StereoDevil

I was lis­ten­ing to a radio show the other day and the host was explain­ing the dif­fer­ent events that led to his becom­ing a radio host and for him the first thing that caused him to wake up, to come alive was Bill Haley and the Comets. This led me to think­ing about my own expe­ri­ences and I knew exactly the moment and song I heard when I woke up. That song was Bat­tery by Metallica.

I remem­ber the day I bought the album Mas­ter of Pup­pets. I remem­ber my thoughts upon see­ing and hear­ing it. It goes some­thing like this. I was at Wal­mart of all places. I went to go buy two albums. They were Van Halen’s 5150 and ZZ Top’s After­burner. Now these are great bands and I enjoy them still to this day but look­ing back I can say I was not con­nected to any­thing via these bands or any others.

So I am look­ing through the albums and I saw Van Halen but no ZZ Top. My eyes glanced down and there was Mas­ter of Pup­pets. I had heard some of Ride the Light­ing while rid­ing around in a dude named Glen’s car but it was just a piece. I picked it up and looked at the cover. It was really different.

Rows of crosses and hands hold­ing strings attached to the crosses. The big block Metal­lica let­ter­ing. It meant some­thing but I didn’t know what. I turned it over and saw some­thing I had not seen on any album. I saw 4 guys that looked like me. No rock star hair, no pos­ing. Just 4 dudes with T-Shirts and Jeans. James Het­field looked like a bad ass. I mean there was some­thing so real about them. The fish­eye pic of I believe Day on the Green con­cert was spe­cial too. It wasn’t of the band. It was of the crowd. Look­ing out from the stage. The whole thing was just fuck­ing cool. So I bought it.

Now mind you I really had no idea what I was buy­ing. I was still in that stage where you are swayed by pack­ag­ing and all that. I was a kid you know. I had not had a musi­cal awak­en­ing but it was com­ing in about an hour.

I got home and pulled out the record. Straight to the turntable. I had just started play­ing gui­tar about a year before so I really wanted to hear the gui­tars. I stood there and waited. Then the intro starts and it’s a Span­ish fla­vored intro of the main theme to come. All these lay­ers are added, elec­tric gui­tars with melodies and then those 5 power chords. E5, B5 G5 , fucked up chord B/D#. You may now com­mence insane riff from hell. Oh my God my head was like WTF! The riff was so fast, and so intense. The accents. Then they all come in. Like a moth­er­fuck­ing freight train. I could not believe they were play­ing that fast. Those triplets. The riff. The tim­ing. It was so fuck­ing bad ass. I read the words and I knew at that moment I had found some­thing for me. It was like poetry to me. The way the lyrics were writ­ten. I lis­tened to that song over and over that day. Know­ing that I had made a con­nec­tion to some­thing more excit­ing than I had ever encoun­tered. I had my musi­cal awak­en­ing. My best friend Jack was learn­ing gui­tar and I was wit­ness­ing like a zealot to him. Soon he was hooked. My mis­sion had just begun. To this very day I can lis­ten to that song and remem­ber those exact feel­ings from that day.

Music is so deeply ingrained in my neu­rons that I hear it con­stantly. I can’t sleep some­times because the music won’t stop play­ing. I hear songs. I try dif­fer­ent riffs in my own songs. I can’t stop, and I don’t want to. My life has been shaped so deeply by music and that one event set me on a course that led me on a won­der­ful musi­cal jour­ney with friends and has allowed me to con­nect music to other events and made my life that much richer. Thanks to Metallica.

A flawed mas­ter­piece …and Jus­tice For All is one of the great­est musi­cal injus­tices (no pun intended) of all time. Many things went wrong in the process of mak­ing this album. Rem­ming Flass­mussen did not mix it and once it came back from mix­ing there was no Bass gui­tar. I have heard all the excuses like “It was swal­lowed up by James gui­tar” in the mix. Lars Ulrich chal­lenged any­one to find a part where the bass was not dou­bling the gui­tar. Hence the swal­lowed up in the mix story. Finally they say they grieved through hate. Basi­cally turn­ing down Jason’s Bass because of their grief over Cliff Burton’s death. That is kind of twisted. Jason New­sted got the gig of a life­time but imag­ine the dis­ap­point­ment that your idols are a bunch of dick­heads and didn’t allowed you to be heard on your first album with them. The Lars and James show. Flem­ming Ras­mussen has stated that the bass recorded was beau­ti­ful sound­ing and that it wasn’t his fault because he didn’t mix it. Finally this has been set­tled and the truth is out. The Bass was recorded and sounds pris­tine. There is though a ver­sion of Black­ened with the bass and it was taken from Gui­tar Hero tracks and oh my God is all I can say. They are gazil­lion­aires so why don’t they re-mix it and put this to rest. Make Jus­tice a masterpiece.

Metal­lica — Blackened-New Bass

Social Net­work­ing. The word sounds like a turd but it has its uses I guess. Seems like now it’s the only way to keep up with friends. Hell I don’t have an address book I have Face­book. Well in the long run it has done some good things for me. I found old friends like Spencer, Eddie, and even Steve. Not that you know who I am talk­ing about.

Recently out of the blue I received a mes­sage on Face­book and it was my best friend from high school, Jack. We started our first band together and rode the wave from garage to clubs to implo­sion. It was a hell of a ride that’s for sure. After all these years it seems like we just left off. So even though I bitch some­times about Myspace and Face­book I have to say thanks to Face­book because it brought some­one back into my life that was with me dur­ing some of the best years of my life and it’s really cool to see where we are in life and real­ize that even over time friend­ships really can last. Ok well that’s about it. Oh yeah Jack and I wrote and still write the most crush­ing riffs you fuck­ing losers!

Oh my god that was one long run on sen­tence. 59 Words!!!!!!! Damn I’m good…