Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2011 February 3

= February 3 =

The Start of Metal
Who started the genre? — Preceding unsigned comment added by GlennRichardAllison (talk • contribs) 00:39, 3 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Our article Heavy metal music (actually it's a featured article!) has a "History" section that answers this. Comet Tuttle (talk) 00:40, 3 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Possibly Steppenwolf see Born to Be Wild. AndyTheGrump (talk) 00:43, 3 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Not really. It's hard to pin down a specific "founding band" of heavy metal.  The term "heavy metal" was first applied by a critic to the music of Humble Pie, while Born to be Wild contained the words "heavy metal thunder".  Heavy metal music as a genre coalesced rapidly during a few short years, say 1968-1969.  Elements common to heavy metal appear in bands as diverse as the two I just mentioned, the Beatles (think of the guitars in Revolution), the Kinks (especially You Really Got Me), the band Mountain (esp. Mississippi Queen). and even Queen (Stone Cold Crazy).  You also can't ignore the importance of Deep Purple; its DNA shows up all over heavy metal, especially if you consider the connections from Ritchie Blackmore to Ronnie James Dio and thus to the Mark II version of Black Sabbath.  If you have to distill it to its true origins, the two Big Founders of heavy metal; as in the ones that had the greatest commercial impact as well as artistic influence on the genre, you'd have to point to Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath.  Zeppelin provides the template for the lighter, more fun-loving party-metal bands, such as AC/DC and the Hair metal movement.  Black Sabbath lays the groundwork for the heavier, darker end of metal, the first two versions of the band, the Ozzy Osborne-led Mark I Black Sabbath, and the Ronnie James Dio-fronted version from the Heavan and Hell period are hugely important to driving this aspect of Metal.  All of the various Death metal are direct descendants of Sabbath.  Two other important movements in metal which start mostly independent of those two bands, but come about later, are the New Wave of British Heavy Metal which was founded mostly by Judas Priest (though they had released several pre-NWOBHM albums) and the American Thrash metal which was roughly contemporaneous with the NWOBHM.  The major things which heavily influenced both NWOBHM and Thrash was heavy punk rock crossover in the bands.  Both NWOBHM band Iron Maiden and Thrash founders Metallica were heavily influenced by punk; early on in both bands careers they were frequently pigeonholed as "punk" bands because Heavy metal purists didn't like the punk aspects to their sound.  If you had to pick any founding bands of heavy metal, you could probably distill it down to Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Metallica, and Judas Priest; those were the most important bands in defining the sounds and looks of what became the biggest subgenres of heavy metal; though none of them were necessarily around at the "founding" of it.  -- Jayron  32  03:55, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Great response, I would however like to add that the first Death Metal album was Slowly we rot by Obituary in 1989, from Florida, and that they were very quickly followed by Entombed from Sweden. True death metal is very different from Heavy Metal, or NWOBHM, and has lead to bands such as Gojira and Mastodon —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.89.16.154 (talk) 09:09, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, impressive response. When did "heavy metal" become a common descriptor for bands, e.g. in the music press? Later than 1968-9, I think. Itsmejudith (talk) 12:05, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't know when it became common, but the very first time it was used in print in a review of music was in 1970, in This review of Humble Pie in Rolling Stone Magazine. The phrase appears twice, once describing the bands music as "heavy metal-leaden shit rock" and later as "27th rate heavy metal crap".  It is quite telling that the first time it was ever used critically, it was in a negative review.  Heavy metal has never been quite accepted by the mainstream press.  -- Jayron  32  13:56, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * It's also telling that the term seems to be used in a way that suggests that the writer figures his audience is already familiar with it. We also have an article on an early metallica work that might be helpful. Matt Deres (talk) 14:58, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * True; often terms like this aren't coined by the writers. They are attending shows, talking to fans, and discussing music.  It is quite likely that the term was being used by fans verbally, but had not yet appeared in print.  Or possibly that it had been used in print, but only in some minor self-published zine which has since been lost to history.  The first confirmed use of it, in print, to describe a musical style was the 1970 Rolling Stone usage above.  It doesn't appear he invented the term, however.  That may be unknowable.  -- Jayron  32  15:09, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Google Book has a 1969 review of an album by "Ashkan", noting that "Bob Weston, the only member of this four-man group to demonstrate any inklings of sensitivity, spends more of his efforts contributing to the Cream/Led Zeppelin "heavy metal thunder" than he does to alleviating the noise". Evidence of the Steppenwolf lyric becoming the generic term for the genre? Warofdreams talk 15:13, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, there ya go. An earlier reference there!  The Humble Pie reference was the one I had heard repeated in several documentary films on the history of Heavy metal.  It was prominent in Seven Ages of Rock, for example.  But it looks like it does show up earlier.  Though, given what little I know of Bob Weston (guitarist), he's about as far from an influence on Heavy Metal as Rod Stewart was (OK, not true.  Rod Stewart was a fairly big influence on Heavy Metal music...)  But that's a clear use of the term to describe rock music prior to the Humble Pie ref.  -- Jayron  32  15:23, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * But as Itsmejudith asks, what's possibly more interesting is not when the term was first coined but when it passed into common currency. Only then can it be said to really act as a descriptor for this kind of music. That would obviously be harder to pinpoint, though. --Viennese Waltz 15:33, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Heavy metal music (etymology) has some more on this, including Burroughs, an even earlier Rolling Stone quote (1968) describing the music, and some notes on how its usage changed. ---Sluzzelin talk  08:36, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

I've always thought of "Helter Skelter" as the first heavy metal song. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 23:43, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Try this. Ghmyrtle (talk) 08:17, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
 * You beat me to it. Rumble is definitely a contender for earliest heavy metal song (and it even got banned to boot!). When I first heard it, I was shocked at how old it was; it would sound more at home on a 1990's metal band demo tape than on something from the 1950s. Matt Deres (talk) 14:12, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Two questions about eggs.
When women have their period, does an actual egg come out?

Secondly, why don't chickens bleed when their eggs come out?

Thanks. 192.150.181.62 (talk) 02:42, 3 February 2011 (UTC)


 * (1) Yes. (2) Who says they don't? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 03:14, 3 February 2011 (UTC)


 * When a chicken lays an egg, it isn't shedding its uterine wall the way women do during menstruation. The laying of eggs isn't really all that analogous to menstruation; the egg itself is a zygote, which is distinct from the unfertilized ovum.  -- Jayron  32  03:33, 3 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Possibly belaboring the obvious, but the reproductive systems across major animal groupings such as mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, insectgs, etc., do not operate identically. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 03:41, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

To answer #1, I will say no, because it seems as though you are asking if the bleeding of menstruation is the egg -- forgive me, though, if I'm misjudging. The egg is so tiny that it's negligible -- the bleeding is the sloughing of the thickened endometrium. But yes, an actual egg (single haploid cell) comes out, but this has little to nothing to do with what we call an egg in terms of omelets and the like. Jayron answered your chicken question adequately -- but perhaps as an addendum, chicken eggs are not analogous to the single cell egg of mammals, and chickens lay eggs even if they're not fertilized, so it's not the same process as goes on in mammals. Moreover, as Jayron pointed out, birds are oviparous and have no uterus.  DRosenbach  ( Talk 05:08, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * See ovulation. Oda Mari (talk) 10:01, 3 February 2011 (UTC)


 * And to fill out the explanation of chickens laying eggs a bit since I've seen it done many times... When the egg is laid, it is moist.  The shell is hard, of course, but the egg is covered in a small amount of clear liquid.  The liquid evaporates in a few seconds in warm weather.  Dismas |(talk) 01:11, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Fascinating! Thank you. 192.150.181.62 (talk) 22:37, 4 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Also - chickens *do* sometimes bleed when the egg comes out. Not only have I seen it happen for real, I have also purchased free-range eggs which have dried blood on the shells. Not loads of blood, but it can happen. --Kurt Shaped Box (talk) 22:57, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

90% loan facility against deposit
Hi there, I am bit confused with this statement (facility) of reputed financial organization - "90% loan facility against deposit". Does this is mean, if I invest 5000 pounds (deposit) I could also get 4,500 pounds as loan from that organization if I want?--180.234.38.215 (talk) 19:43, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * What kind of deposit and loan is it talking about? Is the statement online somewhere? The only idea I have is that it's talking about a mortage and means you can borrow 90% of the value of the property and have to pay 10% as a deposit, although it's an odd way to say that (normally you would say "90% loan to value (LTV)"). --Tango (talk) 21:02, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Based on some googling my best guess is that it's designed for cases where you lock up your money in a CD or other savings scheme where you can not withdraw the money till the term is up. It allows you to borrow up to 90% of the money you have deposited. It would be stupid to do that on purpose (you pay more in interest than you get, so you would be better off just holding on to your money), but it could be valuable if you want to invest money, but still have access to it in case of emergency. Ariel. (talk) 22:49, 3 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Actually the reason most people do this sort of thing is in order to improve their credit rating, as I understand it. Looie496 (talk) 01:46, 4 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Sometimes the interest on a mortgage are lower that the interest that you receive on a CD. (At least in Europe). So, it makes perfectly sense to apply for a mortgage and left your money on the CD.Quest09 (talk) 16:56, 4 February 2011 (UTC)