The dichotomy that is Type O Negative and Jay Ramirez

Why do I love Type O Negative so much? A fair number of people have asked me this over the years and it wasn’t until Peter Steele’s untimely death today that I thought about the reasons why.

The 90’s was a disenfranchising time for me to say the least. I hated Grunge music more then life it-self and because I was a drummer I couldn’t listen to Punk. Tooooo boring… That led me into the only other option after the fall of Hair Metal, and that was just plain of METAL. I often say that Metal is primarily for individuals who play instruments and/or angry teen/20something boys. Needless to say I was all of those things in the 90’s, so Metal was on the menu and Metal is what I chose.

Being a drummer I enjoy the polyrhythmic interplay of the drums and the bass/guitars. That coupled with the speedy tempos in which Metal is played, makes for a challenging task to learn, play, and invent, interesting patterns in the world of drums. This quest led me down the road of Megadeth, Testiment and Metallica’s musically wizardry, but what I soon discovered was that the upper limit of speed and ridiculous time/tempo/key changes was something as unattainable as faster then light travel. There was just always something faster, more difficult and more brutal. Opeth, Samael, Deicide, etc. etc.

The last years of my drum lesions were spend on funk and groove polyrhythms, but after the discovery of Metal I had largely forgotten how cool they were. Speed was the name of the game and cramming 4000 notes into 10 bars was more challenging for me. That was until I heard White Zombie. (Thanks Beavis and Butthead). Hearing the grooves of Welcome to Planet Mother Fuker and Thunderkiss 65 reminded me of the grooves I learned in Jr. High. They were just simplified into a more dancy outcome here. The guitar and drums syncopated in 3 and 2 instead of the drums doing all that alone (Later I’d hear Carter Beauford doing it all himself for Dave Mathews and that more than anything brought me back to my drum lesson days). But it was really the moment I heard Black No. 1 that my life changed. It wasn’t about rhythm any longer; it was about the whole package. Here was a band that was doing the opposite of what everyone else was doing, most noticeably throwing the metronome into a bucket of tree sap. But they made this aura that encapsulated each song like I had never heard before.

I loved it right off the bat. It was only after I learned more about Peter Steele and his working class, self depreciating, stance on rock stardom that I came to admire the tongue-in-cheek portrayal of Type O. This wasn’t that “Poor me I’m a huge rock star” bullshit Cobain emoted to anyone who’d listen, it was a more real portrayal of living a life countless people just like you would die for and at the same time realizing that you’re not any more qualified then any of them to do what you do… I loved it.
Now, I don’t like comedy rock, I’m not a fan of Tenacious D or Adam Sandler’s songs or anything like that. But Type O was making fun of the self righteousness and seriousness of Goth and Metal by poking fun at the worse offenders of the lifestyle… namely the musicians making the music, not the people buying it. Type O made beautiful music sound desperate and harsh while at the same time making aggressive music sound epic and warm. I will always love Type O Negative for that.

I wish I was in Michigan right now so I could burn some leaves, die my hair even blacker, drink some gross red wine and make out in the woods in memory of them… R.I.P. Peter