Theme Thursday – Metal Education
I was trolling YouTube looking for some videos I missed since Music Television no longer plays videos. While seeking out my favorite bands I came across a sampling of Sam Dunn’s work to include at least one full movie. You may recognize his name as the guy who put together several documentaries exploring heavy metal genres and history from an anthropological standpoint. They were very well-done documentaries and I think heavy metal needed it. We (metalheads) have so many genres under the umbrella of heavy metal; it was nice to see how the puzzle pieces fit together and how elements of combined genres formed new ones. It was also cool watching Dunn trace back heavy metal as we know it today all the way back to its origins. You may have seen his work even if you never heard of the guy.
Here are some things he has been a part of:
Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey (Director – first film)
Global Metal (Director)
Iron Maiden: Flight 666 (Co-writer/Co-director)
Metal Evolution (VH-1 series; Producer)
Rush: Time Machine 2011: Live in Cleveland
Iron Maiden: En Vivo!
Satan (pre-production)
Dunn’s documentaries, most of them, are an entertaining educational experience and that’s what this theme is about…learning more about our beloved music genre. Though Dunn has done a bang-up job on his documentaries, there are others out there that are great (or pretty good) as well. I thought I would gather as much as I could find and put them together for your Theme Thursday – Metal Education. Some of the videos I flagged a few weeks ago have been removed from YouTube for copyright reasons. This is what’s left.
Disclaimer – you will need some time on your hands to actually watch them all.
This one isn’t so much educational; more of a look behind one band’s experience on the road.
Posted on August 23, 2012, in Theme Thursday and tagged Black Metal, Global Metal, Heavy Metal Education, Metal Evolution, Sam Dunn. Bookmark the permalink. 2 Comments.
Documentaries!! Woohoo!
I love a good documentary, and thanks to the wonderful YouTube I’ve been able to sate my appetite for them. I’ve watched several metal-themed ones very recently as it happens, and of the above I really enjoyed A Headbangers Journey and Louder Than Life. I watched The Decline of Western Civilization pt II many years ago and remember enjoying it, though I also recall it gave a disproportionate amount of interview time to certain bands – including Napalm Death who, whist notable innovators weren’t and still aren’t perhaps representative of metal. Maybe I’ll give this one an encore tonight. Started to watch the grindcore doc – not really my thing but an interesting scene and one which has provided much innovation and inspiration – but found it a little amateurish and not terribly engaging.
I’ll certainly be checking out the IM Death on the Road one – that should be exciting – and the Black/Death metal scenes are something I’m interested in but nkow little about so I’ll be curious to check out a couple of those things too.
The BBC have produced a series of docs each focusing on various ‘scenes’ in British music – including Prog, Punk and Electronica. This is the metal one:
I’ve also been enjoying a few of these Classic Albums series:
There’s loads of others up there too…