I like giving “Sunday Metal” a theme, and so this theme is “Songs of My Youth”. I found heavy metal as a teenager and it’s always been a big part of my life. I wanted to highlight some songs that stand out from those youthful days.

If you’ve been a long-time reader of my blog, you’ve probably heard me refer to “You Can’t Bring Me Down” on a number of occasions. This song is just awesome on so many levels, but it’s that outro rant that just rules everything. In some ways it forms a core part of my philosophy.

I think people would do well to remember that: just cuz you don’t understand what’s going on don’t mean it don’t make no sense, and just cuz you don’t like it don’t mean it ain’t no good.

And yes, sometimes I do feel like shit. I ain’t happy about it, but I’d rather feel like shit than be full of shit.

 

I like giving “Sunday Metal” a theme, and so this theme is “Songs of My Youth”. I found heavy metal as a teenager and it’s always been a big part of my life. I wanted to highlight some songs that stand out from those youthful days.

“Wild Side” was a dangerous song to me. For whatever reason, when this song was making the rounds, whatever it was going on in my high school life, this song really sung to me. I embraced it. I also spent many hours air-drumming to this song. Never really been a drummer, but some songs make me want to drum and this is one of them.

I also remember spending much time figuring out the lyrics and then scrawling them repeatedly in the margins of my papers while bored during history and english classes. I also remember some kid (M.C.) sat next to me, always taking great interest in “eavesdropping” on me, reading my margin scrawls, and thinking I was referring to the Lou Reed song. Still to this day I fail to understand why he paid me so much mind, especially when he was a jock and “cool kid” and I was a fucking nerd. Who knows.

I like giving “Sunday Metal” a theme, and so this theme is “Songs of My Youth”. I found heavy metal as a teenager and it’s always been a big part of my life. I wanted to highlight some songs that stand out from those youthful days.

Metallica’s “…And Justice for All” album was huge when it came out. One song that resonated with me, and probably with a lot of teenagers, was “Dyers Eve” because teenager, rebellion against parental suppression, and so on. Again, a voice, an outlet, for what I was feeling inside.

 

I like giving “Sunday Metal” a theme, and so this theme is “Songs of My Youth”. I found heavy metal as a teenager and it’s always been a big part of my life. I wanted to highlight some songs that stand out from those youthful days.

On my WXJM radio show I had a spot where I put 2 songs up against each other and had listeners call in to vote for their favorite. Of course the winner would go on to defend their title the next week, and so on.

A local Washington D.C. area band named Kage held that #1 spot for geez… I can’t remember how many weeks. But it got to a point where we just had to retire them so others could have a chance. 🙂  That #1 song was “Darkness Descends”.

I like giving “Sunday Metal” a theme, and so this theme is “Songs of My Youth”. I found heavy metal as a teenager and it’s always been a big part of my life. I wanted to highlight some songs that stand out from those youthful days.

W.A.S.P. brings back some interesting memories.

I remember some kid showing me the “Animal (F**ck Like A Beast)” album cover (the saw blade cod piece) in the locker room before or after gym class. Dangerous stuff! Can’t let the teachers see it.

I also remember some kid in my 8th grade algebra class having a W.A.S.P. t-shirt on. He sat in front of me, and he and the teacher were having an informal chat about the shirt. I don’t recall the whole of the conversation, but I do recall her pointing out it stood for “White Anglo-Saxon Protestant”, which was a new term to me at the time.

In the end tho, we all need our anthems, and “I Wanna Be Somebody” is one of those.

I like giving “Sunday Metal” a theme, and so this theme is “Songs of My Youth”. I found heavy metal as a teenager and it’s always been a big part of my life. I wanted to highlight some songs that stand out from those youthful days.

Much of the conflict in my teenage years came from religion. Be it the hypocrisy I saw at church, mom and sisters pushing me, me wanting to “be good” and “believe” but just having a hard time with it all. Music of course was a source of tension because so much of what I enjoyed was, on the surface, in direct conflict to what the familial influence wanted.

Then along came Stryper.

It was an interesting thing watching them having a tough time with songs like “To Hell with the Devil” because they could see the message was “right”, but the artistic delivery they still took odds with. But they still had a hard time trying to deny me the music. I enjoyed the music for what it was, but no question the other ways it permeated my life were interesting to me as well.

 

I like giving “Sunday Metal” a theme, and so this theme is “Songs of My Youth”. I found heavy metal as a teenager and it’s always been a big part of my life. I wanted to highlight some songs that stand out from those youthful days.

Maybe I was exposed to this song in my youth, but it’s still a song that rings true to me today. Overkill’s “I Hate”.

I still hate people that make you feel small. I still hate having my back against the wall. I hate being talked down to. I hate your rules, I hate ’em all. Hate being marked to take the fall. And so on. 🙂  It’s just a cathartic expression.

 

I like giving “Sunday Metal” a theme, and so this theme is “Songs of My Youth”. I found heavy metal as a teenager and it’s always been a big part of my life. I wanted to highlight some songs that stand out from those youthful days.

Like any good teenage male, I wanted to play guitar to be the guitar god. So when choosing the altar to worship at, it was simple: Eddie or Randy.

I was in the Randy camp.

Not that Eddie wasn’t awesome, but it was Randy’s background and interleaving of classical music into his playing that sold me. I had been studying music much of my life (piano, trumpet, french horn); my older sister was really into classical music, as were my parents. So with a lot of that around the house, Randy’s playing style resonated more with me.

“I Don’t Know” was one of the first Ozzy/Randy tunes that I learned to play:

But I think a more memorable moment for me was with the song “Crazy Train”. A reoccuring theme in my musical youth is my mother’s dislike for this music. One day I was wandering around the house with my acoustic guitar around my neck. I was playing “Crazy Train” and my mother actually stopped and commented on how nice that song sounded. See Mom? You just have to give it a chance. 🙂

I like giving “Sunday Metal” a theme, and so this theme is “Songs of My Youth”. I found heavy metal as a teenager and it’s always been a big part of my life. I wanted to highlight some songs that stand out from those youthful days.

I can’t recall the exact song or moment that enamoured me to Monster Magnet. I do recall seeing their “Spine of God” album in the WXJM library, but it didn’t move me. I did an interview with Dave Wyndorf, which was pretty cool. But I think it was hearing “Twin Earth” off Superjudge that really did it for me.

The heaviness, the fuzz, the psychedelia. “Twin Earth” was the first single, but really the whole “Superjudge” album was awesome to me. I mean “Cage Around the Sun”… the storytelling, the drug-induced trip that Dave was on… it was a new musical adventure to me. “Stoner Rock” became a thing for me.

I like giving “Sunday Metal” a theme, and so this theme is “Songs of My Youth”. I found heavy metal as a teenager and it’s always been a big part of my life. I wanted to highlight some songs that stand out from those youthful days.

Yeah, Nirvana isn’t pure heavy metal, but they certainly are loud rock. And if you know any music history, they were the pivot point that changed the music landscape in the early 1990’s. Heavy metal suffered because of these guys. 😉

But I still remember when their album showed up at the WXJM studios. We all piled into the second studio to listen to the song, “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, and thought it was pretty cool. We had no idea how it would change things, but at least for that moment everyone at the station agreed on something. 🙂