JUST BECAUSE JASON NEWSTED ISN’T IN METALLICA ANYMORE DOESN’T MEAN HE CAN’T CONTINUE TO MAKE TERRIBLE MUSIC

When Some Kind of Monster came out, Jason Newsted suddenly surpassed Dave Mustaine to become #2 on the list of Most Popular Former Members of Metallica*, mostly because he made some pretty funny comments about how the whole Phil Towle/group therapy thing was bullshit — comments which, at the screening I attended, were met with rapturous applause. (The house was obviously packed with Metallica listeners.) Suddenly, everyone rather conviently forgot that Newsted was a willing participant in the Load albums, and he seemed like the cool dude who had jumped off a sinking ship before it was too late. And the fact that he was playing with Voivod didn’t hurt his case any, even if the fact that he was also playing with a certain aging Brit sorta did.

But then of course just a few years later Newsted was out of Voivod and in Rock Star Supernova, and his cred went down the drain just as fast as if he’d stuck around for St. Anger.

Now he has a new band with drummer Steven Wiig, a former assistant of Lars Ulrich’s who recently sued the not-so-great Dane for unpaid overtime (also for being an inferior drummer to his fucking assistant). And in an apparent effort to ensure that no one ever takes them seriously, this new group has decided to call themselves “Papa Wheelie.”

Yep. Papa… fucking… Wheelie.

Now, that’s probably enough to make you lose all interest right there, but wait until you see the live video of the band that Metal Insider found (at the top of this article, dummy). It actually starts out promisingly, with a nice, heavy riff that probably wouldn’t sound of out place on a Down record… but then Newsted starts singing, and the lyrics are, “I got long hair/A black bandana/I get stoned/And listen to Santana,” and that’s about the time I threw up all over my keyboard. Luckily, though, the riff goes on forever and ever and ever without any variation, and there’s no real chorus, so, y’know, the band redeems themselves pretty quickly.

I’m not clear if the second half is a different section of the same song or a new song, but I did enjoy it slightly more, mostly because I didn’t hear Newsted rhyme “bandana” with “Santana.”

So, yeah, this is happening.

Now if all past, present, and former members of Metallica could please stay the fuck out of the news cycle for a week, that would be swell. Thanks in advance, fellas.

-AR

*For someone to take Cliff Burton’s spot at #1, that person would have to die, and he would have to die twenty years ago. In other words, that ain’t never gonna happen.