enter the Goatlady

During that lovely lull between Christmas and New Year where everyone’s either on holidays or expecting everyone else to be, and pressure to produce anything is next to nil and because it’s hot as fuck here in Australia and sitting the dark listening to music, drinking cold, cold beer and geeking out is pretty much the only way to travel, I was catching up on my feed reading and came across a "2010 roundup" post by the lovely Steff Metal. I was suddenly struck by a thought – didn’t I, also, have a blog, at some point in the distant past?

Just kidding. I hadn’t forgotten about this old place at all. But without degrading this to a “sorry I haven’t posted” post, it has been rather empty and sad lately, hasn’t it? I thought about it some more and thought it would be very remiss of me not to do some kind of round up post. It was, after all, a very epic and exhausting year.

Let’s go month by month, shall we?

January

Early in January I pondered whether the Soundgarden reunion was a good idea or not. As it turns out, some of you thought yay, some of you thought nay, but in the end it was ok. Chris Cornell has not only stopped pissing on his own legacy, but has even grown some hair back.

Who says rock n’ roll isn’t a positive force?

February

In February, my birth month, I got all excited about a new Danzig album, Deth Red Sabbaoth. I pre-ordered the first single, On A Wicked Night, on 7” vinyl and then a few weeks later pre-ordered the limited edition boxset of the album which includes the 7” vinyl single (anyone want to buy one? Mint condition). But it’s ok… the album is good. Better than Danzig 6, Danzig 7 and Danzig 8 in my humble opinion. It’s got a real great old-school feel to it, due in part to his extensive use of vintage gear in the recording process as I’ve read in several interviews.

March

In March I picked up the pace a bit. First I posted my review of Soundwave 2010, which was pretty epic. Although not as epic as the lineup for Soundwave 2011 – but wait, I’m getting ahead of myself…

I then pondered why no one told me they were making a movie about The Runaways. Although at the present time I still haven’t seen the movie, I do own it on Blu-Ray and it’s on the todo list for this week.

My next post for March was an “outtakes” post from my interview with Ruyter Suys of Nashville Pussy. FasterLouder got all “1000 words max” on my arse but she was such a fun person to interview the memorable quotes went way past that, so I figured it was worth sharing. I picked up a copy of their latest album From Hell To Texas when I was in Germany (I don’t think they have distribution down here, unfortunately) and it’s a hard-rocking arse-kick of an album. Highly recommended if you’re in the mood for that kind of thing.

Finally, fan-girl moment of the year came when I got to interview Burt and Dino from Fear Factory, in person, face to face, and on goddamn video. Trippin’ out.

April

April saw more ruminations on the Soundgarden reunion, a post about The Black Crowes taking an indefinite hiatus, a discussion of religion and music in reference to Behemoth, and a recommendation to any of y’all who are interested in blogging to pick up Steff Metal’s ebook on the topic.

By far the saddest post I’d written all year was about the death of Type O Negative’s Peter Steele. We still miss you Pete.

May

I got a little ranty about the state of the world today, Dio and god-botherers, and the bloody Australian government. Nothing you wouldn’t expect from me though. I also talked about our plans for metal travel in 2010 – expect the 2011 version of this soon; announced another side-project in the One Million Beers for Metal web site, said RIP to Slipknot’s Paul Gray (would everyone stop dying please?) and talked a bit about what I’d been listening to.

June

I submitted a public apology to Joey Belladonna for any Anthrax-related ranting I’d done in the past, after hearing his rendition of Man on the Silver Mountain at Dio’s memorial service. And the man himself left a comment which actually seems legit.

I also posted about a fitness class to prepare participants for surviving the zombie apocalypse. Because we all know it’s when the zombie apocalypse comes, not if, right? I also posted some thoughts about the “Big Four” and whether a cinema experience would be worth having. We didn’t go, in the end, and don’t have the Blu-Ray yet although it IS on my “to get” list.

July

In July I got my Danzig tattoo – thanks to my good mate Ox at On The Edge Tattooing. Looking back at that post has made me realise that Charp never saw fit to make good on his promise to punch me in it. That means I still have that hanging over my head (or neck, as it were). Fortunately he’s buggered off to another state so the chances of him making good are slim.

Also in July, I talked about the reformation of Skunk Anansie (still don’t have that album yet) and the second coming of earthtone9, and posted some awesome photos that we took at the South Fremantle Power Station when my pal Leticia came to visit.

August

At this point something funny happened. We went to Europe, had an absolute blast at the Wacken, Party.San and Summerbreeze festivals, and somehow I just… stopped posting. Not sure what happened. Too much in general, probably. Anyway, I didn’t touch the blog until…

September

…when I got quite blog-happy again. First I raved a bit about the No Sleep Til Festival and Megadeth playing Rust In Peace in its entirety. There is a LOT more to that story which will be coming soon – ok a quick spoiler: I got to interview Dave Mustaine, the show I saw was extremely memorable, but other’s reviews were in stark contrast to mine. So I will post them. Like, soon.

Then I talked a bit about the Soundwave lineup. I’ve just realised I promised it would be a multi-part post but never got past the first instalment – but never mind, I’ll get onto that soon.

I posted a book review, which I don’t often do, but it was a really, really interesting and thought-provoking book: The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi. I got into it so much I read it twice, back to back.
Finally, I raved a bit about Triptykon and the Shatter EP. Again, there’s a lot more to that story coming soon.

October – November – December

It seems my ridiculous schedule caught up with me again and I didn’t have the time to spare or the energy to write. Which makes me sad.
So here we are, with 2011 bolting out the gates. What will this new year hold for your humble Goatlady?

Well, fact is, things have been very hectic the last year or two. And that’s not entirely a good thing – in fact, in many ways it was a very bad thing. It was all entirely of my own doing, of course, but I’m making a concerted effort to change shit up in 2011.

Will this result in more blog posts? This remains to be seen. However, I really do enjoy writing and this is the perfect platform for me to spew my rantings into the world and see what sticks, so I’d like to think that we won’t see a repeat of the great non-event of October – December 2010 in the future.

As always, that’s a threat, not a promise.

~ by goat_admin on January 12, 2011.

Posted in chatter
Tags: 2010