GuardianのJon Wilde氏のblogエントリー；
“The worst cultural offenders of the last 60 years” http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/art/2007/06/the_worst_cultural_offenders_o.html
“The worst cultural offenders”といいつつ、冒頭では、
という但し書きがしてある。
It was Oscar Wilde who declared that, "there is no such thing as a good influence." He was wrong, of course - as any fool knows, there is good influence and there is bad influence. To exert a bad influence, something does not necessarily have to be bad in itself, but it often helps.
それにしても、1950年代のoffenderとしてThe Goon Show名指されているというのは如何にも英国ローカルという感じだが。1970年代の代表としてご指名に与ったBlack Sabbathの記述；
因みに、最近ブラック・サバスを聴きたいぞ気分が高くなってはいるのだ。
Sabbath may not have invented heavy metal (that dubious honour ought to go to Iron Butterfly)*1 but it was the Sabs who gave it form and became the genre's dominant influence through the 1970s and beyond. Sabbath weren't all bad (Paranoid is a belter of a song) but most of what they inspired was terrifyingly awful, such as Judas Priest, Scorpions, Saxon and Tygers Of Pang Tang (all of whom have some of the worst artwork ever to see the light of day). Lest we forget as well the long roll-call of cruddy sub-genres that HM has impressed on eternity (death metal, gothic metal, power metal, folk metal, Viking metal ...).
*1:heavy metalという言葉だけでいえば、その初めは紐育のバンドBlue Oyster Cultということになるだろう。
