As long as there are kids out there like this, I think there will always be a rock audience in kids:
Fucking love it. Best part is the singers Pikachu shirt!
Their little sister joins in on this one . . . magical!
This thread has gone up a few notches in terms of awesomeness:
Everyone talking about metal and kids, parenting, etc. brings back some awesome memories.
My parents were never into heavy music. My old man particularly hated it, even when he was young. More of a Simon and Garfunkel man.
A well meaning relative got my mum a Nirvana tape when I was four. She never listened to it, but I worked out how to use the tape player and that was lying around and… well, it pretty much set me on my way. Around the same time I was messing around with radio dials, came across a radio station that played similar music and liked how it was familiar to that Nirvana tape.
Rather than try and prevent it, my parents were more than happy to leave the car radio dial on that station- which was pretty cool, coz I distinctly remember hearing Lard on the way home from school when I was in third grade, amongst others! Better yet, there was this really trippy video show on Saturday and Friday nights, and I used to sneak up and watch it; some really awesome vids would come on, and sometimes my old man would let me ‘sneak up’ for a bit of fun and watch through them with me… though, that was more as a mechanism to change the channel when something in the vein of ‘Closer’ came on!
It was cool having that sort of exposure, but it wasn’t without it’s downsides. I think it was part of the reason all through primary and secondary school I just did not fit in, and some of the shit they were singing and showing on the videos in those songs hits very young minds like cannonballs as far as I’m concerned. Well, at least for me anyway.
But I don’t regret it, and my parents have always supported it, even if they don’t get it; which is fucking cool, because there’s nothing better to kill a buzz than to have your parents really, really ‘dig’ it and try get in on it.
Even up til high school; I went to see Tool and the Melvins when I was 14, and my old man came along. He sat through that, something he could not handle even just for the sheer volume alone, but he sat through it coz I dug it. Even recently with the Kriss Hades gig, they’ve been pretty cool about it even though… well, unfortunately, they know how to use Google.
They’re still trying, along with the rest of the family, “why do you do this? just do the pop music, the classical, why? you’re too good for it”, but… I don’t really have an answer for it. I just like it because it’s… brutal?
oh, and those videos were AMAZING [:)]
Heavy Metal as a whole is something that I don’t listen to all that often anymore, but I have a lot of good memories of it when I was a kid. My older brother and I would dress up as KISS on Halloween in the '70s, and later on we had a lot of Iron Maiden and Judas Priest records.
My parents liked '50s Rock, Doo Wop that sort of thing so I have a lifelong appreciation for it. It is not something that I particularly rebelled against. They never really put a ban on what we kids could listen to, but for some reason we had a reel-to-reel recording of Blowfly that we used to play only when they were not around.
When I was around eleven or twelve I got really heavily into Pink Floyd and had all those cassettes which I played until they wore out. Through my brother I discovered punk and industrial in 1986 and it has been all downhill since then. Still even when I had a daft haircut in the '80s, or started going to shows my parents didn’t give me much grief.
My Dad only commented once about a Skinny Puppy 12 inch single I got in the mail, " I don’t know about this stuff." Years later he was the one who showed me Dwayne Goettel’s obituary in the paper, so at least he had enough interest to let me know.
Alternative music wasn’t even around when I was four. Then again, I was 4 back in 1972, so that kinda makes sense. Back in those days it was Bay City Rollers, Michael Jackson, Carol King, Stevie Wonder, Donny Osmond, Chicago, Paul Simon, The Carpenters, Neil Diamond.
I first got interested in music in about 1978. Suddenly - much to my Dad’s dismay - I was hip to T Rex, Kiss, Styx, Rush, Roxy Music, Wings, Quarterflash and Billy Joel. Admittedly still about a million miles from, say, Nirvana’s In Utero.
Back in the late 70’s and early 80’s, if something wasn’t mainstream (and virtually everything had to be mainstream when you lived in the suburbs in those days. I could imagine you’d more or less get arrested for being into something like Throbbing Gristle. And laugh all you want but that’s actually not an exaggeration growing up in the leafy suburbs of Los Angeles) then it was just called punk or weird. There was no alternative. We look at bands now like Sonic Youth and The Fall and kinda yawn with jaded cynicism, but I really admire those guys for sticking to their guns and paving the way for future alternative acts. Especially when the type of music they were selling back then was tantamount to social suicide. They may as well have been from Mars. I can just imagine how Confusion Is Sex must have gone down with the general public! I remember whenever Black Flag tried top play a gig anywhere in LA, they would basically have the cops called on them and be threatened with physical violence until they up and left. Ditto The Dead Kennedys. Now you can buy their t shirts at suburban malls. Go figure.
When punk finally grabbed me (around the throat) at age 16 in 1984, it grabbed hard. I was pretty much hooked. Joy Division, The Ramones and The Cure were definitely the big three as far as I was concerned. I had a new wave haircut, dyed bright orange, leopard skin sneakers and skin tight jeans with patches sewn into the knees. Chrome, Wire, The Birthday Party, Public Image, The Replacements…all of that shit 24/7. And man did I cop it from the other kids. I was like Molly Ringwald times ten. All the soci, preppy kids hated my guts and the heavy metal kids thought I was queer. I was spat at, kicked in the nuts, had food thrown at me, beaten and thrown in a dumpster and had dog shit thrown at my house. How many of you guys had to put up with that whilst you were feeling ‘alienated’. Probably not many.
Now it’s ‘cool’ to be weird. It’s ‘dope’ to like alternative. Thanks a lot!! Could have come in handy back then.
Everyone talking about metal and kids, parenting, etc. brings back some awesome memories.
A well meaning relative got my mum a Nirvana tape when I was four. She never listened to it, but I worked out how to use the tape player and that was lying around and… well, it pretty much set me on my way. Around the same time I was messing around with radio dials, came across a radio station that played similar music and liked how it was familiar to that Nirvana tape.
In this sense, yes, rock is dead.
No matter where rock came from it was always a format which rebellion and revolution fomented.
In my OLD generation, we had our Black Sabbath and Led zeppelin LP’s my older sister had to tell my dad were “drug music.”
My parents loathed anything that had to do with rock music, including Elvis.
I was blesssed to find some big band music, Frank Sinatra, '50’s crooners, and some jump, jive and boogie early stuff that has NOTHING to do with whatever I started listening to.
In fact you couldn’t catch me listening to any of that back when I was 11/12; but now–I find it all pretty cool. I’m glad my parents hated rock and weren’t young enough to introduce me to pink floyd or stoner rock. I’m glad my parents had taste and brought a certain martini and bourbon-on-the-rocks-style to their drinking parties where they played cool big band records and music that defintely wasn’t '70’s saturday Night fever or disco–which was the fare most “mature” people listened to on the radio.
My dad had an 8-track tape in his Buick (sound systems and cars DID influence me) and he had Jazz, like “take five” and other things I never heard on our album-oriented rock stations. That was cool. The only other radio he listened to was news.
So–I’m fortunate I had to find music on my own. My parents were of a completely differtent generation; I had a great time mixing music for their 50th anniversary–with music from the '30’s to the '70’s—stuff which I had hoped would bring back good memories to their life experiences.
In my context, rock is dead in the mainstream. That’s the reality one gets turning on FM radio, and it’s sad; but overdoses of Fleetwood Mac, Styx, Foreigner, Journey, ad nauseum causes one to prematurely lose one’s mind.
My parents are both 70. My dad likes classical and my mum doesn’t listen to music. Neither of them were ‘cool’ parents. In fact they were extremely old fashioned and strict authoritarians. My dad had a temper that you wouldn’t want to poke with a ten foot stick. He would literally tear your head off if he thought you weren’t weeding the garden properly. He would walk around the house all weekend in the worst mood imaginable. Still does.
I liked thrash and hardcore growing up in the late 80’s and early 90’s - partly as a rebellion against my conservative upbringing and partly because everyone at school hated it. For me it was something of a place to hide, seeing as I had no friends, was crap at sports, looked like a spastic and couldn’t get a girlfriend to save my life.
That was pretty much my life up until I was about 25 or so and started to come out of my shell a bit. Alternative music was more or less my whole world. Got me through all those dateless Friday / Saturday nights! Better than nothing I suppose.
I was pretty lucky as my older Brother was right into stuff like Brian Eno, Talking Heads, Jimi Hendrix, AC/DC, Art Of Noise as well as African music and Reggae/Dub etc so I was exposed to all sorts of different music growing up. My Mum was and still is bananas about Van Morrison. I know all his stuff off by heart.
The first music I really started to “like” and buy from my own money was Gangster Rap such as Ice-T, NWA, Geto Boys etc…at that time (87-88?) my Brother was taping pirate radio shows with all the new Acid House & Hip Hop/Industrial that was coming out at the time. Not long after that Body Count came out which Im loved.
A mysterious “metalhead” type of dude lived a few doors down from me at the time and heard me playing Body Count so invited me to his to smoke weed and listen t some of his music. He was into Morbid Angel mostly as I remember and a lot of obscure shit which I guess ended up developing into Black Metal.
Anyway one day he just came back after picking up two new promos that had just dropped…one was Rage Against The Machine’s Killing In The Name and the other was Ministry’s NWO which featured NWO, Just One Fix & TVII. We didn’t give a crap about the RATM one but went bananas over the Ministry one. A few years after that I saw Ministry live and went bananas yet again.
I’d say the first real Heavy Metal record I heard and thought was awesome was AC/DC’s Let There Be Rock.
Heavy Metal as we know it is indeed dead now though. It’s over. Thankfully the music has been recorded so we can always blast that shit when needs be.
This is what I was talking about.
The article reads ‘Where have all the Aussie rock stars gone?’ but it may as well read ‘Where have all the rock stars gone?’ as I’m sure it’s the same all over the place.
What the fuck happened? Do people not want to be rock stars anymore? Do music fans not want to take a chance on something new and instead stick with the classics? Are up and coming rock bands just plain shit at writing tunes and are not getting anywhere? Are record companies not signing potentially big rock acts anymore?
When the biggest rock album of the year was a Bon Jovi greatest hits album…well, where does that leave us?
Does anyone else out there find this as sad as I do?
This is what I was talking about.
The article reads ‘Where have all the Aussie rock stars gone?’ but it may as well read ‘Where have all the rock stars gone?’ as I’m sure it’s the same all over the place.
What the fuck happened? Do people not want to be rock stars anymore? Do music fans not want to take a chance on something new and instead stick with the classics? Are up and coming rock bands just plain shit at writing tunes and are not getting anywhere? Are record companies not signing potentially big rock acts anymore?
When the biggest rock album of the year was a Bon Jovi greatest hits album…well, where does that leave us?
Does anyone else out there find this as sad as I do?
I think you’re being old fashioned.
Genre definitions are really becoming quite blurred as time passes.
And it’s more difficult for the traditional vocals, guitar, bass, drums lineup to be relevant and original sounding.
Do you really want retro bullshit like Wolfmother and Jet to be hugely popular?
No, but I’ll take them over Pink and Eminem any day.
And do you honestly think that mainstream types are out there checking out all sorts of genres and sub-genres…other than pop/rock/r’n’b/dance?
No, but I’ll take them over Pink and Eminem any day.
And do you honestly think that mainstream types are out there checking out all sorts of genres and sub-genres…other than pop/rock/r’n’b/dance?
I can see where you’re going with this and for the most part I agree. But what are you going to do? Rock is obviously dead for now. But there’s plenty of good music coming out of the underground to focus on. Who really gives a fuck what Gerry Normal and Fanny Average-Fuckface is buying at the local mall?
Well put.
I think I’m just frustrated at what passes for mass entertainment these days.
Maybe that’s just part of getting old.
For what it’s worth I’d rather hear like Fergie’s “Trippin’” on the radio than some douchebags trying to sound like a 70s rock band anyday.
Pop can definitely be more innovative and interesting than retro wanna be bullshit. I really despise those bands like Jet and Wolfmother
Are record companies not signing potentially big rock acts anymore?
I think this is the case. actually I just don’t think Record companies are really signing anyone anymore it’s all indie based now. the only crap record companies are involved in now is Pop and R&B.
Late,
grmpysmrf
Rock is not dead. The Jonas Brothers are keeping it alive and strong.
Rock is not dead. The Jonas Brothers are keeping it alive and strong.
those are the MMM bop kids right?
Late,
grmpysmrf
The MMMBOP kids were Hanson. I honestly don’t know what songs the Jonas Brothers sing, but it’s a great hot button for douchey metalheads or wannabe punk kids. Just go on a Megadeth thread somewhere and mention Jonas Brothers and they start crapping themselves. It’s like kryptonite to them. I know what they look like, though. I’ve just never heard them (that I know of).
Justin Bieber has the same effect, by the way. Kids that supposedly hate the dude are absolutely obsessed with him and mention him every 5 minutes to make sure everyone around them knows how much they do NOT like Justin Bieber. Not my cup of tea, but I guess he’s got an okay voice. His hair is gay, though.
I have no shame in admitting I like me some Lady Gaga, however! Gotta have me some GaGa!!!