Every music fan knows that there is a time for rediscovery. There are some albums in my collection that I simply ignore out of habit, never bothering to recapture the memories of which the music brings to light or simply because I am not interested in the artist itself, which, in a way, is unkind to the artist in question. It simply means that there are other artists and music that I dig, which fill me with interest and wonder. As I routed through my collection, I decided to go back to the past when I was a young metal head with torn jeans, cig burns in my t-shirts of Zeppelin and Sabbath, and long hair that has since receded into some foppish toupee.
Bands like Megadeth, Pantera, Judas Priest, Testament and any other bands of the NWOBHM/San Francisco thrash metal scene, knocked me on my ass; it was the most aggressive, in-your-face music on the planet, and I imbibed it like water from the fountain of youth. I even disregarded the music of my father that changed my life, so that I could discover my own tastes. Whatever music I love or hate at anytime will come back, and I’ll be in love again like I was when I first heard those sounds that still rock my soul.
Rediscovering artists is a good thing; if you haven’t listened to a particular band in a while, you discover new things that weren’t there before. In some ways, you’ll appreciate them more. And now that I am older and wiser, I see the reason why I enjoyed certain music at a certain time, especially in my teenage years. Metal was the perfect ingredient to go with angst, aggression, and general hatred of anyone who liked popular music. The in-your-face, don’t-give-a-f*** motif of Pantera was the catalyst of a personality, which was almost hermit-like.
Metal changed my attitude towards music, people, and life in general then. When I got tired of it, I decided to go back further and further in the annals of music history to get that vibe and those emotions I felt when heavy metal became cheap and cliché to a serious music fan. However, I don’t think that way now, of course, but one’s pretentiousness can overrule him. Previous opinions that one has lived their life by can be spat on and degraded, even by the person who spouted such opinions in the first place, which is another trait of a hardcore music fan.
One minute you’ll hear them praising The 13th Floor elevators, and within a month, when they have found something more engaging, they’ll say something derogatory about the band they loved the month before. For instance, fans will say, “well, that band aren’t as good as this band,” or “their album doesn’t match up to this,” and so on and so forth. The hypocrisy of the music fan, in general, is the main thing that comes hand in hand with every like and dislike, whether it be literature, film etc. Although I know that a new band will come along in a month or so that makes me want to get up and dance and enjoy life, forgetting the albums that changed me, I will still go back to them and be enthralled once again by something I have listened to over a million times.