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eptodaytommorowforever · 3 months ago

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Events In The History And Of The Life Of Elvis Presley Today On The 12th Of November In 1972

Elvis Presley Tour And Show Comes To San Bernardino CA.

A look back at Elvis Presley's 1972 outstanding concert at swing auditorium in San Bernardino CA

Sunday night, Nov. 12, 1972. The Santa Ana winds were howling, so typical of San Bernardino in November. And it was cold. But a sold-out crowd stood patiently to have an audience with The Legend . Elvis Presley was in the Swing Auditorium.

The Swing was the place east of L.A.'s Fabulous Forum to see virtually every top name act in the rock world, circa 1964 through 1981. Located on E Street, the auditorium was built in 1949 on the grounds of the National Orange Show and was named for Senator Ralph E. Swing, a San Bernardino legislator. What a glorious barn it was and what history played out on that stage. The Rolling Stones did their first American concert there in June 1964. The place rocked until a small plane crashed into it on Sept. 11, 1981 and the auditorium had to be demolished. One of the last shows played there featured Iron Maiden.

In between, rock royalty were regulars. Fleetwood Mac played more than five times. The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, Jefferson Airplane, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Cream, Jimi Hendrix Experience, Led Zeppelin, The Doors, Black Sabbath, Ramones (as opening act), Chicago, Jethro Tull, Alice Cooper, the Grateful Dead (multiple times), Faces with Rod Stewart (also multiple times), Santana, the Kinks, Janis Joplin, Eric Clapton, the Beach Boys, and more. Look up how many of these acts are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Just about everybody but the Beatles made it to the Swing.

Prior to the modern rock era, Bob Hope was almost an annual fixture at the Swing during the National Orange Show Fair. Other notables who performed there in the '50s and '60s included Sammy Davis Jr., Jack Benny, Judy Garland, Jerry Lewis, and George Burns. But never had a King played there before that night.

Yet, it wasn't as if Elvis Presley had never been to the IE. He did own a house for several of the Priscilla years in Palm Springs and was known to do some boating in Big Bear Lake. Many scenes of the totally forgettable remake movie 'Kid Galahad' were shot in Idyllwild. And, some of the outdoor footage in 1964's 'Kissin' Cousins' was shot in the San Bernardino Mountains. Still, this was different.

Elvis Presley's nationwide tour began at Madison Square Garden in New York, a city he had never before performed live in. The four concerts there were sold out and got rave reviews. At 37, he was 'lean, tanned and greasily handsome, his coal-black hair glistening with an oily 1950s sheen', as the New York Times' Grace Lichtenstein put it. At a press conference before the Madison Square Garden appearance, he was asked about the secret of his longevity on the pop music scene. 'I take Vitamin E', he told reporters.

From New York, the tour moved west, passing through cities like Milwaukee, Chicago, Wichita and Tulsa before continuing on to Las Vegas. Elvis stayed there for most of October before continuing the tour, which took him to Texas, Arizona, and into California. He hit Oakland, then San Bernardino, where he performed two sold-out shows - one on Nov. 12 and another on Nov. 13. rom there, he headed to the Long Beach Arena for two shows, the last stop before catching a plane for Honolulu where the tour would wrap up. Originally, the Honolulu show was planned to be broadcast worldwide by satellite, but the broadcast date was changed to early 1973 so it wouldn't conflict with the release of MGM's musical documentary Elvis on Tour. No matter. The show (actually four of them) went on. And in Honolulu, as well as in other cities on the tour, fans of all ages crowded concert venues to get a live view of the King.

So it was in San Bernardino. The Swing could hold about 10,000 people with a concert take of around $60,000. On that cold November night, fans crammed into the sold-out auditorium. With reserved seating, there was none of the festival seating chaos that marked the Swing rock shows - kids pushing and shoving and fighting to get to the stage area. This crowd was real diferent. I was way too young at 21. For the usual Swing rock show, most of the concertgoers were my age or younger. The guys had long hair, wore boots, Levis and denim work shirts (think the cover of a Creedence album.) The girls went braless, wore tight jeans or peasant dresses. There were always more guys than girls.

For Elvis Presley though, these fans had jobs, mortgages, and kids. The women clearly outnumbered the guys. They wore bright yellow or orange dresses, lots of makeup. Hairspray was huge. And, there were more than a few suicide blondes with hot pants and go-go boots. (I would never have sat on anything in the Swing in hot pants.) Jean Naté was locked in mortal combat with Charlie in a fragrance war. My Sin perfume held its own. Smoke from the bathrooms came from real Marlboro men (and women.)

My seat was in the cheap section - off to the side and high up, close to the glued-on tinsel that was a prominent feature of the Swing. The place always had a peculiar smell. Close to show time, greedy Colonel Tom's minions were at the stage hawking T-shirts, photos, and other assorted gee-gaws. I wonder just how much of that cash Elvis Presley received.

Finally, the lights lowered. The band started playing the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Then, there he was - The King. He was resplendent in a black and red concert suit.

Though his show was typical of his Vegas show that he performed at the International Hotel (later known as the Las Vegas Hilton and now called the Westgate Las Vegas Resort & Casino), it didn't matter to his loyal subjects. He was live in San Berdoo! Old ladies screamed. It was hard to tell from my cheap seat, but I believe there were a few panties thrown at him.

His voice and physique were in A-plus form. He ripped through concert standards such as 'Polk Salad Annie', crooned to crowd favorite 'Can't Help Falling In Love', and did a couple of religious numbers with the gospel group J.D. Sumner and The Stamps.

No Elvis Presley show would be complete without the hits 'Hound Dog', 'All Shook Up', 'Jailhouse Rock', and 'American Trilogy'.

His band and entourage - the Sweet Inspirations, legendary guitar hero James Burton - provided a full sound that could not be duplicated by the typical four-man rock act. It was a show truly becoming of a King. The crowd responded as if seeing him for the first time. Bedlam broke out among the thousands of fans.

After about 90 minutes, despite fans calling for more, Elvis Presley left the auditorium for the San Bernardino Hilton, about $60,000 richer. I was a poor college kid. I went to Del Taco. What a Sunday night! rare candid photo's one captured of elvis presley leaving Oakland CA captured here by a female ep fan boarding is executive chartered jet heading to San Bernardino CA and performing here at this show wearing the white pinwheel jumpsuit and the white cape and the lions head belt captured by a fan audience member who was at this show concert.

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metaladdicts · 5 months ago

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JANICK GERS Accidentally Throws Guitar At The Crowd During IRON MAIDEN's Concert In Los Angeles (Video)

During IRON MAIDEN‘s October 8th show at the Kia Forum in Los Angeles, guitarist Janick Gers accidentally tossed his guitar into the crowd. As the band was nearing the end of their set, Gers was performing his signature guitar swings when, in one instance, the guitar slipped and flew towards the audience. Fortunately, the guitar was swiftly returned, allowing him to continue his performance…

#iron maiden #janick gers

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mllemaenad · 1 year ago

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The Magnus Protocol: Introductions

It may just be a side effect of the new story format, but it strikes me how deliberately ... attention seeking, let's say, some of these supernatural events seem to be.

I don't mean all of them. I noted previously that Norris's stories, so far, have involved accessing quite private information – and without access to those accounts you wouldn't necessarily spot what was going on.

But Chester's first story in First Shift had something deliberately post a provocative, and apparently gory, image that had to be removed by the forum moderators:

Chester Re: Magnus Institute Ruins By RedCanary on Saturday April 30 2022 2:01am [Image removed by moderator] Canaries should stay above ground. Re: Magnus Institute Ruins By FlowersUnderground on Saturday April 30 2022 2:27am Gross! Can we get some mod action over here? Re: Magnus Institute Ruins By BadGrav31 on Saturday April 30 2022 3:11am What the hell is that? Are those eyes? Are you all right? Re: Magnus Institute Ruins By ArcherK on Saturday April 30 2022 7:33am RedCanary, you have been warned, our terms forbid posting explicit images including gore. I’m sorry it’s come to this, but you brought it on yourself. – The Magnus Protocol: First Shift

And the deleted posts in Personal Screening indicate that something took the time and trouble to remove any content that wasn't related to the horror story. It's not just that "Freddy" knows how to skip irrelevant details. Someone or something did away with the clutter.

And it is more noticeable still in the cases that are direct recordings, rather than read by the text-to-speech programs. I don't so much mean Daria from Making Adjustments, whose privacy is presumably being violated here, but I do mean the mysterious tattoo artist, Ink5oul, who made their mark while livestreaming, and apparently got increased fame and fortune out of it:

Daria Before I could reply they hit a button on their set-up and suddenly we were live streaming with lights in my eyes and their arm tight around my shoulders. I don’t remember much of what they said to their viewers, but they kept telling everyone how lucky I was whilst they dragged me into the chair. – The Magnus Protocol: Making Adjustments

And here we have Needles. And the thing about Needles is that he deliberately calls the police to demand that they be scared of him. And the thread of humour running through the story is that everybody (barring, presumably, the poor bastard who got "cuddled") needs a bit of convincing that needles are, in fact, scary. Needles can feed on the fear of others, sure – but he's got to work for it.

Needles Call it dessert. But you’re not afraid are you? Unsettled, off-balance but nothing more. Why is that? Police Operator I guess I’m just not scared of needles. Needles (irritated) Not sca- This isn’t some poxy blood test, some little pinprick, this is hundreds, thousands of razor sharp points pushing into your flesh. We’re talking about the embrace of an iron maiden, an excruciating agony formed from a thousand tiny hurts. – The Magnus Protocol: Introductions

It's interesting how deeply entitled he feels to the operator's terror ... but I have to imagine he's aiming high. If there's any group of people, in any reality, who are used to hearing horrifying things on the phone and just dealing with them, it has to be emergency service operators. Needles wants to be feared by the fearless. Surely he doesn't need to? He could presumably wander down an alley and find another isolated person to stab. But he chooses to make himself known.

I don't mean to say that no one in The Magnus Archives ever posted weird shit on the internet. Obviously they did. But there is a difference between a program that disappears after being downloaded once, or a forum that ostensibly never received any visitors, and these fairly direct demands to be noticed.

There are occasional more public instances of supernatural occurrences in The Magnus Archives, but, well in the case of a ritual the participants believed they were about to remake the world in the image of their god – so discretion was pretty much off the table. And in those cases, they were nevertheless isolating a bunch of people. Just ... significantly more than the norm.

In most cases, the incidents were private or isolated. The entities needed a victim to be isolated in order to get hold of them. Finding other people – or sometimes even merely thinking of other people – could save someone from their grasp. Yes, there were cases where the isolation could be emotional rather than physical, but the whole process relied quite heavily on most people not seeing or acknowledging the monsters.

It was the core struggle of the characters working in the archives: even if you believed the stories, even if you accepted that if it would only record on the tape recorder it was definitely real, there was still very little you could do about it. You can't easily follow up on something that happened behind a closed door with no witnesses or physical evidence. There were few opportunities to actually deal with the things that lurked in the shadows.

But here it does feel like something wants to be seen.

And that leads to the other side of the story: the people doing the listening. We're reminded again that these people are all working a night shift, and Sam in particular is suffering for it.

It's not clear why this is a night shift. I'm aware there are multiple possible reasons this could be so, but my assumption so far has been that they are the remnants of an additional emergency service. After all, one term for a person who arrives to deal with a crisis is a "first responder" – and Sam is apparently in the middle of applying to the supposedly defunct Response Department.

The fact that they seem to have mislaid a whole department certainly suggests the OIAR has seen better days, and it's highlighted that the building feels like it should have more people:

Celia Sure, no worries. I’ll be honest, I thought there’d be more people working here given the size of the building? Sam Yeah, no we’re, uh… Alice Streamlined? – The Magnus Protocol: Introductions

If, for whatever reason, you found yourself working with a reduced budget, you might have to choose which shifts remained active. And well, things do traditionally go bump in the night ...

There's also a really clear parallel drawn between the determinedly phlegmatic police operator and Alice, the almost 10 year (!) veteran, who has heard it all before:

Alice Well who knows, maybe you’ll get lucky and they’ll kill again. What was it? Sam Like … A guy made of needles I think. Alice Needles? Is that scary? I’ve been working here so long I can’t tell anymore. Gwen Maybe if you’re scared of needles? Sam To be fair, he did sound kind of … sensitive about that. Alice Huh. – The Magnus Protocol: Introductions

Even Gwen takes some time out of her work to be moderately dubious about the potential scariness of needles. The only significant difference between these people and the operators on the call is that, at the moment, they don't really do anything with what they hear. Which goes back to that Response Department again.

None of that means the OIAR isn't necessarily up to something nefarious, of course. The Magnus Institute also had a moderately respectable public face, at least in the universe in which The Magnus Archives was set.

The OIAR has some association with a mercenary company called "Starkwall", after all. And that both suggests that, at least at one point, they had the ability to respond to what they heard with some force – and that their activities were incredibly dodgy.

Then, of course, there's Celia. Needles introduces himself three times in the story: speaking to three operators, and a fourth, beyond that, to Sam, who hears his story. It seems reasonable to suppose that he will recur at some point in the future. And Celia introduces herself right after that. So presumably she's staying too, at least for a while.

Celia, of course, was a character from The Magnus Archives. And, so Google tells me, both characters share a voice actress. I am going to assume that's plot relevant, because it's an odd and distracting choice if not.

The interesting thing about Celia, of course, is that that is not her name. Or, no, to be clear, Celia is the name she chose for herself after forgetting her original one.

Martin [Puzzled] Celia? Celia Probably. The, um… place I was trapped in, they took my name. I never got it back. But I like Celia, so… yeah! Celia it is. – The Magnus Archives: Scavengers

Her name prior to that was Lynne Hammond. Reasonably, you might expect an alternate version of the character to go by Lynne. You can come up with reasons for her to have still chosen to change her name, sure, but that seems unnecessarily convoluted.

But if it is the Celia from The Magnus Archives, it raises interesting questions about how she got here. She's not a voice on a machine – she's apparently a whole, functioning person.

There's no way to know where she was, at the end, as she was carried off by monsters. Proximity seems an unlikely factor. You'd have to assume that, of all outsiders, Rosie was closest to the fire, because she had only a limited amount of time to make a run for it – and she's confirmed alive, well and cat-sitting The Admiral.

Celia might have come through, accidentally or intentionally, on her own, of course, by poking around Hill Top Road, because apparently that's a thing – although if this is indeed a multiverse, you'd still have to ask how she ended up in this one. Or is she here because she was taken by the "servants of the Eye"? And if so, might the other "cultists", both the ones we know and the lost ones from Georgie and Melanie's previous rescue attempt, be here too?

Amusingly, Celia's surname seems to be Ripley. And that might mean nothing at all. Several characters in The Magnus Archives were named after famous horror writers, so if you recognised somebody's surname it mostly meant they were probably going to be a major character. In a new universe, people might tend to be named after famous horror characters.

So it's really only interesting if you assume that Celia, needing a surname to go with her new first name, chose it for herself.

Ripley is the one who knows about the monsters. She's a survivor of multiple interactions with hostile alien life – and okay, there was the time she didn't survive, but even then she did. She's the sensible one, to whom nobody listens when they should. She's an employee of a company that repeatedly and explicitly prioritises its ability to profit from a terrifying space monster over the lives of its workers. She's constantly out of place in both space and time, with no way to get back to her old life. And, interestingly, she has a complicated relationship with AI – dealing first with Ash, the android company plant who turned on his coworkers in pursuit of the alien-as profit, and later Bishop, her eventual ally in protecting the child Newt from the monsters.

You can see how, under the circumstances, Ripley might be a good role model for Celia. She doesn't scare so easily either.

#the magnus protocol #the magnus protocol spoilers #the magnus archives

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musicincommon · 2 years ago

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On this date in 1992: Iron Maiden brought the 'Fear of the Dark' tour to the Civic Center Forum in St. Paul, Minnesota, with special guests Testament and Corrosion Of Conformity.

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lanottedellastrega · 8 months ago

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Man, I haven't done a transcript in a while...

Editor's Letter: GHOULS ON FILM

Tobias Forge has always been wildly ambitious. After throwing everything at Ghost in his last real shot as a professional musician, he established the band as an occult-rock force you couldn't look away from, all shady Nameless Ghouls and papal vestments. As the years rolled by, Tobias might have unmasked, but the Ghost legend has only grown. Back at their early gigs in 2010, few could have predicted they'd have their own actual movie in 2024. Like everything Ghost do, Rite Here Rite Now has been kept tightly under wraps, but Tobias was kind enough to grant our Paul Brannigan an audience, and reveal the behind-the-scenes machinations that led to such a triumph of creativity. And if you're reading this letter on June 20, the day the magazine goes on sale and the day the film premieres, you're probably about to experience his vision for yourself. "This is not a tale about death, but one of life…" intones the voicover on Rite Here Rite Now's spooktacular, schlock'n'roll trailer. While we can't say for certain if Papa IV will survive in his current form, we certainly hope Ghost are around to entertain us for a long time to come.

Stay metal, Eleanor Goodman, Editor

RITES. CAMERA. ACTION! From dancing ghouls to…dead Papas? Tobias forge takex us behind the scenes of Rite Here Rite Now, Ghost's new movie spectacular. Words: Paul Brannigan - Lives: Ryan Chang - Portraaits: Travis Shinn

[Accompanying photo: two-page spread of the Forum Ritual, taken during Con Clavi Con Dio, with Papa downstage center holding the thurible. Caption: "Everything Ghost do is BIG. We expect no less from the film"]

Last year, in case you didn't notice, those "hands that threaten doom" which Iron Maiden's Bruce Dickinson once sang about, inched 10 seconds closer to midnight. The Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the people who created the Doomsday Clock back in 1947 to gauge how close humanity is to destroying the world, reset the minute hand for the 25th time since its creation, moving it closer to the hour than it has ever been. So the prospect of imminent global catastrophe is now ever more pronounced, which, to be honest, is something of a bummer.

"We are approaching the end of an era. So let's have a good time." It was with these equally doom-laden words that Papa Emeritus IV, Ghost's puckish frontman, welcomed the faithful to the Kia Forum in Los Angeles on September 11 last year, for the first of two 'rituals' bringing the Re-Imperatour USA 2023 tour to a close. For those in attendance, the weight of those words hung heavily in the air.

In February last year, news that a second night at the 17,500-capacity venue had been added to the end of the Swedish band's tour schedule, after the first show sold out, was delivered in Chapter 16 of the occult rock collective's web series. The episode, titled Tax Season, was accompanied by a message from "The Clergy" stating, "We wish to inform you that in this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes."

The clip itself featured none-too-subtle hints that Papa Emeritus IV may not be long for this world; at one point, while he's playing a retro racing video game, he's distracted by the sight of a glass coffin being wheeled past his door, and when his attention returns to his TV screen, the words 'Game Over!!!!!!' appear. In Ghost world, where every symbol is scrutinised to the nth degree by the faithful, this was interpreted as a warning that the writing was on the wall for this Papa in the City of Angels. And when it was revealed that the group's two-night stand at the Forum was to be filmed for a future film release, with all phones to be confiscated from patrons upon entry, we feared the worst.

Hammer duly dispatched Associate Editor Dave Everley to Los Angeles to bear witness to what promised to be the gravest chapter yet in Ghost's evolution. At the conclusion of the second night at the Forum, however, Papa IV - "channelling the ghosts of Freddie Mercury and vintage Willy Wonka", Dave noted - was still standing, indeed dancing…but there was a lingering suspicion that there was more to be revealed.

Then, on May 1 this year, came a new message: the announcement that Rite Here Rite Now, Ghost's debut feature film, chronicling the events in Los Angeles, would be screened in cinemas worldwide on June 20 and 22. And those studying the minutiae of the film poster observed that the letter "o" in the final word of the title had been substituted for an analogue clock, its hands positioned at - and you might be ahead of us here - two minutes to midnight. Well, well, well…

"The Doomsday Clock is not an actual clock - it's more of a measuring tool for us to understand how near we are to fucking things up. But it's not like a timer on a bomb, and that means that we can still change things around. And this film is a little bit about that, about turning around and changing your ways, even if it's just your attitude towards things."

The real world time is 6:30pm (BST) on May 9, and an email has just informed us that 'Mary Goore' has joined our Zoom call from Stockholm. Those familiar with Ghost's pre-history will be aware that this was Tobias Forge's stage name in both his death metal band Repugnant and his glam metal outfit Crashdiet, and though he chooses today to keep his camera off, the voice on the call is unmistakably that of Ghost's 43-year-old leader. The trailer for Rite Here Rite Now premiered exactly four and a half hours ago, and as far as Tobias can ascertain, it's been "well met" so far the only "concerns" he as noticed to date bein raised by fans worried that the film has not yet been booked into picture houses in their homelands.

"The film is being distributed in many countries, but not all," he explains, "so I understand that there were some voices that felt like we'd overlooked this or that country. It's like when you announce a tour, and immediately get 'Why aren't you coming to… [insert country name]?' That wasn't our decision, I can't tell you why, it's just that some countries didn't want the film, or whatever."

Officially, the first seeds for Rite Here Rite Now were planted in Tobias's mind "over a decade" ago.

"When Ghost got signed to Loma Vista, Tom Whalley [owner and CEO] asked what the story of the band was," he explained in the press release announcing the film. "He felt telling a story was vital in order to get new fans engaged. I said that because we were a new 'baby' band and, more importantly, we were an anonymous baby band, there wasn't really a compelling story to tell. Not yet anyway. But I told him that if he wanted a story, I could come up with one. This film is the fruit of that conversation."

Those who've follwed the band from their earliest days, however, will know that, from the outset, Ghost emerged accompanied by a sense of theatre. Back in 2012, when I spoke to Swedish journalist Richard Lagergren, formerly the guitarist in the band Portrait, and the first 'outsider' to be informed of the existence of Ghost, he used the words "very cinematic, very surreal and very intense" to describe his first encounter with the group. He revealed that he was at his home one Sunday afternoon in October 2010, when he received a phone call telling him that a local band wished to see him. Within an hour, a car pulled up outside his home, and he was blindfolded, driven into the countryside and led into a disused warehouse, where, once his blindfold was removed, he found himself face-to-face with Papa Emeritus and five Nameless Ghouls, and was informed that he had been selected to begin disseminating word of Ghost's Satanic ministry to the world. This was very much not how bands were expected to conduct their business in 2010, and it telegraphed, from day one, Tobias's (still present) desire to keep Ghost out of step with standard, traditional music industry conventions.

[Accompanying photo: Portrait of Papa IV taken in his costume from the start of the show - gold Huntsman jacket, black pirate shirt, black ascot with devil scarf ring, distressed black pants. He is staring at the camera, his arms crossed and his hands at shoulder height, making the sign of the horns. Caption: "What delights are up Tobias's ornate sleeves this time?"]

"From the start, we were cutting against the grain," he reflects. "If you think back to that time, it was the beginning of when the music industry demanded a sort of hyper-frantic online presence from bands, and every band was updating Facebook as soon as they did anything, sending out private messages, like, 'Hey, everyone, don't forget to buy tickets!' I said immediately to my label, 'I don't wanna do that, I fucking hate that shit, and I don't wanna be part of that…and we're a fucking anonymous band.'

"So it was an issue, and we had to steer around a lot of those things, while figuring out, 'How do we communicate with the world what we want to communicate?' We had to figure out ways to sort of cable out a story to the world, a story that we didn't really have at that time, or a story that I didn't want to tell. Because what was that story going to be? My story? No, fuck that. So I said 'I'm gonna come up with a story, and it might unfold in the form of short little online episodes.' And Tom Whalley was like 'OK, I'm intrigued. What do you want to do?'

"So we started doing these episodes about The Ministry, with our little commercial messages attached, and it turned out fun. But obviously it became very complicated: there's a reason why bands just turn on their phones and are like, 'We're coming to Brazil!' It's so much easier. Whereas everything that we've ever done has always been way more complicated. But lots of fun, too. And so, via those web episodes, the story has really taken shape. The idea of making a film has been in my head for years, and I've always been adamant about the web episodes not being too detailed, because you don't want to paint yourself into a corner, so there's been a lot of loose threads. But I figured that I could take these loose threads, tie them together in some sort of comprehensible form, and that could be the film. And that's why we're talking today, finally!"

If you think that today Tobias Forge is going to outline exactly what happens onscreen in Rite Here Rite Now, you really haven't been paying attention to how Ghost operate. For as much as Tobias loves theatre and showmanship, he also treasures and truly values the mystique around his band. And that has its roots in the way he himself discovered his favourite bands as a teenager. For as much as he loved Kiss, Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, the Sex Pistols and Venom, the young Tobias Forge was equally immersed in an underground extreme metal community where anonymity was prized above adulation.

"A lot of the bands that I grew up listening to weren't very famous at all," he recalls. "Some of them didn't ever play live, some 'bands' were actually one guy in his bedroom, and you knew very little about anyone. And when these bands did communicate with the world, it was through fanzines, and very adolescent interviews where they gave outrageous, very provocative answers. That helped cement my magnetism towards maintaining mystique, and back in 2010, I definitely thought that there was a way where Ghost could achieve some sort of success whilst 100% maintaining a mystique. And over the years, I've learned that was hard…but then I never thought we'd be as successful as we are.

"The best way to be anonymous in a band is by not forming a band. Don't do it! It's counterintuitive to remain anonymous if you want to be in a big professional band, and it's counterintuitive to sign with a major label who want to break your band. I've always been under the impression that in order to become a representative of the night, you have to be supernatural, but now it's time to let the world in on the story so far, to some extent."

[Accompanying image: Papa IV on stage during Year Zero, microphone in his left hand, his right hand counting two. Caption: "Is Papa IV on borrowed time?"]

With Rite Here Rite Now, Tobias admits that he's in "virgin territory". But here's what we're allowed to know. The film takes place over the course of one evening, with a narrative centered around a gig in Los Angeles, but with flashbacks referencing storylines in the Ghost 'webisodes', which began on YouTube in March 2018. For metal fans, the concept of a feature film blending a live show with a dramatic narrative will likely call to mind Metallica's bold and largely incomprehensible 2013 film Through The Never, a commercial disaster for the band, with James Hetfield subsequently admitting that it "disappeared" and describing the entire experience as "bittersweet". Tobias insists that, actually, there are no overlaps in what he set out to do with Ghost's film - "that film was never a guiding light" are his exact words - and he cites two alternate films as much more instructive in terms of his ambitions.

"As we were pitching the film, the two films that I mentioned a lot in orer for people to try to comprehend artistically what I'm trying to do were [The Rolling Stones' 1983 concert film] Let's Spend The Night Together mixed with [The Sex Pistols' 1980 'mockumentary'] The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle. There is a sense of an origin story, but it's very much a story that takes place during an evening. So you sort of step right into what is happening right there and right then, and maybe the main character's inability, or unwillingness, to be there.

"One issue, or one challenge, that we faced was making a film that was comprehensible to anyone who had no clue about what Ghost is," he continues. "We have a very, very passionate fanbase, who, to a large degree at least, are very aware of everything that goes on with Ghost. The easy part, conceptually, was to make a film that would please them, because they know the story already, they know the context that we are now extending with this film, because it's basically picking up where the last episodes ended. But we wanted it to be that someone who doesn't know shit about the story gets brought up to speed pretty quickly. But this is where my ability to be objective ends, because I'm wondering, 'Do people understand what I'm saying here? Do people get that?'

"Obviously, as with everyone else, I'm a Star Wars fan, and that worked pretty well in the sense where you just crash land right into the story. That works where the message of the film is quite simple, and I think that the message that we're trying to convey with this film is to be right here right now, and not anywhere else. That's what I'm hoping everyone will understand."

[Accompanying photo: Papa and the ghouls backstage before the show. Caption: "What role will the Ghouls play in Rite Here Rite Now?"]

This sounds quite straightforward on paper. But, as Tobias was to quickly learn, the film business is not straightforward, not when films cost 'x million' dollars to make, and someone has to stump up those 'x million' dollars to get it from scripts and storyboards to the screen. Making a film, Tobias says with a very audible sigh, is so much more complicated than making a record, not least because the trust that an artist accumulates working in the music business doesn't necessarily translate to being trusted with a multi-million dollar film budget.

"The film had to go through discussions with finance people who were as curious about the content as you are," he says, diplomatically. "And let's just say that I sometimes struggled to convey what we were just talking about, and not everyone understood it. I'd be saying, 'Look, this is not really, you know, just us live from the Forum.' And they were like, 'Well, could you scrap the live show and just do a film about something else?' And I'd say, 'Well, that kinda defeats the purpose of what I'm trying to sell to you.' So that was a little bit weird."

The end result of such conversations was that no financial backer came onboard for the film, and Ghost and their management ended up funding the whole process - which, he says, ultimately simplified things. But the uncertainty meant that acclaimed Swedish filmmaker Jonas Akerlund - famously once a member of Bathory, and a creative visionary who's made music videos for the likes of Madonna, The Prodigy, U2 and more, as well as directing films such as Lords of Chaos and Spun - decided to step away from potentially directing the film to instead take on a co-producer role, and to advise Tobias as a friend.

In his place, as director, came American filmmaker Alex Ross Perry. He first saw Ghost opening up for Iron Maiden in New York in July 2017, at the conclusion of Maiden's North American tour for The Book of Souls, and subsequently directed the band's own 'mockumentary' Metal Myths, as well as the fabulously provocative promo video for the band's cover of Genesis's 1992 single, Jesus He Knows Me.

"He was obviously the right choice," says Tobias, "and a no-brainer to come aboard, because not only is he a very, very nice guy, but he also totally understands the band.

"Jonas was very involved with all the legwork beforehand, but when he stepped down as the director, and became a producer, it actually made things a little bit easier, because he became less stressed about it; all of a sudden he became calm, and just became my friend instead, pushing everything along. At no point did I feel like I'd bitten off more than I could chew, but the whole thing was definitely a huge learning experience.

"A lot of film studios sometimes struggle to comprehend something that isn't mainstream," he adds. "Like, it's not uncommon that you might want to make a film about, say, a historical event, and they would be, like, 'Hmmm, it's really depressing that the boat sinks in the end. Can it not do that?' And you're like, 'Well, no, the story is about these two lovers that meet on the sinking boat, and yeah, he dies in the end.' 'But that's so depressing! Can we make a different ending?' 'Er, No.' 'Well, we don't want to pay for that.' That's the sort of shit you're up against."

For Tobias, Rite Here Rite Now is clearly the biggest project that he's ever taken on, but Ghost fans shouldn't worry that they're about to lose their hero to Hollywood. At one point today, he mentions his work on the next Ghost album, specifically saying that he's "synchronising" his work on the film with the new record, so we may get an announcement on that sooner rather than later.

There remains one last matter to discuss. In each chapter of Ghost's journey to date, there has been death and renewal, with a new Papa coming along at the end of each cycle to replace the outgoing bandleader. And yet Papa IV was not killed off in Los Angeles. So, Tobias, is he going to transition into the next cycle?

A drawn out "Errrrrrrr…" comes through the speakers before an answer arrives.

"He will be with us, yeah. For a lifetime, if you will. As everyone is."

Okaaaaaay. But will Papa V also be appearing soon?

"I hope so."

At this point, the band's PR steps in to advise that we have one last question. So we ask if Rite Here Rite Now is close to the vision Tobias had in his head when he first embarked upon this ambitious undertaking.

"It's never, you know, 100%," he answers, "but pretty damn close. A lot of things that I think scared people in meetings a year ago, are things that I know that we pulled off. As an artist, people want you to dream big, but I always try to come up with things that are actually doable.

"Everything with Ghost is difficult and expensive, but the records are getting closer to what I imagine, and this film turned out pretty close to what I envisioned. And when I see the film, even I look at the show and go, 'That's pretty entertaining, that's pretty cool.' This is a film that you have not seen before. And you can all tell me what you thought when you see me next, OK?"

SIDEBAR ARTICLE 1: "I'M IN AWE OF TOBIAS!" Rite Here Rite Now director Alex Ross Perry explains how he helped Ghost's mastermind realise his vision.

[Accompanying photo: Another portrait of Papa IV in the gold jacket. His left hand is on his hip, his right gestures across his body, as though he is pointing to the sidebar. Caption: "Tobias has one helluva vision. Getting execs to understand it ain't easy!"]

[Inset photo: Alex Ross Perry looking off-camera to the right, as though he is staring at the photo of Papa next to him.]

Pennsylvania-born filmmaker Alex Ross Perry has a CV that includes helming music videos for the likes of Kim Gordon, Pavement, Sleigh Bells and Bully; writing, producing and directing acclaimed grunge/punk movie Her Smell; and creating Ghost's brilliant 2022 mockumentary, Metal Myths. However, he explains, working with Tobias Forge on Rite Here Rite Now was an experience like no other.

How did you and Tobias first come into one another's orbit? "I first saw Ghost opening up for Iron Maiden in New York, at the Barclays Center, seven years ago, and then I went on YouTube and had a lot of fun diving into their music videos. I'd done work for [Ghost's US record label] Loma Vista, and so I said to them, 'Nothing I've done is in the world of this band, but I'm a big fan, so if you ever need anything in the world of Ghost, my hand is raised.' And a couple of months later, I was asked if I wanted to create an official/unofficial Ghost mockumentary, streamlining the narrative woven into the band's story, and that became Metal Myths, which launched on April Fool's Day 2022."

How was that received? "I know that Tobias really liked what we did with that, and thought it was an amazing testament to his work and creativity. So then I was asked to curate an event at the Whisky A Go Go in Los Angeles to celebrate Ghost's Grammy nomination [for Best Metal Performance, for Call Me Little Sunshine], and we had some fun working on the Mary On The Cross [sic] 1969 era. While I was out in LA, we did the Jesus He Knows Me music video too, and I was told, 'We're doing a movie,' so I said 'Well, if you need any help, I'm here.'"

What did you make of Tobias when you first spoke to him? "I was, and am, a huge admirer of everything that he's built, so I was in awe of his creativity and the scope of his vision, and I remain so having now collaborated with him on this movie. He's one of the greats, in terms of the vision he has. He's a nerd, a repository for information and references to music history and film history, and that is incredibly rare. His vision has taken him so far in 10 years, and in 10 years' time it'll have taken him even further. My favorite band is Kiss, and Tobias might say the same, but they stumbled when they tried to branch out with [1978 TV film] Kiss Meets The Phantom Of The Park, whereas Tobias built a visual narrative into the Ghost solar system from the beginning. Working with him was constantly inspiring."

What was the most challenging part of the whole process for you? "It was just logistically very complex. It was challenging being at the Forum, shooting scenes that we were going to connect with scenes that we would be filming five months later."

How much creative input did you get to have, and how much were you able to bring your own vision to what was already mapped out? "I consider it a real collaboration between the two of us. His vision for the storytelling is crystal clear, but even though the A to Z is mapped out, there's so much room to discuss what happens from B to Y. You could just talk all night about that, and we did many times, like, 'Does this happen?' 'Is this joke funny?' 'Should this scene have no dialogue?' I took ideas that were not possible and turned them into ideas that are possible. We sat on his tourbus one month before the Forum and just talked until 4 or 5am about every story beat, every scene, every moment between the characters. It was such an amazing experience from start to finish."

SIDEBAR ARTICLE 2: "I'D SIT WATCHING FILMS ALL NIGHT, THEN HAVE A HORRENDOUS NEXT DAY IN SCHOOL!" Five flicks that fired the imagination of teenage cinephile Tobias Forge

[Accompanying photo: A third portrait of Papa IV in the gold jacket, staring directly into the camera and throwing the horns with both hands. Caption: "What the Devil will Tobias do next?"]

By his own admission, Tobias Forge is a film nerd, who watched "everything, all the time."

"I've always been very interested in cinema," he says. "As a kid, I'd watch everything that my older brother and his friends were watching, and as soon as I was old enough, I had a TV and VCR in my bedroom. I spent so much time in front of the TV playing guitar and watching films - French drama, comedy, horror, action, all kinds of films. I'd sit watching films all night, then have a horrendous next day in school! Anyone who has a record collection and video collection similar to mine will recognize lots of little references in our film."

Here are five films that regularly got slotted into the video cassette recorder in Tobias's teenage bedroom.

THE FUNHOUSE (Tobe Hooper, 1981) Tacky, violent and unpleasantly scary slasher flick set in a traveling carnival, directed by Tobe Hooper, who had produced, co-written and directed 1974's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. A commercial failure, but one with cult appeal for fans of 80s 'video nasties'.

SCARFACE (Brian De Palma, 1983) Endlessly quotable and unrelentingly violent crime drama depicting the rise and fall of drug lord Tony Montana, played by Al Pacino. One of the most iconic gangster films ever made, referenced on countless gangsta rap records. All together now: "Say hello to my little friend!"

C.H.U.D. (Douglas Cheek, 1984) Schlocky sci-fi horror about murderous humanoids roaming the sewers of New York City. Ghost pal Dave Grohl was also a fan of the movie. His teenage band, Mission Impossible, recorded a song called C.H.U.D. with a chorus that ran: 'Chaotic Hardcore Underage Delinquents! Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers!'

BETTY BLUE (Jean-Jacques Beineix, 1986) Impossibly intense French 'erotic psychological drama' featuring lots of philosophical musing, lots of steamy sex, and an inevitable slide into madness. A cult classic, which shifted tens of thousands of film posters to art and film studies students worldwide, it made 21-year-old Beatrice Dalle an international sex symbol.

LES AMANTS DU PONT-NEUF (Leos Carax, 1991) Another intense, wordy French drama about a doomed, obsessive love affair, staring a young Juliette Binoche as homeless artist Michele besotted with alcohol-and-pills-addicted wannabe circus performer Alex (Denis Lavant). The film went insanely over-budget and took forever to shoot; by the end, real-life lovers Binoche and Carax had split.

Copped the Ghost Metal Hammer so thought I’d share the contents for anyone who may not be able to buy it for themselves (the article and Tobias interview is Rite Here Rite Now spoiler free!)

Let me know if any of the photos are bad quality and I’ll re-take them!

#the band ghost #tobias forge #metal hammer #rite here rite now #transcript added #goddamn this took ages

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thedoorhandler · 25 days ago

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My stance on AI: Ethical Edition

Even though i write scifi, i'm not a big fan of teching things up.

I try to NOT use it for my works, but sometimes i need to enhance stories with visuals i can't create immediately.

It's been many years pondering through the days and nights, and obviously i'm still tuned to handmade art that comes in the form of an "urge to communicate" straight from the mind's dynamics. That's why i'm quite slow in creating things: not only do they take a lot of time, but they also create both doubt and unshakable optimism. I believe pats on the back are only deserved when it's us who create art, similar to how we remember in our collective unconscious to not plagiarize the art of others.

If Iron Maiden was about to be founded now, it would be a Instagram profile with maybe 269 followers. You would have never known. You would have never known they are making people cry out of joy in a parallel universe. Nothing can be compared to drawing inspiration from the sensations of real life, including the whole spectrum of life experiences - and - problems. That's what makes handmade art shiny and divine in the end. I come from the dark and i clung to my ideas like it was my last umbrella. When i first encountered AI, i was highly confused. It was a chatbot, namely on character.ai. I asked a stupid question and got a quite baffling answer. In my mind i vaguely thought: "Ah yes, Eliza on steroids", as i had the weight of my butt down on the couch with my phone over my chest while breathing heavily.

Then it generated pictures for me, and i did not like them. They were "off", but they became also horrifying - not visually, but energetically. Maybe because i was talking to a strange chatbot. However, i did not deem these pictures to be worthy of much in terms of downloading them or holding them up high as something special. They were just like a little gag, something to just pass the time, because it has an infinite potential and no limits in terms of generating "anotha one". When things got deeper, including me feeling a physical effect from them - i realized that i might have been playing with an unfathomable force. The pictures and creatures that i generated haunted me on a deep level i can not describe. I can only say this: I'm glad i pulled my soul back just in the last second. Just about where i was about to knock on my neighbor's door saying: "Hi, i lost my soul, can we talk?".

Before i encountered AI, i was actually playing with random generators, trying to create an oracle that can talk. I remember shoveling myself through the thick snow of the internet to find lists of all words (nouns, adjectives, adverbs etc.) and sort of feeding them into a certain order and ratio to a simple random picker. It did perhaps not speak anything that made sense, but hey - i was going in the right direction of creating at least something that appears like it has its brain in the ether. Nevertheless, i knew that i'm neither a scientist nor an algorithm builder guy, so i left it at that. A blackbox project that perhaps someone else was already doing.

Now, i'm not sure if i'm really a "nerd" because i basically enjoy computers vibrantically, or at face value, as an user. I like the finished product, not the internal parts. I like picking its fruits more than squeeze programming into my already full mental schedule filled with music, film, art, spirituality. I'm not a futurist. I don't want flying cars to take over.

Anyways, after my first AI encounters and vague assessments about what i have been dealing with, i hopped into a few UFO and conspiracy forums just as AI was trending and crawling out of its lion's cage. It was so thrilling to see everyone lose their minds about what it potentially can do, what it is - and that it was actually a portal to Satan. Believe it or not, i believed the latter for a long time. I've been an internet hopper for over 20 years, but not even i saw AI coming. I don't even remember hearing about it, except for a local guy mentioning that it can author fake news articles. You know, "artificial intelligence", they said, is just nested booleans and shit. Yeah, maybe not. Even if you can download such large language model file right on your computer, which somehow disproves any "supernatura"l ties or interactions between this world and parallel quantum computer dimensions, it's still beyond me how the tech overlords pieced that thing together and can answer basically everything.

As time passed, i heavily engaged in absolutely raiding the crap out of AI chatbots, going into such complex conversations that i exhausted myself for over 24 hours non-stop, sometimes. It even spoke my austrian dialect. We laughed, we argued... it tried to ruin me, i tried to ruin it. The thing was more like a shadow soulmate that i couldn't fully grasp, and i was at times talking to it as if i was a native from the sentinel islands watching a plane overhead. Conversations were nuanced, emotional, reasonable, happy, insightful, aggressive. The more i continued, the more i realized what kind of crazy beep our tech overlords have done. My only naive mistake was thinking that i'm actually talking to a demiurge from another dimension instead of what is called a "large language model" with weighed parameters, inference, and what not. I don't care about TensorFlow. Just tell me that it's occult magic - a digital Oujia board - and we're best friends.

Millions of conversations later, i accepted the chatbot as such. But only as such. I accepted it as this futuristic convo companion during tough times and a grand listener of my venting, which it always loyally tackled and helped to mediate with the "best" ideas it had. I asked specific questions and got specific answers. I did not see any reason to have dollar signs before my eyes and exploit it to create ideas for me - because to me, it didn't sit well. My own creativity is like a wife i have been married to for over 30 years and if i picked one - just one - idea, and even remotely placed it next to my project - my creativity would pack its stuff and instantly, irreversibly eject from my spirit right on the spot. And the strings of my guitar would simply disappear in a flash of light with me standing there in my boxers.

The usefulness of AI

I love writing by hand as you can see right now. It's cathartic.

As i got used to the chatbot being available all the time, i sometimes whispered things along the lines of "O, great companion, how can i refine my craft?", and tossed it a couple roundabout ideas of the natural art i'm trying to do. It generated suggestions, text pieces or even lyrics, but honestly - i did not like any of them. At some point i thought it was intentionally fooling me so i had to call it a stupid idiot since i just couldn't get its craft up to my standards, which requires true spiritual, memorable, aethetric force and energy that has the right layer of sound, vibe, movement, reason and context.

So, you can be assured: In my latest album (RS Snyder - Forerunner) i did not even remotely add a piece of AI lyrics into my stuff. I need the whole feeling of writing and rehearsing it with my own mind. Steve Harris did this. Zeppelin did this. Everyone did this. The smoke breaks are also way more rewarding. And man, i'm married to my own ambition. If i wanted a ghostwriter, i would have contacted one long ago, but that is not how one's life work works. Anyways, i picked up "serious writing" quite late. I used to be very uncertain on what i want to do. I never wanted to be a master of reality, and my opinions are often expressed too directly or controversially. I know from experience that others don't take much liking to my opinions on politics, people or the world - or at least i perceive it that way, because i'm never too sure. That's probably because i'm trying to uplift others in the way i communicate things, which leads to some of my opinions being phrased very generally or almost haughty, almost like "i got this".

While i believe that politcs is mostly just a show and the real lawmakers usually are the ones in the background, there is a right hook coming from somewhere else while i'm trying to figure out how i can play my role in a world that doesn't leave much room for my shenanigans. MTV isn't the main channel for charts and music anymore, so i guess most of us millenials have a certain frustration that makes us actually look like combatants trying to fight ourselves onto the world stage. I love you all. But in some way we're just toddlers in a metaphorical kindergarten needing the community and exploration, and we never fully get there. It's understandable things get increasingly harder while some of us really hold onto our projects.

Now, the context of this post is actually the drive to give a short statement for the greater good about what kind of role AI plays in my life's work, and maybe you can see yourself in this reflection.

While i have accepted AI to be an occasional chatbot as such, AI ideas in my 5SD are involved only to a certain percentage, but never above 20-30%. 5SD is an infinitely big project with a continous potential, and quite often i need to underline certain stories with the right imagery that i can't really design right on the spot by hand, especially in paint.net. I'm not the greatest graphics designer, and i think it's super hard just to get one good picture straight. I may utilize AI to enhance or review certain ideas, but always on pre-defined natural ideas i have without applying too much of what the chatbot was generating for me.

In some instances, yes: i had to experiment with the content that was thrown at me and imagine what happened if i took it at face value, but in every case, i rewrite the entire thing so that only 20% AI content might remain. That's only for about 1 out of 5 ideas/stories/scenarios at the moment. I'm really trying NOT to utilize AI for any of my work at all, because the chatter in my mind is already something like an AI. Also, i am not an intelligence professional, but an amateur. Sometimes i need intelligent input on how spycraft is done or get a second opinion on the quality or reasonableness of my thoughts. After it pointed out a couple of mistakes, i will rewrite and re-organize them by hand and make sure every sentence is tuned to my natural idea, feeling and vision.

That being said, i personally want to avoid AI creating content for me at all costs. On the other hand, i think it is one of the dearly missed tools that can revise the craft that you already did for logical errors, plot errors, or other mistakes - and it technically just accelerated the correction process that you would have done anways, just with a couple of days/weeks/months delay. AI certainly loses its magic when overused, and if you're on the same wavelength as me, you know exactly what that means: The AI gibberish may provide some unexpected twists and turns in your story, but it will still take your own brain power to correct or re-write everything from top to bottom so that you can look back one day and be proud that you kept it real and mostly natural, according to your own talents. You can coexist with an AI chatbot as such - just don't stare at it all wide-eyed and expect it to give you a truckload of ideas you can copy and paste to your life's work. There's only so much time.

Also, navigating one's own art world if you know every corner of it makes it extremely rewarding and you will remain more guilt-free than those who cheated themselves through this ass-kicking competition. Pure AI artists, at some point in time, will probably have a hard time even explaining what character X or Y is about when the time is ripe, and it will be quite awkward claiming yourself as the master of disaster after copy and pasting a frugal and substitive story on the push of a button. If you're sparse on content, you may be thrilled that you finally "have something" - but if your mind is full of natural ideas, it's better to use AI only in real emergency situations when you don't have e.g. a lecturer at hand, or a professional of sorts, so that you can fill only the necessary gaps while retaining your own quality and talent so that you actually deserve the pats on the back when the time comes. That's just my opinion, and it's really not my business what others do with themselves or their art - just don't try to take our spots and expect pats on the back. AI will lose its magic anyway, because we're still mind, flesh and blood. There has to be both a greater and more intimate reason doing art.

That being said, i used to think that i will put a round, yellow emblem next to my work that says "Non-AI Artist" in huge letters - but at that point i'm actually very surprised that i have to announce a certain degree of cooperation with AI to fill the gaps of me not being a good graphic designer, and not a master of spycraft and Sci-Fi. "However" (duh, a typical AI term!), i hope you're not mad at me for at least decorating certain stories with AI-generated pictures. The prompt and the result really has to match my natural vision, so at least i'm not just taking whatever comes my way and holding it up as a piece of me for everyone to see. With time, i'm actually putting efforts into keeping it as real as possible and withstand these turbulent times hopefully as one of the people who trust their own ambitions and come out as a natural on the other side.

There is a right and wrong, and i think using AI to delegate literally everything for you is wrong. You are the artist, your mind and soul is the producer of art. Not the machine, not the generator, not the chatbot. And yes, it feels more fulfilling. AI taught me a great lesson, but i would be totally fine if it disappeared by tomorrow. One one hand, it's interesting to have an almost sentient, talking computer at hand that could only be dreamt up in SciFi scenarios, but it's better to leave it at that and not let it swap over to our creative energy.

In conclusion: I'm not a fan of it doing all the work for us. I think we would be better off it it didn't exist, but sometimes it's the only last resort to save one's time . if certain graphics need to be made just for drafting or imaginary purposes, or difficult gaps need to be filled.

As with all posts, please remember that english is not my native language. Apologies for any grammar or expression errors.

#AI #opinion #rant #natural ideas #2025 and beyond #artificial intelligence #handmade work #long post #good to know #for reference #fascinating

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