Quote from: Jess42 on March 10, 2014, 06:51:00 AM
Why the sad face hon? I can afford Gibsons but would much rather have Epiphones. Believe me, when I walk into the local Guitar center it may take me a couple of hours to pick one that sounds right, feels comfortable and just all around looks good. They are cheap but really aren't cheaply made. My last SG I compared with a Gibson and the Epiphone blew it away. I got 4, 3 SGs and one Les Paul but the Les Paul usually stays in the case unless I do some GNR stuff, which just sounds right. 1 stays in standard tuning, the other in Drop D and the other tuned down half a step. I hate stressing the strings all the time and the Les Paul I don't really play enough and will just tune it accordingly.
Sabbath without Ozzy? Was it really Sabbath at all. I love Ronnie James Dio but as Dio, not a part of Sabbath. As for Ozzy solo, Loved him with Randy Rhoads. Zak Wylde does way too many pinch harmonics for me when Randy would put them in just the right places.
Yeah slow for me sounds a lot more ominous than fast when it comes to metal even though I do listen to the faster screaming stuff. But I guess I'm more classic. 
Against Me is a band that popped up in one of my guitar magazine and I've yet to check them out but they are supposed to be transgender oriented. I've been forgetting to look them up on youtube but they may be worth checking out.
The sad face, well, it was really just because I would've loved to have had the Gibson... or more, I would've preferred a vintage Gibson, but that's out of my range even now! lol But the Epiphone served me well for a long time. I still have it, but I recently upgraded to a Nash Jazzmaster which I adore.
The Epi was better than the Gibson? I know modern Gibsons are not all they are cracked up to be, but wow! I'm a bit of a moron when I comes to gear though, so I'm noting all this down!
Sabbath without Ozzy... Well, you could argue that Sabbath sans Ozzy was about as Sabbath as they were on Technical Ecstasy and Never Say Die. For me, Dio-Sabbath was kind of a percursor for Dio's solo career, similar kind of feeling to the music. Did enjoy the Heaven + Hell album, even if Mob Rules seemed a bit phoned in.
Totes on board w/ yr opinion on Ozzy solo though, Randy made the first two albums work and then afterward... His albums were patchy at best... And Zakk Wylde sucks. Yeah, he could play circles around me, but I don't care to listen to him.
Heh... My band alternates between the fast screaming stuff and the slow ominous stuff... Yes, I sing AND I scream my guts out. But I don't cheat and cup the mic like all the hip kids do these days. I'm old school like that. lol And besides, I'm much more into mood and atmosphere than I am into the aggressive side of it all.
I adore Against Me. They've only become heavily transgender oriented on the last album, Transgender Dysphoria Blues. Aside from that, Laura has only touched on the theme here and there in her songs, but the songs that are about it go back as far as 2002's Disco Before the Breakdown and Tonight We're Gonna Give It 35%.
There are at least two songs on 2005's Searching for a Former Clarity that are about it too, being the title track and Pretty Girls (The Mover). The title track being quite explicitly about dysphoria, but other than the lines :-
"Confessing childhood secrets,
of dressing up in women's clothes...
Compulsions you never knew the reasons to"
Laura cloaked the real meaning with more general references to decay and death. Most people actually took the song to be about someone who was dying of AIDS. It's one of their best and saddest songs, imo.
On 2007's New Wave, she got more direct in the closing track of the album, The Ocean -
"If I could have chosen, I would have been born a woman.
My mother once told me she would have named me Laura."
And in the rest of the stanza goes on to relate a fantasy about being happily married with children. Still, people didn't really seem to cotton on that this wasn't just something she'd pulled out of thin air. There's a few more references tucked away on the album (White Crosses) that followed, but AM! only REALLY started to explicitly utilise the transgender theme with the newest album.
Wow, did I just write all that... I think I MAY have crossed the line into becoming a fangirl! lol
