I guarantee this is the weirdest and yet most rewarding thing you’ll see all day. It’s a video for a Russian metal band’s tribute to Mikhail Gorbachev. On the video’s Vimeo page, the director, Tom Stern, writes:

I did this video for a Russian Metal Band called ANJ. It is pretty crazy. When I saw the lyrics it seemed to be an earnest tribute to Mikael Gorbachov (that’s how the Russians spell it), so I was a bit confounded about what the video concept should be, but then I had a brainstorm to take it way over the top and I think it was just the thing. Suffice to say it’s half Russian History allegory as told through an old zombie movie made in the Soviet Union, and half animated Soviet Propaganda posters.

(Vimeo videos can stutter when they haven’t loaded completely, so let this finish loading before watching it.)

[via Mark Lisanti.]

Metallica Drummer! is a hilarious bit of home-video footage that became a phenomenon on the underground video-trading circuit in the late ’90s. A couple of years ago I summarized the video’s backstory in the lead paragraph of a book review I wrote for The New York Sun:

One day in the early 1990s, a young Canadian heavy metal fan put a chair in the center of his living room, turned on a video camera, cued up a Metallica album, and launched into the most hilariously earnest display of fantasy musicianship ever captured on tape. Glaring straight at the camera, and wearing a pair of Bart Simpson shorts, the scowling young man re-created every snare hit, every kick-drum thud, every cymbal crash on the recordings—but he did it on an imaginary drum kit. The young air drummer quickly forgot about the tape he had made, but someone later found it and released it into the underground trading circuit without his knowledge. Metallica Drummer!, as the video came to be known, developed a cult following in the late 1990s, probably because it’s so revealing of the fantasy world that lurks in the imagination of every music freak. To paraphrase Walt Kelly, we have seen Metallica Drummer, and he is us.

The video—a clip is below—is funny without any context, but knowledge of the backstory makes it richer and funnier. The historical record consists primarily of two articles published in the San Francisco alternative press in January 1999. The first article appeared in The San Francisco Bay Guardian when Metallica Drummer’s identity was still a secret. The second came out a couple of weeks later in SF Weekly and related the reporter’s experience of tracking down the mysterious Metallica Drummer in Vancouver and informing him that he and his video were famous. Sort of. The guy was shocked but oddly proud.

Here’s a clip of the first song on the tape, “Sad But True.” I think that link may work best if you have Quicktime 7. It’s a smaller file, so try it first. If you have any trouble, try this version instead, which is slightly bigger and may have fewer compatibility issues.

When it comes to graphic design, guitar magazines have historically been about as tasteful and restrained as a ten-minute Yngwie Malmsteen solo. Tackiness tends to drip off the page like sweat from Carlos Santana’s brow. I’m talking about this sort of thing (and this isn’t even an extreme example):

Granted, it was the ᾿80s, and granted, it’s mainly the photo that makes it so awful and comical. (Doesn’t Vito Bratta look like a hirsute cousin of Radar editor Maer Roshan?) But really, folks, this sort of thing is grounds for a war-crimes tribunal. The issue above was published in September 1989, soon after I finished an editorial internship at Guitar World. The magazine’s editor at the time was a guy named Joe Bosso, who eventually left to become an A&R guy at some major record label. In the late ’90s he achieved a small measure of immortality by co-writing episode 10 of the godlike first season of The Sopranos.

For some reason I’ve always felt compelled to save every guitar magazine I’ve ever acquired. In my apartment are five or six boxes filled with hundreds of guitar magazines dating back to about 1984. There is some very unfortunate and hilarious content in those issues, especially the ones from the hair metal era.

All this is why Guitar Player’s recent covers have been such a nice surprise. This is a very elegant and balanced design:

This new cover format is totally unique, at least in the context of guitar magazines. The subject of the cover story is photographed in a tight close-up, and one of his or her guitars is presented against the white background above the photo. I love the black-and-white shot of Nels Cline; I love the fetishization of his instrument; I love the understated logo; I love the way the type is arrayed; I love the white space at the top. More than anything, I love that this cover does not scream at me. The art director’s name is Alexandra Zeigler; I may send her flowers.

Guitar Player has always been the most intelligent and tasteful of the guitar magazines, but even it has perpetrated plenty of design atrocities over the last few decades. I stopped subscribing to it several years ago, so I’m not sure when the redesign happened. I think it was about a year ago. I don’t how these covers are selling on the newsstand, but I hope they keep it up.