I wish I could say I was a Hold Steady fan from day one, but the truth is I didn't start listening to them until 2006's brilliant Boys and Girls in America, and even then, I wasn't sold at first. I could tell there was something there for me, I just couldn't figure out what that was. It took a little while; a couple of months listening to the record at least once on an almost daily basis, trying to decipher some code that would provide me the key to unlocking the mysteries of this band that so many indie-media hounds and "clustered-up, clever kids" who were obsessed with "the scene" adored. Then one day it plowed into me like a mac-truck. I still didn't know what hit me exactly, I just knew that I was lying on the ground with pulverized bones and blood pouring from my open and confused mouth. 11 days from now, The Hold Steady will release their fifth album, Heaven is Whenever, and although I haven't heard it yet, I can guarantee it will be the best album released in 2010. (Just as a side note, I now have heard the album. I attempted as best I could to avoid listening to it until the record came out, but NPR's free stream of the album proved to be too great a temptation. Oh, and by the way, I was right.)
I know this to be true. I know this because 1.) The Hold Steady are the best American Rock n' Roll band recording today, but mainly because 2.) I have realized something about The Hold Steady. I have realized that The Hold Steady know something about Rock n' Roll music that most bands have either forgot or never knew in the first place; Rock n' Roll is music for the young.
The greatest records in the pantheon of Rock music have been written and recorded by aged musicians (When it comes to Rock n' Roll, I consider anyone over the age of 24 "aged") recapturing the spirit of youth: Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run, Meatloaf's Bat Out of Hell, Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (that one's got a whole lot of other shit going on too, but still...), literally everything The Ramones did pre-Too Tough to Die, virtually every Kiss record made before Unmasked, pretty much every Thin Lizzy album recorded between the years of 1973 through 1977 (the "great, youthful Rock n' Roll exception" here is Thin Lizzy's exquisite Black Rose: A Rock Legend, which is quite possibly the absolute antithesis of youthful, and also quite possibly the band's greatest achievement, but Thin Lizzy was one of the greatest Rock bands in history, those dudes made everything sound kick-ass...Well, not everything. 1981's Renegade and 1983's Thunder and Lightening are not so good; the keyboard had no place in the music of Thin Lizzy.)
Even great Rock that has no overt lyrical or thematic ties to youth still embody the spirit of the young in its sound: Zeppelin, The Flaming Lips, The Replacements, everything Justin Hawkins has touched, C.C.R., Nirvana, T. Rex, Ryan Adams (sometimes, maybe often), Bowie, Lucero, basically every metal band from the 80's and early 90's, etc., etc., etc. But recently, something has changed. New rock music, I guess what hipster's refer to as "Indie", has shifted the focus from experienced guys recalling what it meant to be young and stupid and free and, well, just pretty fucking awesome to younger guys trying to sound older, wiser, more mature. (I know I'm generalizing, but frankly, I like to make broad, sweeping declarations about the way I perceive the world, especially when those perceptions are music related, and even more so when those perceptions are fact.) As a result, the world of Rock music has started to kind of suck. (Again, this a generalization. I know there are a lot of "grown-up" bands making (or made) remarkably brilliant music: Wilco, Joy Division, Bon Iver, Sigur Rós, Built to Spill, Pearl Jam, Cursive, the ethereal genius of The Cure; again, etc., etc., etc. There are always exceptions to the rule, it's just that in this case, the exceptions comprise around 40% of the good Rock music out there, and The Cure comprise about ½ of that 40%.)
The fact is, Rock n' Roll has always been liberating because it allows the "older folks" to relive and get lost in the memory of what it felt like to be 17, while simultaneously giving the lifestyle of the Seventeener meaning, but now, the Seventeener is trying to be a Twenty-Sevener. (This is a problem for multiple and more obvious reasons, but mainly, what self-respecting 27 year-old is going to take advice from a 22 year-old kids on how you're supposed to feel when you are 27?) What are we left with? We are left with a bunch of kids pretending to understand what it means to be us (maybe I should say "me", someone under the age of 24 might read this, though I doubt it.)
What happened to the escapism of Rock music? What happened to falling in love with a song and falling into a song, forgetting the things that ail you, feeling young and strong because the music feels young and strong? It appears that The Hold Steady must have sucked up all of that energy and are using it solely for themselves, because they are the only ones writing tunes that feel classic, inspired, young, and rockin' (Exceptions...Lucero and Hot Leg, look them up, learn something). But as sad as it is that only one American band out there is truly capturing the spirit of youth and playing real fucking Rock n' Roll, that one band has decided to dole that energy out in spades.
Craig Finn's songs are about firsts: the first hand-hold, the first kiss, the first fuck, the first epic party, the first beer, the first time you decide you are, in fact, invincible, the first time you spend all night next to the toilet vomiting up fire and blue from too much Five O'Clock Vodka and "Mountain Blast" Powerade, cursing yourself from ever suffering from the delusion that you were, in fact, invincible, the first time you fuck over someone you like for no good reason, the first time someone who likes you fucks you over for no good reason. They're all about love and lust and drugs and booze and music and drugs and friends and booze and enemies and hopes and dreams and drugs and failure and despair and booze. Craig Finn's songs aren't about memories though. The mind tends to filter out the bad and leaves only the good when we're dealing with memories. Everyone has a great memory about the biggest party they went to in high school or college, but no one ever seems to have memories about how awful they felt the next morning. Those latter kind of recollections are for people who don't deal in memories, they simply remember things. And Craig Finn definitely remembers.
His songs are not nostalgic; there is no sentimentality clouding up his images of youth. They are lyrics that are about what it felt like to be 17, but clearly from a 38 year-old's perspective. He remembers that being young was amazing and painful and sometimes detrimental to the remainder of your life. Some people do all the wrong things until they graduate High School, and then they go to College and still do all the wrong things but at more appropriate times, and then they graduate after figuring out ways to occasionally do the right things and they get a job and come out relatively unscathed. They may still choose to exhibit occasional bad behavior, but they recognize that there are right times to do the wrong things and work within the confines of this socially-constructed yet still liberating structure.
Some kids aren't so lucky. Some kids lose their innocence earlier than others. Some kids do all the wrong things and never figure out that there are better times than others to be wrong. Some kids become adults who just keep doing all the wrong things. Some kids become adults who end up never doing anything right. Craig Finn knows that, and he knows that when we were 17, all of us were friends regardless of what are inevitable (or not-so-inevitable) destinations might be. Some were on the road to success, others were on a crash-course with disaster, but for at least a little while, we all partied together at that fork in the road, taking shots of Black Velvet from a plastic half-gallon jug and chasing it with warm cans of Hamm's and choking down Marlboro Reds while listening to The Police on somebodies crappy car stereo. Some times were great, others were shitty, but they were all times we had when we were younger and these times were magical because of that. High School wasn't great, but being 17 was. College was better, but still not always great, but being 21 was. This is the crux of The Hold Steady's music, the reality of being young; black and white, good and bad, success and failure, we'll always experience both, but all of the bad shit was sufferable as long as we were young when we were suffering.
Craig Finn writes lyrics about being a kid but for people who no longer are. The "old-timers" get it because his words are honest and sincere, and they remind us of how it felt to be young and indestructible. The kids get it because his words are honest and sincere, and they validate their existence, validate exactly who they are at the exact moment in time that they are listening to them. He somehow manages to write lyrics that mean completely different yet equally important things to two very different groups of people.
And that's only the lyrics. The music, well, I could describe the music, but I don't need to. The Hold Steady are writing songs that are as unique, original, and good as the best bands out there (if not better), but I'm guessing you've heard them before. If you've ever been listening to a song with friends at 1 a.m. and felt compelled to sing every word at top volume in each others faces just because you were there, the beer was cold, there was still a half pack of smokes in your pocket, and the song was just that fucking good, then you've heard it before because that's who The Hold Steady are and what The Hold Steady do. The Hold Steady write music that's meant to be listened to at top volume while driving in the summer with the windows rolled down and no particular place to go. They write the kind of music you listen to while getting ready to go out for a "massive night", only to cut your evening short so you can go home and listen to The Hold Steady again.
If you can hear the opening riff to "Slapped Actress" and think that these guys aren't as Rock as fuck, then I'm not sure what to say to you. If you can put on "Your Little Hoodrat Friend", and not smile at the lead-in to the chorus, I'm not sure I understand you. If you can listen to even just the first 20 seconds of "Hot Soft Light" and not be convinced that this is some of the most kick-ass, serious, and essential Rock n' Roll that you've ever heard, than I don't think there's a thing I can say here that's going to make you think differently. And to be honest, I wouldn't want to, because if you can listen to these songs and not feel those things, then you don't deserve to listen to The Hold Steady.
Download the MP3's from Amazon.com
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Thursday, April 1, 2010
If You Love the USA, Listen to Vinyl
Do you remember the magic of summers as a kid? Every single day was filled with unlimited possibility. You would wake up and see the bright light from early morning sun sneaking its way through the slots in the blinds of your bedroom and it was impossible not to smile because that day held so much boundless opportunity. Each day was another compressed spring just waiting to be released of its potential energy. Looking back now, it's funny just how liberating imagined freedom can be, because, let's face it, none of us were actually free (at least not the well-cared for ones, sorry if that hits a sore spot for anyone). At the time though, nothing seemed imagined about that freedom, because if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and looks like a duck, isn't it a duck?
During those times in between the early waking hours and dinner time (possibly a brief lunch interlude), we were our own person; no one to answer to, no one to regulate our movements, no one to question our behavior or motives. We did what we wanted to do, said what we wanted to say, were what we wanted to be. Summer does something to the hearts and souls of children that no other time of the year can ever hope to compete with. The freedom may have been "imagined" in reality, because there were still always rules to adhere to even if it seemed like total lawlessness, but it was nonetheless a form of freedom. We had stretches of time that were ours. No expectations to fulfill, no social or parental mores to live up to, we were anything and everything we had ever wanted to be and it was absolute, mother-fucking brilliance.
So on the second day of summer in 1994, I found myself with nearly an hour and a half left before dinner, and no one to hang out with or a place to go. I couldn't go home, that was a non-option. Early arrival was tantamount to blasphemy; it would be like spitting in the face of liberty. I wouldn't have that on my conscience, but I didn't want to wander around aimlessly because that was just as fruitless as going home. I needed something to do. The walk home took a half an hour, so I had an hour to play with and needed to find a way to fill it, and then it hit me...Records and Tapes Galore. It was a mere 5 minute walk from my friend's house and it didn't fuck up my walk home all that much. It might have taken me slightly longer (by like a minute), but it was more direct and I had only been inside Records and Tapes twice in my whole life, and, both trips were nearly non-existent. The first time, I walked in through the door to order and pay for an Anthrax import e.p., and the second time, I walked in to pick up Penikufesin (Nise Fukin ep) and then bolted as quickly as I came in. Both experiences lasted less than 10 minutes combined.
I had passed by this store who knows how many times, probably two or three times a week for nearly my entire life but never browsed, never spent a significant amount of time in there. For a normal, well-adjusted person, this isn't all that strange. All of us pass by businesses everyday and never step through the door once, but for me, this was equivalent to a crackhead walking by a dealer a few times a week and never stopping to pick up a rock. That shit just doesn't happen. (As a side note, how fucked up is it that the word "crackhead" doesn't trigger a spelling error?) I didn't really have a choice, I had to go, it was an act of Patriotism. Going was a display of love for freedom, and what's more American than freedom? The way I saw it, I not only had an obligation to my own "personal" freedom, but to the notion of freedom itself. I had an obligation to my country. I had to go to Records and Tapes Galore.
It took about 2 seconds to notice that this was not like any other record store I'd been in. They had C.D.'s, tapes, and a decent selection of music-oriented VHS lining the walls just like all other record stores, but on an island in the middle, they had stacks and stacks of records. I was blown away, records in a record store? How fucking novel. I'd thought I had seen it all, but here I was, browsing through racks of this dinosauric medium, this "ancient" nod to the music of the past, but as I dug, I discovered something remarkable...there were new albums shoved into those bins, albums I owned, albums I wanted to own, on fucking vinyl. And one of those new records, amongst the multiple used copies of Journey's Greatest Hits and the sun-faded covers of Linda Ronstadt LP's was the album, my favorite album in the history of music at that point in time, Nine Inch Nails' The Downward Spiral on glorious 12" black vinyl with larger-than-life album art.
It's hard to explain my exact feelings after finding this, but I can tell you they were revelatory. I have to imagine it was akin to the first time a baby discovers it has a nose. It's literally in their face the whole time, they just never knew it existed, but once they do, their life is unalterably different, there's no turning off that switch, there's no going back. Records had been there my entire life, I just never knew I wanted to listen to them, but once I did, music was inherently different.
It didn't matter that I already owned this album on C.D., or that I didn't own a record player; the only thing that mattered was that I needed this record. I had to get it. So I did. How I had the money I can't exactly remember, because generally speaking, the second I put a dollar bill into my jeans, it tends to fall out of the hole it burned in my pocket, but how I had the cash doesn't really matter now I guess. I had money and had to get this record, so I did. After that one, I got more...and more...and more. Within less than 2 months, if they pressed it on vinyl, I bought it on vinyl. (I still didn't have a record player at this point, and wouldn't have one for nearly 8 more months, when I used the money I received for my 16th birthday to pony up and buy a Sony turntable of very underwhelming quality.) I saved every penny I earned or found. I did extra chores, collected bottles to return for the deposit, dug through couch cushions and never hesitated to pick up a loose dime or nickle on the ground. I needed more records. I didn't care that I couldn't listen to them, I just wanted to own them. And for me, that was OK, I would just make a copy of the tape or C.D. from a friend who bought it. Then I could look at my record while I listened to my dubbed copy. It worked for me, worked for two years. It worked just fine...until I got a car with a C.D. player.
I now found myself in a serious dilemma. By that point I had my player and a sizable vinyl collection. I loved laying around my bedroom spinning my records. I loved talking on the phone to my girlfriend and spinning my records. I loved cleaning my room and even doing my homework while spinning my records. I just plain loved spinning my records...but I absoluetly hated FM radio. For a kid whose favorites were The Cure, The Ramones, Jeff Buckley, Sebadoh, and The Misfits, there wasn't really much of an option for me on the radio dial. I couldn't deal with shitty rock bands, and could handle vapid pop bullshit even less. I needed my tunes, but I didn't have money for a new tape deck for the car, couldn't afford to by a C.D. and vinyl copy of something, and I obviously couldn't play my records in the new ride. I was royally fucked.
Of course, it never occurred to me that there was a happy medium; continue buying the stuff I could on vinyl and listen to the stuff I had to buy on C.D. for lack of a vinyl pressing in the car, but my mind doesn't work logically. It's probably a result of the addictive personality, but I've always thought in "all or nothing" terms. I realize now that I was wrong, but the way I saw it then, I either had to suffer with fucked rock radio and continue buying records, or I had to give up the ghost and submit to the C.D. It was choice between sanity and love. In the end, I chose to remain (semi-)sane and go with those tiny, sterile discs, and it did crush me a bit, but luckily, the beast didn't die, it simply lay dormant, waiting for the day that it could awake from its long, forced slumber and return to its rightful place at the throne of my heart and musical existence.
For more than a decade I bought C.D.'s but I never forgot about records. I never forgot about those "large and in charge" 12" masterworks of human invention and engineering. And then, after far too long of dreaming about records and being broke because of irresponsibility and spending the little money I did have in nickle and dime fashion, an opportunity presented itself.
I was turning 30. My wife and I had spent our youth showering each other with lavish and irresponsible gifts for special occasions: birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas, etc., and then we got married and discovered we were broke and wallowing a decent-sized pool of debt due, at least in part, to the lavish and irresponsible gift-giving. So we made the decision that gifts were suspended. No more $200 birthday presents, no more $300 anniversary nights, no Christmas gifts, done, over, fin. Oh, we cheated a little here and there, but comparatively speaking, we were pretty well-behaved. But in 2009, we were both turning 30 and the 30th birthday is a milestone. She thought we should get each other something bigger that year. Nothing insane, no Lexus with a big red bow or anything, but something that was ultimately otherwise unobtainable. And I knew what I wanted, I wanted a record player and some records. She thought it was a good and reasonably-priced idea...and thus the beast awoke.
When people asked me how my birthday was and what I got, my reply was met with looks of confusion and thinly veiled ridicule. No one go it. The question everyone asked was "Why?", but I could tell from the way the one-word inquiry fell from their slack jaws or snickering lips that the real question was "Why are you an idiot?" I wanted to explain myself, but how do you put into logical words something that was never really thought about, just instinctively and viscerally felt?
So I fell back on science. It was easy to point to the science of vinyl recordings. Wider and fuller dynamic range of analog recording and playback, the sterility of hearing actual sound transcribed into 1's and 0's in digital, the warmer, more complex tones records reproduce, the bastardizing compression music is forced to go through in order to be heard in a digital medium, but as compelling as those arguments can be, none of them really mattered.
See, when it comes to advancements in technology, I'm actually kind of terrified. Maybe there's some sort of new-age social politico or neo-hippie living inside me that I am unaware of, but it seems like with each technological advance we embrace, we are forced to choose between our humanity and the ever-alluring pull of convenience. We no longer have to actually speak to people in person, shit, we no longer have to hear the person's voice we're speaking to at all, shoot an email, send a text. When I get an incoming call on my cell phone, there's an option to text back a response without ever having to hear the person who is actually calling me at that moment. How disgusting is that? My phone gives me the option to communicate without ever hearing a human voice.
Then there's audiobooks. Apparently we don't have the time to set aside a half an hour or 45 minutes a night to read 1984. No, we'd prefer, I don't know, Patrick Stuart or Ian McKellen to interpret Orwell for us. Fuck internalizing the words as we read them, making every paragraph, every sentence, every syllable our own, hearing it in our own voice, in our own head, with our own ideas about its meaning. We have more important things to do. We can't be bothered to read some of the most thought provoking and important works in modern history, that is beneath us. And e-books aren't any better. Throw a novel on your iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, or Kindle. The smell of the paper, the feel of the page as you turn it, that's meaningless. We don't need it.
We can skip human interaction and possibility of the character-building humiliation that just might come with that. Why bother when we can imitate sex with only a few keystrokes and a credit card number? We can skip commercials with our DVR's, ultimately forcing product placement and gratuitous advertising down our throats and into into our favorite TV shows and movies. We can even take out the responsibility that comes with learning to drive a car; just buy a nice enough ride that turns on the lights itself when it gets dark and parallel parks for you with the push of a button. That way, you don't have to remember the skills we learned that once seemed so important. And of course, there's the iTunes/iPod/mp3 player.
We no longer need to go to the record store, it's in our computer. We no longer need to take a chance on discovering a new band, just listen to the 30 second clips, they'll tell you whether you'll like it or not. Don't like a song or two, don't feel like listening to an entire album regardless if skipping songs fucks up the context and continuity of an album, a single work, a single piece of art...delete that shit, save space on the "Pod". Fuck it, if I don't care, why should you? And if you don't care, why the fuck should I?
The only problem is, I do care. There used to be pride in making a discovery, stumbling upon some album no one else you know has heard and buying it just because it looked like it might be something you'd like. No doubt, you would buy a stinker or two, but you'd also find things that two months later you couldn't imagine your life without. There was a thrill in that, a rush from taking a chance and having that chance pay off. But the days of that thrill, that rush are gone.
And hey, I won't pretend or lie, I use "new" technology. I even like "new" technology. I'm not trying to say "new" technology is evil. I haven't watched a live TV show in about 2 years, I send at least a handful of texts a day (generally only when my friends won't answer their fucking phone, but still...), when my wife is too tired, busy, or pissed to get a little naked with me, I have been known to employ the (free) services of an occasional busty, virtual lady to appease my most base of needs, and I use the shit out of my iPod. It's possibly the life-blood of my working existence. But to forget the past, to forget what it means to be a human for the sake of convenience is nothing short of taking part in actively destroying the human race.
Think about it. At a time in the not-too-distant past, if you wanted to have a conversation with your friend on the phone, you were tethered to the kitchen by a curly-Q chord and had to say what you wanted to in front of God and everybody. If you wanted to watch your favorite TV show, you had to suffer through commercials hawking products you had no intention of buying. If you wanted to get laid, you had to put yourself out there and try to actually talk to a human being. Even if you were just planning on whacking it, you had to go through the embarrassment of bringing a Playboy (or Playgirl for the ladies) up to the counter and not only shell out the hard-earned bucks but endure the awkward stares of the clerk. You had to suffer for the things you loved. And there was strength and character in that suffering. Nowadays, suffering is a thing of the past because new technology has given us a way out. With new technology, life isn't easier, it's just easy.
And the people who have embraced this new technological age have either 1., Forgotten history altogether, or, even worse, 2., Decided to disregard the importance of the past. One way or the other, this is very dangerous ground, because to automatically equate technology with advancement means that what has happened before, which is the foundation of today's existence, is meaningless. And when you remove the foundation, the building collapses.
As much as I enjoy the use of today's technology, it is always used as a last resort (with the exception of DVR. Commercials today aren't anywhere near as entertaining as the "Coco Wheats" talking bowl of breakfast "poo" or the "Dunkaroos" sweet-ass jingle, so the less of them I have to see, the more happy I am). I would never choose to read a conversation with a friend over having a conversation with a friend, I would never pick to hear a book or read it on a sterile, pixelized screen if I can hold the book in my hand, turn the pages, feel the paper. I would never choose to sit in front of a computer screen to achieve carnal satisfaction if my wife was willing and available, and I would never choose, not in a million years, to listen to an album in a digital format when an analog one is available.
Let's leave behind the fact that we don't hear in 1's and 0's. Let's not talk about the fact that computers are at best a bastardization of the human condition. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love my iMac and when I'm watching Short Circuit, I'm going to do my best to believe Johnny 5 is in fact alive. I mean, shit, I love that little fucking robot, he's super kick-ass, but when all is said and done, a motherboard is not a brain, a CPU will never be a body, a fan isn't sweat glands, and machines can't feel. To expect a human to hear the same way a computer (robot) translates sound is absolute bullshit. We're not the same and, God willing, never will be.
But honestly, fuck the science of it. The science is meaningless. Because whether or not there is a wider dynamic range of sound in analog playback or not, throwing in a C.D. or pressing a button on an mp3 player can never replace the feeling I get from putting a record onto the turntable. Records are the exact opposite of new technology. Obviously, that's a ridiculous statement, because Thomas Edison invented the phonograph nearly 150 years ago. Clearly, this is not "new" technology. But when I say it's the opposite, what I mean is the point of new technology is to make everything simpler, easier, removing the human responsibility and even interaction to at least some extent. Vinyl records force you to be involved in nearly every action. From the way you remove the sleeve from jacket and record from sleeve, to incessantly cleaning the records before and after you listen to them, dropping the needle onto the surface of the record, flipping the LP, putting the record back into its sleeve and sleeve back into its jacket just as carefully as you removed it, these are all important parts of the experience.
Then there's that initial pop when the needle hits the surface of the record. It last only a split second, but that little click let's you know the tunes are coming, so you better get ready. There's the painstaking task of adjusting the stylus and the tonearm's counterweight to coax out the best possible sound from your table. And then there's the simple fact of not only hearing the music but getting to see the it pour out of the speakers.
Last summer, I was babysitting for my brother and sister-in-law, and the second the kids saw the record player, they were entranced. They wanted to listen to records, so I played them Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman's Bat Out of Hell. I figured it was innocent enough and it gave me the chance to tell them the story of how their dad had played this for me when I was their age and I laughed at him, only to discover a decade later that it was one of the greatest rock records I had ever heard (Any opportunity to bolster an already mythic image of my brother to his kids is a good thing). I'm not sure what they thought about Bat..., but the youngest, who was 5 at the time, my nephew Jack, stood in front of that player and watched both sides play. He was amazed; he loved watching the tonearm slowly creep from the outside of the record towards the center. He was so interested in how it worked that he made me draw him a picture to explain the process. And since then, nearly every time I've spoken to him, he's asked me about the record player. That, as much as anything else, is part of the magic. Getting the opportunity to actually watch your music play is a wondrous and beautiful thing.
It's all of this and more that makes vinyl the king medium for music. It forces you to try, to work, to suffer and care about what you're listening to. They're not just good songs, good albums, they are things that require your attention and pampering. Listening to vinyl pressures you into a deeper connection with your music. Vinyl forces you into a greater intimate relationship with your tunes, and that's what truly matters. That's why vinyl's better, that's why it's brilliant.
I recognize that vinyl isn't for everyone. Some people simply "like" music, some "really like" it, some people "love" it, and vinyl is for the people who "really love" their music, the people who are unyielding in their passion for the music they listen to. I'm not saying you can't love music if you don't listen to it on vinyl, I'm just saying you can't love music as much as I do. Maybe that's a "My Dad can beat up your Dad" kind of statement, but it doesn't make it any less true because in this case, my shit does in fact trump yours. You can say that hearing is the only really important of the 5 senses when it comes to music, and you'd be right, but if it's possible to integrate other senses into the mix, why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you want to touch, feel, smell the music if you could. Why wouldn't you want more out of the listening experience? Why wouldn't you want it to hit you at every possible angle? You wouldn't, period? You can have the most important part with C.D.'s or mp3's, or you can have everything with vinyl, end of story.
When you scrape away all of the muck and bullshit, vinyl forces you to love your music not only mentally and emotionally but physically. It forces you to care about your tunes in a way you never have or never could otherwise, and it furthers the idea and art-form of "the album" and degrades the importance of "the song". It's tangible, it's emotional, it's cosmic. And Goddammit, in the end, vinyl is just fucking cooler. 'Nuff said.
During those times in between the early waking hours and dinner time (possibly a brief lunch interlude), we were our own person; no one to answer to, no one to regulate our movements, no one to question our behavior or motives. We did what we wanted to do, said what we wanted to say, were what we wanted to be. Summer does something to the hearts and souls of children that no other time of the year can ever hope to compete with. The freedom may have been "imagined" in reality, because there were still always rules to adhere to even if it seemed like total lawlessness, but it was nonetheless a form of freedom. We had stretches of time that were ours. No expectations to fulfill, no social or parental mores to live up to, we were anything and everything we had ever wanted to be and it was absolute, mother-fucking brilliance.
So on the second day of summer in 1994, I found myself with nearly an hour and a half left before dinner, and no one to hang out with or a place to go. I couldn't go home, that was a non-option. Early arrival was tantamount to blasphemy; it would be like spitting in the face of liberty. I wouldn't have that on my conscience, but I didn't want to wander around aimlessly because that was just as fruitless as going home. I needed something to do. The walk home took a half an hour, so I had an hour to play with and needed to find a way to fill it, and then it hit me...Records and Tapes Galore. It was a mere 5 minute walk from my friend's house and it didn't fuck up my walk home all that much. It might have taken me slightly longer (by like a minute), but it was more direct and I had only been inside Records and Tapes twice in my whole life, and, both trips were nearly non-existent. The first time, I walked in through the door to order and pay for an Anthrax import e.p., and the second time, I walked in to pick up Penikufesin (Nise Fukin ep) and then bolted as quickly as I came in. Both experiences lasted less than 10 minutes combined.
I had passed by this store who knows how many times, probably two or three times a week for nearly my entire life but never browsed, never spent a significant amount of time in there. For a normal, well-adjusted person, this isn't all that strange. All of us pass by businesses everyday and never step through the door once, but for me, this was equivalent to a crackhead walking by a dealer a few times a week and never stopping to pick up a rock. That shit just doesn't happen. (As a side note, how fucked up is it that the word "crackhead" doesn't trigger a spelling error?) I didn't really have a choice, I had to go, it was an act of Patriotism. Going was a display of love for freedom, and what's more American than freedom? The way I saw it, I not only had an obligation to my own "personal" freedom, but to the notion of freedom itself. I had an obligation to my country. I had to go to Records and Tapes Galore.
It took about 2 seconds to notice that this was not like any other record store I'd been in. They had C.D.'s, tapes, and a decent selection of music-oriented VHS lining the walls just like all other record stores, but on an island in the middle, they had stacks and stacks of records. I was blown away, records in a record store? How fucking novel. I'd thought I had seen it all, but here I was, browsing through racks of this dinosauric medium, this "ancient" nod to the music of the past, but as I dug, I discovered something remarkable...there were new albums shoved into those bins, albums I owned, albums I wanted to own, on fucking vinyl. And one of those new records, amongst the multiple used copies of Journey's Greatest Hits and the sun-faded covers of Linda Ronstadt LP's was the album, my favorite album in the history of music at that point in time, Nine Inch Nails' The Downward Spiral on glorious 12" black vinyl with larger-than-life album art.
It's hard to explain my exact feelings after finding this, but I can tell you they were revelatory. I have to imagine it was akin to the first time a baby discovers it has a nose. It's literally in their face the whole time, they just never knew it existed, but once they do, their life is unalterably different, there's no turning off that switch, there's no going back. Records had been there my entire life, I just never knew I wanted to listen to them, but once I did, music was inherently different.
It didn't matter that I already owned this album on C.D., or that I didn't own a record player; the only thing that mattered was that I needed this record. I had to get it. So I did. How I had the money I can't exactly remember, because generally speaking, the second I put a dollar bill into my jeans, it tends to fall out of the hole it burned in my pocket, but how I had the cash doesn't really matter now I guess. I had money and had to get this record, so I did. After that one, I got more...and more...and more. Within less than 2 months, if they pressed it on vinyl, I bought it on vinyl. (I still didn't have a record player at this point, and wouldn't have one for nearly 8 more months, when I used the money I received for my 16th birthday to pony up and buy a Sony turntable of very underwhelming quality.) I saved every penny I earned or found. I did extra chores, collected bottles to return for the deposit, dug through couch cushions and never hesitated to pick up a loose dime or nickle on the ground. I needed more records. I didn't care that I couldn't listen to them, I just wanted to own them. And for me, that was OK, I would just make a copy of the tape or C.D. from a friend who bought it. Then I could look at my record while I listened to my dubbed copy. It worked for me, worked for two years. It worked just fine...until I got a car with a C.D. player.
I now found myself in a serious dilemma. By that point I had my player and a sizable vinyl collection. I loved laying around my bedroom spinning my records. I loved talking on the phone to my girlfriend and spinning my records. I loved cleaning my room and even doing my homework while spinning my records. I just plain loved spinning my records...but I absoluetly hated FM radio. For a kid whose favorites were The Cure, The Ramones, Jeff Buckley, Sebadoh, and The Misfits, there wasn't really much of an option for me on the radio dial. I couldn't deal with shitty rock bands, and could handle vapid pop bullshit even less. I needed my tunes, but I didn't have money for a new tape deck for the car, couldn't afford to by a C.D. and vinyl copy of something, and I obviously couldn't play my records in the new ride. I was royally fucked.
Of course, it never occurred to me that there was a happy medium; continue buying the stuff I could on vinyl and listen to the stuff I had to buy on C.D. for lack of a vinyl pressing in the car, but my mind doesn't work logically. It's probably a result of the addictive personality, but I've always thought in "all or nothing" terms. I realize now that I was wrong, but the way I saw it then, I either had to suffer with fucked rock radio and continue buying records, or I had to give up the ghost and submit to the C.D. It was choice between sanity and love. In the end, I chose to remain (semi-)sane and go with those tiny, sterile discs, and it did crush me a bit, but luckily, the beast didn't die, it simply lay dormant, waiting for the day that it could awake from its long, forced slumber and return to its rightful place at the throne of my heart and musical existence.
For more than a decade I bought C.D.'s but I never forgot about records. I never forgot about those "large and in charge" 12" masterworks of human invention and engineering. And then, after far too long of dreaming about records and being broke because of irresponsibility and spending the little money I did have in nickle and dime fashion, an opportunity presented itself.
I was turning 30. My wife and I had spent our youth showering each other with lavish and irresponsible gifts for special occasions: birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas, etc., and then we got married and discovered we were broke and wallowing a decent-sized pool of debt due, at least in part, to the lavish and irresponsible gift-giving. So we made the decision that gifts were suspended. No more $200 birthday presents, no more $300 anniversary nights, no Christmas gifts, done, over, fin. Oh, we cheated a little here and there, but comparatively speaking, we were pretty well-behaved. But in 2009, we were both turning 30 and the 30th birthday is a milestone. She thought we should get each other something bigger that year. Nothing insane, no Lexus with a big red bow or anything, but something that was ultimately otherwise unobtainable. And I knew what I wanted, I wanted a record player and some records. She thought it was a good and reasonably-priced idea...and thus the beast awoke.
When people asked me how my birthday was and what I got, my reply was met with looks of confusion and thinly veiled ridicule. No one go it. The question everyone asked was "Why?", but I could tell from the way the one-word inquiry fell from their slack jaws or snickering lips that the real question was "Why are you an idiot?" I wanted to explain myself, but how do you put into logical words something that was never really thought about, just instinctively and viscerally felt?
So I fell back on science. It was easy to point to the science of vinyl recordings. Wider and fuller dynamic range of analog recording and playback, the sterility of hearing actual sound transcribed into 1's and 0's in digital, the warmer, more complex tones records reproduce, the bastardizing compression music is forced to go through in order to be heard in a digital medium, but as compelling as those arguments can be, none of them really mattered.
See, when it comes to advancements in technology, I'm actually kind of terrified. Maybe there's some sort of new-age social politico or neo-hippie living inside me that I am unaware of, but it seems like with each technological advance we embrace, we are forced to choose between our humanity and the ever-alluring pull of convenience. We no longer have to actually speak to people in person, shit, we no longer have to hear the person's voice we're speaking to at all, shoot an email, send a text. When I get an incoming call on my cell phone, there's an option to text back a response without ever having to hear the person who is actually calling me at that moment. How disgusting is that? My phone gives me the option to communicate without ever hearing a human voice.
Then there's audiobooks. Apparently we don't have the time to set aside a half an hour or 45 minutes a night to read 1984. No, we'd prefer, I don't know, Patrick Stuart or Ian McKellen to interpret Orwell for us. Fuck internalizing the words as we read them, making every paragraph, every sentence, every syllable our own, hearing it in our own voice, in our own head, with our own ideas about its meaning. We have more important things to do. We can't be bothered to read some of the most thought provoking and important works in modern history, that is beneath us. And e-books aren't any better. Throw a novel on your iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, or Kindle. The smell of the paper, the feel of the page as you turn it, that's meaningless. We don't need it.
We can skip human interaction and possibility of the character-building humiliation that just might come with that. Why bother when we can imitate sex with only a few keystrokes and a credit card number? We can skip commercials with our DVR's, ultimately forcing product placement and gratuitous advertising down our throats and into into our favorite TV shows and movies. We can even take out the responsibility that comes with learning to drive a car; just buy a nice enough ride that turns on the lights itself when it gets dark and parallel parks for you with the push of a button. That way, you don't have to remember the skills we learned that once seemed so important. And of course, there's the iTunes/iPod/mp3 player.
We no longer need to go to the record store, it's in our computer. We no longer need to take a chance on discovering a new band, just listen to the 30 second clips, they'll tell you whether you'll like it or not. Don't like a song or two, don't feel like listening to an entire album regardless if skipping songs fucks up the context and continuity of an album, a single work, a single piece of art...delete that shit, save space on the "Pod". Fuck it, if I don't care, why should you? And if you don't care, why the fuck should I?
The only problem is, I do care. There used to be pride in making a discovery, stumbling upon some album no one else you know has heard and buying it just because it looked like it might be something you'd like. No doubt, you would buy a stinker or two, but you'd also find things that two months later you couldn't imagine your life without. There was a thrill in that, a rush from taking a chance and having that chance pay off. But the days of that thrill, that rush are gone.
And hey, I won't pretend or lie, I use "new" technology. I even like "new" technology. I'm not trying to say "new" technology is evil. I haven't watched a live TV show in about 2 years, I send at least a handful of texts a day (generally only when my friends won't answer their fucking phone, but still...), when my wife is too tired, busy, or pissed to get a little naked with me, I have been known to employ the (free) services of an occasional busty, virtual lady to appease my most base of needs, and I use the shit out of my iPod. It's possibly the life-blood of my working existence. But to forget the past, to forget what it means to be a human for the sake of convenience is nothing short of taking part in actively destroying the human race.
Think about it. At a time in the not-too-distant past, if you wanted to have a conversation with your friend on the phone, you were tethered to the kitchen by a curly-Q chord and had to say what you wanted to in front of God and everybody. If you wanted to watch your favorite TV show, you had to suffer through commercials hawking products you had no intention of buying. If you wanted to get laid, you had to put yourself out there and try to actually talk to a human being. Even if you were just planning on whacking it, you had to go through the embarrassment of bringing a Playboy (or Playgirl for the ladies) up to the counter and not only shell out the hard-earned bucks but endure the awkward stares of the clerk. You had to suffer for the things you loved. And there was strength and character in that suffering. Nowadays, suffering is a thing of the past because new technology has given us a way out. With new technology, life isn't easier, it's just easy.
And the people who have embraced this new technological age have either 1., Forgotten history altogether, or, even worse, 2., Decided to disregard the importance of the past. One way or the other, this is very dangerous ground, because to automatically equate technology with advancement means that what has happened before, which is the foundation of today's existence, is meaningless. And when you remove the foundation, the building collapses.
As much as I enjoy the use of today's technology, it is always used as a last resort (with the exception of DVR. Commercials today aren't anywhere near as entertaining as the "Coco Wheats" talking bowl of breakfast "poo" or the "Dunkaroos" sweet-ass jingle, so the less of them I have to see, the more happy I am). I would never choose to read a conversation with a friend over having a conversation with a friend, I would never pick to hear a book or read it on a sterile, pixelized screen if I can hold the book in my hand, turn the pages, feel the paper. I would never choose to sit in front of a computer screen to achieve carnal satisfaction if my wife was willing and available, and I would never choose, not in a million years, to listen to an album in a digital format when an analog one is available.
Let's leave behind the fact that we don't hear in 1's and 0's. Let's not talk about the fact that computers are at best a bastardization of the human condition. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love my iMac and when I'm watching Short Circuit, I'm going to do my best to believe Johnny 5 is in fact alive. I mean, shit, I love that little fucking robot, he's super kick-ass, but when all is said and done, a motherboard is not a brain, a CPU will never be a body, a fan isn't sweat glands, and machines can't feel. To expect a human to hear the same way a computer (robot) translates sound is absolute bullshit. We're not the same and, God willing, never will be.
But honestly, fuck the science of it. The science is meaningless. Because whether or not there is a wider dynamic range of sound in analog playback or not, throwing in a C.D. or pressing a button on an mp3 player can never replace the feeling I get from putting a record onto the turntable. Records are the exact opposite of new technology. Obviously, that's a ridiculous statement, because Thomas Edison invented the phonograph nearly 150 years ago. Clearly, this is not "new" technology. But when I say it's the opposite, what I mean is the point of new technology is to make everything simpler, easier, removing the human responsibility and even interaction to at least some extent. Vinyl records force you to be involved in nearly every action. From the way you remove the sleeve from jacket and record from sleeve, to incessantly cleaning the records before and after you listen to them, dropping the needle onto the surface of the record, flipping the LP, putting the record back into its sleeve and sleeve back into its jacket just as carefully as you removed it, these are all important parts of the experience.
Then there's that initial pop when the needle hits the surface of the record. It last only a split second, but that little click let's you know the tunes are coming, so you better get ready. There's the painstaking task of adjusting the stylus and the tonearm's counterweight to coax out the best possible sound from your table. And then there's the simple fact of not only hearing the music but getting to see the it pour out of the speakers.
Last summer, I was babysitting for my brother and sister-in-law, and the second the kids saw the record player, they were entranced. They wanted to listen to records, so I played them Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman's Bat Out of Hell. I figured it was innocent enough and it gave me the chance to tell them the story of how their dad had played this for me when I was their age and I laughed at him, only to discover a decade later that it was one of the greatest rock records I had ever heard (Any opportunity to bolster an already mythic image of my brother to his kids is a good thing). I'm not sure what they thought about Bat..., but the youngest, who was 5 at the time, my nephew Jack, stood in front of that player and watched both sides play. He was amazed; he loved watching the tonearm slowly creep from the outside of the record towards the center. He was so interested in how it worked that he made me draw him a picture to explain the process. And since then, nearly every time I've spoken to him, he's asked me about the record player. That, as much as anything else, is part of the magic. Getting the opportunity to actually watch your music play is a wondrous and beautiful thing.
It's all of this and more that makes vinyl the king medium for music. It forces you to try, to work, to suffer and care about what you're listening to. They're not just good songs, good albums, they are things that require your attention and pampering. Listening to vinyl pressures you into a deeper connection with your music. Vinyl forces you into a greater intimate relationship with your tunes, and that's what truly matters. That's why vinyl's better, that's why it's brilliant.
I recognize that vinyl isn't for everyone. Some people simply "like" music, some "really like" it, some people "love" it, and vinyl is for the people who "really love" their music, the people who are unyielding in their passion for the music they listen to. I'm not saying you can't love music if you don't listen to it on vinyl, I'm just saying you can't love music as much as I do. Maybe that's a "My Dad can beat up your Dad" kind of statement, but it doesn't make it any less true because in this case, my shit does in fact trump yours. You can say that hearing is the only really important of the 5 senses when it comes to music, and you'd be right, but if it's possible to integrate other senses into the mix, why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you want to touch, feel, smell the music if you could. Why wouldn't you want more out of the listening experience? Why wouldn't you want it to hit you at every possible angle? You wouldn't, period? You can have the most important part with C.D.'s or mp3's, or you can have everything with vinyl, end of story.
When you scrape away all of the muck and bullshit, vinyl forces you to love your music not only mentally and emotionally but physically. It forces you to care about your tunes in a way you never have or never could otherwise, and it furthers the idea and art-form of "the album" and degrades the importance of "the song". It's tangible, it's emotional, it's cosmic. And Goddammit, in the end, vinyl is just fucking cooler. 'Nuff said.
Friday, March 12, 2010
I Love Heavy Metal from the '80's and Early 90's...Pt. III: Believe in Love
This love's got what it takes to give us one more chance to start, once again...
-Klaus Meine
When I was 15, I fell madly in love with a girl and it fundamentally changed my life in more ways then I could have ever imagined (Fast-forward 16 years, and that woman is now my wife, so clearly, she's impacted my life a great deal, but now we have to rewind 14 years because seventeen year-old Brandon is the subject right now). After having a girlfriend who, with real sincerity, loved me for the "who" and not the "what" for 2 years; seemingly from out of nowhere, I discovered the strangest thing...I had confidence. I liked myself not for what I was in the eyes of my peers, but for who I was in reality and in the eyes of my girlfriend. All of the sudden, I no longer cared about what others thought of me (not that I'm 100% sure I ever really did) because there was someone who wasn't my mom who truly loved me with honesty, innocence, purity, and intensity , and out of everyone I knew, she was easily my favorite, so if she was happy with me as I was, who was I not to feel the same way?
So on a fateful Friday night in the early Spring, I found the new, "self-confident" me at home earlier than expected and slightly drunker to boot. I had 4 warmish Black Label's that were meant to be drank at a party that got busted up far too soon for my liking still stowed away in my backpack, and I wanted to drink them; partly because I wanted to be a little drunker than I was, but mainly because I wanted them gone. If I am to be entirely honest, I was scared my mom might stumble across them and then there would be disappointment (I never really got in trouble for anything I did). So I drank. I drank and started looking for my old tapes.
I don't know why I did this exactly. I was drunk, people do stupid things when they're drunk. My best guess would be that due to my intoxication, I was easily amused and looking at these analog relics of my past sounded funny, but your guess is probably just as valid as mine. Nonetheless, I felt compelled to look at this stuff with no real intention of actually listening to any of them, but as I read the song titles on the back of the Scorpions album Love at First Sting, I had to pop it in. I knew most of the songs, at least the one's I really liked, but there was one, a song called "I'm Leaving You" that I remembered loving. In fact, it was easily my favorite song from the record, but I couldn't recall why. Nothing popped into my head. Not a single line, lick, or note, and it seemed funny to me that I could remember loving a song so much but not actually remember the song at all. I had to hear it. It was a fact finding mission, nothing more. Call it "a journey to the center of me...circa '84". It was a pretty easy track to find. It came right after "Rock Me Like A Hurricane" and that one would be a little hard to miss.
From the opening drum beat, it all came flooding back; every word, every riff, and most importantly, the sweet-ass bass groove that Francis Buchholz laid down during the choruses (the very reason I had loved the song so much in the first place). If it was a conscious decision to stop listening to Metal in 1992, it was a destined accident that I started again 3 years later, because instantaneously I was back in. The Scorps, with special thanks to Francis B., had me hook, line, and sinker. I started going through all of the others there: Dangerous Toys, Poison, White Lion, Megadeth, L.A. Guns, G N'R, Cinderella, Tesla, Great White...the list goes on. I could still sing all of the words, I remembered enough to anticipate my favorite parts of all my favorite songs. It was an awesome night.
But the brain is a powerful tool. We can condition ourselves to feel ways we have no real right to feel, and the veil of shame for liking this music still clung heavily to me, like underwear to the sweatiest balls in the heart of Summer. For two years, I had convinced myself that this music was a waste of tape, so shaking that self-taught lie wasn't easy. My guilt was heavy and great, and because of that I still felt a need to keep my long-overdue reunion a secret...kind of...mostly.
I would crank Def Leppard's High N' Dry in my Oldsmobile, but only when the windows were firmly in their rolled-up position. If my friends were around and I simply could not help but listen to Stryper's "Calling On You", I presented the song to them as though I listened to it more for the sake of irony than from honest enjoyment. Oh, if one of them asked me flat out if I truly liked this music, I would be completely honest, I just attempted to carry myself in a way that would deter a question of that sort. And that was my life, that's how I lived for a while.
With each passing year, I became more and more comfortable listening to this stuff in public, but I was rarely if ever boastful or forthcoming about how much I actually liked it. It remained something more to be chuckled at than to truly like. My friends even started listening to some of the stuff for the same reason. My Junior year of college, it was nearly impossible to go to a friend's party where Dio's "Holy Diver" wasn't blasted. When it was, all of the college girls in their sluttiest party attire and the sweaty meathead's who were desperately trying to get those girls out of those tiny clothes would exit the dance-floor with confused and disgusted looks on their faces, leaving 5 guys who sang all the words in each others faces, excitedly anticipating the moment when R.J.D. would command us to "jump, jump", which we inevitably would do. The song would end, the the latest danceable chart-topper yet to be played would come on, and I would slink back into the shadows, laughing on the outside but pumping my fists on the inside. This was how I lived and liked Metal for years; pretending my appreciation was out of admiration for the ironic rather than sincerity....that is until 2003.
It was 4 A.M. and I was dozing on the couch, unable to sleep but not fully awake, when a video played on MTV 2. At first, I was almost convinced I was dreaming because the song made no sense in the current climate of commercial pop, but as I became more lucid, I realized it wasn't a dream. I've asked myself more than a few times if I would have prefered it to be a dream, as it would have easily been the most lucrative one I have ever had, had I remembered the song that played in it, but I'll be honest with you; never in a million years would I trade reality for the fantasy, no matter how much bank I would have undoubtedly made from being able to regurgitate such a monstrous jam because the song never could have meant as much to me if it was a product of my own imagination. No, this song was real, and it certainly didn't make any "pop" sense, but I understood every last note.
I had never heard this song "I Believe in a Thing Called Love", nor had I ever heard of the proprietors of this jam, The Darkness, but the instant I heard the opening lick, I was brought from semi-consciousness to being wide awake, drinking every face-melting note in, soaking up every ear-blistering, falsetto shriek. This was the very thing I had been waiting for, begging for actually, and I didn't even know it. Before the song was even half over, I knew I would be skipping classes and calling into work in order to find, purchase, and devour this record. I wasn't being irresponsible because I wasn't deciding to do this; it was written in the stars, it was out of my control, it was preordained by some higher power my lowly mortal mind could not, nor deserved to comprehend. This was fate, this was destiny, this was of absolute and vital necessity. I waited on pins and needles for the hour to strike 9 when I could head out and make this album mine.
Oh, I fell asleep on the couch around 8:30 A.M. and slept nearly 13 hours, waking up a little before 9 P.M., realizing that I just might have missed my window to buy this album but like a true addict, I wasn't willing to give up easily. This record would be the fix of the century to a closet Metal junkie, and there were retailers, as unlikely as they were, who were open later than 9 and might have this record. Target was a bust, as was the dreaded Wal-Mart, but low and behold, the trusty Meijer Thrifty Acres (a regional, 24 hour grocery/"everything-else-under-the-sun" store to those people out there reading this who have never lived in the middle of the northern Midwest. As a side note, it is now referred to simply referred to as "Meijer's") came through. At a little after 10, I found The Darkness's debut album Permission to Land in the Meijer's music section. My girlfriend was visiting her parents for the weekend, so to celebrate this triumph of modern music, I decided to also pick up 12 Honey Brown's in the bottle, 20 Basic Menthol Lights in the soft-pack, and who knows how many Altoids in the tin (I like mints when I booze and Altoids are definitely the best mint out there, especially the Spearmint, although they didn't exist at the time...whatevs), and set out to have what I could only assume would be one of the most kick-ass nights in who knows how long.
And that is exactly what I did. I listened to the album front to back 11 times, replaying "Growing on Me" and "...Thing Called Love" occasionally because they both rocked so fucking hard. These figures are accurate, I promise you. I have a keen sense of memory, probably my only real talent (which is why I was so compelled to listen to "I'm Leaving You"; the fact that I couldn't remember it bothered me so much). I was home by 10:30 and I went to sleep at 6 A.M. The album is just short of 40 minutes...do the math. By the end of the first track, I was calling friends (well, actually, just "friend", singular) to bestow knowledge and enlighten him on the brilliance of what would most certainly be one of the greatest albums in modern rock history.
Permission to Land was (is) unrelenting. From the beginning of the album to then end of it, each song destroyed (destroys) me. It never stopped (stops) kicking my ass. It was (is...I have to stop this whole "parentheses" thing. You probably get the point by now that I feel the same way about this record now as I did when I first heard it. I promise to try to stop being annoying) one of those perfect records; an album with no filler, no weak point, no chink in the armor. From start to finish, it was witty, catchy, and kicked every last inch of my sizable and square ass.
This album was 80's Metal, it just happened to be recorded 13 years after the 80's ended, and it was a wake up call for me. I had to come out of the closet. I could no longer keep my feelings about 80's Metal hidden. I wanted, nay, needed to tell the world about this record. Everyone I knew should hear it. Everyone I knew needed to hear it. Everyone needed to be given the chance to fall in love with this music. Permission to Land was that good, it was that important. I could no longer pretend that Metal from the 80's was simply something funny to listen to because if I did that, no one would possibly take this record that was so undeniably influenced by my heroes of the past seriously, and it deserved to be listened to not as a comedy record but as an honest-to-God, sincere Rock record. But even more so, it opened my eyes to why I loved 80's Metal so damn much.
As much as I love rock from the 90's to the present day, it seems like somewhere around '93/'94 (maybe a little earlier), it became uncool to command your instrument. The better you played, the less cool you were. Virtuoso...hack, sloppy and without any real knowledge of your instrument...visionary....bullshit. Don't get me wrong, the sloppy shit was ridiculous too. Liz Phair, Pavement, John Spencer Blues Explosion, etc, etc...these fuckers were amazing, but there shouldn't have been anything wrong with owning your instrument, yet there was. We can't pin all the blame on the weak-ass hipsters and the "too-cool-for-imagination" crowd though. Metal definitely had a hand in its own demise. We can deal with only so much self-indulgence and overbearing bravado before we throw in the effing towel, and towards the end, Metal certainly couldn't get outside of itself to realize times may in fact be changing, but that doesn't excuse our inability to see that talent and bullshit don't have to equate to a singular sum. Metal could have dialed it down a bit, certainly, but we also could have tried to amp it up.
I guess what I'm driving at is so often I've found that the music of a song is simply a vehicle for melody and vocals, but with Metal, the music and vocals were two separate beasts, or at least two snarling heads on the same kick-ass monster. They coexisted, but didn't need to. The music was it's own force. The music, without vocals, could speak for itself. See, playing the instrument well was not in and of itself the accomplishment, I mean, the dudes in Creed play their instruments extremely well, but Creed sucks (if you like Creed, sorry, but someone had to tell you). No, the accomplishment was playing your instrument so well that you could speak without saying a word.
I remember the first time I heard Metallica's "To Live is to Die" on the ...And Justice for All record. I was blown away. 9 year-old Brandon had never heard something so beautiful and gut-wrenching. In fact, 30 year-old Brandon still has trouble keeping an entirely dry eye when listening to it. There's a part around halfway through the song where the guitar can't simply be called "sad", it's like the guitar is actually crying. It is so somber and grieved. Even to a 9 year-old, it was clear this song was written for Cliff Burton, this was their way of mourning his loss. They didn't need lyrics, they didn't have to tell me their friend died and they missed him, that they loved him and the loss hurt. The guitar did that for them. No words were necessary, only the heartbreaking wail of that guitar. It is still a very magical moment for me every time I hear the song. It is, in fact, the very reason that song is my favorite Metallica song, possibly my favorite Metal song, possibly one of my favorite songs ever. It says more with no words than most others do having the entire lexicon at their fingertips. That was unbelievable, that was magic, that was fucking Metal.
People always assume that Metal was all technique and no soul, but a song like To Live is to Die clearly shows that's not the case, and it's not the exception to the rule. Take Skid Row's Wasted Time, Scorpions' Believe in Love, Iron Maiden's The Duelist, Queensrÿche's The Mission, I could keep going; all of these songs and so many more have just as much heart and guts as anything else out there.
Of course, there were more than enough bands out there writing songs and making music that was about nothing more than getting fucked up and getting fucked, but even these guys managed to write music that had integrity, regardless of how trite the song itself was. It was the perfect union between sincere creativity and glossy, plastic entertainment. Somehow, these guys managed to be both trivial and brilliant simultaneously, and that's a beautiful thing.
I don't know...when I set out to do this, I think I expected to answer some huge question about life through Heavy Metal, but here I am, clearly at the end, but entirely unclear on how to end this. I guess if you should take anything away it should be that cursory glances are meaningless. The Metal from the 80's and early 90's is occasionally (maybe even often) myopic, misogynistic, simple, self-indulgent, and over-inflated, but it's also passionate, sincere, honest, complex, and beautiful. This music manages to establish, perpetuate, and abolish stereotypes in a single shot. It is a dichotomy in and of itself. Nothing and everything matters all at once. To judge it at face value without reading between the lines is an absolute travesty. There's no doubt that a great deal of it is meaningless, but it's just as true that so much of it matters so very much. Heavy Metal changed, my life...shit, Heavy Metal saved my life, and if one person can read this and decide to see what I'm talking about or even simply understand where I am coming from, understand even in the smallest, most insignificant way what I'm talking about, then it will all be worth it. Of course, even if that doesn't happen, it will still all be worth it because Heavy Metal from the 80"s and early 90's kicks supreme ass and if you don't understand it, I guess that sucks for you because, well...fuckin' Dio, enough said.
-Klaus Meine
When I was 15, I fell madly in love with a girl and it fundamentally changed my life in more ways then I could have ever imagined (Fast-forward 16 years, and that woman is now my wife, so clearly, she's impacted my life a great deal, but now we have to rewind 14 years because seventeen year-old Brandon is the subject right now). After having a girlfriend who, with real sincerity, loved me for the "who" and not the "what" for 2 years; seemingly from out of nowhere, I discovered the strangest thing...I had confidence. I liked myself not for what I was in the eyes of my peers, but for who I was in reality and in the eyes of my girlfriend. All of the sudden, I no longer cared about what others thought of me (not that I'm 100% sure I ever really did) because there was someone who wasn't my mom who truly loved me with honesty, innocence, purity, and intensity , and out of everyone I knew, she was easily my favorite, so if she was happy with me as I was, who was I not to feel the same way?
So on a fateful Friday night in the early Spring, I found the new, "self-confident" me at home earlier than expected and slightly drunker to boot. I had 4 warmish Black Label's that were meant to be drank at a party that got busted up far too soon for my liking still stowed away in my backpack, and I wanted to drink them; partly because I wanted to be a little drunker than I was, but mainly because I wanted them gone. If I am to be entirely honest, I was scared my mom might stumble across them and then there would be disappointment (I never really got in trouble for anything I did). So I drank. I drank and started looking for my old tapes.
I don't know why I did this exactly. I was drunk, people do stupid things when they're drunk. My best guess would be that due to my intoxication, I was easily amused and looking at these analog relics of my past sounded funny, but your guess is probably just as valid as mine. Nonetheless, I felt compelled to look at this stuff with no real intention of actually listening to any of them, but as I read the song titles on the back of the Scorpions album Love at First Sting, I had to pop it in. I knew most of the songs, at least the one's I really liked, but there was one, a song called "I'm Leaving You" that I remembered loving. In fact, it was easily my favorite song from the record, but I couldn't recall why. Nothing popped into my head. Not a single line, lick, or note, and it seemed funny to me that I could remember loving a song so much but not actually remember the song at all. I had to hear it. It was a fact finding mission, nothing more. Call it "a journey to the center of me...circa '84". It was a pretty easy track to find. It came right after "Rock Me Like A Hurricane" and that one would be a little hard to miss.
From the opening drum beat, it all came flooding back; every word, every riff, and most importantly, the sweet-ass bass groove that Francis Buchholz laid down during the choruses (the very reason I had loved the song so much in the first place). If it was a conscious decision to stop listening to Metal in 1992, it was a destined accident that I started again 3 years later, because instantaneously I was back in. The Scorps, with special thanks to Francis B., had me hook, line, and sinker. I started going through all of the others there: Dangerous Toys, Poison, White Lion, Megadeth, L.A. Guns, G N'R, Cinderella, Tesla, Great White...the list goes on. I could still sing all of the words, I remembered enough to anticipate my favorite parts of all my favorite songs. It was an awesome night.
But the brain is a powerful tool. We can condition ourselves to feel ways we have no real right to feel, and the veil of shame for liking this music still clung heavily to me, like underwear to the sweatiest balls in the heart of Summer. For two years, I had convinced myself that this music was a waste of tape, so shaking that self-taught lie wasn't easy. My guilt was heavy and great, and because of that I still felt a need to keep my long-overdue reunion a secret...kind of...mostly.
I would crank Def Leppard's High N' Dry in my Oldsmobile, but only when the windows were firmly in their rolled-up position. If my friends were around and I simply could not help but listen to Stryper's "Calling On You", I presented the song to them as though I listened to it more for the sake of irony than from honest enjoyment. Oh, if one of them asked me flat out if I truly liked this music, I would be completely honest, I just attempted to carry myself in a way that would deter a question of that sort. And that was my life, that's how I lived for a while.
With each passing year, I became more and more comfortable listening to this stuff in public, but I was rarely if ever boastful or forthcoming about how much I actually liked it. It remained something more to be chuckled at than to truly like. My friends even started listening to some of the stuff for the same reason. My Junior year of college, it was nearly impossible to go to a friend's party where Dio's "Holy Diver" wasn't blasted. When it was, all of the college girls in their sluttiest party attire and the sweaty meathead's who were desperately trying to get those girls out of those tiny clothes would exit the dance-floor with confused and disgusted looks on their faces, leaving 5 guys who sang all the words in each others faces, excitedly anticipating the moment when R.J.D. would command us to "jump, jump", which we inevitably would do. The song would end, the the latest danceable chart-topper yet to be played would come on, and I would slink back into the shadows, laughing on the outside but pumping my fists on the inside. This was how I lived and liked Metal for years; pretending my appreciation was out of admiration for the ironic rather than sincerity....that is until 2003.
It was 4 A.M. and I was dozing on the couch, unable to sleep but not fully awake, when a video played on MTV 2. At first, I was almost convinced I was dreaming because the song made no sense in the current climate of commercial pop, but as I became more lucid, I realized it wasn't a dream. I've asked myself more than a few times if I would have prefered it to be a dream, as it would have easily been the most lucrative one I have ever had, had I remembered the song that played in it, but I'll be honest with you; never in a million years would I trade reality for the fantasy, no matter how much bank I would have undoubtedly made from being able to regurgitate such a monstrous jam because the song never could have meant as much to me if it was a product of my own imagination. No, this song was real, and it certainly didn't make any "pop" sense, but I understood every last note.
I had never heard this song "I Believe in a Thing Called Love", nor had I ever heard of the proprietors of this jam, The Darkness, but the instant I heard the opening lick, I was brought from semi-consciousness to being wide awake, drinking every face-melting note in, soaking up every ear-blistering, falsetto shriek. This was the very thing I had been waiting for, begging for actually, and I didn't even know it. Before the song was even half over, I knew I would be skipping classes and calling into work in order to find, purchase, and devour this record. I wasn't being irresponsible because I wasn't deciding to do this; it was written in the stars, it was out of my control, it was preordained by some higher power my lowly mortal mind could not, nor deserved to comprehend. This was fate, this was destiny, this was of absolute and vital necessity. I waited on pins and needles for the hour to strike 9 when I could head out and make this album mine.
Oh, I fell asleep on the couch around 8:30 A.M. and slept nearly 13 hours, waking up a little before 9 P.M., realizing that I just might have missed my window to buy this album but like a true addict, I wasn't willing to give up easily. This record would be the fix of the century to a closet Metal junkie, and there were retailers, as unlikely as they were, who were open later than 9 and might have this record. Target was a bust, as was the dreaded Wal-Mart, but low and behold, the trusty Meijer Thrifty Acres (a regional, 24 hour grocery/"everything-else-under-the-sun" store to those people out there reading this who have never lived in the middle of the northern Midwest. As a side note, it is now referred to simply referred to as "Meijer's") came through. At a little after 10, I found The Darkness's debut album Permission to Land in the Meijer's music section. My girlfriend was visiting her parents for the weekend, so to celebrate this triumph of modern music, I decided to also pick up 12 Honey Brown's in the bottle, 20 Basic Menthol Lights in the soft-pack, and who knows how many Altoids in the tin (I like mints when I booze and Altoids are definitely the best mint out there, especially the Spearmint, although they didn't exist at the time...whatevs), and set out to have what I could only assume would be one of the most kick-ass nights in who knows how long.
And that is exactly what I did. I listened to the album front to back 11 times, replaying "Growing on Me" and "...Thing Called Love" occasionally because they both rocked so fucking hard. These figures are accurate, I promise you. I have a keen sense of memory, probably my only real talent (which is why I was so compelled to listen to "I'm Leaving You"; the fact that I couldn't remember it bothered me so much). I was home by 10:30 and I went to sleep at 6 A.M. The album is just short of 40 minutes...do the math. By the end of the first track, I was calling friends (well, actually, just "friend", singular) to bestow knowledge and enlighten him on the brilliance of what would most certainly be one of the greatest albums in modern rock history.
Permission to Land was (is) unrelenting. From the beginning of the album to then end of it, each song destroyed (destroys) me. It never stopped (stops) kicking my ass. It was (is...I have to stop this whole "parentheses" thing. You probably get the point by now that I feel the same way about this record now as I did when I first heard it. I promise to try to stop being annoying) one of those perfect records; an album with no filler, no weak point, no chink in the armor. From start to finish, it was witty, catchy, and kicked every last inch of my sizable and square ass.
This album was 80's Metal, it just happened to be recorded 13 years after the 80's ended, and it was a wake up call for me. I had to come out of the closet. I could no longer keep my feelings about 80's Metal hidden. I wanted, nay, needed to tell the world about this record. Everyone I knew should hear it. Everyone I knew needed to hear it. Everyone needed to be given the chance to fall in love with this music. Permission to Land was that good, it was that important. I could no longer pretend that Metal from the 80's was simply something funny to listen to because if I did that, no one would possibly take this record that was so undeniably influenced by my heroes of the past seriously, and it deserved to be listened to not as a comedy record but as an honest-to-God, sincere Rock record. But even more so, it opened my eyes to why I loved 80's Metal so damn much.
As much as I love rock from the 90's to the present day, it seems like somewhere around '93/'94 (maybe a little earlier), it became uncool to command your instrument. The better you played, the less cool you were. Virtuoso...hack, sloppy and without any real knowledge of your instrument...visionary....bullshit. Don't get me wrong, the sloppy shit was ridiculous too. Liz Phair, Pavement, John Spencer Blues Explosion, etc, etc...these fuckers were amazing, but there shouldn't have been anything wrong with owning your instrument, yet there was. We can't pin all the blame on the weak-ass hipsters and the "too-cool-for-imagination" crowd though. Metal definitely had a hand in its own demise. We can deal with only so much self-indulgence and overbearing bravado before we throw in the effing towel, and towards the end, Metal certainly couldn't get outside of itself to realize times may in fact be changing, but that doesn't excuse our inability to see that talent and bullshit don't have to equate to a singular sum. Metal could have dialed it down a bit, certainly, but we also could have tried to amp it up.
I guess what I'm driving at is so often I've found that the music of a song is simply a vehicle for melody and vocals, but with Metal, the music and vocals were two separate beasts, or at least two snarling heads on the same kick-ass monster. They coexisted, but didn't need to. The music was it's own force. The music, without vocals, could speak for itself. See, playing the instrument well was not in and of itself the accomplishment, I mean, the dudes in Creed play their instruments extremely well, but Creed sucks (if you like Creed, sorry, but someone had to tell you). No, the accomplishment was playing your instrument so well that you could speak without saying a word.
I remember the first time I heard Metallica's "To Live is to Die" on the ...And Justice for All record. I was blown away. 9 year-old Brandon had never heard something so beautiful and gut-wrenching. In fact, 30 year-old Brandon still has trouble keeping an entirely dry eye when listening to it. There's a part around halfway through the song where the guitar can't simply be called "sad", it's like the guitar is actually crying. It is so somber and grieved. Even to a 9 year-old, it was clear this song was written for Cliff Burton, this was their way of mourning his loss. They didn't need lyrics, they didn't have to tell me their friend died and they missed him, that they loved him and the loss hurt. The guitar did that for them. No words were necessary, only the heartbreaking wail of that guitar. It is still a very magical moment for me every time I hear the song. It is, in fact, the very reason that song is my favorite Metallica song, possibly my favorite Metal song, possibly one of my favorite songs ever. It says more with no words than most others do having the entire lexicon at their fingertips. That was unbelievable, that was magic, that was fucking Metal.
People always assume that Metal was all technique and no soul, but a song like To Live is to Die clearly shows that's not the case, and it's not the exception to the rule. Take Skid Row's Wasted Time, Scorpions' Believe in Love, Iron Maiden's The Duelist, Queensrÿche's The Mission, I could keep going; all of these songs and so many more have just as much heart and guts as anything else out there.
Of course, there were more than enough bands out there writing songs and making music that was about nothing more than getting fucked up and getting fucked, but even these guys managed to write music that had integrity, regardless of how trite the song itself was. It was the perfect union between sincere creativity and glossy, plastic entertainment. Somehow, these guys managed to be both trivial and brilliant simultaneously, and that's a beautiful thing.
I don't know...when I set out to do this, I think I expected to answer some huge question about life through Heavy Metal, but here I am, clearly at the end, but entirely unclear on how to end this. I guess if you should take anything away it should be that cursory glances are meaningless. The Metal from the 80's and early 90's is occasionally (maybe even often) myopic, misogynistic, simple, self-indulgent, and over-inflated, but it's also passionate, sincere, honest, complex, and beautiful. This music manages to establish, perpetuate, and abolish stereotypes in a single shot. It is a dichotomy in and of itself. Nothing and everything matters all at once. To judge it at face value without reading between the lines is an absolute travesty. There's no doubt that a great deal of it is meaningless, but it's just as true that so much of it matters so very much. Heavy Metal changed, my life...shit, Heavy Metal saved my life, and if one person can read this and decide to see what I'm talking about or even simply understand where I am coming from, understand even in the smallest, most insignificant way what I'm talking about, then it will all be worth it. Of course, even if that doesn't happen, it will still all be worth it because Heavy Metal from the 80"s and early 90's kicks supreme ass and if you don't understand it, I guess that sucks for you because, well...fuckin' Dio, enough said.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
I Love Heavy Metal from the '80's and Early 90's...Pt. II: Love Turns to Hate?
I still love you, but, I still burn...
-Layne Stayley
If there's a point in my life that could be made into a "coming-of-age" movie, it would be the summer of 1992. I had spent my entire life believing what I thought was a single undeniable truth; nice guys did not finish last. At that point, that staunch belief had yet to pay off. But I was only 14. Let's face it, that's not a whole lot of real-time life to make any concrete decisions about anything. That's not to say that at the time, fourteen years-old didn't seem like an eternity. When you're 14, it seems like you've grown as much as you possibly can. Of course, it never occurred to me that I had felt the same way about life exactly one year prior when I was 13, and going back another year to when I was 12, and so on and so on...but foresight is not the strength of the young. Frankly, I think 30 may be the age that most of us begin to realize that what you do at any singular given moment in time will ultimately not define the remainder of your life. Mistakes can be correctable, wrongs often are righted, change is possible, but when you're young, it seems like who you are at that exact moment in time is who you will always be.
...And I was a nice kid. That's who I was. Oh, I made some monumental blunders and got in my fare share of trouble: talking out of turn in class, detentions, phone calls home to Mom (the fucking worst), creating cruel nicknames for peers that were undeserved or at least more about malice than justice but when it became obvious to me that my ill behavior, in whatever shape it managed to manifest itself, had actually hurt the person it was aimed at, I generally felt devastated and would do nearly anything I could to make it up to the wounded victim, because I was a nice guy and I liked it that way. I was nice and one day, someday soon, being a good guy would pay off.
It didn't matter that the most "desirable" (do I use quotes too much?) girls I had met had always ended up liking bully dickheads who made fun of the small, defenseless kid with glasses, or the bookish girl with early-onset body image issues. If it wasn't that brand of douche, it was the affluent kids who were their own special kind of cock. I'm not saying that if you grew up wealthy it automatically means the words "bitch" or "bastard" applies to you, but out of the crop people I knew personally, it seemed the amount of money your family had was in direct correlation to how great the stench of ass wafted off of you.
Still, none of this mattered; nice guys did not finish last. The way I saw it, we simply got a later start. See, I've always been a hopeless romantic, just without any real sense for romance. But as a childhood Metalhead, I had learned about love from songs like Bon Jovi's "I'd Die for You" (still easily the most kick-ass jam on Slippery When Wet). That's what I thought love was or at least what love should be. I was just going to wait for the one who I'd die for, cry for, do any thing for, lie for...a Juliet for this clueless Romeo. I was just going to continue to be a nice guy. But then things changed in the summer of 1992.
I became fed up. I guess we all have our breaking point and I had reached mine. Without going into too great of detail (this thing will be long enough without throwing in yet another story), I decided to trade my white neckerchief and shiny silver star for a black stetson and a handlebar mustache. And it worked. I got what I wanted. I got the girl and lost my virginity to boot. (Just to clarify, it was two different girls, part of the new "asshole approach" I had adopted that summer .) I had schemed and did some rather underhanded things that summer to get what I wanted, and shocking enough, it payed off...for a while. As it turns out, my soul wasn't worth all that much and the return from it's sale was only a short term yield. Eventually, for various reasons, information fluttered to and from the "major players" in my neighborhood and alliances were compromised and secrets exposed; the warm summer air was rife with deception. Turns out I wasn't the only villain on my block in the summer of '92, just the stupidest one. I had betrayed one of the fundamental and inherent parts of me, and in the end, my world as I know it collapsed in on itself.
So over the course of three months I fell in love, got laid, and watched all of my friendships unravel, some I unavoidably and helplessly watched disintegrate, others I unconsciously but actively destroyed. As those few remaining days of summer faded into nothing but memory and regret, I realized three things about myself: 1.) Nice guys may in fact finish last, but assholes are always done first, 2.) (and most important), my actions had an effect and were capable of fundamentally altering other people's lives and my relationships with them, and 3.) I adored boobs.
Sex was good. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it immensely, but the act itself was far less amazing to me than the boobies that were intrinsically a part of it. The funny thing is, they weren't even very good boobs. In the grand scheme of things (I hope that woman doesn't read this), they were the worst boobs I've ever seen in real life. Still, they were unbelievably awesome, one of the great and brilliant wonders of this universe.
Why? I don't know. It's an age-old question, isn't it? Men are bewildered and astounded by breasts. Big ones, small ones, tanned ones, pale ones, real ones, fake ones, they all seem positively dynamite. And after my first real-life encounter with a set of knockers (you got to love funny, crass euphemisms...at least I do), no matter how ultimately weird they were (and they were weird, believe me), they were remarkable and beautiful and both physically and emotionally moving. Certainly, it's not that I hadn't noticed boobs before losing my virginity. I enjoyed stealing sideways glances at girls walking around the mall or seeing pictures of bare breasts prior to my first tangible encounter, but slimy ogling and glossy pin-up pages could never do justice to the genuine article.
I tell you this only because when school started that fall, I was now hyper-aware of the blossomed bodies of my female peers. Having an in-the-flesh relationship with boobs, in spite of how fleeting (or maybe because of it), made that addiction place in my brain "ping", and I now had to dedicate at least a somewhat significant part of my time attempting to get a fix.
It probably goes without saying, but this was a tough spot to be in because, as shocking as it may come to many people (sarcasm is a difficult thing to convey in writing), I was not what you would call a "lady's man". To my credit, over the course of the next year, I did manage to get an opportunity to touch/feel/see two different sets of these astounding orbs of biological and evolutionary perfection, but that's just ego-boosting, He-Man posturing, because that's all ultimately inconsequential to the story I'm telling here (especially because that's not all that impressive of a feat). My point is, I had a taste of boobs (pun both gross and intended), and I absolutely needed more.
So what's a chubby fourteen year-old boy to do? How does someone such as myself improve his chances of getting an opportunity to have a close, intimate relationship with breasts? I saw two ways. One was with looks, which I was screwed on. I don't believe I was or am an ugly fellow by an means, but I'm certainly no Adonis or Arthur Fonzarelli, so physical appearance was not going to be my key to open the gate to the land of boobs. The only other way, but maybe the more crucial, substantial, possibly sure-fire way gain access to the holy land beneath the bra was "cool".
Being cool in 8th grade is the holy fucking grail. It is the quality that, if obtained, can transcend looks, intelligence, economic status. The way I saw it, if you were "cool", you were "in", both socially and, I assumed, sexually. It would have to be an open invitation to the world of "Awesome", and without a doubt, that world included access to breasts.
"What in the hell does any of this have to do with Heavy Metal?", you ask. Simple. In 1992, the climate in the world of music had begun to change. Slowly and sadly, but undoubtedly sure, Heavy Metal was fading from being the cool absolute to being unequivocally not. But Heavy Metal was my life. As much as I wanted to ignore it, the writing was on the wall and in my mind, Slaughter or Dokken would be a major detriment to my achievement of sweetness.
How was I to pick? Tits or Metal, which one mattered more? I was in a precarious situation. On the one hand, I had discovered and liked, nay, loved music that was outwardly perceived as definitively not Metal, although I would have argued against that idea at the time. You very well may say "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was the end of Heavy Metal, but I respectfully and adamantly disagree. Not only could the "Alternative" bands co-exist with the Metal bands of the day, those bands actually became a sort of "new" Metal (not to be confused with the atrocious Nu Metal). The first time I heard Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins, Ned's Atomic Dustbin, and Alice in Chains was on MTV's Headbanger's Ball. Some of it (most notably Ned's and Pumpkins) were in the Ball's three-video block called "The Fringe"; bands who were heavier than standard rock, but weren't 100% Heavy Metal, but most of the bands that ultimately came to be tagged with the "Grunge" or "Alternative" label were played side by side with Tesla, Death Angel, White Lion, Megadeth, King Diamond and Queensrÿche. No one, at least not MTV (and in 1990, to a twelve year-old, there was no one else), was making the distinguishing difference between the two.
I would wager a guess and say that the majority of the "older" fans that these bands initially managed to garner were Metal fans. The relationship between old (or, as I prefer to think of it, classic) and new seemed mutualistic at first. Mötley Crüe's first "greatest hits" compilation, Decade of Decadence was released one month after Nirvana's Nevermind, and over the course of the next year, the collection managed to sell 2 million copies. Clearly, if Nirvana's major label debut was the final nail in the coffin, that couldn't have happened. But let's play Devil's advocate for a second and and pretend I believe that Nirvana killed Metal. ...Teen Spirit was a major hit by December of '91. D.O.D. continued to sell massive amounts for nearly another 9 months. If Nirvana was the Grim Reaper to Metal, wouldn't 3, 4, maybe 6 months on the outside be enough to demolish the house that Metal built? I would think so, but it didn't. It seemed that the old had given the new exposure and the new had given the old a revitalization. These two different musical avenues could both coexist in my heart. But could they coexist socially? On the charts and in the minds of my peers, nothing had changed, but to a devout Metalhead like myself, the downfall had begun, regardless of how infinitesimal. The declination was so small and slow that, commercially, it almost couldn't be tracked. To the naked eye, it didn't exist. It was virtually unnoticeable, but was nonetheless existent. By the time my 8th grade school year was underway, it didn't take a rocket scientist to see the music I had loved for so very long could potentially be a stumbling block on my road to "cool", and this was a fact that plagued me.
Tits/Metal; should I stay loyal to the safety and comfort of my history, or would I find a greater joy in discovery? It certainly seemed like it had to be one or the other. Maybe it was ridiculous. Maybe I was being melodramatic. Maybe I didn't have to choose, but it certainly seemed like it, and making that decision was easily one of the most gut-wrenching predicaments I had ever found myself in.
Before I go on, I would like to clarify ideas about the genre that may be confusing. In the 80's, there were three different families operating under the Metal blanket.
The two most popular were the 1.) less threatening and most commercially successful of the genre: the Glam Metal guys. These bands were your Poison's, Def Leppard's, Bon Jovi's, and later M.C.'s. Then 2.) you had the sonic opposite, the "moral and spiritual" threats. These guys were heavier, louder, faster, more brutal. Bands like Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Anthrax, Death Angel, and Mercyful Fate fell into this category. They're lyrics seemed more polluting to the mind and damning to the soul. They sang about death, violence, anger, religion, blood. The lyrics seemed far more evil and wicked than the "Glam" guys. Of course, with growth, it's clear that this grouping was far more socially conscious and less ethically damaging than the earlier sect and were (in most cases) not evil at all. (Out the aforementioned bands, Mercyful Fate and Slayer had they're moments of pure and unadulterated fury/hate/Satanica.) For the most part, these bands simply sang songs that attempted to expose injustice, intolerance, cruelty, bigotry; the inconsistency of "normal" life. Then we have 3.) the in-between of these two: Q.R., Iron Maiden, GNR, Dokken, early MC. These guys were heavier than "Glam", but not nearly as heavy as the serious "balls-in-a-vice" Metal of the thrash and speed genres. They were catchy but not poppy. Their message was threatening to the social structure of Reagan-era, conservative America but without the bluntness of the Thrash/Speed set. They could open for a Glam band or have a Thrash band open for them. They were the nearly perfect union between the two extremes.
But regardless of how different one band may have been from another, there was a single unifying factor that pulsed through all of the music...rebellion. No matter how overtly aggressive or comparatively passive, these bands were comprised of people who felt rejected by normal society. See, the thing about Heavy Metal that most people neglect to realize is it was/is one of the most nonexclusive clubs someone can belong to. There's only a couple of essential factors: a love for the music and a desperate desire to "Rock". It didn't matter how down-trodden, how outcast, how different, how "uncool" you were in the eyes of normal society, if you loved Metal, you were "Metal". You were part of a family. You could sit down to lunch in your school's cafeteria wearing a Ratt t-shirt, and see a guy who you've never met, never spoken to before wearing a Kiss t-shirt from across the room, and you instantly understood each other. One of the guys could have been rich, the other poor, one black, the other white, one gay, the other straight, one thin and fit, the other a fat fatty, and still, you had a brother, a cohort. Regardless of how different you were, you were one in the same.
For a kid who spent his life being fat and on the outskirts of normalcy and unconditional acceptance, having that feeling of community outside of a loving family was a huge deal. I didn't really have any peers as a young Metalhead, but I had respect from those who loved my music. They may have been older than I was and had no desire to hang out with me (thank God...Could you imagine?), but they were still willing to acknowledge my existence, and what's more, they validated that existence, they made me feel like I was someone of importance, a person of worth, a boy who mattered. But more importantly, I had the music. I could listen to songs penned by society's outcasts and feel like I had allies. There were people who understood me out there. That was huge.
Tits were amazing, but I had to be cool to get them, and to be cool in 1992, I had to give up that sense of belonging. Granted, if I achieved the level of cool necessary to cradle a breast in my hand, I would most likely once again feel like I was a a part of something. But with my future being uncertain, I was faced with the question; Do I stick with something that gave me a figurative sense of intimacy, or do I take a chance on the possibility of literal, physical intimacy? The decision tore me apart.
In the end, I went with boobs. The gravitational pull of those globes was too great to resist. They're round, soft, beautiful, fun, fantastic, but I'd be remiss if I didn't express to you that the decision was made only because Metal didn't produce. I had told myself that the tunes had to defend themselves. There wasn't music I loved more than Metal, but there was still music I loved. I wouldn't lose out on music if I gave up Metal, but if I went with Metal, I would most certainly miss out on boobs. Metal had to convince me. An album had to come out that mattered so much, that sounded so good, that kicked so much ass that boobs ceased to matter. That album never came.
That doesn't mean the decision was easy. I struggled. I hurt. I gave up one of the only things that had ever truly mattered to me in pursuit of something that very well may have been unattainable. As sad as it is to admit, I killed a part of myself on the day I swore off Metal. Oh, I found it again; I managed to resurrect the shit out that part of me when I realized a few years later that trying to fall in line and live up to some social rubric of cool was one of the most fruitless quests ever and that I was far more happy with myself when I was simply comfortable with who I was and listening to the music I loved, regardless of how "cool" it was. Touching boobs and liking Heavy Metal could be symbiotic as long you were happy with being yourself, but that was too sophisticated an idea for me to grasp at the time, so I gave Metal up.
Like I said, some boobs came, most didn't. In the end, I found a girl in 9th grade who I loved who loved me for who I was and not what I was and that love eventually gave me the confidence to reignite that old, lost flame, but that's a story for another day, the third chapter in my "I Love Heavy Metal" saga. Ultimately, if you take anything away from this, it should be 1.) Be true to yourself. Life is much better when you are. 2.) Heavy Metal kicks serious ass. And 3.) Boobs are amazing enough to die for.
-Layne Stayley
If there's a point in my life that could be made into a "coming-of-age" movie, it would be the summer of 1992. I had spent my entire life believing what I thought was a single undeniable truth; nice guys did not finish last. At that point, that staunch belief had yet to pay off. But I was only 14. Let's face it, that's not a whole lot of real-time life to make any concrete decisions about anything. That's not to say that at the time, fourteen years-old didn't seem like an eternity. When you're 14, it seems like you've grown as much as you possibly can. Of course, it never occurred to me that I had felt the same way about life exactly one year prior when I was 13, and going back another year to when I was 12, and so on and so on...but foresight is not the strength of the young. Frankly, I think 30 may be the age that most of us begin to realize that what you do at any singular given moment in time will ultimately not define the remainder of your life. Mistakes can be correctable, wrongs often are righted, change is possible, but when you're young, it seems like who you are at that exact moment in time is who you will always be.
...And I was a nice kid. That's who I was. Oh, I made some monumental blunders and got in my fare share of trouble: talking out of turn in class, detentions, phone calls home to Mom (the fucking worst), creating cruel nicknames for peers that were undeserved or at least more about malice than justice but when it became obvious to me that my ill behavior, in whatever shape it managed to manifest itself, had actually hurt the person it was aimed at, I generally felt devastated and would do nearly anything I could to make it up to the wounded victim, because I was a nice guy and I liked it that way. I was nice and one day, someday soon, being a good guy would pay off.
It didn't matter that the most "desirable" (do I use quotes too much?) girls I had met had always ended up liking bully dickheads who made fun of the small, defenseless kid with glasses, or the bookish girl with early-onset body image issues. If it wasn't that brand of douche, it was the affluent kids who were their own special kind of cock. I'm not saying that if you grew up wealthy it automatically means the words "bitch" or "bastard" applies to you, but out of the crop people I knew personally, it seemed the amount of money your family had was in direct correlation to how great the stench of ass wafted off of you.
Still, none of this mattered; nice guys did not finish last. The way I saw it, we simply got a later start. See, I've always been a hopeless romantic, just without any real sense for romance. But as a childhood Metalhead, I had learned about love from songs like Bon Jovi's "I'd Die for You" (still easily the most kick-ass jam on Slippery When Wet). That's what I thought love was or at least what love should be. I was just going to wait for the one who I'd die for, cry for, do any thing for, lie for...a Juliet for this clueless Romeo. I was just going to continue to be a nice guy. But then things changed in the summer of 1992.
I became fed up. I guess we all have our breaking point and I had reached mine. Without going into too great of detail (this thing will be long enough without throwing in yet another story), I decided to trade my white neckerchief and shiny silver star for a black stetson and a handlebar mustache. And it worked. I got what I wanted. I got the girl and lost my virginity to boot. (Just to clarify, it was two different girls, part of the new "asshole approach" I had adopted that summer .) I had schemed and did some rather underhanded things that summer to get what I wanted, and shocking enough, it payed off...for a while. As it turns out, my soul wasn't worth all that much and the return from it's sale was only a short term yield. Eventually, for various reasons, information fluttered to and from the "major players" in my neighborhood and alliances were compromised and secrets exposed; the warm summer air was rife with deception. Turns out I wasn't the only villain on my block in the summer of '92, just the stupidest one. I had betrayed one of the fundamental and inherent parts of me, and in the end, my world as I know it collapsed in on itself.
So over the course of three months I fell in love, got laid, and watched all of my friendships unravel, some I unavoidably and helplessly watched disintegrate, others I unconsciously but actively destroyed. As those few remaining days of summer faded into nothing but memory and regret, I realized three things about myself: 1.) Nice guys may in fact finish last, but assholes are always done first, 2.) (and most important), my actions had an effect and were capable of fundamentally altering other people's lives and my relationships with them, and 3.) I adored boobs.
Sex was good. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it immensely, but the act itself was far less amazing to me than the boobies that were intrinsically a part of it. The funny thing is, they weren't even very good boobs. In the grand scheme of things (I hope that woman doesn't read this), they were the worst boobs I've ever seen in real life. Still, they were unbelievably awesome, one of the great and brilliant wonders of this universe.
Why? I don't know. It's an age-old question, isn't it? Men are bewildered and astounded by breasts. Big ones, small ones, tanned ones, pale ones, real ones, fake ones, they all seem positively dynamite. And after my first real-life encounter with a set of knockers (you got to love funny, crass euphemisms...at least I do), no matter how ultimately weird they were (and they were weird, believe me), they were remarkable and beautiful and both physically and emotionally moving. Certainly, it's not that I hadn't noticed boobs before losing my virginity. I enjoyed stealing sideways glances at girls walking around the mall or seeing pictures of bare breasts prior to my first tangible encounter, but slimy ogling and glossy pin-up pages could never do justice to the genuine article.
I tell you this only because when school started that fall, I was now hyper-aware of the blossomed bodies of my female peers. Having an in-the-flesh relationship with boobs, in spite of how fleeting (or maybe because of it), made that addiction place in my brain "ping", and I now had to dedicate at least a somewhat significant part of my time attempting to get a fix.
It probably goes without saying, but this was a tough spot to be in because, as shocking as it may come to many people (sarcasm is a difficult thing to convey in writing), I was not what you would call a "lady's man". To my credit, over the course of the next year, I did manage to get an opportunity to touch/feel/see two different sets of these astounding orbs of biological and evolutionary perfection, but that's just ego-boosting, He-Man posturing, because that's all ultimately inconsequential to the story I'm telling here (especially because that's not all that impressive of a feat). My point is, I had a taste of boobs (pun both gross and intended), and I absolutely needed more.
So what's a chubby fourteen year-old boy to do? How does someone such as myself improve his chances of getting an opportunity to have a close, intimate relationship with breasts? I saw two ways. One was with looks, which I was screwed on. I don't believe I was or am an ugly fellow by an means, but I'm certainly no Adonis or Arthur Fonzarelli, so physical appearance was not going to be my key to open the gate to the land of boobs. The only other way, but maybe the more crucial, substantial, possibly sure-fire way gain access to the holy land beneath the bra was "cool".
Being cool in 8th grade is the holy fucking grail. It is the quality that, if obtained, can transcend looks, intelligence, economic status. The way I saw it, if you were "cool", you were "in", both socially and, I assumed, sexually. It would have to be an open invitation to the world of "Awesome", and without a doubt, that world included access to breasts.
"What in the hell does any of this have to do with Heavy Metal?", you ask. Simple. In 1992, the climate in the world of music had begun to change. Slowly and sadly, but undoubtedly sure, Heavy Metal was fading from being the cool absolute to being unequivocally not. But Heavy Metal was my life. As much as I wanted to ignore it, the writing was on the wall and in my mind, Slaughter or Dokken would be a major detriment to my achievement of sweetness.
How was I to pick? Tits or Metal, which one mattered more? I was in a precarious situation. On the one hand, I had discovered and liked, nay, loved music that was outwardly perceived as definitively not Metal, although I would have argued against that idea at the time. You very well may say "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was the end of Heavy Metal, but I respectfully and adamantly disagree. Not only could the "Alternative" bands co-exist with the Metal bands of the day, those bands actually became a sort of "new" Metal (not to be confused with the atrocious Nu Metal). The first time I heard Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins, Ned's Atomic Dustbin, and Alice in Chains was on MTV's Headbanger's Ball. Some of it (most notably Ned's and Pumpkins) were in the Ball's three-video block called "The Fringe"; bands who were heavier than standard rock, but weren't 100% Heavy Metal, but most of the bands that ultimately came to be tagged with the "Grunge" or "Alternative" label were played side by side with Tesla, Death Angel, White Lion, Megadeth, King Diamond and Queensrÿche. No one, at least not MTV (and in 1990, to a twelve year-old, there was no one else), was making the distinguishing difference between the two.
I would wager a guess and say that the majority of the "older" fans that these bands initially managed to garner were Metal fans. The relationship between old (or, as I prefer to think of it, classic) and new seemed mutualistic at first. Mötley Crüe's first "greatest hits" compilation, Decade of Decadence was released one month after Nirvana's Nevermind, and over the course of the next year, the collection managed to sell 2 million copies. Clearly, if Nirvana's major label debut was the final nail in the coffin, that couldn't have happened. But let's play Devil's advocate for a second and and pretend I believe that Nirvana killed Metal. ...Teen Spirit was a major hit by December of '91. D.O.D. continued to sell massive amounts for nearly another 9 months. If Nirvana was the Grim Reaper to Metal, wouldn't 3, 4, maybe 6 months on the outside be enough to demolish the house that Metal built? I would think so, but it didn't. It seemed that the old had given the new exposure and the new had given the old a revitalization. These two different musical avenues could both coexist in my heart. But could they coexist socially? On the charts and in the minds of my peers, nothing had changed, but to a devout Metalhead like myself, the downfall had begun, regardless of how infinitesimal. The declination was so small and slow that, commercially, it almost couldn't be tracked. To the naked eye, it didn't exist. It was virtually unnoticeable, but was nonetheless existent. By the time my 8th grade school year was underway, it didn't take a rocket scientist to see the music I had loved for so very long could potentially be a stumbling block on my road to "cool", and this was a fact that plagued me.
Tits/Metal; should I stay loyal to the safety and comfort of my history, or would I find a greater joy in discovery? It certainly seemed like it had to be one or the other. Maybe it was ridiculous. Maybe I was being melodramatic. Maybe I didn't have to choose, but it certainly seemed like it, and making that decision was easily one of the most gut-wrenching predicaments I had ever found myself in.
Before I go on, I would like to clarify ideas about the genre that may be confusing. In the 80's, there were three different families operating under the Metal blanket.
The two most popular were the 1.) less threatening and most commercially successful of the genre: the Glam Metal guys. These bands were your Poison's, Def Leppard's, Bon Jovi's, and later M.C.'s. Then 2.) you had the sonic opposite, the "moral and spiritual" threats. These guys were heavier, louder, faster, more brutal. Bands like Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Anthrax, Death Angel, and Mercyful Fate fell into this category. They're lyrics seemed more polluting to the mind and damning to the soul. They sang about death, violence, anger, religion, blood. The lyrics seemed far more evil and wicked than the "Glam" guys. Of course, with growth, it's clear that this grouping was far more socially conscious and less ethically damaging than the earlier sect and were (in most cases) not evil at all. (Out the aforementioned bands, Mercyful Fate and Slayer had they're moments of pure and unadulterated fury/hate/Satanica.) For the most part, these bands simply sang songs that attempted to expose injustice, intolerance, cruelty, bigotry; the inconsistency of "normal" life. Then we have 3.) the in-between of these two: Q.R., Iron Maiden, GNR, Dokken, early MC. These guys were heavier than "Glam", but not nearly as heavy as the serious "balls-in-a-vice" Metal of the thrash and speed genres. They were catchy but not poppy. Their message was threatening to the social structure of Reagan-era, conservative America but without the bluntness of the Thrash/Speed set. They could open for a Glam band or have a Thrash band open for them. They were the nearly perfect union between the two extremes.
But regardless of how different one band may have been from another, there was a single unifying factor that pulsed through all of the music...rebellion. No matter how overtly aggressive or comparatively passive, these bands were comprised of people who felt rejected by normal society. See, the thing about Heavy Metal that most people neglect to realize is it was/is one of the most nonexclusive clubs someone can belong to. There's only a couple of essential factors: a love for the music and a desperate desire to "Rock". It didn't matter how down-trodden, how outcast, how different, how "uncool" you were in the eyes of normal society, if you loved Metal, you were "Metal". You were part of a family. You could sit down to lunch in your school's cafeteria wearing a Ratt t-shirt, and see a guy who you've never met, never spoken to before wearing a Kiss t-shirt from across the room, and you instantly understood each other. One of the guys could have been rich, the other poor, one black, the other white, one gay, the other straight, one thin and fit, the other a fat fatty, and still, you had a brother, a cohort. Regardless of how different you were, you were one in the same.
For a kid who spent his life being fat and on the outskirts of normalcy and unconditional acceptance, having that feeling of community outside of a loving family was a huge deal. I didn't really have any peers as a young Metalhead, but I had respect from those who loved my music. They may have been older than I was and had no desire to hang out with me (thank God...Could you imagine?), but they were still willing to acknowledge my existence, and what's more, they validated that existence, they made me feel like I was someone of importance, a person of worth, a boy who mattered. But more importantly, I had the music. I could listen to songs penned by society's outcasts and feel like I had allies. There were people who understood me out there. That was huge.
Tits were amazing, but I had to be cool to get them, and to be cool in 1992, I had to give up that sense of belonging. Granted, if I achieved the level of cool necessary to cradle a breast in my hand, I would most likely once again feel like I was a a part of something. But with my future being uncertain, I was faced with the question; Do I stick with something that gave me a figurative sense of intimacy, or do I take a chance on the possibility of literal, physical intimacy? The decision tore me apart.
In the end, I went with boobs. The gravitational pull of those globes was too great to resist. They're round, soft, beautiful, fun, fantastic, but I'd be remiss if I didn't express to you that the decision was made only because Metal didn't produce. I had told myself that the tunes had to defend themselves. There wasn't music I loved more than Metal, but there was still music I loved. I wouldn't lose out on music if I gave up Metal, but if I went with Metal, I would most certainly miss out on boobs. Metal had to convince me. An album had to come out that mattered so much, that sounded so good, that kicked so much ass that boobs ceased to matter. That album never came.
That doesn't mean the decision was easy. I struggled. I hurt. I gave up one of the only things that had ever truly mattered to me in pursuit of something that very well may have been unattainable. As sad as it is to admit, I killed a part of myself on the day I swore off Metal. Oh, I found it again; I managed to resurrect the shit out that part of me when I realized a few years later that trying to fall in line and live up to some social rubric of cool was one of the most fruitless quests ever and that I was far more happy with myself when I was simply comfortable with who I was and listening to the music I loved, regardless of how "cool" it was. Touching boobs and liking Heavy Metal could be symbiotic as long you were happy with being yourself, but that was too sophisticated an idea for me to grasp at the time, so I gave Metal up.
Like I said, some boobs came, most didn't. In the end, I found a girl in 9th grade who I loved who loved me for who I was and not what I was and that love eventually gave me the confidence to reignite that old, lost flame, but that's a story for another day, the third chapter in my "I Love Heavy Metal" saga. Ultimately, if you take anything away from this, it should be 1.) Be true to yourself. Life is much better when you are. 2.) Heavy Metal kicks serious ass. And 3.) Boobs are amazing enough to die for.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
I Love Heavy Metal from the '80's and Early 90's...Pt. I: In the Beginning
In the beginning
Good always overpowered the evils
Of all man's sins...
But in time
The nations grew weak
And our cities fell to slums
While evil stood strong
In the dusts of hell
Lurked the blackest of hates
For he whom they feared
Awaited them... Now many many lifetimes later
Lay destroyed, beaten down,
Only the corpses of rebels
Ashes of dreams
And blood stained streets
It has been written that
"Those who have the youth
Have the future"
So come now, children of the beast
Be strong
And Shout at the Devil...
-Nikki Sixx
Heavy Metal saved my life. I know it sounds silly, melodramatic, crazy, but that doesn't make it any less true. To understand this, there are two things you need to know about me: 1., I am an addict. I have that thing in my brain that turns something I love into a preoccupation, and that preoccupation turns into obsession, and then obsession turns into desperate need. It started at an extremely young age. My first jones was for action figures. I loved those little plastic men with all of my heart. The actual accumulation of the toys was secondary. Don't get me wrong, obtaining "Battle-Action Armor He-Man" was kick-ass, but plotting, planning, dwelling on the figure was far more appealing. I would look at the tiny comic books or the box-backs where other available figures were displayed, and I would dream about them. I would imagine the epic battles that could take place. I was addicted to action figures. I was three, three fucking years old and this was how I spent my time. Insane, I know, because let's face it, I'm at least a tiny bit nuts, whatever...
2., I am lazy. Having too many things to do makes me mentally shut down. Oh, I get those things done, I'm just so angry about being a "functioning, productive, responsible" human being that in order to accomplish any of the things necessary to call myself an "adult", I have to go on auto-pilot lest my already unstable mind be pushed even further into Loonyland. This also means that if I want to actually get done the things i set in front of myself, I have to be realistic and not put too much on my plate at any given time. I have to make things manageable or I will instead manage to get nothing done.
"So just how did Metal save my life exactly?", you ask. The answer is simple; Heavy Metal quickly became the addiction. That addiction (eventually) turned into a full blown to music period, a monkey I still carry on my back to this day (don't worry, it will soon all make sense). It's like any addiction story you've ever heard, the first taste made me want, the second one made me need.
The story goes that my brother went on a school trip to Toronto and wanted to get everyone souvenirs. He asked me what I wanted Toronto, and after seeing the video for the lead-off single from Ronnie James Dio's first solo album, a recently four-year old Brandon asked if Toronto had "Rainbow in the Dark"?, because if they did, that's what I wanted. I wanted "Rainbow in the Dark". Being a good big brother, Scott came home with a copy of Dio's "Holy Diver" on cassette. But it wasn't until four months later when Mötley Crüe's second record "Shout at the Devil" came out that I was truly hooked.
I saw the video for "Looks that Kill" (two videos...does that make MTV my pusher?) and I needed it. But see, this time it was 100% different. Four-year old Brandon had a rather wild and overactive imagination that often, for one reason or another, turned to the macabre. I was scared of a whole mess of stuff and it didn't take much to set me off. I refused to go down the cereal isle at Meijer because they had Kiss puffy stickers and painted up Gene Simmons sent me reeling. If I saw those stickers, there was a good chance I wouldn't be sleeping that night. It was a fucking sticker. I was scared of a sticker. Don't ask me, because I have no idea. All I know is I avoided the cereal isle like the plague, but I digress. "Looks that Kill" was the most amazing thing that had ever touched my ears. The guitar part for the chorus was the most brilliant thing I had ever heard (to this day I still think it's one of the most inspired licks in history).
But Mick Mars; my God, I had never seen a living soul more terror-inspiring than him. Simmons be damned, Mars was grade A, #1, "I'm going to puke and pee at the same time because I'm so scared" material. I was convinced this guy ate children. He ate little one's for breakfast and lunch and a bigger one from dinner. And there was no doubt in my mind that he was like a spider; he liked his meals alive. And what's worse, I was on the menu.
I could picture it in my mind; I would be roused from a dead sleep to the sound of awesome guitar being played just outside my bedroom window, and the righteous tuneage would pull me outside like a moth to a flame. He would lull me with increasingly sweet licks and then when I was at my most mesmerized, he would precede to devour me whole, leaving nothing but a pile of little bones. It was going to happen unless I could just forget about the Crüe. If I could just stop loving the song, if I could stop wanting the tape, all I had to do was not listen to Mötley Crüe and I would slip off his radar. But I couldn't, it was just too damn good. In the face of death, and a particularly gruesome one at that, I still wanted Shout at the Devil. Consequences were no longer a factor. Death did not matter, not if it meant I could rock out to the Crüe. So instead of doing the smart thing and denouncing the supreme sweetness that was Mötley Crüe and live, I chose to love the Crüe for my few remaining days and die an early death.
Mick Mars never showed up to eat me which was awesome. But from that point on, I was a Metalhead in the worst way. Mötley Crüe gave way to Poison, who gave way to Def Leppard, who gave way to Tesla, who gave way to Metallica, who gave way to Queensrÿche, who gave way to Anthrax, Megadeth, Death Angel, and a virtual ton of other bands. But see, here's the point; addiction's hard work. If you think otherwise, you clearly are not an addict. Getting addicted to something isn't all that hard, but maintaining said addiction is complicated and exhausting. And with each new addiction, the maintenance grows all the more tasking. But as I said, I'm lazy. Trying to maintain multiple addictions is tough work, and seeing as how I hate work, I've had to pick only the most important things to become/remain addicted to.
As a kid, it was action figures and Heavy Metal. By around age seven or eight, I added soda-pop into the repertoire. As I got older, pop continued to stay strong and action figures were replaced by boobs. Eventually I added a love/hate, on-again/off-again relationship with tobacco, but the only constant, absolutely necessary addiction has remained music. You see, without music, there would have been room for booze or drugs. I tried my best to be a fan of drugs but they were just too much work. Finding someone to buy them from, finding money to buy them. I had to buy Super-Big Gulps and cd's and my seasonal outdoor maintenance money only went so far. On top of that, the work of returning home after doing the drugs and appearing "straight" was way too much for a louse such as myself. Not to mention they made me feel fuzzy and stupid.
And booze, well alcohol is a fantastic stress-reliever/vice ( I am actually drinking a finely brewed Busch Light beer from an all too classy aluminum can as I write this) but just as it was/is with narcotics, finding the extra money to purchase the delicious ales and lagers I enjoy so much is simply too much extra expended energy. I have records to buy and I only make so much money, and I find nearly all distilled liquids to be vile concoctions, even the quality, pricey ones make my stomach quake and quiver a little, so the cheap ones are simply out of the question. That's not even figuring hangovers into the equation. So booze is, addictionaly speaking, absolutely a "no-go".
But here's the thing...if you take Metal out of my life, you take away the sum and total of music as well and then a huge "addiction space" opens up. Without that early addiction to Metal, I can guarantee you I'd either be an alcoholic or dope-fiend. And although smokes certainly aren't "life-friendly", without Metal, I'd be on an even faster track to Deadsville. This, my friends is how Heavy Metal saved my life, and I will be eternally grateful to the Gods of Rock for bestowing it upon me.
Good always overpowered the evils
Of all man's sins...
But in time
The nations grew weak
And our cities fell to slums
While evil stood strong
In the dusts of hell
Lurked the blackest of hates
For he whom they feared
Awaited them... Now many many lifetimes later
Lay destroyed, beaten down,
Only the corpses of rebels
Ashes of dreams
And blood stained streets
It has been written that
"Those who have the youth
Have the future"
So come now, children of the beast
Be strong
And Shout at the Devil...
-Nikki Sixx
Heavy Metal saved my life. I know it sounds silly, melodramatic, crazy, but that doesn't make it any less true. To understand this, there are two things you need to know about me: 1., I am an addict. I have that thing in my brain that turns something I love into a preoccupation, and that preoccupation turns into obsession, and then obsession turns into desperate need. It started at an extremely young age. My first jones was for action figures. I loved those little plastic men with all of my heart. The actual accumulation of the toys was secondary. Don't get me wrong, obtaining "Battle-Action Armor He-Man" was kick-ass, but plotting, planning, dwelling on the figure was far more appealing. I would look at the tiny comic books or the box-backs where other available figures were displayed, and I would dream about them. I would imagine the epic battles that could take place. I was addicted to action figures. I was three, three fucking years old and this was how I spent my time. Insane, I know, because let's face it, I'm at least a tiny bit nuts, whatever...
2., I am lazy. Having too many things to do makes me mentally shut down. Oh, I get those things done, I'm just so angry about being a "functioning, productive, responsible" human being that in order to accomplish any of the things necessary to call myself an "adult", I have to go on auto-pilot lest my already unstable mind be pushed even further into Loonyland. This also means that if I want to actually get done the things i set in front of myself, I have to be realistic and not put too much on my plate at any given time. I have to make things manageable or I will instead manage to get nothing done.
"So just how did Metal save my life exactly?", you ask. The answer is simple; Heavy Metal quickly became the addiction. That addiction (eventually) turned into a full blown to music period, a monkey I still carry on my back to this day (don't worry, it will soon all make sense). It's like any addiction story you've ever heard, the first taste made me want, the second one made me need.
The story goes that my brother went on a school trip to Toronto and wanted to get everyone souvenirs. He asked me what I wanted Toronto, and after seeing the video for the lead-off single from Ronnie James Dio's first solo album, a recently four-year old Brandon asked if Toronto had "Rainbow in the Dark"?, because if they did, that's what I wanted. I wanted "Rainbow in the Dark". Being a good big brother, Scott came home with a copy of Dio's "Holy Diver" on cassette. But it wasn't until four months later when Mötley Crüe's second record "Shout at the Devil" came out that I was truly hooked.
I saw the video for "Looks that Kill" (two videos...does that make MTV my pusher?) and I needed it. But see, this time it was 100% different. Four-year old Brandon had a rather wild and overactive imagination that often, for one reason or another, turned to the macabre. I was scared of a whole mess of stuff and it didn't take much to set me off. I refused to go down the cereal isle at Meijer because they had Kiss puffy stickers and painted up Gene Simmons sent me reeling. If I saw those stickers, there was a good chance I wouldn't be sleeping that night. It was a fucking sticker. I was scared of a sticker. Don't ask me, because I have no idea. All I know is I avoided the cereal isle like the plague, but I digress. "Looks that Kill" was the most amazing thing that had ever touched my ears. The guitar part for the chorus was the most brilliant thing I had ever heard (to this day I still think it's one of the most inspired licks in history).
But Mick Mars; my God, I had never seen a living soul more terror-inspiring than him. Simmons be damned, Mars was grade A, #1, "I'm going to puke and pee at the same time because I'm so scared" material. I was convinced this guy ate children. He ate little one's for breakfast and lunch and a bigger one from dinner. And there was no doubt in my mind that he was like a spider; he liked his meals alive. And what's worse, I was on the menu.
I could picture it in my mind; I would be roused from a dead sleep to the sound of awesome guitar being played just outside my bedroom window, and the righteous tuneage would pull me outside like a moth to a flame. He would lull me with increasingly sweet licks and then when I was at my most mesmerized, he would precede to devour me whole, leaving nothing but a pile of little bones. It was going to happen unless I could just forget about the Crüe. If I could just stop loving the song, if I could stop wanting the tape, all I had to do was not listen to Mötley Crüe and I would slip off his radar. But I couldn't, it was just too damn good. In the face of death, and a particularly gruesome one at that, I still wanted Shout at the Devil. Consequences were no longer a factor. Death did not matter, not if it meant I could rock out to the Crüe. So instead of doing the smart thing and denouncing the supreme sweetness that was Mötley Crüe and live, I chose to love the Crüe for my few remaining days and die an early death.
Mick Mars never showed up to eat me which was awesome. But from that point on, I was a Metalhead in the worst way. Mötley Crüe gave way to Poison, who gave way to Def Leppard, who gave way to Tesla, who gave way to Metallica, who gave way to Queensrÿche, who gave way to Anthrax, Megadeth, Death Angel, and a virtual ton of other bands. But see, here's the point; addiction's hard work. If you think otherwise, you clearly are not an addict. Getting addicted to something isn't all that hard, but maintaining said addiction is complicated and exhausting. And with each new addiction, the maintenance grows all the more tasking. But as I said, I'm lazy. Trying to maintain multiple addictions is tough work, and seeing as how I hate work, I've had to pick only the most important things to become/remain addicted to.
As a kid, it was action figures and Heavy Metal. By around age seven or eight, I added soda-pop into the repertoire. As I got older, pop continued to stay strong and action figures were replaced by boobs. Eventually I added a love/hate, on-again/off-again relationship with tobacco, but the only constant, absolutely necessary addiction has remained music. You see, without music, there would have been room for booze or drugs. I tried my best to be a fan of drugs but they were just too much work. Finding someone to buy them from, finding money to buy them. I had to buy Super-Big Gulps and cd's and my seasonal outdoor maintenance money only went so far. On top of that, the work of returning home after doing the drugs and appearing "straight" was way too much for a louse such as myself. Not to mention they made me feel fuzzy and stupid.
And booze, well alcohol is a fantastic stress-reliever/vice ( I am actually drinking a finely brewed Busch Light beer from an all too classy aluminum can as I write this) but just as it was/is with narcotics, finding the extra money to purchase the delicious ales and lagers I enjoy so much is simply too much extra expended energy. I have records to buy and I only make so much money, and I find nearly all distilled liquids to be vile concoctions, even the quality, pricey ones make my stomach quake and quiver a little, so the cheap ones are simply out of the question. That's not even figuring hangovers into the equation. So booze is, addictionaly speaking, absolutely a "no-go".
But here's the thing...if you take Metal out of my life, you take away the sum and total of music as well and then a huge "addiction space" opens up. Without that early addiction to Metal, I can guarantee you I'd either be an alcoholic or dope-fiend. And although smokes certainly aren't "life-friendly", without Metal, I'd be on an even faster track to Deadsville. This, my friends is how Heavy Metal saved my life, and I will be eternally grateful to the Gods of Rock for bestowing it upon me.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Where is "Octahedron" and "There is No Enemy"
I know The Mars Volta's Octahedron and Built to Spill's latest masterwork, There is No Enemy, have only been out for a little while (but so has The Flaming Lips Embryonic, not that isn't as well a brilliant fucking record)but how did these albums make no one's top "whatever" list of 2009? Granted, I haven't read every list. But I've read Pitchfork's, Spin's, Rolling Stone's, and Paste's, and neither record is there.
OK, The Mars Volta are certainly a band for a certain sect of individuals. I'll give you that, but Octahedron is easily their most accessible set of tunes to date, and is a brilliant and shockingly beautiful record. And There is No Enemy is quite possibly the best Built to Spill record yet. The mere presence of "Tomorrow" should push the album into 2009's stratosphere, yet no one has mentioned it.
I'm a little angry. Two of the best albums in a reasonably lean year in my opinion have been slighted. If you haven't checked these gems out, please do so. They are worth every penny you will pay.
OK, The Mars Volta are certainly a band for a certain sect of individuals. I'll give you that, but Octahedron is easily their most accessible set of tunes to date, and is a brilliant and shockingly beautiful record. And There is No Enemy is quite possibly the best Built to Spill record yet. The mere presence of "Tomorrow" should push the album into 2009's stratosphere, yet no one has mentioned it.
I'm a little angry. Two of the best albums in a reasonably lean year in my opinion have been slighted. If you haven't checked these gems out, please do so. They are worth every penny you will pay.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
If You're Not Already Listening to "Black Rose", You Should Be
It's been a long time since I've posted last. Over a month in fact. Not an incredibly good precedent to start. It's not that I wasn't writing; I was writing nonstop. The problem was nothing was popping. Nothing was flooring me. I couldn't get excited about anything I was writing. It wasn't the subjects. Trust me, they are all worthy of one of my little essay/blogs (not exactly sure just how worthy my little essay/blogs are of them though). It was the writing. The tunes were doing the job on their end, I wasn't coming through on mine. Looking over 4 blogs started and not finished, what I reread sounded lifeless and worthless. I couldn't seem to put down on paper the ideas that had bounced around in my brain so many times. It was a translation problem. But With Christmas fast approaching, and familial obligations taking me out of town for over a week, I decided to put the blog on the back-burner.
It was a good thing that I did it too, because without Christmas, there's a good chance 19 Sank While 6 Would Swim may just have been trashed altogether for lack of motivation and material. Instead, I got lucky. Christmas morning came, and in true Brandon fashion, I had a very "11 year old" style Christmas. All I asked for were records...glorious, beautiful, 12", shiny, glistening vinyl. I opened my gifts on that oh so holy of days with the kind of fervor and excitement that should be reserved for actual children, not those who simply act like them, but I couldn't help it. Album after album wowed me. The Flaming Lips' Hear It Is, Metallica's Master of Puppets, Wilco's Being There, along with so many others...they were all great, but when I opened Thin Lizzy's Black Rose, I found myself unable to think about anything else.
This seems funny to me, although I guess it really shouldn't, because I love Thin Lizzy. And Thin Lizzy is a band that has been wildly underrated in the pantheon of great Rock N' Roll music. Oh, critics adore them, and they certainly have had at least a few moderate nods from musicians over the last 25 years, but when it comes to contemporary record buyers, after having heard "The Boys are Back in Town" from 1976's classic Jailbreak, Thin Lizzy fades into that dark recess of the mind where things go to be forgotten. Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Aerosmith, AC/DC, Rush, Alice Cooper, these are all names synonymous with great 70's rock, even if they don't always deserve to be, and that's just naming a few. But somehow, Thin Lizzy's name seems to be at best a footnote in the book of great 70's rock. And that is an absolute shame. Nonetheless, had you asked me before Christmas what album I was most looking forward to getting, Black Rose would not have been my answer. But when I saw that blueish-black rose dripping blood on the cover in it's full 12" glory, instantly there was nothing else I wanted to listen to more.
The album opens in full, bombastic Thin Lizzy fashion; low, humming, hypnotic bass coupled with equally thunderous drums. In less than 15 seconds, the patented duel guitar wail explodes and instantly sends you into 70's Rock heaven. This record is a mile a minute rocker (well, at least until you get to the ballad, "Sarah". Phil Lynott wrote for his daughter, but it is a minor and enjoyable diversion). Black Rose sounds as "Thin Lizzy" as it gets. This is a pure, unadulterated Rock N' Roll record.
I'll be honest, it's hard for me to verbalize my reasons for loving this record. As a big "Lizzy" fan, the sound isn't describable, it's inherent. You only have to hear this album to know why it's amazing. This is real life, no-holds-barred "Fuckin' A" Rock N' Roll. The grooves, the grinds, the lyrics, Phil's always impeccable delivery, there's nothing other than straight, sensitive, tough, sincere Rock music here. You get kicked in the teeth from note one, and there is no respite until the close of the record. It is as purely unbelievable and as incredible as any of the Zeppelin or Sabbath records that we all (or many of us) cherish so much.
I could probably go on. I could talk about Phil Lynott's importance to music as a whole (and it is immense, believe me). I could talk about Thin Lizzy's approach to guitar playing, the currently cliche muscle of the duel axe assault (of course, for them it was ridiculously unique...they fucking invented it for Christ's sake), only topped by Lynott's on-spot, brilliant vocals and driving, back-bone bass playing. I could talk about Phil as a lyricist and a poet in a much greater depth, understanding Joyce and Rimbaud with the insight and expertise of a scholar, but ultimately being the spokesman of the working man. And then there's the way Phil sang; the cadence unbelievable, the voice, honest and real. You believe ever word he says, not because he's simply sounds "convincing", but because you can hear he lived ever word he sang, and every note he hit is a result of that experience.
Maybe Thin Lizzy never had the intensity of Black Sabbath or the mysticism and bravado of Led Zeppelin; maybe they didn't have the complexity of Rush or the unearthliness of E.L.O., but where they lacked in all of these areas, they made up for in honesty. Thin Lizzy was a band that made sense and kicked ass while they did it, and Black Rose is the exemplification of that. But frankly, none of that matters unless you're willing to go out and get this album. I could detail every idea and feeling I've had while listening to this record, but all of those details amount to a lump of shit unless you're willing to take my advice and listen to this record. Certainly, you'd be doing a solid to the legacy of Thin Lizzy by really delving into this one, and you'd be doing me a serious favor by seriously listening to it, but in the end, you are the only one who is going to really benefit. This is a record worth more than it's weight in gold, but you'll only know that if you choose to check it out.
It was a good thing that I did it too, because without Christmas, there's a good chance 19 Sank While 6 Would Swim may just have been trashed altogether for lack of motivation and material. Instead, I got lucky. Christmas morning came, and in true Brandon fashion, I had a very "11 year old" style Christmas. All I asked for were records...glorious, beautiful, 12", shiny, glistening vinyl. I opened my gifts on that oh so holy of days with the kind of fervor and excitement that should be reserved for actual children, not those who simply act like them, but I couldn't help it. Album after album wowed me. The Flaming Lips' Hear It Is, Metallica's Master of Puppets, Wilco's Being There, along with so many others...they were all great, but when I opened Thin Lizzy's Black Rose, I found myself unable to think about anything else.
This seems funny to me, although I guess it really shouldn't, because I love Thin Lizzy. And Thin Lizzy is a band that has been wildly underrated in the pantheon of great Rock N' Roll music. Oh, critics adore them, and they certainly have had at least a few moderate nods from musicians over the last 25 years, but when it comes to contemporary record buyers, after having heard "The Boys are Back in Town" from 1976's classic Jailbreak, Thin Lizzy fades into that dark recess of the mind where things go to be forgotten. Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Aerosmith, AC/DC, Rush, Alice Cooper, these are all names synonymous with great 70's rock, even if they don't always deserve to be, and that's just naming a few. But somehow, Thin Lizzy's name seems to be at best a footnote in the book of great 70's rock. And that is an absolute shame. Nonetheless, had you asked me before Christmas what album I was most looking forward to getting, Black Rose would not have been my answer. But when I saw that blueish-black rose dripping blood on the cover in it's full 12" glory, instantly there was nothing else I wanted to listen to more.
The album opens in full, bombastic Thin Lizzy fashion; low, humming, hypnotic bass coupled with equally thunderous drums. In less than 15 seconds, the patented duel guitar wail explodes and instantly sends you into 70's Rock heaven. This record is a mile a minute rocker (well, at least until you get to the ballad, "Sarah". Phil Lynott wrote for his daughter, but it is a minor and enjoyable diversion). Black Rose sounds as "Thin Lizzy" as it gets. This is a pure, unadulterated Rock N' Roll record.
I'll be honest, it's hard for me to verbalize my reasons for loving this record. As a big "Lizzy" fan, the sound isn't describable, it's inherent. You only have to hear this album to know why it's amazing. This is real life, no-holds-barred "Fuckin' A" Rock N' Roll. The grooves, the grinds, the lyrics, Phil's always impeccable delivery, there's nothing other than straight, sensitive, tough, sincere Rock music here. You get kicked in the teeth from note one, and there is no respite until the close of the record. It is as purely unbelievable and as incredible as any of the Zeppelin or Sabbath records that we all (or many of us) cherish so much.
I could probably go on. I could talk about Phil Lynott's importance to music as a whole (and it is immense, believe me). I could talk about Thin Lizzy's approach to guitar playing, the currently cliche muscle of the duel axe assault (of course, for them it was ridiculously unique...they fucking invented it for Christ's sake), only topped by Lynott's on-spot, brilliant vocals and driving, back-bone bass playing. I could talk about Phil as a lyricist and a poet in a much greater depth, understanding Joyce and Rimbaud with the insight and expertise of a scholar, but ultimately being the spokesman of the working man. And then there's the way Phil sang; the cadence unbelievable, the voice, honest and real. You believe ever word he says, not because he's simply sounds "convincing", but because you can hear he lived ever word he sang, and every note he hit is a result of that experience.
Maybe Thin Lizzy never had the intensity of Black Sabbath or the mysticism and bravado of Led Zeppelin; maybe they didn't have the complexity of Rush or the unearthliness of E.L.O., but where they lacked in all of these areas, they made up for in honesty. Thin Lizzy was a band that made sense and kicked ass while they did it, and Black Rose is the exemplification of that. But frankly, none of that matters unless you're willing to go out and get this album. I could detail every idea and feeling I've had while listening to this record, but all of those details amount to a lump of shit unless you're willing to take my advice and listen to this record. Certainly, you'd be doing a solid to the legacy of Thin Lizzy by really delving into this one, and you'd be doing me a serious favor by seriously listening to it, but in the end, you are the only one who is going to really benefit. This is a record worth more than it's weight in gold, but you'll only know that if you choose to check it out.
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