The Thing That Should Not She: Misstallica!

After an endless series of whining, complaining, bitching and moaning ("boo f*cking hoo"…you got the reference, right?) I'm pleased to report I'm happy about something.

Went to see my friend's band play at the local tavern on Friday but I got there too late and missed their set.

But get this: Headlining the evening was an All Girl Metallica Cover Band. I'm not kidding. In fact, I was so sure no one would believe me that I busted out my phone and took some pictures to prove it.

Yes, I saw Misstallica.

The have a Facebook page where they describe themselves as "an all chick Metallica tribute band". When I walked into the bar, I think they were playing Fight Fire With Fire. Maybe it was Ride the Lightning. It was something from that album. The lead gal, I guess the "James Hetfield" of the operation, was wearing a Death t-shirt. OK, things are off to a great start. I'd also like to add that she was performing double duties, playing most of Hammett's solos.

These girls have pushed the female species forward by about 50 years. While the rest of you dopey broads are walking on a stairmaster to nowhere or looking for the latest deals on Groupon, the ladies of Misstallica are busy learning the dual guitar complexities of Orion and the double bass work of Trapped Under Ice. These ladies might not be Living Social, but they do know To Live Is To Die.

I really had a hard time grasping what I saw. I remember Metallica being hot sh*t with most burnouts in shop class at my high school. In the 1980's! How is it that they've managed to transcend both time and gender and be popular with a bunch of girls that couldn't be older than 20? And believe you me, these girls were hitting all the crazy hammer-ons and odd time signatures like nobody's business. I can grasp the concept of some teenage dungeons and dragons dude sitting in his bedroom getting stoned and trying to learn the solo to Battery. But a bunch of chicks? Really?????? Not that I'm not totally for this sort of thing. Did I mention they performed Orion? How many all-girl ensembles do you think were playing the song Orion on the night of May 6th? And doing it well? Not many, I'd say. The drummer's double bass work was exceptional. Made me feel like a complete idiot.

Now OK, they weren't 100% tight and the guitars could have used a tuning between songs. They hit a few clams (heh heh) but for the most part, things sounded pretty good. They do need to put a little more accentuation (Is that a word? It's a word, right? I'm going with it, spellcheck didn't flag it.) between chorus and verse. Everything seemed to meld together at times like they were just going through the motions. And at first it was like, "Cool!" But at times, the novelty started wearing thinner than Lars Ulrich's hairline.

But honestly, hearing the girls play these songs really made me realize how f*cking awesome and heavy-hittng the original incarnation of Metallica was. I mean, the speedy riffs, tempo changes and occasional odd time signatures….they weren't exactly the laziest of bands, were they? Good memories from the 80's…..let's forget about Re-Load, shall we?

Oh wait, back to Misstallica. I'm reading the rest of the Facebook writeup: "With a slightly different lineup we are also Queen Diamond the (mostly) Female Tribute Band to King Diamond and Mercyful Fate" Oh, come on! We've just gone from the sublime to the ridiculous.

I'm throwing this request out to the internet world: An all female Carcass tribute band. And be hot, dammit!

Burning Sensations

So I guess you can upload video straight onto the blog page? Well, I'm giving it a shot today. This a video from Sunday, 8.24.08 at Scalzi Park. The skating itself is nothing impressive (with a few obvious exceptions), but I'm quite interested in the background music I used, "Belly of a Whale" by Burning Sensations.

If you told me this band was English Beat or Ranking Roger or General Public, I would have believed you, until I investigated further. See the video here. The video was light years ahead of it's time. Some of the effects & transitions must have been fairly difficult to achieve (and time consuming) with early 80's technology.

Plus they were parodying other videos, (Jacko, The Motels) which is a concept that got popular much later. And while a horrible, horrible fashion faux pas, the band members had goatees (just goatees, no mustaches) a trend that picked up steam in the horrible 90's (especially with that contemporary swing movement. Ugghhhh)
The icing on the cake was the final shot/album cover which just screams 80's Americana.
Greatest. Generation. Ever.

Shut Up and Skate

So much whining and moaning on StamfordSkatepark.com Enough already. Just shred!


New skate video up on my Vimeo site. Peep it here. Plenty of boarding this July 4th weekend, including a visit from the great one, Murph. (As seen in the above photo, courtesy of PDA)

The video was literally slapped together so that my fellow Scalzi brethren could have a look, ASAP. Shot with the Canon XH-A1 and edited quickly in Final Cut Pro. Hey, check out the cool "glass bug" title feature that I just learned.

Excellent holiday weekend. I don't want to go back to work.

Crucial Barbeque-Scalzi Park

Whew! I'm back from our trip to California. I've got plenty of stories and even more photos. So I'm a bit back-logged, but I'll try and get things up this week.

Moving on...Dateline: Sunday, May 18th. Skateboards. Burgers. Brews. (& sodas for the kids) Here are a few pictures from the barbeque in Scalzi Park. A great morning skate session followed by burgers and hot dogs. Thanks to everyone who provided the food. Sato is the man, that goes without saying.


Roxy and Spike-skatepugs. Roxy is the one on the...ah hell, even I can't even tell which one is which any more.


An overview shot of the festivities. I learned a valuable lesson from watching some hessians that were grilling next to us. You don't need a spatula--A crushed beer can on a stick will suffice.

Memo to the city of Stamford: Is there any landscaping money in the budget? These fields/picnic grounds look like absolute garbage! Normally, I just make a beeline from my car to the skatepark, but yesterday I finally realized the grounds themselves kinda looks like crap.


And a few skate pictures for good measure. Todd and Ben, frontside and backside grinds, respectivedly.


And one more quick note: I am please to announce that I will be working on yet another music video for the Boardlord's new CD release, "Wax Museum". We're going to shoot this week. I'll keep you posted, but I don't want to give too much away. Not just yet.

16 MM Madness

The purpose of this blog was supposed to be to document Frosch-Frog Productions. But I kind of got sidetracked with photos & stories of all the great skateboarding as of late. Besides, I don't want to bore anyone with the details surrounding tire shop commercials and corporate DVDs. Zzzzzz....
I'm only reporting on the interesting stuff like music videos and short films. Which brings us to today's post:

With all the filming going on in Stamford lately, we figured we would jump into the fray. Dateline: Sunday, May 4th. Location: The corner of Summer Street and 8th. I had the pleasure of filming with an Eclair ACL16mm camera on the set of Paul David Anthony's new film, "Friendship". Coming from an entirely digital background, I must say it was quite difference than what I'm used to. It's not every day that I get to shoot with some classic film gear, and it was a lot of fun.

Despite a rocky start (I forgot, you have to hold the shutter button down the WHOLE time you're filming--It's not like a camcorder where you just press 'record'! Sorry, force of habit) Well, anyways, despite a few glitches, we were able to get all our shots.....I think! You see unlike video, you can't roll back the tape and watch it on a field monitor. So here's hoping that it all comes out OK. You can't fake the funk: Film is film and nothing else looks like it. I don't care how many Magic Bullet filters you apply to your 24p footage. It's not the same.

So here are a few behind-the-scenes production stills from yesterday's shoot. I'll keep you posted on the progress of the movie. BTW, "Friendship" is the third movie in PDA's trilogy. It should be out later this year.




A sign of confidence. (I think?)