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The day we moved something happened which forever altered my life, and helped to guide it to this very day, both musically and personally. My mother, brother and I were being driven to the new house in a van that belonged to a friend of my father. When we arrived and opened the side door of the van I saw a lady and two kids coming out of the house next door. The kids were our age and they ran up to my brother. I didn’t understand what was happening. It turns out that, since my brother had to be held back a year due to his poor English, he had been in first grade first with one of the kids and then with his younger brother. Their names are Claudio and Jaime, and they are my best friends to this day. Actually, they are my brothers.
For the next few years our collective musical interests coalesced. Together we had a small collection of music that we would listen to endlessly, and play air guitar, air drums, and air bass to (although none of us at the time understood what the difference was between the bass and the guitar). One of our favorite albums to listen to was Quiet Riot’s ”Metal Health.” Quiet Riot had videos that were especially suited to pre-pubescent boy’s minds. They were all in-your-face and the songs were simple and loud. Quiet Riot was my favorite band, until I hit 5th grade. I couldn’t get enough of them. When I was in 5th grade a guy in my class would bring in Van Halen’s “1984” and Motley Crue’s “Shout at the Devil.” I immediately wanted to buy these two albums because the music teacher wouldn’t play them. The Van Halen album had an angel smoking a cigarette and the Motley Crue album was just plain satanic looking, with its giant pentagram and devil imagery. It was all quite cheesy and tongue-in-cheek but to a 10 year old it looked DAMN COOL!
“Shout at the Devil” became my favorite album then. I would play it constantly. My favorite songs on it were the title track, “Looks that Kill,” and “Helter Skelter,” which, at the time, I didn’t know was a Beatle’s cover. It all seemed so damn important to me. Having grown up Episcopalian I had none of the automatic aversion to the whole Satan, hell, devil thing that the Roman Catholics talk about so much. The Episcopalians never talked much of Hell, or Satan. Good for them! Too much attention is given to the bit players in religions. The funny thing was that, with my father being an Episcopal priest, I was never chastised for listening to the music I chose. They were very open to letting me buy what I wanted. I think they knew that no band or music would make me become a bad kid. I would do that on my own.
The Van Halen record, “1984”, would also become very important to me. I would rock out and remember the hilarious videos for “Jump,” “Panama” and “Hot For Teacher.” Especially “Hot for Teacher.” That video had kids that were my age in it, and a hot-assed teacher nonetheless! While I would eventually lose interest in the records I owned then, I would actually grow to love “1984” more and more. It was the first record that I owned where I liked the non-single songs as much as the singles.
I am forgetting what was then my all-time favorite album. Def Leppard’s “Pyromania” was on my parent’s turntable constantly. I played that sucker religiously and loved every second. I got to admit I really liked the whole “set stuff on fire” thing. When you listen to music at a young age, everything seems so meaningful. I would analyze the lyrics, the cover, the liner notes, the pictures of the band, the label on the actual L.P., all to see if I could gain any insight into the bands I liked. I used to know the names of every single member of all the bands whose records I owned. I knew the song lists, and the brands of guitars or drums the musicians used. Whenever I would buy a new album would pore over the sleeve or the cassette cover looking for whatever the band had decided to put there for me. I don’t do that anymore. Maybe it is because I buy more records now or maybe it is because I realized that the stuff written on the album matters very little when it comes to the enjoyment of the music itself. Maybe I am just lazy. I used to love astounding the other kids who were into music with my knowledge of song titles, musician’s names, and the like. I still do that but it gets harder since the number of people who have heard of the bands I listen to now have shrunk to just one. His name is Michael, and even he sometimes goes,
“Bozart? You made that one up. That’s not a band.”
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