Ministry

Ministry may refer to:

Government

Religion

Music

Fiction

Overkill

Overkill may refer to:

Fictional characters

Literature

Music

Space Truckin'

"Space Truckin'" is a song by British hard rock band Deep Purple. It is the seventh and final track on the Machine Head album. Its lyrics talk of space travel and it showcases the vocal abilities of singer Ian Gillan and powerful drumming of Ian Paice.

Live performances

When it was first performed live, the band appended an instrumental that was originally part of the song "Mandrake Root" on their first album but gradually evolved into a showcase for Jon Lord's Hammond organ and Ritchie Blackmore's guitar solos. This usually took the length of the overall song to over twenty minutes, and it was always performed as the last number of the main set. A good example of this arrangement can be found on the Made in Japan album, wherein Blackmore also quotes the "cello" solo of "Fools" off Fireball.

Jon Lord played his solo through a ring modulator or played some of it on an ARP synthesizer. Meanwhile, Ritchie Blackmore usually split the guitar solo into two halves, a quiet section with just drums, then a loud section with the full band. The second half was often when Blackmore would smash his guitar, play it with his feet or throw it into the air. One of the most infamous incidents where that happened was at the California Jam festival in 1974, where he dropped one guitar over the edge of the stage, smashed a second against a TV camera, then set his amplifier on fire, which then subsequently exploded.

With Sympathy

With Sympathy is the debut album by Ministry. The album was released in 1983 through Arista Records, with Ministry's members at the time being Alain Jourgensen and Stephen George.

Jourgensen has maintained that he was pressured by Arista management into producing the album in the then-popular "synthpop" style, which is in contrast to the harder industrial and heavy metal sounds he developed afterwards. However, there are reports of Jourgensen saying in the 1980s that when he discovered hardcore music, his musical direction changed. Additionally, video of local concerts Ministry performed in Chicago 1–2 years previous to their signing with Arista show the band dressed in "new wave" styles and playing new wave and synthpop music. Jourgensen assumes a false English accent for all of the songs, for which he also later expressed great disliking, though his ex-wife stated in a 2013 interview:

...the English accent thing was more an homage to the bands he loved than anything else. He was not trying to come off as British. The Stones used a southern accent and no one crawled up their ass for it.

Al Jourgensen

Alejandro Ramírez "Al" Jourgensen (born October 9, 1958), is a Cuban-American musician and music producer, best known as the founder and frontman of the industrial metal band Ministry. He is sometimes credited as Alain Jourgensen, Alien Jourgensen, Uncle Al, Hypo Luxa (his alias as a producer), Dog, Alien Dog Star and Buck Satan. He is a member and/or founder of several industrial rock bands, performing as a singer, guitarist or keyboard player.

Early life

Alejandro Ramírez Casas was born in Havana to Cuban parents in 1958. Soon after, he relocated to the United States to live with his mother and his Norwegian stepfather, who changed the family's name to "Jourgensen." Jourgensen's stepfather was a stock car driver, as well as a mechanic for Formula One driver Dan Gurney. Jourgensen was raised in Chicago, Illinois and Breckenridge, Colorado, and was a fan of artists such as Liberace, The Beatles, Black Sabbath, Hawkwind, Pink Floyd, Can, Kraftwerk, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Kitty Wells, Buck Owens, George Jones, Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, and Miles Davis.