IG2EUS: Iron Maiden

The Irreverent Guide To Everything Under the Sun has this to say on the subject of Iron Maiden:

Iron Maiden are, perhaps, the greatest band ever made. They are certainly the greatest band ever that is not the Beatles.

Their genre is Heavy Metal. Not Thrash Metal or Speed Metal or Power Metal. Just Heavy Metal. They are bloody famous for their epic songs and awesome harmonies. They also have, in the form of singer Bruce Dickinson, the single greatest singer in the history of music, ever.

They have made 15 studio albums. Only bassist Steve Harris and guitarist Dave Murray have appeared on all 15. Oh, and Eddie. Eddie the Head is their mascot. He may or may not be an alien, zombie, cyborg, or all of the above.

History
There are two ways of dividing Iron Maiden history into four blocks.

Method 1:

• Pre-Bruce
• Iron Maiden (1980), Killers (1981)
• Classic Bruce
• The Number of the Beast (1982), Piece of Mind (1983), Powerslave (1984), Somewhere in Time (1986), Seventh Son of a Seventh Son (1988), No Prayer for the Dying (1990), Fear of the Dark (1992)
• Minus-Bruce
• The X-Factor (1995), Virtual XI (1998)
• Re-Bruce 
• Brave New World (2000), Dance of Death (2003), A Matter of Life and Death (2006), The Final Frontier (2010)

The main advantage to this method is that it tells you who's behind the microphone. The major disadvantage to this method is that it doesn't give you the slightest  indication what's going on behind the scenes.

Method 2:

• Early Days (1980-1982)
• Iron Maiden, Killers, The Number of the Beast
• The lineup during this era was constantly shifting, adding guitarist Adrian Smith in 1981, singer Bruce Dickinson in 1982, and finally drummer Nicko McBrain in 1983.  None of these albums are exactly masterpieces, but by Beast it's clear that the band has found its footing.
• Classic Era (1983-1988)
• Piece of Mind, Powerslave, Somewhere in Time, Seventh Son of a Seventh Son
• With Bruce now freed from a provision of his previous band's contract and able to write songs, and Adrian firmly entrenched as a powerhouse songwriter, the band pumps out four absolutely essential albums.  Or rather, three: Somewhere in Time suffers from synthesizeritis (and was doomed to failure seeing as it was a lighter offering the year Metallica did Master of Puppets).
• Janick Era (1989-1998)
• No Prayer for the Dying, Fear of the Dark, The X-Factor, Virtual XI
• Adrian Smith quits.  Not to knock his abilities as a guitarist, but his songwriting abilities are missed more. Two albums later, Bruce Dickinson quits. Not to knock his songwriting abilities, but his singing abilities are missed more.
• Six-Piece (1999-Present)
• Brave New World, Dance of Death, A Matter of Life and Death, The Final Frontier
• Steve Harris decides to put the band's best interests ahead of any personal beef he has with Bruce Dickinson. Bruce agrees to return only if Adrian does as well. Adrian, who is old friends with his replacement, Janick Gers, refuses to return if it means Janick has to go, so the band becomes a six-piece with Janick continuing to play a number of Adrian's solos live.

Notable Songs
You should know the following Iron Maiden songs by heart:

• Iron Maiden
• "Phantom of the Opera." If you added this song to the production quality of AC/DC's Back in Black, out the same year, you'd have the formula for the next half-decade of music.
• "Remember Tomorrow"
• "Iron Maiden." It's one verse and a chorus. First major use of the twin-guitar harmonies.
• Killers 
• "Wrathchild"
• The Number of the Beast
• "The Number of the Beast." Actually probably about a nightmare Steve Harris had. Has the exact same plot as a Nathanial Hawthorne short story. So, not exactly satanic. 
• "Hallowed be Thy Name." The. Greatest. Song. Ever.
• Piece of Mind 
• "Revelations"
• "The Trooper." Easily the most famous use of the twin-guitar harmonies. Based on Alfred Tennyson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade."
• Powerslave
• "Aces High"
• "2 Minutes to Midnight." The intro riff was borrowed by Adrian Smith from this song... written by his future replacement, Janick Gers. Small world.
• "Powerslave"
• "Rime of the Ancient Mariner." Thirteen and a half minutes of your life you won't regret wasting. Also, you'll never mis-quote "nor any drop to drink" again.
• Somewhere in Time
• "Wasted Years." Adrian Smith's masterpiece.
• "Alexander the Great"
  
• Seventh Son of a Seventh Son
• "Can I Play With Madness"
• "The Evil That Men Do"
• Fear of the Dark
• "Fear of the Dark." Do not go to an Iron Maiden concert if you haven't memorized the guitar fills. Everyone will be singing along to them. Yes, the guitar parts.
• Brave New World
• "The Wicker Man"
• "Brave New World"
• Dance of Death
• "No More Lies"

 

IG2EUS: Really Stupid Ideas

The Irreverent Guide to Everything Under the Sun has this to say on the subject of Really Stupid Ideas:

Really stupid ideas are ideas that are really stupid. Here are some examples.

Firing Phillip Hinchcliffe from the producership of Doctor Who.

Cancelling Firefly.

Insisting that the same people who will blindly follow orders at the expense of an innocent person's health are eligible to vote.

IG2EUS: Political Parties

The Irreverent Guide to Everything Under the Sun has this to say on the subject of Political Parties:

Political parties are sinister polarizing forces that conspire to turn man against his brother until man exists no more.

In the Decadent Wayward Colony known as America, there are two main political parties, the Republicans and the Democrats. The Republicans believe that the government must have every power necessary to fight the threat of global terrorism, but only when the adults (e.g, themselves) are in charge. In contrast, the Democrats believe that the government must have every power necessary to fight the threat of global poverty, but only when the adults (e.g, themselves) are in charge.

Every two years, both parties spend a fantastic amount of money to elect one candidate who loves their country and who has strong convictions over another candidate who loves their country and who has strong convictions. Americans (and indeed, most citizens living in democracies) see this as perfectly reasonable. Remember, a democracy is a form of government that posits that the people are intelligent enough to elect their own leaders.

Every four years, the American political parties spend enough money to fund a minor war in order to get their candidate elected to occupy the White House, and also the Presidency. On paper, all the President gets to do is execute the law. This does not, thankfully, involve a firing squad. In reality, however, the President must be the voice of the free world. And this, thankfully, does not involve a firing squad either. Once it does, you can take comfort in knowing that it's already too late and there is nothing you can do.

See also:
The End of the World
Really Really Stupid Ideas

IG2EUS: Progressive Rock

The Irreverent Guide to Everything Under the Sun has this to say on the subject of Progressive Rock:

Progressive Rock is supposedly a highly technical form of music. The pinnacle of expression is the concept album, which is supposedly high art. In actual fact, the concept album is just a clever means of recycling the same riff for 45 minutes.

IG2EUS: Headaches

The Irreverent Guide to Everything Under the Sun has this to say on the subject of headaches:

If my head is this badly split open, I must be so hungover I don't even remember drinking.

Gaaaaaaaaaah.

IG2EUS: Doctor Who

The Irreverent Guide to Everything Under the Sun has this to say on the subject of Doctor Who:

Doctor Who was a television show that ran on the BBC (and later BBC1) from 1963 until 1989. It was subsequently resurrected in 2005. Among its many contributions to culture are long multicolor scarfs, an irrational fear of salt-shakers, and the knowledge of what they call French fries in France.

The show was conceived by Winston Churchill, a suspected Time Lord, in 1941 as a way of showing just how bad the world would be if the Nazis won. However production could not begin yet because no budget could be allocated to anything not essential to winning the war effort. Terry Nation's Nazi script was put on hold until the war ended.

Once the war was over, Churchill was thrown out of power. In a drunken rage, he burned Nation's draft scripts, thus setting precedent that everything associated with the show would be burnt. Fortunately, because he was drunk, he forgot to burn one of the scripts and instead locked it away in an attic somewhere.

In 1962 a man named Alice Frick, whose parents obviously hated him, discovered these scripts and proposed the creation of a television show around them. Nation's script was now unsuitable as an opening story. The production team decided that instead of Nazis, the main threat had to be nuclear war. A thirteen-episode series was commissioned: one episode to introduce the main characters, three episodes set in a nuclear wasteland, seven episodes dealing with future Nazis, and two episodes of putting all the clues together and figuring out who Doctor Who was.

Unfortunately, the scripts had to be rushed out in a hurry, because the script editor, David Whitaker, was literally on a different planet. After turning down scripts from Gene Roddenberry, because they were too optimistic, and Douglas Adams, because he was eleven at the time, Whitaker took two shots of vodka and a noseful of cocaine, sat down with his notes, and banged out some nonsense about cavemen. Then he banged out more nonsense about Doctor Who's time machine and how it was alive. Then he banged out more nonsense about the French Revolution, the Crusades, the Norman Invasion, the Battle of Culloden, Atlantis, space pirates, cave-monsters, Atlantis again, the EEC, Atlantis yet again, giant spiders, giant robots, and giant mice. He also sounded out Terry Nation about recycling The Lord of the Rings in space. Then he died of a heart attack, leaving quite a mess behind him.

The BBC realized that, while Whitaker had laid out an interesting plan, fully implementing it would take about fourteen years. With Nation's new scripts coming in, they had no choice but to go ahead and grant the show a full season. Then the show somehow became a hit with the fans, who demanded subsequent seasons. This caused some consternation among the cast, who became increasingly upset about having to spend so much time in the company of giant saltshakers. One by one, they all quit. As they did so, they were replaced with younger and sexier actors and actresses, because the writing team was slowly forgetting how to write decent scripts. "More saltshakers!" was the constant cry from higher up. The last cast member to quit was the original Doctor Who, William Hartnell. He went on to time-travel into the future and audition for the role of Dumbledore in the Harry Potter films, but the homophobic actor pulled out when he learned of the character's sexual orientation. He went back to 1973 to make sure the show was going along all right without him, mumbled something about coming back one day, and then blasted off for the 22nd century. The BBC, incensed that they'd hired a real Time Lord who no doubt could have saved them a bunch of money in effects, burned much of his last season.

Meanwhile, back in 1966, the producers agreed to hire one of the Beatles, Patrick Troughton, to carry on in the role of Doctor Who. Troughton was initially hesitant, and for the rest of his life would bemoan the fact that "A Day in the Life" did not have an epic recorder solo.

The Beatles were forced to hire a replacement, thus leading to the famous "Pat is Dead" theory, even though he was obviously alive and well and playing Doctor Who. He ultimately left the show in 1969, rejoined the Beatles, and turned Abbey Road from another example of White Album and Let it Be-era self-indulgence into the masterpiece it is. Shortly afterwards, Troughton became a priest. It did not end well. The BBC, incensed at his decision to leave the show to make music and spread the Gospel, burned most of his episodes.

Also in the year 1969, International Man of Mystery Austin Powers was cryogenically frozen so that one day he could face his nemesis, Doctor Evil, again. The producers of Doctor Who decided to make the next incarnation of Doctor Who an homage to Powers. They cast Jon Pertwee, who happily obliged his paymasters with an impromptu nude scene in his second episode. He was later informed that by "homage Austin Powers," the BBC had meant "copy his outfit and nothing else. Not his teeth, not his glasses, and certainly not his habit of shagging anything in sight." By this point it was 1974, and the star had gotten rather tired of partying it up every night.

He was replaced by Tom Baker, alias Rasputin. Perhaps the most famous Doctor Who of them all, Tom stayed in the role for longer than should be legal. It's actually possible that he was going to be sacked after his third year, but then the producer was sacked instead. (For more on the sacking of this particular producer, please see The Stupidest Things Ever.) During the seven years he was on the show, he married each and every one of his female co-stars. In Tom's final episode, he was strangled by his own scarf, and then he was shot, poisoned, possessed by a zombie, decapitated, subjected to vast quantities of entropy, and finally thrown off the BBC's transmission tower in an effort to get him off the show. However he survived all of this and regenerated with the help of Rupert Giles.

Realizing that once again they had a real Time Lord on their hands, the producers allowed the "new" Doctor Who, "Peter Davison," to stick around for three more years. By this time the show had gone to hell anyway, thanks to the producership of Jonathan Turner Classic Movies. He demanded that the next Doctor Who wear an obscene multicolor suit. The only taker for the job was Colin Baker. Public reaction to his suit was to put the show on hiatus. Baker's reaction to the hiatus was to gain a lot of weight. Ultimately he was fired; nobody knows the reasons why because all of the paperwork was burnt.

The last Doctor Who of the original run was Sylvester McCoy. His attempt at proving that the show wasn't a tired old mule was to play Doctor Who in almost the exact same style as Patrick Troughton. To be fair, this is what almost every Doctor Who since Troughton did, but this time the audience caught on. The show was cancelled and Jonathan Turner Classic Movies was burnt.

There were some movies in the mid-60s starring Grand Moff Tarkin, but those don't count. There was also a movie in 1996 starring an actor known only as "I," thus making him the most appropriately-named Doctor Who to date. Whether this counts or not is a matter of debate and has been the cause of a surprising number of saltshaker-related injuries.

In 1999, American filmmaker George Lucass enquired about making "Special Editions" of classic Doctor Who serials, such as The Talons of Eng-China, Genesis of the Dales, and The Caves of Andreana. Nobody has heard anything from Mr. Lucass ever again. According to Tom Baker, history was really lucky there.

In 2005, the show was revived. The ninth Doctor Who was played by Christopher Eccleston, who had to quit after one season because of an allergic reaction to his leather jacket. He was replaced by David Tennant, probably the most controversial Doctor Who since Tom Baker. Either you like this enthusiastic gentleman with his unyielding optimism, or you can't stand this skinny idiot who gets upset when anyone else gets to play the hero.

Eventually, Tennant was replaced by Matthew Smith, best known for playing Young Voldemort on the cutting room floor. His female co-star has legs. This is all anyone currently watching the show knows about either of them. Mostly because of his female co-star's legs.

IG2EUS: Time Lords

The Irreverent Guide to Everything Under the Sun has this to say on the subject of Time Lords:

Time Lords fall into two categories. Most of them are nasty, bureaucratic, officious, and callous. They live insular lives on the island of Hellfire, Ireland, and demand that nobody ever interfere with anything, ever. They have been known to kill hobos for interfering. They have also been known to attempt to kill cricketers because they might be a possible threat. They have been known to attempt to kill Colin Baker for having some truly awful taste in clothing.

The other type of Time Lords are fun-loving nutcases who tend to leave large swaths of destruction in their wake, but also very entertained people.

Time Lords normally have thirteen lives. However, this number can increase when exposed to the Ring of Rassilon, and it can decrease when exposed to the Gauntlet of Rassilon, and also mind probes.

Ninety-nine percent of Time Lords are white males, and all of them speak English.

The following people are confirmed to be known Time Lords:

Syd Barrett
Colin Baker
Tom Baker
James Bond*
Chewbacca
Peter Davison
Roger Delgado
Bruce Dickinson
Christopher Eccleston
Elim Garak
William Hartnell
James T. Kirk
John Lennon
The Man With No Name
Sylvester McCoy
Paul McGann
Wolfgang A. Mozart
Jimmy Page
James K. Polk
Rassilon*
Keith Richards
Teddy Roosevelt
George C. Scott
William Shakespeare
Benjamin Sisko
Agent Smith
Matt Smith
Doctor Strangelove
David Tennant
Patrick Troughton
Martin Van Buren
Vincent Van Gough
H. G. Wells
Joss Whedon
Woodrow Wilson

*It is possible that James Bond is a subsequent incarnation of Rassilon.

IG2EUS: Pink Floyd

The Irreverent Guide to Everything Under the Sun has this to say on the subject of Pink Floyd:

Pink Floyd were an English rock band, best known for composing the title track to the famous musical, The Phantom of the Opera, and the sountrack to the famous motion picture, The Wizard of Oz.

The band was fromed in 1966-ish by a displaced and delusional Time Lord named Syd Barrett. Preoccupied with the "drugs" part of "sex, drugs and rock & roll," he soon left the band to pursue this venture full-time. Before he left, they recorded one album Sgt. Piper at the Gates of the Lonely Hearts Club (1967). Following his departure, the band wrote several clueless albums, including A Saucer Full of Secretions (1968), which covered sex; Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh (1969) and The One With a Cow on the Cover (1970), which covered drugs; and Metal (1971), which covered rock and roll. Metal contained a cover of the Doctor Who theme and ended with a song called "Echoes" which took up five of the album's six sides. The band were asked if they would consider letting Stanely Kubrick use the song in his film 2001: Are We There Yet? for a considerable amount of money, but declined in favor of letting Andrew Lloyd Webber have it for free to use in a musical about a man in a mask who haunts a theater.

Tempted by the offer of scoring a movie, the band settled down in 1972-3 to record the soundtrack to The Wizard of Oz. This was possible because Syd Barrett, being a Time Lord, had access to a time machine. Once the soundtrack was finished, they wrote their next album, Wish You Were Here (1975), about him.

Now totally out of ideas, they began writing concept albums such as A Day at the Zoo, I Never Got Over My Father's Death, and Margaret Thatcher is Evil. By this point, the band was in the totalitarian grip of its lead singer, lead bassist, lead writer, manager, and only roadie, Roger Waters. He left the band after this because he couldn't stand working with people who had no ideas, and went on to have a solo career where he surrounded himself with peopel who had no ideas.

The rest of the band, which consisted of drummer Nick Mason, keyboardist Rick Wright, and guitar god David Gilmour, soldiered on for two more albums before finally calling it a day in 1994.

There has yet to be a Rock Band or Guitar Hero game about this band, probably because all of the songs are in the same tempo: slow. As far as lyrical themes go, the band has covered everything ranging from drug-induced depression and isolation to loss-induced depression and isolation to feud-induced depression and isolation.

They are one of the five biggest selling bands of all time. The soundtrack to The Wizard of Oz is one of only a handful of albums to outsell Led Zeppelin IV.

IG2EUS: Modern Art

The Irreverent Guide to Everything Under the Sun has this to say on the subject of Modern Art:

Modern art, much like punk music, is what happens when people stop having standards. It is an excuse for the lazy and untalented to have their work displayed and make a lot of money.

Someone must stop this at once.

Artists are people with artistic talent. The ability to compose a great piece of music is talent. The ability to cry on cue is talent. The ability to fling paint randomly at a canvas is not talent. People who do fling paint randomly at a canvas for a living are lazy hacks, and people who call this "art" are their enablers.

IG2EUS: Concept Albums

The Irreverent Guide to Everything Under the Sun has this to say on the subject of concept albums:

Concept albums are albums that are centered around a single unifying concept, be it sex, drugs, or rock and roll. The term is a unification of two words: "Concept," meaning that the songs have a common theme, and "album," meaning a collection of songs recorded by one band in one place and at one time.

The concept of concept albums has been around since the 1950s but the crossover to rock music was first attempted in 1967 by Paul McCartney of the Beatles. The attempt was, frankly, less than sucessful, but that's not to say that Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is not a freaking good album. It is. It is in fact one of the biggest-selling albums of all time, and though rock fans can be morons at time, the collective idiocy required to buy more than 30 million copies of a less-than-stellar recording would be too great for any civilization to actually survive this long. The fact of the matter is, however, that there are more songs on Back in Black that have to do with the death of Bon Scott than there are on Sgt. Pepper that have to do with the Lonely Hearts Club Band.

The other common example of the quintessential concept album is Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon, an example that is equally flawed for opposite reasons. There are in fact two concepts on this album. Side one deals with life, while side two deals with isolation and madness. Where The Dark Side of the Moon falls apart is on the "album" side of the equation, and it is therefore unique among non-rock-opera concept albums for having extended instrumental passages that are not parts of actual songs.

Pink Floyd built on this, er, concept, though, and in 1975 they unleashed Wish You Were Here, which is not only a perfect example of a concept album, but arguably also a perfect example of Pink Floyd at their finest (if you can sit through the 8-and-a-half-minute instrumental passage before the first word is sung). The album might as well have been called The Rise and Fall of Roger Keith "Syd" Barrett, because that is precisely what it is about. Unlike The Dark Side of the Moon, there is only one unifying theme instead of two, and all of the different "tracks" on it are actual songs instead of a mix of songs and separate instrumental passages. They did it again in 1977 with Animals before creating one of the quintessential rock operas, The Wall.

A rock opera is a concept album that leans far too heavily on the "concept" side of the equation. These albums tell a story through their songs, at least in theory. In actual practice, the listener tends to get a small number of awesome songs, while the plot is actually described in 1-minute breaks between the songs. Every rock opera ever is guilty of this. Also every rock opera of any importance involves a rebirth of fascism.

IG2EUS: The Beatles

The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a wonderful piece of fiction about a fish out of water, babelfish in peoples' ears, the significance of the number forty-two, the greatest drink in the universe, and a bowl of petunias.

This is not that story.

Rather, this is the Irreverent Guide to Everything Under the Sun, which is in no way a pathetic rip-off of a book written by an atheist that is probably read more than the Bible nowadays.

Statements like the previous one used to be rather inflammatory and taken far too seriously. There was once a man who suggested that an organization that he was part of was bigger than Jesus. He cannot be reached for comment, because quite like the author of the Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, he is spending eternity dead for reasons that have nothing to do with taxes whatsoever. But the organization that he was a part of lives on. You can hear their message on the radio every day. They were instrumental in creating a movement that can still affect young people today despite the fact that they haven't done anything, really, in 40 years.

They are, of course, the Beatles, a band whose name could not possibly have gone five seconds in this day and age without some clever critic adding a second "s" to the end of their name. Another thing that the Beatles did that no band could possibly get away with today is not tour for the second half of their career. In the days before the invention of the Internet, when disaffected teenagers (called "fans" by their idols and the media) could not copy and share audio and video recordings for free, when record sales actually meant something, touring was really a means of supporting an album. And because the Beatles' albums included Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, one of the biggest-selling albums of all time, there was really no need to go on tour.

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is claimed by some to be the very first rock concept album. This is untrue. Not even John Lennon thought Sgt. Pepper was a concept album. Sgt. Pepper may have brought the concept of concept albums to the rock scene, but it didn't do much more than that, other than sell, sell, sell, and also cause everyone to wonder how in the hell they'd managed to record an orchestra on only four tracks.

Not long after Sgt. Pepper, the band recorded The Beatles, also known as The White Album.

No. Stop.

The previous statement is incorrect. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and George Harrison recorded The Beatles, but with the benefit of hindsight it is clear that they did not do so as a band. A general rule of thumb that all bands can follow to benefit from this lesson is not to skimp on the cover art. To wit:

AC/DC: Back in Black had a mostly black cover. Their sales started declining with the release of their next album.

Pink Floyd: The Wall had a simple cover. The recording process saw one member of the band get fired, and was the beginning of the end for another member.

Metallica: Metallica. They followed the Beatles' strategy of releasing a self-titled album under the nickname "The (Absence of Color) Album," and like the Beatles, went to Music Hell shortly thereafter.

Note that all of these albums sold very very well and were generally well-recieved.

At any rate, The White Album can be generously reviewed as a project made by four people who, because they weren't touring and also their manager was now dead, simply weren't relating to each other very well anymore. The Beatles broke up in 1970 and there was much sadness.

Then in 1971 an untitled album by four other Brits was released and eventually outsold Sgt. Pepper. But that's a different story.