ROCK!

Last week I connected with my old, old friend Josh. Josh and I were in our very first garage band together back in Junior High School. He's still playing and has a successful band out of Florida, Tenspoke Indies. He also works for Dean Guitars so he as in SoCal last week for the annual NAMM show. I went to Hollywood to meet Josh and his friends all of which were rock musicians as well, they were all dressed in leather jackets, boots, long hair, etc. Needless to say I felt a little out of place in my thermal and Eddie Baur short-sleeve button-down. But it was great to see an old friend still playing music and still rocking the f***k out. I figured I'd be dressed a lot like those guys had I stuck with rock instead of gravitating towards jazz music.

The timing of our little reunion was perfect as I had just started reading this fantastic book Fargo Rock City by rock journalist Chuck Klosterman. Its about growing up on 80's metal in a small town, something I can definitely relate to. The book really is a sociological study on the impact of "hair bands" on kids' lives; his goal is to justify the genre as 'important' even though (as far as musics go) it wasn't a very 'good' one. It's also a hilarious memoir and is very well written.

Now, my 80's metal phase was rather brief. While I loved Guns N' Roses (still do) and similar bands by 8th grade I was in to The Cure and by 9th grade I was listening to Alice In Chains and by 9th grade Nirvana broke and changed everything. Sure I followed all of the popular metal bands of the day but I never owned a Motley Crue or Poison tape, I didn't need to--they were on MTV constantly. But 80's metal is still rather sentimental to me and after this past week I've decided its something I need to re-investigate and re-live a bit. I got rid of a lot of my old tapes long ago so I think I'll pillage iTunes looking for my old favorite tracks.