I don't think it was ever really finished and this might be the only time we ever played it in front of people.  The lyrics were never really figured out.  I was just mumbling together words that rhymed and seemed within the theme.  At this point it was really just a jam song.  It's a fitting to end the movie with an unfinished song since unfinished is a word that sums up The Rage pretty well.  We were the wrong band at the wrong time in the wrong place.  It was the early 90's, Kurt Cobain was dead and the agents of suck had firmly taken control of the music industry.  I'm sad to say they are still in control.  Playing heavy acid rock in a college town dominated by garbage like Hootie and the Blowfish and The Dave Mathews Band was not a path to success but that is the path The Rage chose.  We never made any money.  Never had any help.  Never had any direction.  Never made it to a recording studio.  Oh well.  That is the fate of 99.999% of all artistic endeavors.  
The Rage wrote a lot of songs in just a few years.  Some of them exist on analog cassette tapes, some on the video footage left out of the movie and some from rehearsal videos.  If you liked any of what you've seen here just use the comments function to let me know and maybe I'll post some more.  Either way, this is not the end of the Saturday Rock Show.  I produced and directed three other concert movies featuring some great stuff from the Yams From Outer Space, guitar legend Shawn Lane and others.  I hope to get some of that stuff up for you in the next few weeks so stay tuned!

Your best pal ever,
Shannon Smith

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