“Okay you people – sit tight, hold the fort and keep the home fires burning, and if we’re not back by dawn? Call the president.” – Big Trouble in Little China
I hear that Rob Halford became an eastern monk, which I guess makes him a Buddhist Priest.
Back when I was in high school, I started a quest. It would probably be a trivial quest in today’s world with the Internet, and tens of millions of songs available all from a single search. However, back when I was in high school, the only people using the Internet were computer nerds at colleges or places like Los Alamos sharing nuclear bomb design info and ASCII porn.
Is this how Los Alamos beat the Soviets?
There was exactly one rock and roll radio station that reached the lofty heights of Wilder Mountain, and it was a good three-hour drive from where I lived. Heck, the nearest record store was a 45-minute drive. But I heard a song . . . and loved it.
I had no idea who the artist was. All I knew was that it had guitars that sounded like jet fighters coming in for an attack (metaphorically) and a heavy metal singer with pipes to growl low and also hit the high notes.
This was not helpful. My bumbling attempts to hum the song to the record store clerk probably sounded like a toddler attempting to instruct an Albanian goat herder on how to repair a Junkers Jumo-004 on an ME 262. My incoherent rambling eventually convinced the store owner that I could probably be sold a lot of records on my quest to find the goofy song.
What happens when a plane full of Leftist lands? The Jet turns off but the whining continues.
She was right. On one particular winter day, I bought two cassettes. Memo to the young: a cassette was an attempt to put a part of the Internet on a skinny magnetic tape and take it with you. Sort of like WIFI but with a really, really low transfer rate that cost over $7 for 42 megabytes.
I listened to one of the cassettes on my forty-minute drive to Stately Wilder Manor. I don’t recall what the first cassette was. It was okay. The song I was looking for, however, wasn’t on it.
When I got to Wilder Mountain, I decided to listen to the other cassette. Pa Wilder wasn’t home. It was November, and snow was falling gently across the valley, as I looked toward the volcanic cone that dominated the view above the mountains that surrounded the valley.
I put in the cassette. I hit play.
A single guitar hit an E note that crunched and then was followed by 41 seconds of guitar solo that made my brain implode. The first second was enough, the next 40? Pure passion. My father’s stereo, which before that day was primarily concerned with playing Dean Martin and Johnny Cash, must have been surprised.
I know I was. Then? Another driving song, this time about a sentient A.I. encased in an orbiting surveillance satellite.
The two satellite dishes on my house got married. The ceremony was awful, but the reception was amazing.
What? I was in heaven. The cassette was Judas Priest, the album? Screaming for Vengeance.
The theme of the music was unabashedly masculine. It was fueled by testosterone and optimism and defiance. It was, in short, everything I loved in life.
What was my ethos at that time? Full speed. Every moment in life. When I played football, I played football. Every ounce of my being was focused on the next play. The cleats digging into the turf, the snap as the center delivered the ball to the quarterback, my sudden sprint, and the exquisite feeling of my shoulder pads digging into that quarterback’s belly as I impacted him at full speed. Life was a game to be played at full speed. When a football game was over, win or lose, the idea that I would have left anything of myself or held back an ounce of myself? I never felt that after a single game.
Win or lose. Everything I had.
And that was the ethos. My focus was on doing everything that I could humanly do during the game. If we won? Excellent. If we lost? There was no room for regret since I had done every single thing I could for the team.
Amazingly, here that was, in music.
This music and most of the music I have loved since then was fueled by one concept – it was fueled by the idea that, in this life, there are winners, and there are losers. But there are no victims. I was responsible for my preparation. I was responsible for my effort. I was responsible for me.
If I won? Wonderful. If I lost? Yeah, it stung. But if I gave it my best, and lived up to my own values, I still won.
I took a survey of what soap people used in the shower. 95% of them told me to get out.
Again, winning was and is important. But a loss of a single day was nothing. Winning could and would come. And I would live my life, on my terms.
Have I been cheated? Yes. Have I been wronged? Yes. Did I stand toe to toe with my boss and tell him that I wouldn’t sell my honor and principles to him for any reason?
Yes. And did I pay a price?
Duh.
Do I regret it? Not for a minute. Not for a second.
There are moments in life, where honor and values will be tested.
Heck, that was in this music, too.
In this world we’re living’ in, we have our share of sorrow
Answer now is don’t give in, aim for a new tomorrow
Also in the music? Questions of deep philosophy. The eternal battle between Good and Evil. Oh, yeah, and hot chicks.
Eventually, this changed and fell out of fashion. I think it was Bush. Or maybe raising the drinking age to 21. Or maybe drugging generations with lithium and Adderall®. Or maybe the new “zero tolerance” lifestyle, where fighting for Good and being right still resulted in a suspension.
Or maybe all of that.
Kurt Cobain was depressed at 13. Guess that was his midlife crisis.
Music based on honor and testosterone and optimism eventually fell out of favor. I can even give you the date: September 21, 1991, when Nirvana launched Nevermind.
With the lights out, it’s less dangerous
Here we are now, entertain us
I feel stupid and contagious
Here we are now, entertain us
That abomination of learned helplessness replaced this from Judas Priest:
Thousand of cars and a million guitars
Screaming with power in the air
We’ve found the place where the decibels race
This army of rock will be there
To ram it down, ram it down
Straight through the heart of this town
Ram it down, ram it down
Razing the place to the ground
Ram it down
One of these makes me feel like slitting my wrists. The other? Fills me with the idea that none of us are alone. We have power. We are . . . going to win, no matter what the damn odds are. Judas Priest is still touring. Kurt Cobain? Not so much. I guess it proves that one person can handle only so much Courtney Love.
Fast and furious, we ride the universe
To carve a road for us, that slices every curve in sight
We accelerate, no time to hesitate
This load will detonate, whoever would contend its right
I refuse to accept defeat. The idea is against every fiber of being in my body. I realize that I will not win every battle. And I am going to listen to music, and I am going to take in media that tells me the truth, but I shall never, ever, despair no matter how dire the situation. My family? They come from heroes. So does yours. Never, ever, give up.
I always took a piece of paper to a wrestling match. That way I could beat The Rock.
I’m not going to stop until I stop breathing. And I won’t relinquish my honor to any man. And I am responsible for every aspect of my life and my situation.
Oh, I did find the song I was looking for, a year later:
The hammer of the gods
Will drive our ships to new lands
To fight the horde, sing and cry
Valhalla, I am coming
But that’s another story, though the song remains the same.