I rushed upstairs (making sure to trip and burn my chin on the carpet as had become a tradition) and opened my parents record cupboard. On one side was my mother's records: German singing sensation Heinte and a real purty woman named Nana Mouskouri. I think this is where my fetish for brunettes in glasses began.
Then there were my dad's records. They all had pictures of smiling men in white sweaters standing with their arms around each other (mental note: those sweaters look itchy!). I waited patiently for someone to come home, so I could hear a record. As I was wont to do - I watched T.V. in the meantime.
My aunt must have heard of my burgeoning interest in music because that Christmas she gave me my very own record: Kooky Krazy Hits. It had all these neat songs aboot Arabs and a guy named Mr. Custer. This was also my first introduction to the blues - courtesy of a guy named Mule Skinner. I drove my mother batshit playing that record all the time. So much so that she got me own little record player. At last I was a grown up.
Now as time went on, I scratched up my brother's albums so badly the artists had to be identified with dental records (pun intended). Knowing fratricide was now on my brother's Christmas wishlist, my mother intervened and I never got the beating I so richly deserved. Ahhhh nepotism. Membership has it's privileges.
My Birthday rolled around and I woke up to find my present on my dresser. Abba - The Album. It wasn't on K-Tel, but I thought I'd give it a shot anyway. The songs weren't especially krazy or kooky, but they made me feel very... happy. I was now on a quest. A quest for happy music. My quest soon ended with one man. And that man was Shaun Cassidy. He can act AND sing. He's my hero! But I wish my brother wouldn't keep calling him a fag.
Two years passed, and I found myself in a rut. Music just didn't have the impact on me that it once did - despite my discovery of radio one year previous. One sunny Friday afternoon I found myself at the mall. My allowance was literally tingling in my pocket. It needed to be spent. It HAD to be spent. I know! I'll go to the record store. Yes! They have records there!! Walking through the store, up and down all those aisles of beautiful people, I spied something out of the corner of my eye. You guessed it - a record! And on it were two guys. Two funny looking guys. On funny looking bikes!
"Who are you?" I ask, turning the record over. "We are Cheap Trick," the front cover replied. "Cheap Trick, I will buy you." So I took the album to the front counter. "This album is $3.99 plus tax," said the man at the counter. "I have four dollars," how much can this 'tax' thing be, anyway?
What happened next my friends, changed my life forever. Because of that next moment, I knew that no matter what paths lay ahead for me in life, no matter what obstacles lay before me, no matter how disillusioned I became with the world in the years to come, I could never lose total faith in humanity.
"Good enough" the man replied, and handed me my record. MY record. I just bought my first record! It was the proudest moment in my life. This was my Bar Mitzvah. Only without any knishes. Little did I know that after I heard this sacred piece of vinyl, I would never be the same.
My band. Cheap Trick were my band. I was the only person in the world that knew about them. I discovered them and because I was a product of society, in my filthy greed, I kept them to myself.
Hours upon days upon weeks I sat in my room listening. Learning all of the wisdom that Robin Zander saw fit to bestow upon my unworthy self. This is what I was born for. I wanted to change my name to Bun.
Rock is good Rock is great. I need some more to satiate. This was my new mantra. The mantra that drove me to the record store later that month whereupon I purchased Blondie's "Parallel Lines" and Pat Benatar's "Crimes Of Passion". No gender elitest was i. They were girls. They were purty. And they rocked. Hell is for children indeed!
Well, time went on, and so did life. As I discovered the magic of 'radio', records weren't as high on the priority list, as say.......wacky packages. 'Lox'. Nyuk nyuk. Still makes me chuckle.
So one day, I was walking down the hall of my appointed educational facility with my best and only friend - ohh, let's call him......Twitch, I overheard some other disenfranchised youths talking about a concert coming to town. They had a guy that spit blood AND breathed fire! Why had I not heard of this group before? Maybe they were on that 'FM' that I'd been hearing so much about.
I asked my mom if I could go see them play, and guess what she said? Wrongo Dongo. She said NO WAY. You see, even though my mom looked like Maude, she wasn't nearly as liberated and free thinking. Curse my underdeveloped emotional stability. She thought I couldn't handle the extreme nature of the aforementioned theatrics. My dad, who had always thought I had been dropped on my head as a baby, had merely thought the old wound was acting up again. So I didn't get to go see Kiss. As a consolation prize, however, my mom gave me 'Kiss Alive' for my birthday that year. There was lots of neat pictures, and the music was so loud. I loved it. I remember how disappointed I was when I heard my first Kiss studio album. It sounded so slow and boring. There wasn't even a drum solo! Pfft. Poseurs.
Listening to Kiss Alive as much as I did, had set the standard for what was to tickle my fancy next. The bar had been raised. And no easy thing to be tickled, was MY fancy. I needed to be surprised. I needed to be impressed. I needed... Iron Maiden.
Part II: I Was A Teenage Headbanger
"With Iron Maiden began the years of my burgeoning rock-idol worship, which began on March 24th, 1984 when Ozzy Ozbourne signed my circus magazine at an autograph session at The Bay. He was really grumpy and wouldn't talk to me or any of the kids, but I knew by the way he ignored me, that there was a special kinship between us."Words: Kevin Fitzpatrick Graphics: Matt
