Calling DU metalheads: Sleep "Jerusalem"

[vi5]

Who else knows the score on this record? A 50 minute song with at most 4-5 riffs and no more than 30 lyrics. I've had this for a while but never tried to get through the whole thing. But I put it on as background music this past weekend and it really did the trick. Total self indulgent novelty, but damn if this isn't one of the heaviest things ever put to record.

The back story on it is pretty hysterical as well.

[Beware the Beast Man]

1. Damn. That's a good record.

Supposedly the record company gave them an advance to cut the album and they spent it on weed, yielding one 50-minute track about dope & Jesus.

[vi5]

2. Hehehe....just such a great story...

A six figure major label advance blown on top of the line equipment and dope and yielding a 50 minute song. It really doesn't get any better than that.

The thing is, did the label listen to Sleep's Holy Mountain and think that the band had a commerical element to them that just wasn't being tapped? What the hell were they thinking forking over 6 figures to those guys?

[SnowGoose]

3. The dark side of advances

is that when bands don't make back the money the company advanced them, they often wind up owing the record company money.

Little wonder a fictional record company exec was named "chainsaw charlie"... and that's about as close as I'll ever get to admitting ownership of a WASP album.

[slutticus]

4. "Drop out of life with bong in hand"

"Follow the smoke to the riff filled land

Proceeds the weedian, Nazareth"

:D

:smoke:

[RandomKoolzip]

5. Lot of nutty things were happening in the mid-90's.

What a great time; record companies were so pazoozled by Nirvana's success that they were signing anyone who looked like that hadn't bathed in months. Weirdos who never before would have had a shot at the main stage were suddenly getting major moolah shoved down their throats in the hope that they'd puke it back up in the shape of a hit. It was like the janitors had taken over the high school for a couple of years....

I've heard "Jerusalem," but only once. That's all it took.

[vi5]

6. Great assesement. Seriously, I've said this any number of times...

I thought that was a really dark period in music, but in hindsight it did have it's plus sides. I mean in the years immediately following Nirvana and prior to labels realizing they could simply manufacture bands and present them as something they weren't and have people eat it up, a lot of deserving bands got to make a living off of their music.

Yeah, a record exec would be stupid to think that Mudhoney or the Melvins or Surgery or any number of bands that were signed would make them any money. On the other hand, some of those bands got to make a living off of their music for a few years and gain some fans they might otherwise never had.