Savatage/Oliva/Caffery Vids

A collection of Savatage (et al.) videos have been uploaded to youTube. Go check them out on youTube.

The B.O.M. Squad

I went from a Top 40 listener to a Metal Head. The journey took a couple of years and my tastes were still very immature. Metal was really anything with a guitar solo in it that I knew my parents wouldn’t approve of. Shit, I thought Hendrix was metal. I can recall my dad looking at my Iron Maiden – Can I Play With Madness poster (the one with Eddie’s head split open at the top and a ladle with a yellow soupy mixture sloshing about and a hand rammed through his entire head and then holding his brain) and then looking at me like…”Are you insane?”. I had my first metal defending moment. This would be fun. I was out to prove that metal music did not mean Satan worshiping drunken stupidity (at that time I was not aware of the large amount of Satan worshiping drunken stupidity that was running rampant in the metal community). I pulled out the Somewhere In Time cassette and let my dad read the lyrics to Alexander The Great. He was stunned. He then looked at another Maiden poster, The Trooper, got a twinkle in his eyes and said “That’s from the Crimean War.” He then went on to explain how the British, French, and Turks all fought the Russians who were encroaching on India and Afghanistan. I think he was pretty impressed. I even used the lyrics to Alexander the Great to write a kick ass essay in my ninth grade World History class. Maiden was single handedly responsible for me scoring an A that quarter.

One of my best friends, NW, from back in High School, and still to this day, introduced me to 2 bands that had a massive impact on molding me to metal. Columbia House and BMG provided NW with a nice selection of metal cuts. The first was Helix. Say what you will about them, but don’t ever talk shit about “Ride The Rocket” or “Deep Cuts the Knife”. A bunch of us used to hang out and smoke cigarettes like chimneys and drink sake and who the fuck knows what else and jam the shit out of Helix. One night we were on our way to blown ear drums, black lungs, slurred speech, and blurry vision and my cousin, MF, was challenged to a pull up contest. Never one to back down, he snuffed out his smoke and put down his glass of liquor and stepped up to the bar. We had Helix blaring throughout the house. I think my cousin lost by one or two pull ups. The reason this event is stuck in my head was the absurdity of a pull up contest after the consumption of copious amounts of smokes and alcohol, but at the time no one batted an eye at it. It was all about the tunes and whatever liquor we could jam down our gullets. The tunes were good, but the liquor never had to be. As long as it got us bombed, that was the only prerequisite.

The next band was Manowar. The album was Fighting The World. NW kept talking about this tune called Carry On and finally he got the chance to preview the cut for us. Including NW there was a group of 4 of us that were always together. We all went to the same high school, and we all played football together. We were in the car and he proceeded to crank the shit out of Carry On. All of us were completely blown away. There are some songs that have “that” vibe to them. They flow effortlessly into that realm of impossibly good. This was that. Impossibly good. We all felt it. Something happened during that listening. We eagerly lapped up the rest of the cuts on Fighting the World. Standouts include Holy War, Carry On, and Defender. The track Holy War had the lyric “Brothers of Metal know no master..Metal’s our religion..take it to the grave”. Thus the B.O.M. Squad was born. The Brothers Of Metal. Requirements were to be a leather jacket (NW had a green jacket with leather arms that we deemed as passable) and leather boots (I think worker boots..perhaps with a steel toe), and of course you had to crank Manowar and other metal treats. The leather jackets and boots be damned, but the tunes…we had that covered damned well.

My Journey to Metal…the short version

I was but a young fellow and I was moved by music. I admit that I jammed out to The Pretenders and Genesis..good lord even the Pointer Sisters and Eddie Rabbit (as I write this on a Rainy Night). The cards were stacked against me. Casey Kasem was all I had. But, when I was around 8 I tasted the nectar of Styx. Something seemed different about Styx. I think I thought, and please forgive me, that I was hearing some heavy music, perhaps heavy metal. Then I heard Foreigner, Journey, REO Speedwagon, Little River Band, Asia, .38 Special. My brain and ears always lumped those bands together. Foreigner 4 and the greatest hits Foreigner Records were my first 2 albums that I ever purchased.
A couple years ago, during the Napster persecutions, I started hunting down tunes from my Top 40 days. I was after tunes that were a bit more allusive than Boston or Journey. I was looking for a specific one hit wonder (I think they had 2 or 3 hits, but I digress). Chilliwack…that was a band I remember as pretty heavy, leaning towards masculine. I downloaded Chilliwack – “She’s Been Gone So Long” off of the Scour network. I was sure that it was not metal, but I figured it was at least rocking. I remember I used to sing it in the cafeteria with “my boys” at the Catholic school. It had to rock…right? Reality sunk in..it was a Catholic school after all. This tune does not rock, it sure does pop though. I was thinking that the guitar was heavy or at least prominent. It’s not, but there is a guitar solo that sort of …rocks?. Hmm. No, that’s not the right word. There are some harmonizing male vocals like in Elvira. I still like the song, but it really is not a high volume kind of cut.

Anyway. Let’s talk Van Halen. Real guitars doing metalish things. I liked that sound. I was still dabbling in the sounds of Asia and some Toto with a dash of Flock of Seagulls and some Saga on the side. I was starting to like the tunes with more and more guitar though. Still not metal perhaps (I did think Saga was metal though…I seriously did), but guitar ladened pop with a drizzle of dark atmosphere. I was still listening to Duran Duran, The Fixx, and the ever amazing Christopher Cross (at the time I believed him to be amazing)…and the talented Big Country (who I do still love). And bands like Night Ranger really were quite amazing to me. Still pop/ular stuff.

And then I heard “it”, and I knew.
“It” was what was missing.
“It” was dark, almost frighteningly so.
“It” was….DIO.

This was metal. I really had no doubt. I remember being a little scared and intrigued by the lyrics to The Last in Line. The slow melodic start and then…. “We are coming……….Home……… We’re off to the witch, we may never never never come home..”. Shit. I never did, if home was top 40 music. My parents did not approve of that one for sure. What followed was some Sammy Hagar. VOA……Swept Away? Oh I believe so. Then heavy doses of Van Halen. Then I borrowed Judas Priest’s album Defenders of the Faith. “Some Heads are Gonna Roll” was on the Top 10 at 10 for a couple of weeks in 84 or 85. That tune rocked, but for me it was all about the “Sentinel”. “The figure stands expressionless, impassive and alone, unmoved by his victory and the SEEDS OF DEATH HE’S SOWN”. Heavier stuff followed.

Metallica. I remember some dude at the country club where I washed dishes had the Master of Puppets tape. This guy was in his 30’s and seemed to lead a pretty heavy lifestyle. Not sure what he was all about, but he scared me a little bit. BUT, he introduced me to Metallica. But I remember working one of those Saturday morning shifts. I was in the dish room with this guy. We were both dragging ass. Emptying bus carts all the way up the fucking ramp. A filled ramp with dirty dish carts was the worst way to spend a hung-over morning. Can I get an Amen? All those fucking half empty brandy snifters and fucking high balls with that sweet fucking Melon Ball concoction. I had my boom box and in he popped some Masters. Dick never even asked. I was having some issues with the volume, but I just let it play. I found Battery to be a bit unappealing. But again, this dude made me uncomfortable so I let it play. I wasn’t going to stop him. He flipped to side 2. Leper Messiah. Now this was cool shit. Orion? That was even cooler. No vocals in that track, and at the time I was having some issues getting used to the thrash vocal style. That day we listened to Master of Puppets exclusively. By the end of that shift I was digging some Metallica. I waited until …And Justice For All to make the leap. The true moment of my next step into and up….a notch closer to enlightenment.

I am not sure why I decided to write this up. It is woefully incomplete, but I wanted to chronicle part of, a small part perhaps, of my journey to Metal. I remember my first metal moment. Hearing that Dio song. I wanted to share that. My journey certainly continues.