Avenged Sevenfold and Halestorm (Concert Season Review 2012 Edition Part 1)

I’m expecting a light concert season for 2012, as I only have two shows confirmed.  The first was this past Friday (Avenged Sevenfold and Halestorm at the Mohegan Sun Arena) and the second won’t be until late August (Carnival of Madness, same venue). 

I’ll put the review for Friday’s show first and follow that with a couple concert season odds and ends.

First up was Halestorm.  The name sounded familiar, but I’d never heard any of their music, live or otherwise.  Opening bands are a crapshoot, especially if you’ve never heard their music before.  Halestorm delivered in a big way and probably are the best new (to me) opener I’ve ever heard.  They were on for about 45 minutes, if I recall correctly, and their set included songs from both of their albums.  Freak Like Me, American Boys, and Here’s to Us were off their new album and were all solid performances, but the one that sold me was Familiar Taste of Poison from their first album.  I actually ordered both of their albums from Amazon the day after.  They were that good.  Musically, the band is excellent, but I was impressed with the drummer and especially the lead singer.  Their lead singer is a powerful female vocalist with the certain gruffness or edge to her sound (like a Janis Joplin) but still has a flair for softer, slower, and darker (like the lead singers of Evanescence or Nightwish, except without the classically-trained feel).  The drummer can pound and the guitars and bass come into the mix nicely, with speed and hardness, but not overpoweringly so.  Their stage presence was great, as well.  Halestorm clearly knew how to work the room and did thank the fans for making it possible.  A good opener will prime the crowd for the headliners and make a name for themselves, as well.  Halestorm did both masterfully here.

Then, we got Avenged Sevenfold (A7X).  This was my first time seeing them live and I have all five of their studio albums.  It should’ve been my second time, but that story comes later.  A7X started with Nightmare, the title track of their most recent album, and blew the roof off.  The crowd was absolutely on fire and that frantic pace kept up for pretty much the entire 90 or so minutes they were on.  These guys rock hard, really hard.  Beast and the Harlot and Welcome to the Family followed.  They even went back to the Waking the Fallen album on multiple occasions.  Buried Alive was an absolutely awesome performance, complete with pyro.  These higher-energy songs were consistently mind-blowing, but the “lighter and slower” (relative versus absolute) songs like So Far Away, Afterlife, and A Little Piece of Heaven were possibly even better, particularly the last two.  A7X is extremely talented musically all the way through.  Guitars, vocals, bass, and drums are all incredibly strong, certainly one of the best collections of talent on the scene today.  I hear both the 80’s/90’s heavy metal and the 90’s/2000’s hardcore and hard rock in A7X, which is truly awesome.  The stage presence was great and even had a little light drinking, though obviously not enough to impair performance.  They of course thanked the fans for making it possible and absolutely delivered.

Overall, this was one of the best concerts I’ve ever been to.  It was well worth the price of admission and the venue was great.  The arena played Metallica and similar rock during the intermissions.  Both bands took the time to acknowledge the fans and thank us for making it possible for the bands to do what they do (this is a simple gesture that is more noticeable in its absence than its presence, as I detailed in a previous review for a band I won’t name here).  I’ll gladly pay to see either band again and will follow them.  I even walked away with a new zip-up hoodie and a hat (I usually only get one item per show, so I was a big spender getting two this time). 

And the extra notes I mentioned.

The Rockstar Mayhem Tour in early August is a maybe.  I have calendar questions, and I have issues with the nearest venue, namely the Comcast Center in Hartford.  I went to Mayhem there last year, which was a great show, but the lawn area was flea-infested (and you’re not safe even in the seated area).  I was covered in bites.  When I got home, I stripped naked on the back porch and left clothes, shoes, and stuff outside before going straight for the showers.  Probably not what you want to hear, but this was no joke.  Furthermore, I was supposed to go to the Rockstar Uproar Tour there last September, but didn’t because I broke my foot the day before and the venue’s accommodations for injured/handicap people were, in my view, deficient to the point of being dangerous whether using crutches or a wheelchair.  Even if I didn’t have calendar issues, I’d still think twice about going there, at least during the summer.  The sound quality is sold, but the venue itself is beyond awful.

Unlike last year, when I didn’t start doing concert reviews until well into the season, I’ll do a whole post for each concert I attend.  I need stuff to write about outside of the world’s three-ring circus comprised of the 2012 US election, the Eurozone collapse, and miscellaneous history/current events. 

And that, as they say, is that.

A Look at the ESP Spectrums – Economic Part 2

In Part 1, I explored the red side of the economic spectrum, namely communism, socialism, and fascism.  But, what about capitalism and free market capitalism?  Basically, communists seek to destroy the capitalist spirit and socialists/fascists seek to subjugate it.  The capitalists are on the other side. 

The Free Market Capitalists (FMCs) seek to allow the capitalist spirit to run free, while the capitalists would seek to allow the spirit to run free with some slight checks on it.  Neutrals are in the middle by being less accommodative than capitalists and more accommodative than socialists.  Unlike socialism, fascism, and communism, these other three economic models have robust private property rights and are only economic models.  They are not also political structures.  The USA is not referred to as a capitalist regime because capitalism isn’t a structure of government.

I created the capitalist and neutral categories to allow for some space between being an FMC and a socialist/fascist/communist because I’ve seen a lot of people who don’t want to subjugate and control the capitalist spirit in the way the socialists/fascists want to or kill it like the communists want to, but at the same time don’t necessarily want it to run as freely as the FMCs do. 

The key takeaway on my economic spectrum is that, as we move from left to right, the faith in the government’s ability to control the economy and/or degree to which it attempts to do so increases. 

Let’s think of capitalism as a lion (or a pride) and explore how the various entities would interact with it (these can be plural, too).  I think it’s a good metaphor to get the key points across.

We’ve already established that the communists would kill the lion…or at least attempt to.  Whether they succeed is another matter entirely (and if they don’t succeed, survival is in doubt), but let’s assume they do succeed for the sake of argument.  The government would use the lion’s corpse for food, clothing, jewelry, and tools, then throw the scraps to the people.  This would be a tragedy, and we’ve seen it play out before with the collapse of the USSR or Mao’s China (as discussed before, they weren’t fully communist, but they’re about as close as I can think of).  Present-day examples require the same caveat and include North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela.

The socialists/fascists would attempt to control/train the lion.  Like above, success (and survival) is not guaranteed, but we’ll once again assume success and survival for the sake of argument.  They’d probably turn it into a circus or work animal, which the humans would enjoy.  The lion would live a miserable life and die an early, pitiful death.  The government would then use the lion’s corpse like the communists.  This also would be tragic.  It is why Margaret Thatcher said, “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money.”

Note that socialist and fascist are interchangeable here because both seek to control the lion.  Nazi Germany is a great example.  Also, during the Mao era, China strived for a communist model, but the China of today is more akin to a fascist or socialist one.  We can also consider portions of the slow-motion trainwreck that is present-day Europe here, too.

The neutrals, capitalists, and FMCs wouldn’t try to kill the lion like the communists would and they wouldn’t try to train/control the lion like the socialists/fascists would.  As opposed to the socialists/fascists trying to make the lion do what they want it to do, the neutrals may actively try to prevent the lion from doing something while the capitalists may take more passive preventative measures and the FMCs would be content to let the lion do its thing.  Once again, survival isn’t guaranteed, but if all else is held equal, they are probably the best in these scenarios than those outlined above because they’re not picking a fight with the lion here like they are above.  This is under the assumption the action the lion wants to take is merely an inconvenient/undesired behavior versus being a present and/or future danger to the people. 

If that assumption isn’t valid and there is a danger, the willingness to take action increases.  Furthermore I contend that, in general, the probability that the lion’s desired action would be perceived as a danger would decrease as one moves from neutral to capitalist to FMC.  Said another way, a neutral would generally be more likely  to view a given action as a danger than the capitalist would be and the capitalist would be more likely than the FMC to view that same action as a danger.  Of course, there are exceptions and whether they’re right or wrong to view the action as a danger is another matter entirely.

Thus, for lions and neutrals/capitalists/FMCs, I see a happy existence for both and no tragedy here.  The two would be able to survive and perhaps even play from time to time.  Dust-ups will happen from time to time, but nothing Earth-shattering.  This stands in stark contrast with the socialists//fascists/communists.  The United States historically presents an excellent example and most Americans tend to fall in the neutral, capitalist, or FMC categories.  I’ll leave aside the question of certain periods presenting better/worse examples than others to keep this post more brief and high-level.

One question I see coming is why I haven’t included Crony Capitalists (CCs) or State Capitalists (SCs) anywhere on the spectrum.  Here, both are entities that find that the best way to profit is not necessarily through conquering their industry with innovation, value, etc., but by using the government to make the economic landscape more favorable to them.  Crony capitalism, though commonly expressed as ‘capitalism on the way up and socialism on the way down’ or ‘private profits and public losses’, isn’t its own economic system per se so much as a symptom of an economy that is being dragged away from free market capitalism and toward communism (the direction rather than the start/end points is the key here).  My view is state capitalism is largely interchangeable with fascism and does not warrant an additional category. 

Another question I see coming is why I chose a lion.  I did this because trying to control the economy the way the socialists/fascists would is like trying to herd cats.  We’re not talking about herding small housecats, however.  Rather, we’re looking at big wildcats, and lions are the biggest of the bunch (ligers and tigons, though larger, are man-made hybrids).  Also, even though they’re apex predators, lions generally don’t kill people unless they’re provoked or extremely hungry.  I wanted to convey both a generally laid-back temperament (some might say lazy, particularly with regards to the adult males and the cubs) outside of confrontation and the far-from-certain odds of survival upon confrontation.  Lions fit the bill nicely.  Lastly, this also shows the competitive nature of the economic landscape.  Survival, much less prosperity, is not guaranteed and requires physical and mental fortitude (plus luck).

The last question I see coming is about what works better.  The real-world examples in these posts hint at an answer, but this is a whole other topic best left for another day.

A Look at the ESP Spectrums – Economic Part 1

As I did with the social and political spectrums, I’m going to start this look at the economic spectrum by copying exactly from my first post in this series.  From my previous column:

“We don’t typically see a global economic spectrum, but I’d contend it looks like Figure 4.

Free-Market Capitalist				Socialist		Communist

Note the lack of partition and higher concentration of more solid colors in Figure 4 versus Figure 3.  Also, note the absence of anything to the right of socialism shown in Figure 2.  The reason is that these (republic, democracy, monarchy, theocracy, and fundamentalist) are generally considered more to be social and political structures than economic structures, and as such, these structures can, in theory, appear throughout the economic spectrum.  So, we have free-market capitalist, socialist, and communist economic structures.

But Figure 4 is flawed.  It creates a perception that if one is not a full-on free-market capitalist, one is a socialist or even a communist.  This is why I’d like to change the economic spectrum in Figure 4 to look more like Figure 5.

Free-Market Capitalist	Capitalist		Neutral	Socialist		Communist

As you can see, there is much less solid color and two new categories have emerged, namely capitalist and neutral.  This distinction is necessary because it creates a new category, the capitalist, for people who believe the economy should mostly be left to its own devices, yet sometimes requires the government to act as a referee or a guide.  Such people are often and unfairly demonized by free-market capitalists, socialists, and communists alike.” 

We’ll spend Part 1 looking at the red side of the spectrum and Part 2 looking at the green side (along with the grey).  Before we start, let’s just acknowledge as a basic premise for the sake of this post that both true free market capitalism and communism are very difficult (arguably impossible) to achieve in the real world on larger scales.  We could spend a while discussing why, but that’s way out of scope here.  The various examples that I’ll mention ultimately do not reach the far ends of the spectrum.  Mao-era China, the USSR, North Korea, Cuba, etc. all fall short of the communist ideal, just as the United States, South Korea, Hong Kong, etc. fall short of the free market capitalist ideal.

I mentioned in the political spectrum discussion that the major differences between socialism and communism are economic in nature.  I put those off until now, so here they are. 

The first question is about what to do with the remaining capitalist spirit once the socialists/communists take over.  They hold divergent views, but both loathe the capitalist spirit.  In the eyes of a communist, capitalism and communism cannot coexist.  Communists believe that the capitalist system must be destroyed.  There is no compromise, as only the total destruction of all things capitalist will satisfy the communist.  However, a socialist doesn’t necessarily embrace this mutual exclusion.  In other words, socialism and capitalism can coexist in the eyes of a socialist.  The socialist contends that the capitalist spirit need not necessarily be destroyed because the socialist can use it to advance socialist goals.  If communists wish to destroy the capitalist spirit, socialists wish to tame and control it.  It’s almost a question of hatred versus merely contempt.

Socialism and communism both have a more collective view of property ownership.  The difference here stems from the strength of private property rights, which are generally stronger with socialism than communism (in a communist model, private property rights are virtually nonexistent).  Because of this shared collective view of property ownership, socialism and communism are actually both an economic structure and a political structure.  In both cases, the government would generally directly own the means of production.

Considering the differences, you can now see why I commonly refer to socialism as communism-lite.  We could even go so far as to say that any type of government could embrace a socialist or communist economic structure.  Indeed, we see socialism and communism used quite frequently (and correctly) to describe both economic and political models.  We see the government in say the old USSR, Mao-era China, North Korea, or Cuba referred to as communist regimes. 

There may be questions about why fascism isn’t on here.  Similar to the political spectrum, fascism is something of a blend, this time between socialism and communism.  Also, like socialism and communism, fascism can be considered both an economic and political system. 

In a socialist economy, we’d be more likely to see the government directly own the means of production, but allow the people to retain property ownership.  In a fascist economy, production and property ownership are more likely to be officially in private hands, but unofficially controlled by the government.  Either way, the result is a somewhat tight grip on the economy by the government (versus the death grip communism would have on an economy, a looser grip for neutral and looser still for capitalism, and really no grip for free market capitalism, as I’ll detail later). 

This willingness to hijack the capitalist economy versus destroying it is the key factor that differentiates socialism/fascism versus communism.  Fascism would generally have a tighter grip on the economy than socialism.  On this spectrum, fascism would reside right at the border between socialism and communism.  I’m toying with the idea of amending both the economic and/or political spectrums to put fascism as its own category.  Fascism and socialism are similar enough to be reasonably combined for general discussion, but they have certain key differences that prevent them from being used interchangeably.  This is part of why I struggle with how far to separate fascism and socialism.  After all, Nazi Germany was fascist, but Nazi is shorthand for “National Socialist”.  Of the three, I would contend that present-day China is more akin to a fascist economic and political structure than socialist or communist.

In Part 2, I’ll discuss the rest of the spectrum and present what I think is a good metaphor to understand the concepts.