Heavy Metal & Me

Heavy Metal music and I have a long storied history.  It starts of course with my Uncle Bob and Cousin Steve.  They introduced me to Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Jimi Hendrix, Alice Cooper, Aerosmith, Ted Nugent and a lot of heavy hard rock.  This all happened to a 7 year old me.  Except of Black Sabbath many of those bands are not considered true Heavy Metal.  The foundation for what came later was made.  I enjoyed hard rock in all its permutations.  By the age twelve I had some favorite bands: Led Zeppelin, Queen, Heart, Ted Nugent, AC/DC, Rainbow, Black Sabbath, Van Halen, and Rush.  Many are still not considered true Heavy Metal, but you can see the trend.  What resonated with me was the shear power of the music.  It permeated every bit of my being.  Much of the themes of alienation and disenfranchisement sung to me as a pre-teen.

Growing up in my neighborhood in Oxnard, California in the early eighties us hard rock/ Heavy Metal kids would trade our records (real old school vinyl) and tape what we did not have.  Hell, we even raided our parents 70’s and 60’s collections.  I introduced Janis Joplin to many a Metal kid in those days.  In early 1981, I was introduced to Judas Priest, AC/DC, Rainbow, Ronnie Rush, James Dio, Def Leppard, Ozzy Osbourne, Saxon, Motorhead, and Van Halen.  I got in trouble when I first saw a picture of Rob Halford; I mentioned he looked like a gay biker dude like the guy in Village People.  My arm was sore after that.  I was in a Pentecostal Junior High from 1981 to June of 1982.  That was my initial introduction to what would be considered to be true Heavy Metal.  There was still this weird vague idea what was Heavy Metal, some considered many hard rock acts Metal others did not.  This was a very amorphous time for the style.

In the Summer of 83 Heavy Metal as we knew it exploded. This was when Quiet Riot released their first U.S. Album, Def Leppard released Pyromania, and Iron Maiden released Piece of Mind.  Piece of Mind was not the huge album that the previous year’s Number of the Beast, but it was proof that this iteration of the band was not a flash in the pan with songs like Trooper, Flight of Icarus, and Where Eagles Dare. This was also the advent of Metal hitting the charts.  It was everywhere in Southern California.  That was the epicenter of the U.S. part of this musical movement.  Glam metal started to make its rounds. At 14 and 15 I was not impressed.  I was introduced to Motley Crue’s first album.  I thought musically they were OK, their whole made up and feather hair did not do anything for me.  At this time Metallica, Anthrax and other Thrash/ Speed Metal bands were making their early albums.

Through the next few years I started to drift away from the pop Metal bands towards the Classic Hard Rock acts, Hardcore Punk and Thrash/ Speed Metal.  Suicidal Tendencies, Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, and the Cult were putting out albums that spoke to me during the mid to late eighties.  I was drifting away from Heavy Metal in my Twenties, so were the bands.  Living in the Portland, Oregon area at the time we were hearing rumbling of new bands with a hard heavy sound reminiscent of Deep Purple and early Black Sabbath with a punk ethic.  These bands were Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Screaming Trees, Mother Love Bone and Nirvana.  This new sound would be called the Seattle Sound or Grunge.  They we more concerned with the music and less with image.  The Metal scene had become style over substance.  The Thrash/ Speed Metal scene was becoming more mainstream and losing some of its edge at this time.

During the early to mid nineties Grunge and late Alternative became the creative wellspring for Heavy Music.  Alternative was not so much a style than a philosophy of being alternative to the corporate music machine.  As always many of the acts became part of that machine. Heavy music did make a comeback with acts like Ministry, White Zombie, Korn, Rage against the Machine, Offspring, Clutch, Disturbed, Godsmack Eagles of Death Metal, Queens of the Stone Age, and others.  By the early 2000’s I was not into Heavy Metal or its various offshoots anymore, or at least newer acts.  I still listen to older acts with newer material.  Once and a while I will find a new Metal or Hard Rock act I like, for example Portland, Oregon’s Red Fang or the Pirate Metal band Alestorm.  In general I am no longer in that scene, it really is a younger man’s game.  So I will let them have it. 

Here is a list of Heavy Metal/ Hard Rock Acts I think people should check out (this is based on my own personal tastes):  Accept, AC/DC, Aerosmith, Airbourne, Aldo Nova, Alestorm, Alice Cooper, Alice in Chains, Andrew W.K. Anthrax, Audioslave, Autograph, Billy Idol (more punk and new wave), Black Sabbath, Blitzkrieg, Blue Cheer, Cheap Trick, Clutch, The Cult, Danzig, The Darkness, David Lee Roth, Deep Purple, Def Leppard, Diamond Head, Dio, Dream Theater, Eagles of Death Metal, Extreme, Faith No More, Fastway, Godsmack, Great White, Green Jello/ Jelly, Guns N’ Roses, Hanoi Rocks, Heart, Helmet, The Hives, Iggy Pop/ Iggy Pop and the Stooges/ Stooges, Infectious Grooves, Iron Butterfly, Iron Maiden, Jet, Jimi Hendrix, Joe Satriani, Judas Priest, King Crimson, The Kinks, Kiss,  Korn, Krokus, L.A. Guns, Led Zeppelin, Living Color, MC5, Megadeth, Metallica, Metal Church, Michael Schenker Group/ McAuley Schenker Group, Ministry, M.O.D., Monster Magnet, Montrose, Mother Love Bone, Motorhead, Mudhoney Nirvana, Offspring, Ozzy Osbourne, Pantera, Pat Benatar, Powerman 5000, Primus, Probot, Queen, Queensryche, Queens of the Stone Age, Quiet Riot, Rage Against the Machine, Rainbow, Rammstein, Ratt, Red Fang, Rob Zombie/ White Zombie, Rush, Sammy Hagar, Savatage, Saxon, Scatterbrain, Sepultura, Slayer, Scorpions, Screaming Trees, Silverchair, Skindred, Slipknot, Smashing Pumpkins, Soundgarden, Spinal Tap, Steppenwolf, Steve Vai, Stone Temple Pilots, Stormtroopers of Death, The Strokes, System of a Down, Suicidal Tendencies, Ted Nugent, Temple of the Dog, Tesla, Testament, Thin Lizzy, Triumph, Uriah Heep, Van Halen, Velvet Revolver, Wednesday 13, White Stripes, Whitesnake, Wolfmother, Y & T, Zebra.  This is by no means a comprehensive list just my personal favorites or ones I feel are historically important.  There are a few omissions.  Those are acts I personally do not care for to the extreme.  This Is My Not So Humble Opinion.

Monster Movies & Me

I have an interesting history with monster/horror Movies. For a time, they freaked me out. I blame one man for that - Christopher Lee. For a little kid growing up in the 70s, Hammer films were everywhere. Christopher Lee’s portrayal of Dracula was scary, seductive, and menacing. It freaked me out. That man scared the living bejeezuz out of me. In college, I went back and watched the Hammer films and discovered their allure. I love them now, but if seven-year-old Rick saw Christopher Lee on the street, would have pissed himself in fear. There was a movie that also terrorized me as a kid was 1975's Trilogy of Terror starring Karen Black. It is a three act anthology movies with Ms. Black starring as different characters in each segment. The act with the Zuni Fetish doll scared me beyond belief it was a total wig out moment when I saw it. Another thing that got me was a trailer It’s Alive. I never saw the movie just the trailer and to a six year old me that was enough to traumatize. It was about evil mutant babies and if you are a younger kid who has baby sibling you know that is not too far off from reality at least in a little kid's mind.

Let us start in the beginning. I used to check out those Crestwood Monster Movie books as a kid. I thought they were cool. I loved a lot of horror comedies like the Abbott and Costello Meets… series, Mad Monster Party, The Addams Family, and The Munsters. I could handle the Universal monster movies, Vincent Price films, Roger Corman films, Ray Harryhausen films, Godzilla movies, and a great deal of the sixties schlocky films. Like all young boys, I thought they were cool and neat. Ray Harryhausen was a childhood hero of mine. I was fascinated with the Sinbad movies he did, as well as with Jason and the Argonauts and Clash of the Titans. Many of his movies were more action and adventure and less horror. Now, I was more into super heroes than monsters, but many monsters are found in comics, too. Vincent Price’s element of camp made his movies a bit more palatable. That may have worked for me, allowing me to laugh at what scared me. My mom let me read the kid-friendly monster books from Harvey Comics - Casper, Wendy, Spooky, and Hot Stuff. Those were easier on me than some of the other stronger scary comics.

I grew up in and out of hospitals and as a little boy, I knew what real horror could be. The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock, Outer Limits, and Hammer horror films freaked me out, maybe due to their intense emotional content. I just know that I could not watch them for the longest time. My uncle was a huge fan of the Warren horror comics, EC reprints, DC, and Marvel horror lines. I was able to handle those because of they were hand drawn. In 1982, I went to see Poltergeist in the theater, and this was the rekindling of my love of monster and horror movies, television, books, and comics. I got into the Nightmare and Elm Street films, the Return of the Living Dead films, and so much more.

As a teenager, I discovered that according to certain Eastern European superstitions, I would have been expected to become either a werewolf or a vampire just because I have a cleft lip and palate. This made me curious in my twenties. I watched and read many vampire- and werewolf--based media, including the White Wolf World of Darkness role-playing game setting. As an adult, I began to see a trend in which the monsters were not the real evil; humanity was. This was through the Clive Barker film Nightbreed and many of the Zombie media as well. With my experiences as a young child this was not refuted. I started going back and checking out those things that scared me as a little kid: Hammer Films, Twilight Zone (I watched those when I was 13), Outer Limits and Alfred Hitchcock. I began to read Horror, Fantasy, Urban Fantasy and Mythic Fiction. I saw that the line between these genres were thin. Charles De Lint and Clive Barker often blurred the lines between them often.

The theme of what is the true monster - the other or us - is a theme from the ages and it continues today. These monster movies can be used to tell allegories we otherwise would not be able to handle. Sometimes understanding our darker nature as a species is not easy. My history with monsters in movies went from the safe as a kid, to the more philosophical as an adult. With certain childhood experiences and even certain adult ones, I learned what true monsters were. Using the supernatural, horrific and grotesque to examine these ideas in a safe forum, we are able to ask and answer some very hard questions about ourselves and our natures. That Is My Not So Humble Opinion.

Child of the Seventies

I was born in 1968, but I grew up mostly in the 1970’s.  When the 80’s rolled in I was 11, so my teen years were in that decade.  As a child of the 70’s there are things I experienced that succeeding generations take as a given that were new.  The Seventies saw the beginning of really merchandising to kids.  Now it occurred before that, but after 1977 and Star Wars that changed.  The Toy licensing of Star Wars is interesting.  In 1977 Lucasfilms approached Mego, a toy company known for licensing various properties into toylines.  They did the DC and Marvel 8 inch figures; they also did Happy Days, CHiPs, Star Trek: The Original Series and many more.  The President of Mego refused saying he did not want to be known for licensing every B Science Fiction Movie.  So Lucasfilms went to Kenner and they took it, that lead to Kenner becoming a powerhouse in the Toy Industry.  Kenner later became part of Hasbro.  Mego went out of business in 1982.  They were a top Toy company in the seventies.  

In the Seventies, Toys were made from characters from TV, Movies, and Comic Books.  By the 1980’s TV Shows, Comic Books and other merchandise were made from toy lines.  That led to many concerns that animated TV shows in the 80’s were thirty minute commercials.  Star Wars helped come up with the idea of anything was game to license for merchandising to kids.  My brother owned the Jaws game that was made in the Seventies.  In the Seventies businesses really began to understand how media affected kids.  A positive spin on this is Children’s Workshop using advertising techniques to teach kids with the advent of Sesame Street.  ABC did this also with Schoolhouse Rock.  Advertisers both in positive and negative ways began to really target kids more in the 70’s.  It did not hurt that the saturation of media as we know started to go into overdrive in that decade as well.  It was not just Television and Film, radio and the Music industry started to target the tweens during this time with Michael Jackson, Donny Osmond, David and Shaun Cassidy, Lief Garret and many more. 

The Seventies are when we saw people advertise their tastes with their clothes.  This is when the TV and film tie in T-shirts began.  There were also shops that made custom shirts using vinyl decals and heavy duty presses.  With more stores carrying the screen printed work these types of places went away by the mid Nineties.  Before the Seventies one brand was really big in Athletic shoes, Converse; by the mid Seventies they had major competition form Adidas, Puma, Nike, and up and comer Vans.  The late Seventies saw the advent of the designer Jeans, before that Levis and Lees ruled denim.  Many of these trends still exist today.

The Seventies with the rise of the FM station was when music had long shelf lives.  Songs released years ago would be re-released as singles again if the act was increasing in popularity.  Dream On by Aerosmith only charted to 59 on the U.S. charts when it first was released in 1973. After the success of Toys in the Attic in 1975, it was re-released and went as high as 6 in the U.S.  When I was in high school a song from almost 10 years earlier were on the pop stations.    In the early eighties a lot of the early Punk and New Wave songs that came out in the mid to late Seventies were still on the radio.  So when I was creating certain play lists based on chronology I was surprised by the actual release date of some of the music. Today music seems more transitory having a shelf life of months or weeks as opposed to years. 

It seems that all Popular Culture is losing itself shelf life due to easy accessibility.  Movies from the Thirties, Forties, Fifties Sixties and even ones released a few years prior remained in Theaters especially Drive Ins.  That is something many Children of succeeding decades will have missed out in.  By the Eighties over half of the Drive-In Theaters closed down.  This is due to the rise of the huge Multiplex theaters in urban and suburban areas.  In many was Drive-In Theaters were more Communal in nature.  People would socialize during the Intermissions.  In some case almost have a tailgate party.  Luckily I live in an area were we have a Drive-In with in 5 miles.  They still play the older movies there, in the last few years we have seen Creature of the Black Lagoon and The Warriors on the Big Screen.  Drive-Ins were a major part of American Popular Culture between the late 1940’s and the 1970’s.  In Ventura County California where I grew up the City of Ventura had a large Drive-In that had 3 screens.

As I said Earlier I think the Seventies is when the media started targeting the Tweens (9-12) and early teens which is also the Junior High/ Middle School set.  This is when the Young Adult Literature movement started to really take off.  The momentum of it started in the late Sixties with S.E. Hinton.  She helped continue the movement with more books in the Seventies.  Without this previous history we may not have had Harry Potter or the Hunger Games.  Those adult who read Young Adult Literature as Tweens and Teens, are now Adults reading Young Adult Literature.  They know the label does not mean lower quality. 

As a Child of the Seventies I have seen many changes in the way media affects us.  I have seen the continued marketing targeting younger and younger people.  Mass consumerism seems to continue to this day.  I am still not sure how I feel about it.  This Has Been My Not So Humble Opinion.

Star Wars & Me

My journey with Star Wars began not with the movie, but with the Toys.  The Toys at the time were cool and began a whole new scale in action figure sizes before there were the 8 inch Mego or the 12 inch sized G.I. Joes and Six Million Dollar Man.  That was in late 1977, the Year the first Star Wars film came out.  Yes, I know it was Episode Four, at the time it was the first movie out.  I did not see it till 1978 and I saw it in a drive in.  I was 10 years old.  Mind you, I had been on a trip to the stars before with Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock.  This was different. It was reminiscent of the Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers Serials from the Thirties and Forties.  I loved it; I had some of the toys.  I was not obsessed with it.  It spoke to me, but not as loudly as to others.  Light Sabers, really cool looking alien Races, Special effects that blew me out of the water, were among the things that surprised me in a pleasant way.  As a kid I did not really start going to movies in the theater much till I was 12 or so.  Science Fiction TV shows were more my forte.  I watched Battlestar Galactica at the time and thought that was awesome.  I know in retrospect the Seventies Original version was cheesy.  As a kid I was a mouse, I loved cheese.  I saw the much maligned Star Wars Holiday Special too, once again not my speed, although at 10 I liked it.  I read a few of the Han Solo prequel novels and the Star Wars comic from Marvel.  I did not get too much into the expanded universe.

In 1980, my family was living on Adak, Alaska.  At the time it was a military base.  When Empire Strikes Back came to the island, everyone was at that theater watching.  In order to handle the demand they had multiple showings and even did Weekday and night showings.  It like its predecessor shocked and amazed me.  At the time the special effects were something we really had not seen the like.  Once again we bought the toys, hell we had a Star wars slot car set.  I made my own Tie Fighter and X-Wing Fighter Models, well I assembled them.  They were the glue kind previously I only had the snap on types.   I was blown away be the images again.  Lucas used a great deal of Japanese influences to the wardrobe and production design to movies. 

In 1983 I was 15; we were back in Oxnard California.  Return of the Jedi came out and was played at the Ventura Theater in Ventura, California.  The Ventura went through a major renovation.  It tried to hearken to the days it was a Movie Palace in the 1920’s and 1930’s.  Not only was it a great film it was in an amazing theater.  This was also the first time I realized I was no longer the target audience of the film.  The Ewoks, I did not care for them I knew they were fodder for the younger crowd.  Even my 12 year old brother did not care for them.  This was supposed to be a family movie so, I let it go. Once again I was spellbound by the scope, the effects and the production design. 

During the hiatus between the original series and the prequels, I did not really get into any of the Expanded Universe Novels or comics.  I was a young adult in my twenties when they started to arrive.  I was not that interested.  To be fair I was not into the Novels for Star Trek either.  I tried to play the Star Wars table top RPG from West End Games.  It was not for me.  Star Wars informed my creativity, but it was never the big thing for me.  When the prequels came out I was in my thirties.  The first one definitely was geared for a younger crowd.  I was not it; I still understood where they were coming from.  The next two were good.  I felt disconnected from Star Wars by this time.  Mind you, my brother, Mike, loved Star Wars.  He was more the Star Wars guy than the Star Trek Guy.  I was the opposite.  We work that way.  This just was not my Science Fiction franchise.  I do not hate Star Wars, I love it.  I have my issues with certain tenants in Jedi Philosophy.  It is just not the one that permeates my every fiber.  I am not sure if there is something that does that completely for me.  That Is My Not So Humble Opinion.