Scott Ian spoken word DVD review

You may know who Scott Ian is for a variety of reasons. He has been a member of Anthrax since the very beginning back in the early 80's, or maybe you know him as that guy with the questionable beard that's always showing up at those metal awards shows and getting in magazines. Apparently he's also married to Meatloaf's daughter. Either way, he seems to be a guy who knows a lot of people and been around the world and he wrote a book about it that came out last year. That's expanded to him doing a spoken word tour where he hangs out, drinks beer and tells stories about it live.
This DVD takes place at one of his stops in Glasgow, Scotland in what looks like a large storage room of sorts. I know it's a decent theatre but it has an odd look to it. It starts with an intro to the beginning of his show where he reads from Anthony Keadis's book about heroin and jokes about being a junkie(he isn't). His first story is the start of Anthrax and the first media tour of europe where he met Lemmy. His story shows why meeting Lemmy in a bar is either a really good thing or a really bad thing if you have to fly to Germany and do more promos the next day. He fumbles a little when he segues into another story, actually his transition into each new bit is always a bit clumsy. But he moves on to talk about learning to drink with dimebag darrell and a long series of pranks that darrell played on him. This is where I also learned that Dime had a goat with a dyed goatee.
He tells a few more bits about Al Jourgenson on the set of AI and how he met Steven Speilberg. Luckily he has the powerpoint presentation in the background to help everything move along. He goes through a bunch of stories before he moves to the Q&A at the end. This actually ends up being the best part of the DVD because for some reason this freeform part has the most flow. Here we get to learn the answers to important questions like: "did you fuck Kelly Bundy?" "When was your first concert?" and most of all "what makes Gene Simmons cry?". The rest of the act didn't have a lot of great flow even though it was shot well. The powerpoint presentation in the background made it feel too much like a business presentation even though there could have been some cool stories in there. I think in the end the stories might have been a little better if they were told by someone else. Scott Ian needs a little practice but good on him for getting out there and trying this, maybe he'll keep at it and get better.


Michael F. Carnage