Title: Steppenwolf's great American anthem - Monster Source:
www.youtube.com URL Source:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpuyXdKx9Ws Published:Jan 13, 2008 Author:John Kay Post Date:2008-01-13 23:32:48 by Ferret Mike Keywords:None Views:481 Comments:16
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Poster Comment:
This song never got the play and popularity it deserved. It is long, and full of lyrics that make people highly uncomfortable. It is a young old song, more relevant today then when it was first written and preformed. It's actual title in the Unabridged version is "Monster Suicide America"
It is long, and full of lyrics that make people highly uncomfortable.
Musically it is mediocre at best. Nobody cares about a long boring song or hang around to listen to the lyrics. Besides, the lyrics at that time were nothing new so the song flopped as it should have. Maybe I should say it BOMBED!
"Musically it is mediocre at best. Nobody cares about a long boring song or hang around to listen to the lyrics."
Ah yes, the four minute song, the favorite of most people. They are wonderful. But I am someone who likes 8-10 minute songs such as Gordon Lightfoot's Canadian Railroad Trilogy, When the Music's Over by the Doors, and I have the patience to break the paradigm of the music industry set to sell the most music and make entities like radio stations that play music viable.
It wasn't a flop, by the way. It was a labor of love made in spite of knowing full well it lacked elements of the formula set in stone for making hits and commercial music.
Thanks for sharing your take on Monster, but I am in pain because of what we have become as a country, and I am not in the mood for status quo formulas and well engineered and very commercial music catering to shallow excapism knowing money and success is usually there if you are good at it. I am more resonant these days with Monster, with all it's graces, poetry and yes, even it's blemishes.
Call me silly, but I would rather hear Jerry Garcia spend 10 minutes interpreting an Elizabeth Cotton song then spend four minute listening to a song from a group or singer who has a merchandising plan with Wal-Mart and plastic toys being given away of them at McDonalds.
One of the things we have done in the music industry is to make commercial success the kiss of death for the human soul, and a real horror story of empty calorie sounds.