M Shadows

Matthew Charles Sanders, (born July 31,1981) better known by his stage name M. Shadows, is currently the vocalist for the American heavy metal band Avenged Sevenfold.

M. Shadows

Biography

In his youth, Shadows was notorious for his disorderly conduct and misbehavior. He was quoted as saying "I was in between a good kid and a terrible kid - I had a good heart, but a terrible attitude." He attended Huntington Beach High School after being expelled from his middle school in the eighth grade. As the band was just starting out, he was the darker character of the group (hence the name "Shadows") but he also wanted to incorporate his name, Matt, into his stage name. Matt was reduced to "M" because it had a better ring when combined with his stage name and ever since he has been known as M. Shadows.[1]

Early

Matt used to play the piano before he began to sing in his first band, "Successful Failure". When he was growing up, he listened to a lot of punk rock such as H2O and The Misfits and got into the metal scene when his father bought him Appetite for Destruction by Guns N' Roses after he had seen them on MTV's Headbanger's Ball. [2]

In following years, Shadows formed a number of bands with Avenged Sevenfold's rhythm guitarist Zacky Vengeance. Zacky was previously a member of a punk group called 'MPA. Shadows was in a band called Successful Failure in which The Rev was slotted to play drums (but was admittedly too good).[3] While in this band he penned the song "Streets," which would later be recorded after Avenged Sevenfold was formed, and released on the first album, Sounding the Seventh Trumpet. The album was a mix of metalcore and punk rock but also includes a softer, more ballad-like song (Warmness On The Soul).

RIP: Jim Carroll (1949-2009)

Poet and punk rocker Jim Carrol passed away at his home in Manhattan Friday from a heart attack. He was 60.

Part of the same New York Scene that produced Patti Smith and Andy Warhol, Carrol was a poet who bridged the gap between Beat and punk rock poetry. He became a fast-rising sensation when he published his first book of poetry, Organic Trains, at the age of 17. This attention, as well as that garnered by later publication, leads to his working for Andy Warhol, writing dialogue for his films.

It wasn’t until 1978, with the publication of The Basketball Diaries(Compare Prises), that Carrol really gained national exposure. Based on his personal diaries, The Basketball Diaries detailed Carrol’s early life, graphically detailing his addiction to heroin at an early age.

1980 saw Carrol’s rise in the punk scene with the release of his album Catholic Boy (Compare Prises), and it’s single "People Who Died,” still considered a punk rock classic.

In 1995, The Basketball Diaries was made into a feature film starring Leonardo DiCaprio (Compare Prises), which once again saw Carroll’s music and writing elevated into prominence.

In the ensuing years, Carroll had produced more poetry, performed spoken word, and was at work on his first fiction novel.

It will probably be many years before the full extent of Carroll’s influence is felt. As a poet, he embraced what the Beat culture had handed him, giving it an even more outlaw flair. Many of his Beat poet predecessors lauded his work, realizing his was the poetic voice of what was to come.

Hopefully a new generation of poets and musicians has been taking notes and inspirations, and we can look forward to his legacy for years to come.

We’d like to extend our condolences to his friends, family and all who knew him.

As a tribute to Carrol’s memory, we invite you to watch this live performance of “People Who Died”

Hardcore Music

When it comes to defining a subgenre of punk, post-hardcore is really not much more than a vague catchall, set up to encompass any band that has taken their musical roots from hardcore, but expanded their sound.

Post-hardcore really began in the ‘80s, with the actual hardcore bands themselves. As bands like Black Flag began to bore with the formulaic constraints of hardcore, more experimental sounds began to appear in their music. Just as when the Clash broke away from traditional punk rock by adding elements of reggae to their music, hardcore bands were adding elements of jazz, noise rock, prog rock and math rock to their sounds.

Additionally, this era saw Rites of Spring, often considered the earliest incarnation of emo, another subgenre that gets lumped in with post-hardcore.

The ‘90s saw emo begin to rise to prominence, with experimental bands like Hot Water Music and At The Drive-In. At the same time, the waters of post-hardcore were getting even muddier as a sound description, as bands like Fugazi, who added funk and dub beats and glam rock riffs, and Glassjaw, who added whatever they liked, were also drawing from hardcore influences and doing things that were even more withdrawn from traditional hardcore punk.

In the new millennium, post-hardcore is even more vague. Denoting a band a post-hardcore does little to describe their sound at all. Post-hardcore can now refer to bands that are emo, screamo, experimental or even pop punk, as long as elements of the heavier roots of hardcore are present in their music. (For example, all emo is post-hardcore, but not all post-hardcore is emo.)

Many of punk’s most popular bands today can be called post-hardcore, but while they share many of the same influences, and often the same penchant for screaming, the definition of post-hardcore as a sound is getting less and less definitive by the day.

The London Underground is a rapid transit system serving a large part of Greater London and neighbouring areas of Essex, Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire in the UK. The first section opened in 1863, and was the first underground railway system in the world, and, starting in 1890, it was also the first to operate electric trains. It is usually referred to as the Underground or the Tube—the latter deriving from the shape of the system's deep-bore tunnels—although about 55% of the network is above ground.

The earlier lines of the present London Underground network were built by various private companies. Apart from the main line railways, they became part of an integrated transport system in 1933 when the London Passenger Transport Board (LPTB) or "London Transport" was created. The underground network became a single entity in 1985, when the UK government created London Underground Limited (LUL). Since 2003 LUL has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Transport for London (TfL), the statutory corporation responsible for most aspects of the transport system in Greater London, which is run by a board and a commissioner appointed by the Mayor of London.

The Underground has 270 stations and about 400 km (250 miles) of track, making it the longest metro system in the world by route length. It also has one of the highest number of stations. In 2007, more than one billion passenger journeys were recorded, making it the third busiest metro system in Europe after Moscow and Paris.

The tube map, with its schematic non-geographical layout and colour-coded lines, is considered a design classic, and many other transport maps worldwide have been influenced by it.