7/07/2007

heavy metal(s)

Paul's recent post on nerdy periodic table songs has inspired me to talk about music, so I thought I'd mention two fun bands I recently encountered. Backmask and Stomprocket both put on good live shows.
Both bands also have a chemist-musician.
As far as I know, Milo may be the only reader(?) who appreciates metal, but...it was worth a shot. I thought it was cool, anyway, so you have to read about it. At least this isn't a device post, eh?

20 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bunsen Honeydew from 2-headed Mayhem is a closeted fan of Iron Maiden, I think we should turn him out.

Anonymous said...

If memory serves, crystallization of zinc pyrazine plays music (if you like crickets). That would be JACS in the, oh, late 70s. Add solvent-moist 1,4-di-t-butyl-2,5-dimethoxy-benzene crystals doing jumping jacks and you have a bench concert.

Ψ*Ψ said...

I think we should beat him up until he agrees to post. How did you know he liked Iron Maiden?

Anonymous said...

Milo Aukerman of the early punk rock band the Descendants is a biochemist.

Anonymous said...

A chem blog is the last place I expected to find new metal, sweet.

Ψ*Ψ said...

Yeah...I guess most chemists just aren't into metal. I have yet to find a group that will let me play some of my music in the lab. Sigh.

Anonymous said...

My former Iranian lab-mate was heavily into gangsta rap and it made me dream of bashing some Iranians over the head with a 2L sep funnel.

Eventually I found out that he was afraid of demons (he told me he could never watch a Halloween movie, he thoght the stuff like this is real) so a crappy Marlyn Manson CD was played in the lab twice - and we had a ceasefire ever after.

[Bunsen Honeydew mistook my reference to Brave New World for a CD, I think this is a clear giveaway for a closeted heavy metaldom]

Anonymous said...

i can only assume, Ψ*Ψ, that someone has made you aware of the existence of this:

http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/science/8953/

very fetching if you like metal, puns, or both.

Ψ*Ψ said...

Alright, um, I think I might have to get a shirt now.
I wonder if it will survive the lab. At least it's black.

Robin St. John said...

Metal!

Most of your readers don't appreciate metal? What kind of riff raff do you have lurking here?!

I thought organic chemistry only worked when irradiated by heavy metal music. Punk works for some reactions.

OTOH, I once had a lab mate who heard me cranking Static X who said the the music made him want to commit suicide. Tragically, he never followed through.

Anonymous said...

He wanted to kill himself after listening to Static X? What was he used to, Michael Bolton's duets with Fabio? If you really wanted to do the job right, I'm sure you could have found some Danzig that might have helped him on his way.

I'm kind of partial to metal, though I don't really know if what I like is any good - I don't care much at this point.

Barney said...

Another metal fan here.
Late nights in grad school me and one of my labmates (now a prof at UMass) would play the radio-switching game: I'd leave lab to run an NMR and come back to jazz on the radio; he'd leave and come back to some sweet sweet grinding metal (or hardcore or whatever was playing on KALX at the time). Now I can listen with impunity in my office.
I haven't found any chemically-related metal anthems, but there's a fine branch of grindcore with detailed descriptions of medical procedures, etc., probably starting with Carcass and most recently represented by the County Medical Examiners. Good fodder for teaching organic to the pre-meds.

And, just for the hell of it, here's a recent photo of baby Thea working on her metalness.

Excimer said...

Awww, cute baby! You should get a pic of her throwing up the horns, that'd be awesome.

Robin St. John said...

Cute kid! We have little T's with skulls on them for our little one.

I think my old labmate was more of a John Michael Montgomery type. I have learned to ignore just about any and all noise (being married with children helps, but I've always been a little, uh, obsessive).

But boot-scootin' bullshit wears on me after a while. It isn't the music so much as the palpable insincerity- I used to like country music a la Haggard and Hank and Johnny Paycheck. The new stuff is just too treacly.

Anonymous said...

Although I am not a huge Heavy Metal fan, I especially enjoy it when running columns, it surely helps the separation. Also, a friend of mine claims to have the proofs that certain oxidation reactions give consistently better yields when irradiated with Motorhead's "Overkill"...

Anonymous said...

Ψ*Ψ, methinks you need to form your own group.

I would be keen on joining any group who listens to metal in the lab.

Currently my lab are all into house and stuff like that and won't let me play any metal till after most people go home

Ψ*Ψ said...

Actually, my boss listens to metal, but mostly it's old man metal. The entire lab listens to Tool, though. I think it's like a requirement for joining the group.

Excimer said...

my group listens to all sorts of different crap. my benchmate listens to incredibly shitty punk music that drives me up the fucking wall, the guy across the hall from me listens to rap (I like rap), and the girl across from me listens to indie rock, most of which is pretty good. most of us have ipods though, thank god. except the guy who listens to the shitty punk, but it's okay, he's still able to listens to his music with his stereo. loudly. He has some beef against the iPod for, like, moral reasons. In the same vein, I support him going deaf for moral reasons as well. And by "morals" I mean "good god his music sucks." same thing.

Ψ*Ψ said...

There's been a (very lazy and not very serious) ongoing search for music that will keep the boss out of the lab. So far, 80s pop appears best. Unfortunately, that also makes me want to avoid the lab.

Anonymous said...

Ψ*Ψ, your lab sounds good to me.

Keeping our boss out of the lab is easy most of the time.

Right now its winter and you can tell he has come for a visit because you here him loudly proclaim "bbrrrr its so cold in here, I don't know how you can work in here."
The visits have gone down significantly since the temp has dropped