I have been listening to a lot of heavy metal music, these days. I mean the old school metal, not the new stuff. I have a pretty steady diet of Judas Priest and Iron Maiden on my .mp3 player (I'm too cheap to buy an iPod). It's the music I grew up with, and I was thinkin' about it, this morning. I figured I'd write a bit about that, today.
I think the first exposure I had to metal or hard rock music was when I heard KISS for the first time. Most of my peers went through at least a short period of KISS fandom. It was a pretty easy jump from Batman and Robin, to the Saturday Creature Feature, to KISS. And it was true that our parents hated them, which made it even sweeter. I even remember my older brother being told by his sixth grade teacher that it was not appropriate to bring his KISS records to school. How would a pre-teen boy be able to resist that kind of forbidden fruit? To this day, I believe that "KISS" should be rendered in all capital letters, if it's referring to the band's proper name.
My friends and I eventually created what we thought was a band called The Spikes. We borrowed a bit from KISS and designed some crazy face make-up and drew ourselves on a bunch of record covers. There was Lightning Man, Indian Man, The Demon (I guess we borrowed that one), and Spiko (pronounced "spy-koh"). I think we were doing an homage that would have got us a trademark infringement lawsuit. We wrote a bunch of song titles on them, even though there were no actual songs. I guess we were going to get to that, later. It was a blast, though. Eventually, we all did learn to play some instruments and had some actual bands.
As the 80s rolled on, a lot of new bands showed up to supercede KISS on our turntables. The British bands: Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Def Leppard. The L.A. Bands: Motley Crue, Ratt, Quiet Riott, Dokken. Twisted Sister was a favorite of mine, and I still watch Dee Snider whenever I see him on TV. Thank god for VH1! There were some others. Bon Jovi, W.A.S.P., Cinderella, Winger, Yngview Malmsteen, Whitesnake, Bulletboys, Mr. Big. . . I could go on. All I have to do is look at my music playlist, because I still have most of that stuff. It's just great, obnoxious, over-the-top rock music that still succeeds in getting me pumped up. Oh, yeah. . . They have sappy love songs, too. I never cared for most of the power ballads, but as a singer in a band, I can tell you that the chicks really loved them.
As I got older, I looked a little further back in time for music to listen to. My favorites being the classic rock bands, like The Who, Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, and Deep Purple. But those heavy metal bands have been around long enough now, that they have become classics, as well. I think I always knew that "We're Not Gonna' Take It" was going to be one of the great rock anthems of all time--I challenge anyone to tell me that it isn't--and it's great to see some of my favorite bands getting their due. The culture that eschewed them in the post-Nirvana era seems to have come back around and is trying to reconcile. I think it's great. Heavy metal rules!!
