Modern Day Slacker

My parents divorced when I was 10 and when I was 11, going on 12, we moved into a house in the neighborhood my mom still lives in. It is a solidly middle class neighborhood where people take care of their kids, their houses and their cars. Usually in that order. Strangely enough, it also has the most millionaires per capita then anywhere else in the city. Every other corner has a bar, a doctor’s office or a church. While it has a mix of ethnicities, you usually find people to be Irish, Italian or Polish. It is also a place where people are born and raised, you rarely find new blood here.

When I moved here I was new blood and I stuck out like a sore thumb. That’s not exactly handy when you are 11 years old.

Most of the kids knew each other from birth and didn’t exactly warm up to the new kid. I was also weird. I loved music, but not the top 40 dance music everyone seemed to listen to, I wore funny tshirts and I had short hair. I had gone to Girl Scout camp for 2 weeks and when I came back I was utterly addicted to The Dead Milkmen and more specifically “Eat Your Paisely” (to this day I love hearing “Beach Party Vietnam”). Oh, and my parents were divorced, which was definitely not the style of the time in 1986 (funny aside, by the time I finished high school, half my tormentors had broken homes, just like me. How about that?). I spent most of my time in the house and when I went out, I ran a lot. Or, rather, I was chased a lot. On the upside, it was definitely good exercise for a fairly chubby preteen.

I made a friend up the street and immediately I was hooked on the music he was into: Ozzy, Maiden, that kind of thing. But what really hooked me? Metallica. We would sit around with his buddies and listen to various records but Ride The Lightening was the best, especially when playing Zelda or Super Mario Brothers.

One of the guys was a kid named Billy Kellaher. Billy lived with his dad and his mom was in the hospital in a coma or something (he didn’t really talk about it) and was already in high school. He had lots of time to hang out since his dad worked all the time as a short order cook (again, something he didn’t talk much about). What he did talk about was Metallica. More specifically, he was really protective of the band to the point of telling me one day that “I had to prove myself as a fan” and would quiz me. Seriously. He would pepper me with Metallica trivia and stuff and if I didn’t know, he’d ridicule my devotion to the band, which I thought on one hand was funny but on the other hand kind of drove me to learn as much as I could about the band. I think that sort of thinking and weird teenage devotion to a band drove me to be almost obsessive over the stuff I like, as if Billy will pop up behind a desk or a wall somewhere quizzing me on my devotion to, say, Hondas or New Balance sneakers.

Anyway, I finally got him to make me a taped copy of “Ride The Lightening”. I still have the black TDK tape in my box of tapes and crap in my dad’s basement. I played the crap out of that tape on my boombox I got from my grandparents that Christmas. Then I got my hands on a copy of “Master Of Puppets” from my local Wall To Wall Sound and Video. That was it. I had my two tapes and they were glued to my tape deck. No one else in my classes knew who they were, or really much cared. They were into U2 or some other sort of dance music.

When I was in 7th grade, I was eagerly awaiting the release of “…And Justice For All”. The day it came out, I rode my bike again to the Wall To Wall Sound and Video and purchased the record. Or, more specifically the double album. It was a sweet double gatefold with great sleeves full of pictures and lyrics. Again, I played those records over and over again. Why did I get it on vinyl? Well, even tho cd’s were out and slowly getting more and more popular, I had this weird attachment to vinyl. There is something about reading the liner notes and seeing how they design everything from the jacket to the label on the record itself is fascinating to me. Cd’s just really don’t do it for me. Also, records are sort of magical to me, but that’s another story for another time.

After the record was out for awhile, they released the video for “One”. All the sudden, the band I had followed obsessively was on MTV every 5 minutes. Boys in my class made fun of it, and the girls thought I was weird for liking it. Only, I didn’t particularly like that song, especially since others like “Harvester Of Sorrow” were so much better. At the time I didn’t understand why they made that video and now my band was out there.

I dealt with it. Life goes on for kids. Life goes on for bands. But it sort of broke my heart to share that band with the world.

After awhile Metallica kind of faded a little from my musical consciousness and replaced by all sorts of things as I entered high school. They released the Black album and while listening to it at my friend Josh’s house, I really started getting irritated. This was not the band I loved and obsessed over back in the day. I realized that was it. They might be “growing” as a band but we were growing apart. This relationship was over. This parrot has ceased to be.

As with any old love, when you see them you feel a little stirring of something. Usually, it’s just the memory of some good times tickling at your heart strings and it fades when you get distracted by other things in life like tying your shoes or driving your car. Years later, there was a little program called Napster that let you trade music files. For someone like me who never had any money, it was awesome.

And then Lars Ulrich opened his big, fat Danish mouth. He wasn’t concerned about artists, or how file trading might help smaller bands build a following, he was more concerned about money FOR HIM. He singlehandedly shut down something that could have helped a zillion bands get thier music out. It made him look like a money grubbing whiney bitch, and frankly, I was embarrased for him but also it kind of made me sad to see how far he had come from those days of “Kill ‘Em All”. Some weird road he traveled.

Fast forward to 2 years ago when I saw the documentary they had released called “Some Kind Of Monster”. I am guessing their reasons for releasing it had something to do with wanting to look human but all it did was reinforce what fans had been saying for years…that the band was wildly off the rails and needed a reality check. Crying about having to sell your art is not very rock. And I won’t get into how awful that album “St. Anger” is. Oh dear jesus.

So after yet a third bass player, Metallica has decided to soldier on. Much like Van Halen, they just keep on going long after the expiration date is blinking in their faces. Unlike Van Halen, who realized the fans wanna see the first lineup and hear those old songs, Metallica actually thinks you want to hear new material. Most fans, they want to hear the old stuff. However I doubt you’ll see Jason back in the band for a greatest hits of the 80’s tour. They will just keep making awful albums, making a mockery of their best work, and making those old fans embarrased to even say they *are* fans.

And like a divorced kid who never gives up on that dead beat dad, they will continue to break my heart over and over again.