Pittsburgh loves hair and falsetto as much as the next city does, and your faithful Clunkline reporters let you in on the rumor that we’d soon be seeing an appearance by a lesser-known member of the old guard of rock’n’roll. Now, details are falling into place. An anonymous source reported Saturday that long-lived hard rock supergroup Magma will be playing New Year’s Eve at the Post-Gazette Pavilion. This will mark the thirty-eighth scheduled performance in Magma’s latest comeback tour.
“We blasted out of the 70s,” said lead singer and triple-necked-guitarist Blaze Runway. “Musical pyrotechnics, exploding onto the scene. We cooled off a bit through the 80s, then in the 90s we went back underground, through subduction. Now we’re back in the magma chamber below the vent, if you know what I mean, and I really think we’re just about ready to erupt once more. After all, FROM WHERE DOTH ROCK COME IF NOT FROM MAGMA?!”
“We don’t really like the label of ‘hard rock’ we’ve been given by the public,” said drummer Ash Lamps. “We’re really more of an igneous rock sound. ‘Molten rock’ works, too.”
Magma is best known for their 1974 hit, “A Caldera Full of Scorching Love”, off their seventh album, “Volcanic (My Love For You Is True).” Also playing are powerpop champions The Sediments, as well as underground R&B classic Metamorphic and the Heats & Pressures.
“This has been our first time playing in front of a live audience for over twenty years,” said grizzled frontman of Metamorphic, Jean-Paul Davis. “I hope we’ll be able to flow under the pressure, given some time. But you know what they say… if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the mantle.”
Not everyone is convinced that the show will be worth listening to, but everyone seems to agree that it will be worth seeing. “I’m not much of a fan of the igneous rock genre itself,” said Carnegie Mellon student Terrence Edwards, a sophomore in geoscience. “Much too fluid and hot-headed for me. But I will say this, Magma’s groupies are really spathic.” ‘Spathic’ refers to the high cuttability of a given mineral… that is, spathic rock has great cleavage. ‘Bizarrely perverted’ refers to student Terrence Edwards.
In this writer’s opinion, this is going to be the biggest act since Famous Frontman, His Orchestra, and Special Guest played at Heinz Hall in 1994, the great Hoverfish / Discount Viscount collaboration of ’82, or perhaps even The Ataris.
This article was originally published in readme, which contains some of your daily values of vitamins, minerals, and small cars.)
