FAILING AT METAL
Flashback to 1994. I
was 21 and an English major at UNIVERSITY, splitting time between a (worthless)
Film Studies degree (Robin Wood Represent) and English Lit classes, but I was
also a Commuter. Which fucking sucks for
a trillion fucking reasons and you really might as well not even go to a major
college at that point, because all this “social life” and “political awakening”
shit that people spin about college like it’s some perennial fucking Bertolucci
movie where you’re stapling anarchist proletariat posters and engaging in
ménage a trios in a nonstop opium haze is all out the fucking window when
you’re taking the PUBLIC TRANSIT down to campus like a total part-timer, making
no friends and rocking some idiotic SURPLAS JACKET hanging at the library like
it ain’t no thang while you’re really dying inside that Fucking Flounder is up
at frat row motorboating sorority tits while you’re tucked in safe and sound in
your family bedroom each and every night.
Through most of these horrible college years, I maintained a
depressing-as-fuck job at the local supermarket, alternately unloading trucks
or working the produce detail. And
pretty much everybody there was like 15, 16, 17 tops, baggers and stock and the
occasional paisley-shirt wearing cashier douche. All the guys my age had gone off to college
and were ensconced in apparent Eyes Wide Shut fucking orgies where behind every
dorm room door on campus lay another bacchanalia, but no, I had to COMMUTE and
front like The Fonz come the weekend, pathetically rolling with some posse of
high school Yinzer wiggers dipping Skoal Mint Bandits and Zubaz.
This was, crucially, the Grunge Era, the Voice of My
Generation, Nirvana and Pearl Jam and Soundgarden creating these amazing sonic
landscapes of the era that encapsulated the full Gen X malaise and ambivalence
that ought to have touched my very soul…. But because I was an ABSOLUTE poseur,
I was still carrying the torch for METAL!
Truth told, I was always a Johnny Come Lately fucking douche fucking
poseur fucking part-timer about music anyway, getting on board with like GNR
not during Appetite but wholesale during USE YOUR ILLUSION, never listening to
any Metallica before “One” then becoming Captain Superfan during “Black Album,”
loading up on CASSETTES of MOTLEY CRUE not in appropriate 1985 but on campus at
National Record Mart in like 1991 WAY past their original, pre-nostalgia
prime. And working with this slew of
high school doofuses throughout this era had me getting into “heavier” shit
when I was surely a notch too old for it and concurrent with when the
alternative scene that might’ve actually, you know, spoken to a 20, 21 year old
college snob was at its fucking height.
REM and RHCP and Jane’s Addiction and Lollapalooza and Rollins and Tool
and Rage, ALL that incendiary stuff blowing up right around this time, changing
the landscape…
Meanwhile I’m chew dippin’ in a ’79 Malibu and cartin’
around the fucking Class of ’95 with zero dignity, feeling On Top of the World
(TM GOD HAGAR) when some rod dubs me off a TAPE of ‘Hell Awaits,” meanwhile I’m
some MIDDLE PART DANZA-HAIR ITALIA-FRO DORK in POWDER BLUE DOCKERS roosting
come daytime in Russian Lit class, whipping up an essay on Karamazov before
bussing it home to catch a Danzig show.
Yeah, SO fucking metal. Hey,
Professor, let me hurry up and whip up this essay on Lord Byron so I can get to
the Cannibal Corpse 45-capacity club concert.
So for a year or two I’m CAPTAIN CONCERT, browbeating
whatever posse or dumbass 11th graders I can summon up to go catch
these meathead club shows and the
occasional mellower power-ballad-ass already-over HAIR METAL SHIT (Firehouse/Tesla at the Palumbo, WHO’S IN
MOTHERFUCKERS, might be chicks????), but by third year of college, this act is
wearing noticeably thin, and even the guys a year or two behind me had gone off
to THEIR colleges. Some jerkoff I
formerly knew as a TOTAL LOSER came back that past summer of 1993 at a Van
Halen show bragging about getting some road head from a hot chick from his school, and sent me
into a stratosphere of depression that haunts me to this day. Dude had been some megadork I’d condescended
to prior, younger than me, now completely usurping my station in life.
All those guys a year or so younger had outgrown this
fucking shit, but One Man Stood Alone, spraying Produce Lettuce come day,
hitting up World Cinema 101 by night, and come weekend like Manero at the
fucking Odyssey I was Walkmanning my BIOHAZARD CASSETTES and seeing FUDGE
TUNNEL AT THE CITY LIMITS, only 21 years young but easily 4 years older than
ANYONE in the room not in the band.
So the Show of Shows announces it’s coming to Pittsburgh,
PANTERA/SEPULTURA/BIOHAZARD, this is some summer outdoor amphitheatre tour to
celebrate Pantera’s FAR BEYOND DRIVEN album, which I had on a warped
cassette and was air-guitaring mean-mugging in my bedroom mirror at roughly the
age that Tom Cruise was shooting Risky Business and probably at that very same
time Ben Affleck and Matt Damon were filming major Hollywood movies, but MR
METAL had to be at THIS SHOW, THE MOST IMPORTANT EVENT OF HIS LIFETIME or so it
seemed. The three greatest bands IN THE
WORLD in 1994! To clarify, Pantera might
be the awesomest shit in human history in retrospect, but for metal guys of a
certain age it was a crucial cutoff dividing the ’80s old-school thrash guys
who were age-appropriate to Metallica, Anthrax, Megadeth…. and the younger set
of ‘90s roid-rage, shaved-head, meatball “kids.” And it’s never lost that ALL bands refer to
their fans as “the kids,” because trust me, ain’t a lot of investment bankers
and certified CPAs at a metal show. This
was when classic thrash was splitting off into more hardcore new sound, and you
either had the vintage stuff of four longhairs up their doing open E-chord
speed riffs flinging their hair, or all this Pro-Pain, Biohazard, Madball stuff
with shorter-hair mooks grunting and spitting and playing Drop-D in
balls-stinking small rooms with your face unfortunately mashed into some
asshole’s disgusting fucking back sweat.
Pantera was like the new great hope to both bridge this gap AND keep
metal going in the face of “alternative,” whatever the fuck that really
meant. Now I could do a dissertation on
grunge and alterna-rock with its detached lyrics and mopey tone and snide irony
and shaggy-haired coffee-house dropouts in clunky glasses wailing with an
earflap cap and nerd glasses and thrift-store cardigan, but to me it just
seemed like a bunch of Sanka-stinking, rain-soaked assholes droning on about
being a pussy, or something.
Whereas PANTERA BITCH and BIOHAZARD was about BEING A MAN,
ranting about TRANSFORMING INTO A BADASS and OVERCOMING and BEING INDEPDENDENT,
YOU CAN’T HOLD ME DOWN, ROWR, and other shit that should’ve at least seemed
vaguely comical to an ENGLISH MAJOR and scholarly sort prone to wearing The
Corporate Guy Collection to unload a fucking a watermelon truck. But, nah, I was somehow ALL about it in the
face of absolute embarrassment, some HIDE UNDER THE UNIVERSE moment where I
drew a HEMP LEAF on my hand in GREEN PEN and gleefully showed it off to some
jailbait bagger chick at “work,” telling
her I BELIEVE IN LEGALIZATION OF POT because Pantera had some ridiculous shit
in their LINER NOTES about “joining the fan club being cheap so it doesn’t cut
into your SMOKE POCKET” or some dumb shit like that. Just me being an ABSOLUTE POSEUR OF ALL
POSEURS, hair all DORKED OUT with BOB-FROM-HALLOWEEN COKE BOTTLE EYEGLASSES
fooling fucking NOOOOOBODY, having smoked pot like once, ever, when I was 19
with some rods who liked Rusted Root.
Anyway this JUGGERNAUT OF A TOUR is hitting The Burgh and
I’m on the phone like fucking Shelley the Machine Levine, cold-calling absolute
losers, high school kids, and even some prick in my EngLit courses at Pitt,
trying to sell him on, “Hey do you like Brazilian death metal? This band
Sepultura will be crazy!!!” (they’re not even death metal, btw) and the guy
basically asking, “Uh, who are you again?”
Anything or anybody to RALLY A POSSE to see this must-see event….for
kids 8 years younger than me. Just
absolutely NOBODY giving a fuck or anyone my age thinking this could possibly
be up their alley, this NASCAR dude and future Republican I was boys with in
high school, us out at the bar one night, both 21, him with his future wife and
doing professional internships for his eventual lucrative career and me begging
him to see METAL!, guy looking at me like Rob Cohen’s 1964 nerd posse must
react to the news that Rob wants to hit the “dope-ass clubs” with the
rice-rocket racers of 2002. Striking out
across the board everywhere with everywhere, and got word that a younger cousin
was going with his FULL CREW of other 16-year-olds. I couldn’t get USURPED on this matter by a
COUSIN, I was MR. METAL. But I couldn’t
quite tag along with them with any dignity, so I persisted, badgering EVERYONE
who worked at my miserable grocery store job, finally CORRALING two of the
least METAL! motherfuckers in the history of the globe.
Some Latter Day Saints-looking rodnozzle named TUPPERTY,
glued-down middle part and Howdy Doody grin, rocking the SHORT-SLEEVE WHITE
DRESS SHIRT-N-TIE look, and some big hillbilly fucking, chew-dipping oaf named
BENEER, neither of whom had ever and I mean EVER heard of Pantera, or probably
fucking Metallica or The Beatles or George Washington or even knew what fucking
country we lived in. Just absolute
Yinzed-out PA fucking hayseeds, just grinning like dumb fucks that some older
kid asked them to roll to this concert where I promised there’d be girls, like
ANY fucking chicks of any real discernment were at a fucking METAL SHOW in
1994; Guys were like high school seniors
and had no clue about this scene or anything, but all I knew was I had two willing
victims so I wouldn’t have to roll out solo to the OUTDOOR VENUE, some shitballs
amphitheatre on the Ohio border called Star Lake. Where I’d seen such esteemed acts as Ozzy and
Aerosmith and Vince Neil and Ugly Kid Joe not 12, 24 months before, but all those semi-likeminded
“bros” had moved on to actual lives and, you know, GROWING THE FUCK UP.
So we’re in the PLYMOUTH RELIANT K-CAR and I think I’m
trying to PRIME THEM for the MAGIC by blasting Pantera “Becoming” on the AUDIO
VOX CASSETTE PLAYER, and Tupperty’s plugging his ears and Beneer’s just
spitting Skoal dip into a Dr Pepper can in a daze, and my dignity’s flying out
the fucking window faster than the Winston cherry that’s sparking out the
driver window as I barrel down the highway, more excited than if I was gonna,
you know, lose my virginity or something.
Which I hadn’t done. But this was
BIGGER THAN THAT.
We get there and I can LEGALLY BUY A BEER at this point in
my life, and somehow I’m not even getting lit up for this experience, sober as
a fucking judge and not even bothering to offer the BROS one on the sly, pretty
fucking sure Mormon dude is ACTUALLY rocking the fucking TIE and white shirt at
the Pantera show, the big lurch in a THREE-QUARTER LENGTHER softball jersey and
mesh hat, we’re out on the LAWN part behind the seats, and I’m wondering where
the ACTION is gonna break out, ie the PIT.
I want FULL ON MOSHING for this shit, like real insanity moshing and
KICKING ASS (ie jumping in long enough to duck the fuck out). These 2 dorks have never even heard this kind
of music, and to be frank, other than some spazz-metal kids in the early 90s,
NOBODY ON EARTH really knows, has ever known, ever will know who BIOHAZARD is,
was, etc…. They come out dropping some URBAN DISCIPLINE and Tupperty’s
contorting the same flummoxed mugging face John C Reilly pulls when Borat puts on
the musette music in Talladega Nights, Beneer tries to nod along but looks
horrified, and I’m WAVING MY HANDS like an absolute retard, yelling YAY
BIOHAZARD in some reedy voice and reacting to this NYC club act like fucking
Hendrix just came out of the ground from the dead Creepshow Father’s Day-style.
Somewhere around this point, my 16-yr-old cuz and his POSSE
OF BADASSES roll through, each with a big-ass fucking beer and some CHICKS in
tow, and I’m all MEAN MUGGING that stupid YEP METAL! FACE OF MANLY RESPECT at
them as I pretend I’m totally not with the two fucking dorks from My Three
Sons. Pretty soon the place gets more
frenetic, probably when Sepultura came on, the pits inches over toward Tupperty
and he recoils like he just caught a dick in his face, and my cuz and his boys
hop the barrier into the seated section to bum-rush the front, where REAL PITS
were breaking out RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE BAND.
Like Beau Bridges getting Jeff Bridges’d, I’m seeing a family member
SEIZE THE DAY and I won’t have this, will not be USURPED, so after some stewing
I plan my escape. When the lights go
down and Pantera’s about to come out, I’M HOPPING THE BARRIER TOO and leaving
these two punching bags on the lawn.
These two fucking sorry fucking kids, at a show they didn’t
care about, music they clearly hated, just trying to hang with MR COOL METAL
MAN THE 21-YEAR-OLD, I leave them in the dust the split-second Pantera kicks
in, rushing for the front but getting no further than the back row of SEATS, stopped
by security (or probably some old fuck usher), ending up standing on a SEAT
like it’s a Bon Jovi show the rest of the night, mooning from afar how the Real
Action was up front, this huge pit breaking out before the stage, Phil from
Pantera doing his crazy rants and bringing dudes up to smoke weed and
browbeating some local Pittsburgh stripper into showing her tits (which seemed
to take 45 minutes), and my cousin and crew are 7 feet from all this chaos, and
I’m 20 yards back in THE SEATS, basically watching the show by myself for the
next 2 hours, which I had gone to all these lengths to avoid. Even when it
finally wrapped up for the night, I stood around like a douche waiting for
AUTOGRAPHS – SCORE, I got the guitar player from Biohazard to sign a BUMPER
STICKER! – still keeping those two rods I came with waiting….
Apparently they’d begged off to the parking lots HOURS ago,
sitting there on the ground, arms folded, waiting in absolute boredom and
misery, probably clutching their ears the whole time, one of them asking “Are
you finally done?” My cousin’s crew
popped by and one of them opined, ‘GREATEST NIGHT OF MY LIFE!” probably en
route to fucking one of the chicks they came with, everyone there all
boisterous and buzzed and drunk and happy and MY “posse” all depressed and
hoaxed about it waiting for their ride home like I’m some suburban Griswold dad
who just made his bored kids suffer some awful vacation they never wanted to
take. Managing to get OWNED by “family”
and push away “friend” alike, fucking embarrassing myself as always. And now 21 years on I still remember this
shit as THE ONE TIME I SAW PANTERA!, this band that I was probably too old for,
surrounded by a bunch of dorks I was too old to be hanging with, who couldn’t
have fucking cared less, still managing to miss that precise mix of interest
and likemindedness that it seems like everyone else but me can so skillfully
navigate, me always the lone-wolf voyeur taking it in like the solo act I’m
destined to always be.
