METAL DAYS RE-revisited, Part 1 of 3.

The following is the first in a three-part series about my hard-rocking METAL years of Jr. High. If you can relate, crank up the volume all the way to 11 and take a journey to the golden age of metal. If you cannot relate you probably were into the band Journey and were LAME).

As evidenced from the accompanying pic, I was once pretty effin’ METAL. I guess my AC/DC shirt was in laundry limbo that day. Yes, this photo is of yours truly circa 1987. Notice the plumage of the mullet, the curl under both of the ears. If I hadn’t hidden my identity with the skull face, (I do have some shame, after all) you could also notice my cold, blank stare and menacing scowl. My goal was to look like a juvenile delinquent. I accomplished this quite nicely, I think.

The beginnings of my METAL habit can be traced back to 1984. I know this because that was the year Van Halen came out with the appropriately titled album,1984. I owned this album on an actual album, one that you play on a phonograph or record player. For the record (no pun intended) fourth graders should not handle vinyl. There are so many scratches on it today it’s just worthless. It’s a damn shame too, I often want to spin it and listen to Hot for Teacher.

Van Halen led to AC/DC, AC/DC led to led to Motley Crue, Motley Crue led to Judas Priest. I also discovered Aerosmith through the help of Run DMC. In 1987, a band called Guns N’ Roses came along and changed everything! When I heard Appetite for Destruction it blew me away! I became a full-fledged METAL kid. That was my identity. Long hair? Check. Levi’s 501 jeans in Blue and Black? Check. Metal Mania magazine and like-minded publications? Check. Assortment of black T-shirts letting people know what bands I consider awesome? Check. Hells yeah! METAL!

I was a mullet-headed, acne-faced, wanna-be hooligan with an electric guitar, Pevey amp, and distortion pedal. My motto was “rock n’ roll all night, and party every day”, although I didn’t have the slightest idea of what rocking or partying was, or why we could use these words as verbs as well as nouns. My idea of “partying every day” was having friends over to play Super Mario Brothers. “Rocking n’ Rolling” all night meant turning the sound down on the TV while playing Super Mario Brothers and listening to Def Leopard’s Pyromania.

As an impressionable kid, I was buying into every glam-metal, bullshit hair band the recording industry tried to shove down our throats. Poison? All right. Ratt? Ok. Cinderella? Ok. I guess. Whitesnake? Ok. Great White? Ok. White Lion? It was right about the time I noticed the eighth band with “White” in its name I said, “HEY! Wait a minute? This sucks!”

These guys weren’t METAL! They didn’t even Rock! What is rockin or metal about Extreme’s More than Words? What does that say? “I have long hair and like to rock out with electric guitars, but there’s a sensitive side to me as well that makes me want to harmonize in falsetto!” That’s about as METAL as Richard Marx.

I cracked the code. I saw what these douchey butt-rockers were trying to do to us. They would put out a shitty album, then release their first “single” from said album, which would be a rocker. That song would appear on MTV. Then they would put out the slow “power ballad” to get teen-aged girls to dig them, go on tour, have a sex with said under-aged teenaged girls, release another album and repeat process. I came to this conclusion, sometime in 1987, but the Hair Metal Train kept on rolling. Don’t think these dipshits had a formula? Check out the following time line.

1986 Cinderella’s NightSongs
Rocker = Shake Me
Power Ballad = Nobody’s Fool

1987 White Lion’s Pride
Rocker = Wait
Power Ballad = When the Children Cry

1988 Poison’s Open up and say …. Ahh!
Rocker = Nothing but a Good Time
Power Ballad = Every Rose has its Thorn

1989 Warrant’s Dirty Rotten Filthy Stinking Rich
Rocker = Down Boys
Power Ballad = Heaven

1990 FireHouse’s FireHouse
Rocker = Don’t Treat me Bad
Power Ballad = Love of a Lifetime

Sometime after Poison, but before Warrant (God they were awful weren’t they?) I jumped off the Hair Metal party train. Did I stop rocking? Did I avoid guitar-based rock n’ roll in favor of acoustic folk music? Did I enjoy the electronic-based techno music from Great Britain? Ha! You underestimate my commitment to balls out METAL!

When the Rock becomes lame. The true Rockers rock even harder!

… to be continued.