Month: September 2014

28 Years Gone: RIP Cliff Burton

Posted on by kevinthemusicguy

For those who don’t know, Clifford Lee Burton was the second electric bass player of Metallica who served in the band for six years before his untimely and gruesome death on September 27th, 1986. Burton had the upper half of his body crushed in a tour bus accident after the bus hit black ice:

As a heavy metal bassist, I’ve always considered Cliff Burton to be one of my biggest influences next to Jason Newsted (also of Metallica) and Steve Harris of Iron Mainden. Cliff taught Metallica how to harmonize their guitars, and was a prolific song writer in how epic all of the songs he wrote sounded. Cliff was also very open-minded about different forms of music, so I’m sure he would have liked the idea of Metallica experimenting with different styles of music to some extent.

Some people feel that Cliff was an “overrated” bassist, but I don’t why they would say that since they never did anything better musically themselves and probably never will. To use a saying famous in my generation, “haters gonna hate.” Since I was born in 1989, Cliff died well before my time and I’m saddened by that fact. However, his influence lives on to inspire new generations of bass players (myself included). I’m also happy to know that he’s still recognized for his accomplishments and talents 28 years later.

RIP Cliff, I’m sure you’re jamming with other great musicians in the great beyond.

-Tatteybye

Stop Blaming the Victim!

Posted on by kevinthemusicguy

*Trigger warning for discussions of Feminism, rape, pornography, and victim blaming*

So nude celebrity photos were leaked to the internet and Cee Lo Green made comments about date rape before deleting his Twitter? Well then, September is already off to an incredibly screwy start.

For those who haven’t guessed by now, I’m a Liberal Feminist from Massachusetts who is easily pissed off by ignorant and hateful statements. Ignorance is in the eye of the beholder (much like beauty), so I’m not ranting about Conservatives here. What I am ranting about is how people always to pit blame on the victim in our culture. For example: “How much was she drinking that night before she passed out? Well, she shouldn’t have worn that dress!” Or what I’ve been reading lately, “Jennifer Lawrence should have known better than upload those photos to iCloud!”

The action of any crime is always the fault of the perpetrator, not the victim! Even if those ladies shouldn’t have taken and uploaded the photos to an online server, how could they have known that they would have been hacked? How is their fault they were hacked? It isn’t, and never was. People are just dodging the issue that what happened to these women is an immoral invasion of privacy and prime example of female objectification.

Just to clarify, I don’t oppose the porn industry or pornographic material. However, I do see how dehumanizing it is to know that once a private image of a person is out on the web it’s basically just fodder for lustful eyes who treat the image as either a trophy or a tissue. Regardless of whether or not those photos shouldn’t have been taken in the first place, it’s just stupid that this had to happen and that people blame the actresses.

Feel free to state your thoughts in the comment section in a civil manner, just keep in mind I won’t tolerate people starting flame wars on my blog.

-Tatteybye