back in the day, when i was young and fast and enthusiastic, i found my first true love in the record department of kmart. (YES! they actually sold vinyl at kmart.) it had everything a boy could want.
from the shitty, winged devil skull, to the cool, extra occult-ey looking runes gently framing ozzy's still svelte physique, i knew that no matter what it might be, whatever was contained on that record was bound to be bad as fuck. look at ozzy, circa 1982 for just a sec. go ahead and take it in... i'll wait. now pretend that you are seven years old. holy shit. A) he's vomiting up blood clots. b)he has fucking vampire fangs. c) dig that shitty snarling, on fire... whatever the fuck that thing is tattoo. (i'd put a good chunk of money on at least 1,000 rednecks sporting even shittier versions of that guy as an homage, though if you asked them about it, sabbath would never enter the conversation. i might have to get into the problem with ozzy osbourne later) anyhow, it was on that day that i vowed that i'd be just like the guy on that album cover when i grew up. sadly, i didn't grow up to be 1982 ozzy osbourne, though i still think he was cool as shit.
my point in all of this is that things change. i am no longer seven and in love with 'speak of the devil'. ozzy is shitty and all palsied and retarded. and hot chicks will now have sex with metal dudes.
(my apology for the crappiness of this photo, i couldn't google up a decent image and had to take one myself. note the hooded corpse midget. oz must've used up all the fake blood for the cover, cause his had to be drawn on. c'mon... i was seven and realized how stupid that was.)
in my heyday, back when i could still be troubled to get into a circle pit, metal shows were 98 percent this guy...
these hesher dudes were mostly harmless, though inclined to get too drunk and shout out song titles while pumping their fist. hesher clans kept tabs on their ranks by distinctive calls, used most often to establish proximity to each other, the stage, the bar, etc. "fuuuuuuuuuk yeah?' 'fuuuuuuuuuk yeah!'
you could also be assured to run into at least one, sometimes more of this guy...
these were dudes, usually ten years older than everyone else, who came in from the suburbs with the specific intent to get drunk and punch children. and then there were the women... sigh.
(i wish this were more of an exaggeration. i think i ran into this chick at an assuck show at the blue chair in tampa, ca. 1992)kids nowadays have it easy. much like punk rockers, older generations of metal heads suffered through crushing celibacy with nothing but napalm death records and furious wack off sessions to any magazine that might have featured lita ford. it was though our effort (that's innaccurate, let's call it stubbornness) that, eventually, metal came to be cool, albeit too often as a source of 'irony'. sure the stoner rock movement had it's merit and i don't know that too many dudes ended up looking like shitbags for fashion's sake. and now thrash is making it's comeback, though most people who rock a nuclear assault shirt nowadays were barely even alive when 'game over' came out. i will not go into the shit genres of metal (dying fetus? darkest hour?) at this point for the sake of keeping on task. i might sound like i'm hating here, but i'm not. because while their complete love and grasp of all things metal may bit a bit fictional, the trim that they attract most certainly is not.
as an experiment... go to a metal show. now, look around. keep looking. see? what did i tell you? these dudes (god love 'em!) who look like they were thrown out of the ymca for being too shitty, are adorned with some pretty cute chicks. and i am not, (NOT!) saying that hot chicks are the norm yet, but neither are the slutty seahags in ratt shirts that were the 'metal mommas' of my day. we can call it evolution. metal has come into the mainstream, if only by a bit, and metal guys have gotten a bit less dorky as fuck. (well, maybe.) so, mr. nasum tee shirt, when you're making your way out of the club at the end of the night on the arm of a pink haired girl in gene simmons shoes, remember the sacrifices made by your forefathers. you're welcome.
(sure she looks dumb as hell, but at least she's not GROSS)p.s. 'speak of the devil' ,with time, has proved itself to be somewhat of a turd. for those of you who are not familiar, the 'speak' album was recorded after ozzy was kicked out of sabbath and took his songs with him. at any, rate it proved to be more of an omen than anything else. with it's noodly, masturbatory guitars and a bass sound reminiscent of rubber bands taped to a dog turd, it offered the universe it's very first glimpse at the steaming pile that would later be known as 'ozzy's solo stuff'. by the way... if you don't own this album, but hate it, chances are you're a poser.
