Smoke on the Water - Heavy Metal?

[stewblack]

Wikipedia has an interesting entry on the etymology of the term. 

[EssentialTension]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_metal_music#Etymology

[Killed_by_Death]

7 hours ago, hiram.k.hackenbacker said:

it’s about pigeonholing

You perfectly happy 'pigeonholing' KISS out of Glam-Metal during the Animalize period recently.

 

6 hours ago, stewblack said:

they were very much heavy metal

I could list the songs where they were Heavy Metal, & the list is far shorter than the list of their catalog that was not.

 

[Passinwind]

16 hours ago, Killed_by_Death said:

 

There's no doubting that Deep Purple influenced some future Heavy Metal bands, but is this particular song Heavy Metal?

 

It was Acid Rock at time of conception, at least to everyone around my social scene. 

[OliverBlackman]

1 hour ago, ubit said:

It wasn't classic rock when it came out though.

Yeh but the genre it was in has been renamed - still the same genre.

In fairness, I hate the idea of categorising music. Different songs often take inspiration from lots of sources. Few bands write similar songs over and over - AC/DC exempt. 

[tegs07]

6 minutes ago, Passinwind said:

It was Acid Rock at time of conception, at least to everyone around my social scene. 

Indeed. It’s semantics though. There was a discussion not long ago about if Judas Priest were Heavy Metal. They were classed as that when I was a teenager and were notable at least to my ears as being distinctively less rooted in the blues than their predecessors. 

Edited July 11, 2021 by tegs07

[thebigyin]

8 hours ago, hiram.k.hackenbacker said:

I’m all for discussing music, but that’s not what this thread is. As @Cato says, it’s about pigeonholing. It’s been done before (by you) and I don’t get it either 🤷‍♂️. What next? Was Elvis ‘The King of Rock and Roll? Was Michael Jackson ‘The King of Pop’? Was James Brown ‘The Godfather of Soul’? Can Marc Almond hold a tune? Are the Pet Shop Boys the best live act you’ll ever see? The answer to the last two are definitely ‘No”, but you get my drift?

Beam me up Snotty.....don't like it don't comment.

[EssentialTension]

Were The Heavy Metal Kids .. er ...  heavy metal kids?

Just asking for a friend, obvs.

[TheGreek]

Just a thought....aren't DP considered a bit too lightweight nowadays for this category?

Was Cliff ever considered R'n'R??

Edited July 11, 2021 by TheGreek

[hiram.k.hackenbacker]

1 hour ago, thebigyin said:

Beam me up Snotty.....don't like it don't comment.

If you don't like my comment about not liking a comment don't comment about my comment 🤔

[Judo Chop]

10 minutes ago, hiram.k.hackenbacker said:

If you don't like my comment about not liking a comment don't comment about my comment 🤔

I don't like this comment

[hiram.k.hackenbacker]

1 hour ago, Killed_by_Death said:

You perfectly happy 'pigeonholing' KISS out of Glam-Metal during the Animalize period recently.

Mmm. Pigeonholing is about reducing, exactly the opposite in fact of what I was suggesting in the other thread.

I love rock music and pretty much everything that falls under that very broad spectrum. It's what I was brought up on and is part of me. I just don't see the point of all this sub-divisional mumbo jumbo. As @stewblack highlighted, Wikipedia has an interesting take on it. I was looking at what they include under Heavy Metal - 'doom metal', 'pirate metal and 'avant-garde metal'. All smoke and mirrors to me.

[tegs07]

28 minutes ago, TheGreek said:

Was Cliff ever considered R'n'R??

I don’t know.
Are Greenday a punk band? We’re Generation X a punk band? It’s just music to my ears. Well possibly not Cliff but those Shadows blokes were pretty cool.

[MacDaddy]

10 hours ago, hiram.k.hackenbacker said:

Can Marc Almond hold a tune? Are the Pet Shop Boys the best live act you’ll ever see? The answer to the last two are definitely ‘No”, but you get my drift?

I saw Soft Cell when they reformed for the first time. Mark Almond can definitely hold a tune, and it was one of the best gigs I've been to, and I'm a fan of the heavy metal in most of its various guises.

So no, I don't get your drift 😜

[hiram.k.hackenbacker]

4 minutes ago, MacDaddy said:

I saw Soft Cell when they reformed for the first time. Mark Almond can definitely hold a tune, and it was one of the best gigs I've been to, and I'm a fan of the heavy metal in most of its various guises.

So no, I don't get your drift 😜

He murdered Life on Mars? at the Bowie tribute.

[phil.c60]

8 hours ago, Rich said:

Bang on. Nobody is forcing anyone to participate, and IMHO @stewblack is quite right -- it encapsulates the evolution of popular music. Always an interesting topic.

I never got on with Leb personally, I was definitely more of a Rocky Black man. I recall some absolutely banzai grass doing the rounds in our town for a few months too.

....and a "friend of mine" had some absolutely monster squidgy black that he referred to as Nepalese Temple Balls - I'm not sure if I remember that correctly though.....😎.

 I always think of Deep Purple as essentially a blues band, but I don't mind how you call it. I've got just the thirteen albums  plus some LP picture discs I bought at Beano's  in Croydon many years ago. A bit sad, but hey, it's my life.....

[Killed_by_Death]

2 hours ago, hiram.k.hackenbacker said:

Pigeonholing is about reducing, exactly the opposite in fact

That's why I put the quotes around pigeonholing, it was basically the same in reverse.

 

4 hours ago, tegs07 said:

There was a discussion not long ago about if Judas Priest were Heavy Metal.

That discussion was whether or not their first album was Heavy Metal. The popular vote is that it's not.

They were undoubtedly Heavy Metal later-on, but their Marketing people have been claiming "50 Years of Heavy Metal" to all & sundry.

 

2 hours ago, TheGreek said:

aren't DP considered a bit too lightweight nowadays for this category?

Even back then most of their output was not Heavy Metal.

Edited July 11, 2021 by Killed_by_Death
wording & spacing

[Killed_by_Death]

15 hours ago, Happy Jack said:

When BS came out the music they played was what we later called Heavy Metal.

Correct, they defined the sub-genre.

 

15 hours ago, Happy Jack said:

I don't know of anybody who called it that at the time - it was heavy rock.

That's correct as well, but if you look at magazines like Creem or Hit Parader, even in the 70s they were calling bands like Van Halen & Aerosmith Heavy Metal.

It's almost exactly the opposite of how folks who were actively listening to Music at the time were talking about them.

At some point it went from something that bands didn't want to be lumped in, to something the media was throwing around like a catchphrase. I lived through that part & I would laugh at those rags. Some of them didn't survive & the ones that are out there reportng on the Heavy Music these days are no better.

I'm thinking about Blabber Mouth & Loud Wire.

 

Edited July 11, 2021 by Killed_by_Death
spelled blabber incorrectly

[Killed_by_Death]

 

snapshot of the results so far:

[Passinwind]

2 hours ago, Killed_by_Death said:

 

snapshot of the results so far:

I think I may have hit "definitely" by mistake rather than "definitely not."

[Richard R]

1 hour ago, Passinwind said:

I think I may have hit "definitely" by mistake rather than "definitely not."

Quick - create two more accounts and vote "definitely not" with both of them to counteract your earlier mistake. This stuff matters.

[SteveXFR]

It's a great song and it's probably influenced some metal bands but it's not metal. 

Listen to this and then listen to Iron Man by Black Sabbath and I think there's no doubt. Smoke on the water just doesn't rattle your guts in the same way.

[Dad3353]

4 hours ago, Passinwind said:

I think I may have hit "definitely" by mistake rather than "definitely not."

Confirmed. Well done; you've broken the Interweb. 

...

 

[4000]

On 11/07/2021 at 09:10, Happy Jack said:

Tosh. When BS came out the music they played was what we later called Heavy Metal. I don't know of anybody who called it that at the time - it was heavy rock.

Labels are things that go through a long journey over time. I'm old enough to remember the classrooom debates in the early 70s as to what was Heavy Rock and what was Hard Rock, like these were two completely different genres. Some of the albums I owned at 16 were later re-labelled as Heavy Metal (e.g. Budgie's Never Turn Your Back On A Friend), some were later re-labelled as Classic Rock (e.g. Deep Purple's Machine Head), but those terms are subsequent inventions.

 

I’m in my late 50s and at school (oop North) it was all referred to as heavy rock until probably when NWOBHM hit. It wasn’t even hard rock. Everything from Purple to Sabbath and Priest via Rush and Zeppelin was heavy rock. I do wonder how much this differed depending on where you lived though. 

FWIW, so far as I’m concerned all these genres and sub genres are pointless anyway. I mean, where do you stop? It’s all music to me. 

[Chezz55]

I don't regard Deep Purple as a 'Heavy Metal' band at all.

I do think that the Mk II Deep Purple line-up (Lord , Blackmore , Paice , Gillan & Glover) was one of the finest Rock Bands, irrespective of genre.

To my ears - 'In Rock' and 'Machine Head' remain first class studio 'rock' albums - and 'Made In Japan' is the definitive live 'rock' album.