The Tyranny of Tradition

A Real Iron Maiden!!!

Some of you may have heard the big news today, but if you haven’t, I will tell you that today is easily the biggest day in the history of The Tyranny of Tradition blog.  I have spent most of the last 24 hours dealing with calls from CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and even the 700 Club.  In order to understand what is about to happen I need to give you some back-story. About 3 months ago, a good friend of mine told me that he remembered at an early Sarah Palin speech during the 2008 campaign she came out to speak to the opening riff from Godzilla by the Blue Oyster Cult.  I assumed he was kidding, but he was pretty insistent about it so I decided to look it up.  Sure enough, I found the footage along with an interview with her talking about music and she mentioned listening to the Blue Oyster Cult when she was in high school.  Being a die-hard Blue Oyster Cult fan, this utterly blew my mind.  I wanted to find out if she was still a fan so I emailed her people again and again but never got a response.  I figured that she had just blown it off as a series of bizarre emails and forgot about the whole thing.  Then, about a week ago…I got an email FROM HER.  I was astonished.  She wrote me this lengthy letter thanking me for writing to her telling me all about her love for the Blue Oyster Cult.  This was too much for me.  I nearly had a heart attack.  I decided to push things a step further and sent her a request to write a short piece for my blog.  I had been listening nonstop to a record by a band called Ghost.  The album, “Opus Eponymous”, is absolutely fantastic.  On a whim, I decided to ask her to listen to it and write a review.  Again, I was certain that I would never in a million years get a reply, but as I opened my inbox this morning I found the following email…

Keith,

Thanks for offering me a chance to write a review for your blog.  I have been quite busy recently but I took a few moments to put something together for you.  Hope you like it.

Yours truly,

Sarah

A Review of Ghost “Opus Eponymous”

By Sarah Palin

Over the last few years, many of you have gotten to know me as Sarah the candidate, or Sarah the Governor, or Sarah the Mother, but I want to take this opportunity to show you another side of me.  Today, I want to introduce you to Sarah the Metalhead.  A lot of people think of me as some kind of stuffed shirt who doesn’t know how to rock out.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Todd and I are both huge fans of heavy metal.  On one of our first dates, Todd took me to the nicest restaurant in Wasilla, a wonderful little Mexican place called El Taco that is owned by our close family friend Jerry O’Malley.  To impress me, he hired the mariachi band to play the Blue Oyster Cult song “Astronomy”.  At that moment, I knew I was in love.   Of all metal and hard rock bands, I have always had a special place in my heart for the Blue Oyster Cult.  I love them so much that I even tried to get Bristol and Piper’s Jazzercise instructor to use “Burnin’ For You” as part of their warm-up activities.  When we were working on Sarah Palin’s America for TLC, we tried to film a sequence where we shot a moose with a rocket launcher from a moving chopper.  To get ready to use this fine piece of military machinery, I listened to the Blue Oyster Cult’s song “Vengeance:  The Pact”.  Unfortunately, I missed the moose and the segment had to be cut, but that song really got me ready to go.

I recently picked up a copy of a CD by a band named Ghost called “Opus Eponymous” that reminded me a lot of what’s great about the Blue Oyster Cult.  The album is filled with great solos, sweeping choruses and driving riffs.  When I first heard the song, “Ritual” I knew I was going to enjoy their sound.  There are definitely other influences on this album as well.  I noticed a lot of moments that reminded me of some of the work done by the great King Diamond on the early records by Mercyful Fate, particularly the song “Elizabeth”.

At first, I really loved the album but then I found out some things about Ghost that troubled me greatly.  First of all, they make reference to Satan on several occasions on this album.  There are also a lot of violent lyrics.  As you know, I am strongly against young people listening to violent music.  This is not the sort of thing that impressionable children should be listening to.  The thing that disturbed even more was the fact that Ghost is Swedish.  They seemed to speak English very well so I, of course, assumed that they were American.  It makes you think that a Swede could pretend to be an American an easily get away with it.  A slick talking Swedish terrorist could easily get past one of those TSA government workers and bring weapons of mass destruction into our country.  I don’t want to paint all Swedes with the same brush.  There are probably some good Swedes out there, but it is a fact that the government of Sweden is socialist.  Ghost may not be a socialist band.  They may have fled Sweden to escape their brutal and oppressive government, but they have grown up living the socialist life and these things can change a person.  They probably would come here expecting some sort of government hand out if they didn’t sell enough records.  We have to at least consider the possibility that their music is meant as a Trojan horse to lead our young people to violence, Satanism and the belief that the government is going to solve all of their problems.

I would advise you to not buy this album in spite of the excellent quality of the music.  There are plenty of good old fashion, red-blooded American metal bands that are struggling to sell records.  Why give good hard earned, American money to a group of people who are just going to give it away to people who don’t share our values?

Read Sarah Palin’s response to the “Oystergate” controversy caused by this article.