Musical Epiphanies

Musical Epiphanies

By: Erreh Svaia

“An artist's duty is rather to stay open-minded and in a state where he can receive information and inspiration. You always have to be ready for that little artistic Epiphany.”

Nick Cave

1984 is not only one of my favorite novels by the great writer and poet George Orwell, is also the year I had my first musical epiphany, I bought Jimi Hendrix's Smash Hits in Soriana, a retail store, I was a small kid, and I read on a music magazine about Are You Experienced?, Hendrix amazing first record, I wasn't able to find that one, but I got Smash Hits, I remember listening to Purple Haze, it was like listening to Martian music, I just couldn't believe those guitar riffs, many people had that same epiphany with Like a Rolling Stone by Bob Dylan in 1965, although 1965 was a year of many musical epiphany, just imagine the Stones groundbreaking Satisfaction made also that year.

Apart from that one, I had many more, fortunately music has given to me epiphanies so many times, I had another one when I first heard the totally mind blowing first record by a then little known British quartet, no, it wasn't the. Beatles, the quartet wasn't from Liverpool, they were from Birmingham, and they weren't Black Sabbath, that band was Napalm Death, and that record was their incredible Scum album, a record that took the heaviest Death Metal and the toughest Hardcore Punk to never before heard extremes, they simply did a lot more than music, they did noise pure and simple, so when my mom used to tell me to shut that noise,  by the first time she was accurately right,  and I simply loved it, I listening insistently to grindcore and Scum was mi bible, it meant the destruction of what many of us thought was music.

But I guess my ever expanding musical tastes were really put to the test in 1989, that year, the Berlin Wall wasn't the only wall coming down, also a wall between the worlds of rap and metal, of course there were antecedents to this, as Aerosmith experiment with Run DMC signaled the return of the America classic hard rock band, also, there were the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, not exactly rap, but more a loud funk band.

But Faith No More meant the real clash between rap and metal, it was surreal and it was amazing, I remember listening to Epic,  and then my father came into my room, the look in his face as he couldn't believe that such mixing of genres could be possible, Patton could be seen at the time as a mere Kiedis imitator, undoubtedly, the RHCP singer had a great influence on him, but watching Patton at that time was just the tip of the iceberg, as Patton was still to show us his true nature, innovative and daring, assimilating John Zorn's experimental nature.

Unfortunately, even the best plans go down in flames sometimes, and FNM innovative musical mix didn't end up the way everyone wished, as lame copycat bands will emerge claiming to be successors of FNM legacy, but never really reaching the amazing heights of The Real Thing, FNM, perhaps deceived by their pupils, quickly changed directions and came with the more challenging Angel Dust, in my opinion, the band's best recording ever.