Summary
[Brian Koenig] forgot all about everything except his guitar. He played along with Metallica's "Master of Puppets" until he'd mastered every lick Kirk Hammett played on it, and then studied the music of Joe Satriani after reading that Joe had tutored Hammett. He swooned at Yngwie Malmsteen's marriage of classical and rock influences, and realized he'd won the genetic lottery: As does only one in 10,000, he had perfect pitch. Mastering the guitar was more satisfying than anything he'd ever done, more exciting!
Well, yes. But metal is no less the music of, for instance, 30-year-old local computer technician and family man Mike Burmeister, founder of the metal e-zine Adrenalin, whose contributors include a chemist and an employee of a Watertown marketing company. Dissent and Revolt vocalist Aaron Miller, also 30, is a few scant units short of a degree in creative writing from the UW. Ottoman Empire's bass player, Jacob Bare, is a much-in-demand web developer. Its frontwoman, [Mary Zimmer], who was singing the music of such favorite Romantic composers as Brahms, Schumann and Schubert at UW-Whitewater while Brian Koenig was tooting his oboe, is a reluctant member of a local corporate human-resources department. The dauqhter of parents whose record collection included the Beatles, the Who and the Cars, Metal Mary was originally drawn to the music that would become her life by the Finnish band Nightwish's juxtaposition of a classically trained mezzo-soprano with metal backing. Her exploration of the genre led her by arid by to death metal, which she thought the best thing...well, ever! The intensity! In many cases, she found the metaphoric quality of her new partner in crime Brian's lyrics impenetrable, but it wasn't as though she was unaccustomed to singing lyrics she didn't understand. Brian was writing no more incomprehensibly, after all, than Gaetano Donizetti.By all accounts Madison itself, especially since flames consumed key venue O'Cayz Corral in 2001, isn't very big at all on metal, preferring indie rock and hippie jam bands. It isn't, as Ottoman emperor Brian Koenig glumly notes, like the Twin Cities, whose residents seem to seek out live music much more avidly - and to buy a lot more merchandise. Local kids buy metal CDs but don't go to shows, especially ones they can't go to because they're under 21.See the full content of this document
Extract
Madison Metal
His choice of instrument hardly made sense, especially given his dad's history as a guitarist in cover bands, and nearly a decade and a half hence Brian Koenig remains unable to explicate exactly what inspired him as a fifth- grader to study the oboe, of all instruments. But choose it he did, and how his classmates down in the self-styled Swiss cheese capital of the USA teased him for it. To compound the fact of its clearly being a girl's instrument, one of the girls whose instrument it was called the director of the orchestra in which Brian played Daddy, so no matter how good he got, he'd never be firs...
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