If you saw the Cradle of Filth lecture at EMP, let me live vicariously through you!

Yes! I loved his paper, I wish I'd kept the handout but I gave it to Dave Q to scribble hermetic theories on during the Jimmy Page paper.

I'm not actually sure there was much of a 'point' to what he was saying, and he didn't actually answer the question, "Are Cradle of Filth serious?", but it was a superb example of how entertaining close analysis married to great delivery can be.

Yeah, 'point' could sometimes be a problem. I remember this one lecture he gave about the use of unnatural silence in pop songs (like when Alanis says "Why are you so petrified of silence" etc. and then the music stops), and it was more or less just documenting a bunch of instances, and during the Q&A some of the other faculty said "So what?"--but still, he did have a great delivery. And he's good at close analysis, however misguided. He tried to convince us once that "Karn Evil 9 pt. II" (I think) was good because of its formal structure, which it no doubt has.

I saw that panel, and have the same thoughts as Tom.. though I'll add that, in a way, he left me with more questions than answers, which may have been Mercer-Taylor's intent, re: what was COF's point in that song. The song in particular "From The Cradle To Enslave" he played the entirety of, though he stopped and started as necessary, to point out the elements he noted in his handout.

I was most taken by how many were snickering during the playback. I mean, I was smiling no doubt, and couldn't resist doing some air-snare-and-double-kick-drum action myself.. but i wasn't doing it out of mockery at all. I was the guy who called out all the motherfuckers who were laughing and basically said "If Mercer-Taylor was analyzing a Korn of Misfits or Black Sabbath or Venom song, NONE of you would be snickering, and these bands -- in the context of this discussion -- are not worth any less mockery.. sorry."

(ok, maybe people would snicker if it were a Venom song too, but then again, if we're talking later Venom especially, who wouldn't snicker?)