Heavy Metal Memories

After watching a documentary on VH1 Classic about Heavy Metal and it's impact on society, I was reminded how much Heavy Metal meant to me in my youth. Metal served as the soundtrack to my high school years and the next few after graduation. While I'm not ashamed of most of the music I loved so much, it is a little embarrassing to remember how much importance I put on music in my life back then.

I started out slow enough, getting into rock through friends and by listening to the radio. As I look back, it's apparent to me that depending on what friends I chose (or rather, were chosen by geography), I could have easily been led into such interests as punk, rap, pop, or God help me, modern country music. I'd like to think that I would have eventually drifted towards hard rock, but truth be told, I'm sure I was a product of my surroundings and peers. A scarier thought is that I could have hung around with friends with no interest in music whatsoever.

I love music so much now, that I can hardly fathom a life with little or no interest in music. I don't expect everyone to "get into" it like I do, knowing the musician's bios, line-up changes in a band, etc. But I am genuinely shocked when I find that someone has no regard for any kind of music. It's just something that's on the radio in the background. I can't believe that a person has never said, "oh, I love this song" at one point or another in their life. When someone tells me that they own a whopping 30 or so CDs, I have to try and sound impressed like I'm looking at their kid's drawings on the fridge.

Somehow, eventually, I took off my studded black leather blinders and reached out to appreciate other types of music. Sometimes, I amaze myself at my own varied tastes. I've had CDs in my changer switch from Patsy Cline to Blue Oyster Cult and not blink while the others in the car look at me as if I must be playing a horrible trick on them. I'm glad that I've opened my palate to other forms of music and wonder if I would have still found this path had I been turned onto and fixated with say, early '80s New Wave. I think the fact that Heavy Metal has so many influences (Rock, Blues, Classical, et al) that it borrows from, it lends itself to the discerning listener as a template to discover other forms of music.

Metal: A Headbanger's Journey is a fine film. I came across it while flipping channels and watched a minute or so until I decided to record it on my new DVR. I checked for upcoming air dates and punched it in. Put the DVR alongside such things as answering machines, cellphones, remote controls and the internet as "how did I get along in life before these things?". After recording it, I forgot all about it until I was bored and scrolling through the menu of saved items a few days ago.

I found it to be a film that anyone could enjoy, especially Metal fans of course. But a layman could watch and maybe get an understanding of what the music meant (and means) to fans. It has some insight from fans and performers alike, with other input from industry insiders and so-called experts. It is both deep and meaningless at times, if that is possible. The director interviews many artists from the many sub-genres of Metal and the spots range from honest reflection (Black Sabbath's Tony Iommi) to hilarious severity of intent (Norwegian Black Metal bands).

Speaking of sub-genres; along with my closest friends and fellow Metal freaks, I tended to catorgorize the bands that most casual listeners simply lumped under the term Heavy Metal. Some bands were heavier than others, some simply Hard Rock bands, some we couldn't label but didn't consider them Metal at all regardless. (We probably called them gay). The director and guide along this journey, Sam Dunn, does what I feel is a superb job of putting the music into a flow chart styled genre grid. I can't really disagree with his placements of the bands. In fact, he enlightened me by correctly noting the difference between Black Metal and Death Metal. In the past, I simply put them both in the shit file.

A Google search turned up an official site: http://www.metalhistory.com/. It's full of info and clips. Seems there is a 2 disc DVD out now. I may have to check that out.

For more heartfelt insight into the culture of Heavy Metal, this time focused mainly on 80s Hair Metal, I highly recommend Chuck Klosterman's book Fargo Rock City: A Heavy Metal Odyssey In Rural North Dakota. Although Klosterman is a few years behind me in his coming of age into Metal, I was able to happily relive some of my glory days, the feelings I had back then about music, and also revisit those growing pains. I've read two of Klosterman's other books and enjoyed them because he has a very conversation style of writing and his sense of humor appeals to my sardonic side. I've yet to pick up his latest, but look forward to it.

In the meantime, I'm headed to the gym with Iron Maiden's 1984 masterpiece Powerslave (remastered version with bonus tracks, naturally) blasting on the MP3 player.