Don't Turn Your Back...On The Heretic

For most of my life, I've made attempts to stay up to date and current with new bands. "Hey look at me. I'm not old...I'm digging this new youthful hardcore band"! This year, however, I'm struggling to give a shit about remaining relevant. Sure I still get the occasional charge from discovering a new band, but for the most part, all I want to do is sit around and listen to those albums that were released when I was a teenager through the 80's. Maybe it is nostalgia, or as I sit here on my 45th birthday, maybe it is a mid-life crisis...either way, I'm just rolling with it and hitting up eBay for those Heavy Metal classics on vinyl.

When it was announced that Mike Howe was back in Metal Church, the nostalgia needle buried itself in the red, and Blessing In Disguise and Human Factor started getting daily spins.

As I was listening to Howe-era Metal Church, I suddenly remembered that he had also done an album with Heretic back in 1988. I remember my brother had the Heretic cassette, but I didn't really remember much beyond him owning a copy. I grabbed a download, and after a couple of listens, I suddenly couldn't get enough. I can't imagine why we didn't like this more back then. This this classic Mike Howe, and a great precursor to what he would do with Metal Church.

After listening to the album repeatedly for a couple of weeks, I was in desperate need to buy the vinyl. Once again, discogs came to the rescue.

Still sealed and with the hype sticker on the front...for $12 I didn't hesitate to quickly buy it.

Bleeding For The Birthday Banquet

Growing up, through my teen years, if the music wasn't loud, obnoxious, and played lightning fast, I wanted nothing to do with it. Much like my attitude towards The Beatles and The Doors, I looked at The Rolling Stones with the youthful arrogance that the band sucked. I had no room for that stuff among my daily playlist of Iron Maiden, Dio, and Judas Priest. Shit like The Stones was for old people...people that were too uptight and boring.

Today is my birthday, and rolling into 44 years old, I'm thinking that I must officially be old, as listening to The Rolling Stones was probably the highlight out of everything that I was spinning yesterday.

It was a slow, gradual acceptance of The Rolling Stones. It started with my friend Rob, and his introduction of the band to me through Sympathy For The Devil. The song blew me away, but I still wasn't sold on the band completely. After landing a copy of the Hot Rocks collection, my appreciation grew. Still, when it came to full albums, all I was into was their early stuff...that straight forward, blues guitar, rock n roll sound. As much as I tried to get into albums like Beggars Banquet and Let It Bleed, they just left me a bit confused. Outside a few of the hit songs on the album, I wasn't sure what I'd just listened to. I just didn't "get it".

About six months ago, things finally fell into place. I decided to give Let It Bleed "one more try" before I made the move to delete it off my ipod. Whoa. Things clicked, and after the album was done, I had to queue it up for another listen. I was not only liking the album, I couldn't get enough of it.

Same deal with Beggars Banquet. Sympathy For The Devil is hands down, my favorite Stones song ever...so I really wanted to like the entire album, but it just never happened. After my experience with Let It Bleed, I decided to give Beggars Banquet another try as well.

Yeah, this thing is awesome.

When it came time to finally add the vinyl to my collection, I was torn. A part of me wanted to buy some original UK Decca pressings, but I wasn't sure if I really wanted to commit to those prices. I'd heard good things about the sound quality of the new clear vinyl pressings, and finding a copy of Beggars Banquet in the used bin at my local record store helped me make the decision on which direction to go in. Great, thick vinyl...and I love the look of those record labels. With a $12 price tag, I was sold...and that of course meant that I needed the same clear vinyl pressing for Let It Bleed.

HeWhoCannotBeAged

I had a birthday this month. Normally I don't give birthdays a second thought...they come and go, and often times I have to stop and calculate how old I really am. This one was a bit different though. There was no forgetting that I was turning 40. This was a big one, and there was no avoiding it. I have an idea of what 40 looks like, and I don't think that I fit the profile. Call it a mid-life crisis, or maybe a healthy bit of denial, but I was bound and determined that by the time my birthday rolled around I was going to be in the best shape of my adult life. I doubled my gym time, doing weights in the morning and then cardio in the afternoon, and adjusted my diet to cut out some of the sugar and carbs. The end result is that I dropped 20 pounds. Fuck you forty...I'm not going down like that.

In keeping with my theme of punching 40 in the face, Rob was awesome enough to pick me up a copy of Black Breath's Heavy Breathing LP for my birthday. I had never heard of this band until I read about them on Doug's blog. He made them sound interesting, so I checked them out. Holy fucking Metal! Thrashing guitars, growled vocals, and Satan...just the kind of thing to keep this 40 year old feeling like he is 18 again.

This was my first Southern Lord piece of vinyl, and I've got to say that the packaging is very well done.

Happy Birthday From The Family

38 years old. Holy shit. Each year that my birthday rolls around and I'm forced to recognize how old I am, it always surprises me. When did get this old? In some ways I feel like I'm such a different person than I was at 20, but in many ways I still feel that young...like I've never really grown up. I think that a part of it is that I'm still strongly attached to the same music that I loved through my teenage years. I need music and crave it at all times. I can't drive the car without needing to throw a CD into the player. If I have 5 spare minutes at home, I'm hopping on to the computer to check out a new song that I had downloaded. When I get home with the kids, it's a race to see if I can get the stereo on before they get the TV on. On a good day, I can make my way through 9 or 10 CD's while I'm at work. I surf around on the internet, checking ebay for records that I really can't afford to buy. I live and breathe this stuff. It keeps me young. My family is so good to me, that when my birthday rolls around, they give me gift cards to either Newbury Comics or Bull Moose Music so that I can go music shopping for myself. While this year, I also got some gift cards for Home Depot to buy materials for my music shelving, I also got enough for a good shopping trip.

The first item on my shopping list was the new album from The Raconteurs, Consolers of the Lonely. The band includes Jack White from The White Stripes, and this new album is simply an amazing rock record. I've even grown to appreciate the one song that includes some violin. The gatefold packaging for this double album is spectacular and well worth the $30. While shopping, I couldn't resist picking up the Metallica S&M triple vinyl. The album was priced at $16 with a "50% Off" sticker on it, so I grabbed it for $8. Sweet deal. The rest of the money from my birthday went towards a bunch of CD's that I wanted for my collection to replace those shitty burned CD's that I had.

The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same

Today is my birthday. I am now 37 years old. Fuck, that sounds old, but you know what, I don't feel old, and sometimes I wonder if I have anything in common with other people that are my age. I enjoy what I do for my job, but I could give a shit about my "career". I'd rather chill with family, spend hours going through my record collection, or hang out with friends playing video games, than waste my time and mind at happy hour with drones who's sole existence seems to revolve around when they can drink. I love my life, and live it the way that makes sense to me. I remember when I was around 17 years old and was really getting into Thrash Metal...listening to a lot of Metallica, Slayer, Testament, and Overkill. A co-worker of mine at McDonalds told me that soon I would grow out of that style of music...like I was going to enter adulthood and toss out my Heavy Metal tapes and tune into some radio station playing "the hits of yesterday and today". I don't know if that is how it works for some people, but it sure as Hell wasn't how it was going to work for me. Music makes up a large part of who I am. As an awkward teenager with zero self-confidence, it was a safe haven. It was where I could go and not concern myself with how I measured up against others.

So here I am 20 years later, 37 years old and finding myself getting a charge out of buying the newest Slayer release on vinyl. This is a re-issue of their Christ Illusion album, which was released on my birthday last year. Apparently they had another song, Final Six, that didn't get finished during the recording session because Tom Araya got sick and couldn't finish the vocals on time. After the album was released, they finished up the song and re-released it to include the extra song. In addition to the new song, there is an alternate version of the song Black Serenade, and a different album cover. Saw it on vinyl for $15, so I picked it up. The other Slayer item that I picked up this week was the Soundtrack to the Apocalypse box set. I got $60 in gift certificates for my birthday, and saw it as the perfect opportunity to pick this up as well. 4 CD's and a DVD, a really cool and detailed book about their existence, plus a couple of other trinkets (a banner and a laminated pass). Very cool, and since it is limited, I was happy to get a copy (unlike that Iron Maiden box set that I missed out on a few years ago). So, yeah, 37 years old and listening to Slayer...yeah, maybe I'll outgrow this music someday...right.

Happy Birthday To Me

Today I turned 36 years old. Birthday's don't mean much to me. I enjoy life, and have a great time on this ride, so I don't really concentrate the number of years that have passed. As a friend of mine has been known to say..."You can't change what is.".

My family had a birthday party for me the other weekend. The only thing I ever really ask for is more music, and that was what I got this year. I did pretty good this year, getting a couple of DVD's, one of Dio and one of Judas Priest, plus I got some CD's which included Triple Threat and Mental. Of course this blog entry is about the vinyl that I got.

• Doomriders "Black Thunder" - Holy shit, the riff from the title track is amazing. Worth it for that song alone.
• The Raconteurs "Broken Boy Soldier" - First off, I love The White Stripes. Jack White has got that classic guitar sound down. Rob surprised me months ago, dropping off a burned copy of the Raconteurs CD. "Jack White plays in this band", he tells me. I had never heard anything about this, and I'm excited to check it out. The band is more polished than The White Stripes, and it took me a few listens to really appreciate it. Good stuff, but pales in comparison to The White Stripes.
• Queensryche "Operation Mindcrime II" - I loved the first Mindcrime CD from Queensryche and saw them on tour with Metallica, who were on the Justice For All tour. Queensryche was the first band that I slamdanced to. I lost all interest in the band by the time they released their next album, and I had low expectations when they released Mindcrime II this year. I was really surprised at how much I enjoyed this record.
• Black Flag "Loose Nut" - I don't know why it took me so long to buy this record. Other than Damaged, this is probably one of my favorite Black Flag records. Great songs like Modern Man, Annihilate This Week, and Best One Yet.
• Black Sabbath "Never Say Die" - This is a re-issue on Earmark Records, pressed on 180 gram vinyl. While this record is often overlooked by casual Sabbath fans, there is still some great songs on this album.