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Pre-Internet Metal Memories


Requiem

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This is a thread for people who remember a world before youtube, facebook and google, where there was a great mystery around metal. I'm interested in hearing how people accessed metal and metal related things prior to the internet. 

Some of my fondest musical memories are from that romantic era in the late 80s to mid 90s. I grew up in a small town where we didn't even have a music store, so trips to the larger town nearby would be focused around heading to one of the two record stores. There was a small but ok metal section, and I would trawl through the tapes (at first), then CDs (once they became more prevalent). Most of the time I would end up buying something (if my parents were kind enough to shell out) that I had never heard of but really liked the cover. If there was a band that I had heard of before and really wanted, like My Dying Bride, Anathema, Paradise Lost etc the store would order the CD in and it would often take a month before it arrived at mega prices. I'd be lucky to get a new tape maybe once every two months. 

News and information about bands was also minimal and clouded by mystery. Metal magazines were mostly from the UK and US, so were often months old by the time they reached my friends and I in Australia. My walls were covered in posters of metal bands. Do kids still do that these days? I remember reading about the rise of the second wave of black metal and Euronymous' murder in a magazine and just being amazed at the whole black metal thing in general. This would have been early 1994 I think. I hadn't even heard a black metal song before, but ordered Satyricon's 'The Shadowthrone'. Can you imagine the first time I put it on after the 4 weeks it took to come in to the store, and heard the intro to 'Hvite Krists Dod'?

Everything was shrouded in mystery when it came to figuring out who was in various bands, what they looked like, even what their discographies included. It was a real jigsaw puzzle of information from here and there. A lot of word of mouth too from kids at school. 

I remember being amazed when I first discovered the name My Dying Bride, which I thought was the coolest thing ever. Talk about a mystery band back in the mid 90s. I first heard them on a metal radio show and taped the track 'Like Gods of the Sun' onto a blank tape. I had heaps of blank tapes full of tracks from that metal show. You had to be really quick when the song started, and if you discovered you were recording a dud you would stop the tape and rewind, ready to go again when the next track started. 

We also swapped a lot of tapes at school with the few other metal fans back in the 90s. I discovered Ozzy, Maiden and even early Metallica this way. 

Nowadays I google any band's discography immediately, with a plethora of band photos etc. Metal Archives contains all the information about band members past and present, and youtube has almost every album you can think of, ready to be heard. It's a totally different world. 

While it's handy being able to listen to every single band anyone ever mentions, there is also an element of sadness in instant gratification. Never again will I wait for weeks for an album to come into the store, then get to the next town to get my hands on it, gaze at it, amazed, before putting it in the tape player and discover what they actually sound like! Sure there were some misses amongst the hits, but the magic of the newfound hits remains with me to this day. And because music was so damn scarce, the classics were revered and worshipped with unprecedented obsessiveness. Every lyric learnt, every speck of artwork digested and understood. I'm sad to say that rarely happens now, even though I still buy a lot of stuff. 

Anyone else got any memories/stories they would like to tell about the old days? 

EDIT: Can someone please move this to Deep and Meaningful? I think it fits that forum better. 

Edited by Requiem
Wrong forum.
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Discovery was mostly word of mouth for me at first - that and MTV, I think I discovered Queensryche on MTV... probably several other bands. This is when I was 10 or 11. I'd dub tapes from other people's collections. I had an incomplete copy of "And Justice For All"; a copy of "Master Of Puppets" that I'd dubbed over a tape of sound effects that came with my Casio sampling keyboard, which didn't get completely erased, so various sound effects (farm animal noises and whatnot) were audible during pauses and quiet moments; a tape of Rush's "Moving Pictures" that I'd recorded by sticking a recorder in front of one of our living room speakers; and incomplete copies of "The Wall" and "Operation: Mindcrime" that I'd rearranged to get as much of the music as possible onto their tapes. Those two tapes in particular were late night companions. When I was a little older, I'd sneak out of the house with my boom box, start a little campfire on the vacant property next door, play acoustic guitar, smoke cigarettes, and listen to those tapes over and over till all hours. An experience best shared with friends.

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7 hours ago, FatherAlabaster said:

Discovery was mostly word of mouth for me at first - that and MTV, I think I discovered Queensryche on MTV... probably several other bands. This is when I was 10 or 11. I'd dub tapes from other people's collections. I had an incomplete copy of "And Justice For All"; a copy of "Master Of Puppets" that I'd dubbed over a tape of sound effects that came with my Casio sampling keyboard, which didn't get completely erased, so various sound effects (farm animal noises and whatnot) were audible during pauses and quiet moments; a tape of Rush's "Moving Pictures" that I'd recorded by sticking a recorder in front of one of our living room speakers; and incomplete copies of "The Wall" and "Operation: Mindcrime" that I'd rearranged to get as much of the music as possible onto their tapes. Those two tapes in particular were late night companions. When I was a little older, I'd sneak out of the house with my boom box, start a little campfire on the vacant property next door, play acoustic guitar, smoke cigarettes, and listen to those tapes over and over till all hours. An experience best shared with friends.

Wow, MTV. That would have been cool back in the late 80s and early 90s. We used to be constantly recording on blank tapes too. People who had those two tape decks in one unit arrangement were highly valued. 

You were lucky in a way Father Alabaster. When I was in the tenth grade in 1995 (so I think that's a high school sophomore in American parlance) I went on a school trip to the United States which for us was the land of cheap music and clothes. I bought about fifteen cassettes, some of which I still have to this day. It was the best. All the other kids were going to clothes stores for cheap jeans and shoes, but I wanted to keep going to music stores. My host family must have thought I was mad. 

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Back when I was growing up you'd only hear new metal through the occasional radio show or if others at school had gotten albums. Its not like today when you'd know a band was releasing an album for months beforehand and you'd get drip-fed information or even songs along the way. New albums would just 'show up' in the record store....There were a couple of metal radio shows on 3PBS  - 'Metal for Melbourne' or 'Demon Night' - where i'd lay awake hearing songs by bands I'd never actually heard before. Sometimes the guys running the shows would play 3-4 tracks back to back and you'd sit there waiting to hear who the previous bands were. Id lay there thinking of the bands I wanted to hear - "Could this one be Saxon?...is this song Accept..maybe this is Dokken?? and so forth. So many bands Id never heard but Id seen there picture...so i'd just lay in bed and listen...and wait - these radio shows were the first actual musical exposure we had to them.

I remember hearing Helloween's "March of Time" and then Queensryche's "The Needle Lies" back-to-back not knowing the bands, and thinking it was the same band until the guy came on and announced the tracks. Must have been around '88 I guess. Next day at school there were a couple of us who'd get together and talk about the bands we'd heard "Did you hear that Celtic Frost song?..wow" and so forth. I remember seeing a picture of Motley Crue in a magazine (Shout at the Devil era) and they became my favourite band - even though I'd never heard a single song they'd sung. I showed my mum the picture and I remember her saying something like "they just think they're KISS". 

There were a couple of tv music shows (not MTV here in Australia..) that had a metal hour or so. One was called Beatbox, and it was on at 11am each Saturday morning; and I'd sit there taping the videos of the bands - this show introduced to me to less mainstream bands - eg Black'N'Blue, Lita Ford (Out for Blood - yeah!), Krokus, Heaven, Warrior's "Fighting for the Earth" and the almighty Queensryche "Queen of the Ryche' videos. They even played Keel's "the Right to Rock"...it's strange how 30 years later I can remember those lesser bands videos form the show.

The local record stores were impossible to get much more than mainstream metal - you'd have to order stuff in 'on Import" and it'd cost a few $$ extra etc. records would take a month to come and they'd ring you when the album came in. The 30 minutes home on the bus were agonising cos you could see (sometimes for the first time) what the band actually looked like and read the lyrics - but you couldn't hear the music until you got it home. Then I'd tape it onto cassette and play it in my walkman whenever i wanted. Then we'd spend hours reproducing our own hand-drawn album covers (and track listings) for the taped cassette versions wed made. W'd spent hours trying to draw the album covers and color them in so they look exactly like the album covers.

My best mate's dad went to the US and bought back 3 albums for us - Twisted Sister 'Stay Hungry', Motley Crue 'Shout at the Devil' and Ratt's debut. I remember him calling me and saying come over and listen. I was so excited riding my BMX over there to hear them all. Funnily enough he decided he didn't like heavy metal soon after so I got the albums. The a few years later, my mum and dad spent 3 months in Europe and before they went I asked my dad to bring home the new Motley Crue album (hadn't been released before they left) which was to be called 'Theatre of Pain'. Back then you couldn't hear pre-release tracks or anything like that so you had no idea how a new album would sound until you actually got it. I recall feeling really disappointed when I put it on - was so lightweight compared to Shout at the Devil.....

I remember a friend's dad went to Japan and bought back Queensryche's  "Rage for Order" and some Venom and other stuff. It was such a big deal when someone got a new album like that - we'd have like a listening party in his bedroom just rocking out to these new albums from bands we could only dream about.

There was a famous metal shop here in the city called "Metal for Melbourne". Everyone knew it. Was the only metal store in all of the city. My friends and I would catch the train into the CBD to go to it - and stand out the front for 20 minutes too scared to walk in. The windows were all covered in posters and flyers and you couldn't see in; and all the guys going in/coming out were so much older, wearing leather and studs, long hair, earnings etc. For 14 year old private school boys we were shitting our pants. Inside they had everything - wristbands, bullet belts, picture discs, posters, badges, back-patches, t-shirts....fucking awesome shop. they'd publish a handwritten Top 100 albums list and 'new releases' lists and photocopy them and we'd always grab one off the counter as we left then spend all week reading them.

My friend bought the WASP "Fuck Like a Beast" picture disc from there for some absorbent amount and we thought we were such heroes. Ha ha.

The other memory I have is that once a month with my pocket money (allowance) I would go straight to the news agency and buy a metal magazine. My favourite was always CIRCUS coz they had so much Motley Crue, Twisted Sister, WASP and RATT. Id cut out all the pictures and paste them onto my school books or put them on my walls.  Hit Parader was another,. When I went to Hong Kong I bought a copy of BUURN Magazine - but it was all in Japanese so I took it to school and my Japanese teacher read me some of the articles in class! Ha ha so much fun....seriously I could type another 2 pages on old pre-internet metal memories like these.

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7 hours ago, True Belief said:

Back when I was growing up you'd only hear new metal through the occasional radio show or if others at school had gotten albums. Its not like today when you'd know a band was releasing an album for months beforehand and you'd get drip-fed information or even songs along the way. New albums would just 'show up' in the record store....There were a couple of metal radio shows on 3PBS  - 'Metal for Melbourne' or 'Demon Night' - where i'd lay awake hearing songs by bands I'd never actually heard before. Sometimes the guys running the shows would play 3-4 tracks back to back and you'd sit there waiting to hear who the previous bands were. Id lay there thinking of the bands I wanted to hear - "Could this one be Saxon?...is this song Accept..maybe this is Dokken?? and so forth. So many bands Id never heard but Id seen there picture...so i'd just lay in bed and listen...and wait - these radio shows were the first actual musical exposure we had to them.

I remember hearing Helloween's "March of Time" and then Queensryche's "The Needle Lies" back-to-back not knowing the bands, and thinking it was the same band until the guy came on and announced the tracks. Must have been around '88 I guess. Next day at school there were a couple of us who'd get together and talk about the bands we'd heard "Did you hear that Celtic Frost song?..wow" and so forth. I remember seeing a picture of Motley Crue in a magazine (Shout at the Devil era) and they became my favourite band - even though I'd never heard a single song they'd sung. I showed my mum the picture and I remember her saying something like "they just think they're KISS". 

There were a couple of tv music shows (not MTV here in Australia..) that had a metal hour or so. One was called Beatbox, and it was on at 11am each Saturday morning; and I'd sit there taping the videos of the bands - this show introduced to me to less mainstream bands - eg Black'N'Blue, Lita Ford (Out for Blood - yeah!), Krokus, Heaven, Warrior's "Fighting for the Earth" and the almighty Queensryche "Queen of the Ryche' videos. They even played Keel's "the Right to Rock"...it's strange how 30 years later I can remember those lesser bands videos form the show.

The local record stores were impossible to get much more than mainstream metal - you'd have to order stuff in 'on Import" and it'd cost a few $$ extra etc. records would take a month to come and they'd ring you when the album came in. The 30 minutes home on the bus were agonising cos you could see (sometimes for the first time) what the band actually looked like and read the lyrics - but you couldn't hear the music until you got it home. Then I'd tape it onto cassette and play it in my walkman whenever i wanted. Then we'd spend hours reproducing our own hand-drawn album covers (and track listings) for the taped cassette versions wed made. W'd spent hours trying to draw the album covers and color them in so they look exactly like the album covers.

My best mate's dad went to the US and bought back 3 albums for us - Twisted Sister 'Stay Hungry', Motley Crue 'Shout at the Devil' and Ratt's debut. I remember him calling me and saying come over and listen. I was so excited riding my BMX over there to hear them all. Funnily enough he decided he didn't like heavy metal soon after so I got the albums. The a few years later, my mum and dad spent 3 months in Europe and before they went I asked my dad to bring home the new Motley Crue album (hadn't been released before they left) which was to be called 'Theatre of Pain'. Back then you couldn't hear pre-release tracks or anything like that so you had no idea how a new album would sound until you actually got it. I recall feeling really disappointed when I put it on - was so lightweight compared to Shout at the Devil.....

I remember a friend's dad went to Japan and bought back Queensryche's  "Rage for Order" and some Venom and other stuff. It was such a big deal when someone got a new album like that - we'd have like a listening party in his bedroom just rocking out to these new albums from bands we could only dream about.

There was a famous metal shop here in the city called "Metal for Melbourne". Everyone knew it. Was the only metal store in all of the city. My friends and I would catch the train into the CBD to go to it - and stand out the front for 20 minutes too scared to walk in. The windows were all covered in posters and flyers and you couldn't see in; and all the guys going in/coming out were so much older, wearing leather and studs, long hair, earnings etc. For 14 year old private school boys we were shitting our pants. Inside they had everything - wristbands, bullet belts, picture discs, posters, badges, back-patches, t-shirts....fucking awesome shop. they'd publish a handwritten Top 100 albums list and 'new releases' lists and photocopy them and we'd always grab one off the counter as we left then spend all week reading them.

My friend bought the WASP "Fuck Like a Beast" picture disc from there for some absorbent amount and we thought we were such heroes. Ha ha.

The other memory I have is that once a month with my pocket money (allowance) I would go straight to the news agency and buy a metal magazine. My favourite was always CIRCUS coz they had so much Motley Crue, Twisted Sister, WASP and RATT. Id cut out all the pictures and paste them onto my school books or put them on my walls.  Hit Parader was another,. When I went to Hong Kong I bought a copy of BUURN Magazine - but it was all in Japanese so I took it to school and my Japanese teacher read me some of the articles in class! Ha ha so much fun....seriously I could type another 2 pages on old pre-internet metal memories like these.

This is awesome, and exactly what I was talking about.

I remember listening to Triple J - '3 hours of power' and doing the same thing - 'Hmm, which band was that? Was that actually Emperor?'. Once I had taped a black metal song that was quite symphonic and I wondered whether it was from 'In the Nightside Eclipse' by Emperor, as I had 'Anthems' only at that time (it was 1997) and I had yet to hear 'Nightside'. It was probably about six months later that I learnt that the song I had was Limbonic Art - 'Behind the Mask Obscure' and not Emperor at all! 

But yeah, hoping the radio guy would say the name of the song, and hoping that I'd managed to press record on the tape deck quick enough to capture the start! 

Other memories include seeing the video for Poison - 'Nothin but a Good Time' on tv and being amazed. Another time my family came home from a holiday or something and when I turned the tv on it was Warrant - 'Cherry Pie', except the reception was so bad it was almost impossible to see or hear what was happening. I could just make out the faintest trace of the song, but man I was enthralled. 

Also, for some reason my town's video store had a copy of Bon Jovi's 'Slippery When Wet - The Videos'. I kept hiring it and one time I remember my dad getting upset because I wasn't hiring kids movies, I was getting this video hahaha. I must have been about 9 or 10. He's currently asleep upstairs in my music room with a Dissection flag hanging over a cabinet, so it turns out he was probably right to be worried hahahaha. 

 

 

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6 minutes ago, Requiem said:

This is awesome, and exactly what I was talking about.

I remember listening to Triple J - '3 hours of power' and doing the same thing - 'Hmm, which band was that? Was that actually Emperor?'. Once I had taped a black metal song that was quite symphonic and I wondered whether it was from 'In the Nightside Eclipse' by Emperor, as I had 'Anthems' only at that time (it was 1997) and I had yet to hear 'Nightside'. It was probably about six months later that I learnt that the song I had was Limbonic Art - 'Behind the Mask Obscure' and not Emperor at all! 

But yeah, hoping the radio guy would say the name of the song, and hoping that I'd managed to press record on the tape deck quick enough to capture the start! 

Other memories include seeing the video for Poison - 'Nothin but a Good Time' on tv and being amazed. Another time my family came home from a holiday or something and when I turned the tv on it was Warrant - 'Cherry Pie', except the reception was so bad it was almost impossible to see or hear what was happening. I could just make out the faintest trace of the song, but man I was enthralled. 

Also, for some reason my town's video store had a copy of Bon Jovi's 'Slippery When Wet - The Videos'. I kept hiring it and one time I remember my dad getting upset because I wasn't hiring kids movies, I was getting this video hahaha. I must have been about 9 or 10. He's currently asleep upstairs in my music room with a Dissection flag hanging over a cabinet, so it turns out he was probably right to be worried hahahaha. 

 

 

^^Love it. I can so relate to the radio shows....and taping stuff etc.

I remember one older guy at school used to bang on and on about this fucking new band 'Metallica'. Fuck he annoyed me. He had this Kill Em All badge he would wear on his school blazer...I'd never heard them of course and as they weren't in CIRCUS magazine they may as  well not have existed. Fast-forward 5 or so years and we stole a brand new copy of 'And Justice for All' from Brashes music at Doncaster. Almost wet our pants finding the new Metallica album there - they had 20 copies..double gatefold..

Every album was an event and cause for celebration back then.

In the late 80s early 90s there was this one store called Pipe Imported Records which got in all the European stuff. One of my best friends was all over Celtic Frost, Venom, Sodom and so forth. I recall seeing their albums at his house and seriously this was pure evil. The other one was Mercyful Fate's "Don't Break the Oath'. The rest of us were still hooked on the LA scene + Iron Maiden (back in the day EVERYONE was into Maiden). We had never really heard of most of these evil bands but man we jumped on board eventually.

I once bought this LA Guns t-shirt which had "Sex, Booze and Tattoos" across the back. I wore it everywhere. My mum hated it, my girlfriend was worried about it and all the guys thought it was the greatest shirt of all time. I also grabbed an Overkill "Fuck You" t-shirt form a shop in the city and got pulled up by the cops and made to turn it inside out...

There seems to be some many fewer bands back then. Come the early 90s everything seems to explode - bands came form everywhere..places none of us had even heard about - like Sweden, Norway and Finland.

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12 minutes ago, True Belief said:

^^Love it. I can so relate to the radio shows....and taping stuff etc.

I remember one older guy at school used to bang on and on about this fucking new band 'Metallica'. Fuck he annoyed me. He had this Kill Em All badge he would wear on his school blazer...I'd never heard them of course and as they weren't in CIRCUS magazine they may as  well not have existed. Fast-forward 5 or so years and we stole a brand new copy of 'And Justice for All' from Brashes music at Doncaster. Almost wet our pants finding the new Metallica album there - they had 20 copies..double gatefold..

Every album was an event and cause for celebration back then.

In the late 80s early 90s there was this one store called Pipe Imported Records which got in all the European stuff. One of my best friends was all over Celtic Frost, Venom, Sodom and so forth. I recall seeing their albums at his house and seriously this was pure evil. The other one was Mercyful Fate's "Don't Break the Oath'. The rest of us were still hooked on the LA scene + Iron Maiden (back in the day EVERYONE was into Maiden). We had never really heard of most of these evil bands but man we jumped on board eventually.

I once bought this LA Guns t-shirt which had "Sex, Booze and Tattoos" across the back. I wore it everywhere. My mum hated it, my girlfriend was worried about it and all the guys thought it was the greatest shirt of all time. I also grabbed an Overkill "Fuck You" t-shirt form a shop in the city and got pulled up by the cops and made to turn it inside out...

There seems to be some many fewer bands back then. Come the early 90s everything seems to explode - bands came form everywhere..places none of us had even heard about - like Sweden, Norway and Finland.

Every album was an event, you're right. When you factor in a fraction of the number of bands currently in the world, plus my minuscule budget, plus the month or more it would take to order something in, albums were to be cherished and adored. 

Another factor was there was no internet to distract from listening. Even now as I'm typing this I'm listening to music of course, but I hardly ever listen to music and just sit there looking through the booklet. Now I'm usually driving, or online or reading a metal related book upstairs or walking the satanic hellhound of Hades. Back when I was a kid it was just me on my bed reading the lyrics and listening. Maybe flicking through a magazine if I was lucky enough to have one. Hence why I can still recite the entire lyrics from 'Countdown to Extinction', 'Use Your Illusion', 'Dusk and Her Embrace' etc etc... Think I can recite an entire album's lyrics that was released in the last 15 years? Not a chance. 

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Some similar experiences to others from me here.  In the UK on the radio we had Tommy Vance and the "Friday Night Rock Show" which had two hours and included a "Rock War" battle of the bands type segment - god there was some shite in there.  Also there was Alan Freeman and the "Saturday Night Rock Show" (the BBC didn't go much for fancy names on their radio shows - description was the main driver).  Tommy's show drove more on newer stuff whereas Alan's show had the likes of Santana thrown in alongside the likes of Metallica and Megadeth which was frustrating.

Yes, I did the track recording to C90 cassettes all the time too, had fucking hundreds of the bastards in my room but had no real "metal friends" to share them with and was far to isolationist as a teenager to engage with other humans.

I read more or less every metal mag  I could get my hands on, Metal Forces, Metal Hammer, Kerrang (when it was a metal mag), Raw and then eventually Terrorizer.  Those were the days when I would buy an album blind and you'd develop a proper relationship with a band as you loved them for the great releases and then fell out with them over the shite ones and vowed never to darken their door again with your paper round money!

I had a cousin who was significantly older than me and I borrowed his vinyl metal collection listening to most of the Maiden records up to and including "Somewhere In Time" and recording them all onto C90 cassettes.  He also had Saxon "Power & Glory", UFO "Strangers.." and Rush "Moving Pictures" as well as the Sex Pistols "Anarchy.." (which I hated then and still do now).

I bought (or got bought more the likely) a hi-fi stereo system in the end and had CDs, Vinyl and cassettes in abundance and now I think about it many of those "blind" bought albums turned out to be some of my favourites:

Slayer "Seasons In The Abyss"

Sepultura "Arise"

Obituary "Slowly We Rot"

Motlley Crue " Dr Feelgood" (shut up!)

Judas Priest "Painkiller"

Pantera "Cowboys From Hell"

We also had "Raw Power" on a Saturday morning at like 1am on the TV and I used to tape it on a video recorder and play it back the next day.  I got put on to some great bands via that and occasional the "Rock Chart" on the Saturday lunchtime show "The Chart Show".

Good times.

 

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Ah, the radio. When I was a little bit older, especially once I started driving, I would listen to our local metal radio show - "Chainsaw Rock", hosted by "The Unholy One". I think his real name was Tom. He would announce every song with barely comprehensible harsh vocals. That kind of jammed things up for me sometimes; he played a song off Naglfar's "Vittra" and I fell in love with it instantly, but when he said the band name, it sounded like "NAAAHGUUHAAHR", and when I went to the record store (which was not stocking random Scandinavian melodic black metal at the time) I thought I was looking for Nevermore. Imagine my disappointment and confusion when I got their self-titled album home and put it on... It took me years to revisit Nevermore after that.

I'd heard of a lot of the more popular bands through other people, or seeing names on magazine covers/band shirts/etc, so I didn't get to really "discover" many of my favorites, but a handful of sight-unseen faith grabs turned out to be some of my favorite albums: Ulver's "Bergtatt", Rotting Christ's "Triarchy Of The Lost Lovers", Opeth's "Morningrise". My copy of "Morningrise" was the UK edition without a logo on the cover; their stuff hadn't really made it to the States yet. The copy I bought was in the record store used, on consignment from "The Unholy One". Who knows how much it cost him to get it. I guess it wasn't unholy enough for him to keep around.

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Aaahhh yes, the hosts of those old metal shows always had interesting 'names'.. down here we had Jack Sabbath, Fred Zeppelin and a guy called Andy Accept. Nothing as cool as 'The Unholy One' - although I do have a friend known almost exclusively as 'The Overlord'. Some don't even know his real name is Glen. lol

 

 

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I remember that often band names were mispronounced on the radio regularly. There were all sorts of mistakes made, but the general message was ok. I remember, for instance when they played Moonspell - 'Sacred' and called it 'Scared'. Stuff like that happened all the time. I can't think of any other examples but they were a frequent frustration. 

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I had a flashback to my youth this morning as I woke early in bed.  I wrote a letter to the Skid Row fan club asking to become a member and enclosed a postal order for $2.50 (or whatever amount it was, I cannot specifically remember).  I recall my Dad moaning on about how much it cost with post included and that money didn't grow on trees and he was positively unbearable when I heard nothing back.  Thanks Seb Bach, ya crooning prick!

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I had a flashback to my youth this morning as I woke early in bed.  I wrote a letter to the Skid Row fan club asking to become a member and enclosed a postal order for $2.50 (or whatever amount it was, I cannot specifically remember).  I recall my Dad moaning on about how much it cost with post included and that money didn't grow on trees and he was positively unbearable when I heard nothing back.  Thanks Seb Bach, ya crooning prick!

 

 

 

 

.....sounds dodgy.....like monkey business....? *Ka Boom tsh*

 

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1 hour ago, True Belief said:

 

.....sounds dodgy.....like monkey business....? *Ka Boom tsh*

 

Wow, True Belief bringing out the comedy Big Guns there. 

 

2 hours ago, MacabreEternal said:

I had a flashback to my youth this morning as I woke early in bed.  I wrote a letter to the Skid Row fan club asking to become a member and enclosed a postal order for $2.50 (or whatever amount it was, I cannot specifically remember).  I recall my Dad moaning on about how much it cost with post included and that money didn't grow on trees and he was positively unbearable when I heard nothing back.  Thanks Seb Bach, ya crooning prick!

This is a bit like my Bon Jovi video thing. Back in the day we had to fight for our right to listen to hard rock. Man I love Skid Row, too. 

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Req tb macabre  My older sister was listening to metal back in the 80s and MTV too  she was into Iron Maiden Metallica.  Stryper  dokken   Bon Jovi  Cinderella  Motley Crue Judas Priest. I was three years old when I started liking metal  my first record was Bon Jovi  slippery when wet.  That's how I got the metal bug skid row too as well

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55 minutes ago, deathstorm said:

Req tb macabre  My older sister was listening to metal back in the 80s and MTV too  she was into Iron Maiden Metallica.  Stryper  dokken   Bon Jovi  Cinderella  Motley Crue Judas Priest. I was three years old when I started liking metal  my first record was Bon Jovi  slippery when wet.  That's how I got the metal bug skid row too as well

Some great bands there Deathy. 'Slippery When Wet' is a classic pure and simple. I actually re-bought it as an adult to augment my 80s rock classics collection. 

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On 2/4/2017 at 5:20 AM, True Belief said:

Back when I was growing up you'd only hear new metal through the occasional radio show or if others at school had gotten albums. Its not like today when you'd know a band was releasing an album for months beforehand and you'd get drip-fed information or even songs along the way. New albums would just 'show up' in the record store....There were a couple of metal radio shows on 3PBS  - 'Metal for Melbourne' or 'Demon Night' - where i'd lay awake hearing songs by bands I'd never actually heard before. Sometimes the guys running the shows would play 3-4 tracks back to back and you'd sit there waiting to hear who the previous bands were. Id lay there thinking of the bands I wanted to hear - "Could this one be Saxon?...is this song Accept..maybe this is Dokken?? and so forth. So many bands Id never heard but Id seen there picture...so i'd just lay in bed and listen...and wait - these radio shows were the first actual musical exposure we had to them.

I remember hearing Helloween's "March of Time" and then Queensryche's "The Needle Lies" back-to-back not knowing the bands, and thinking it was the same band until the guy came on and announced the tracks. Must have been around '88 I guess. Next day at school there were a couple of us who'd get together and talk about the bands we'd heard "Did you hear that Celtic Frost song?..wow" and so forth. I remember seeing a picture of Motley Crue in a magazine (Shout at the Devil era) and they became my favourite band - even though I'd never heard a single song they'd sung. I showed my mum the picture and I remember her saying something like "they just think they're KISS". 

There were a couple of tv music shows (not MTV here in Australia..) that had a metal hour or so. One was called Beatbox, and it was on at 11am each Saturday morning; and I'd sit there taping the videos of the bands - this show introduced to me to less mainstream bands - eg Black'N'Blue, Lita Ford (Out for Blood - yeah!), Krokus, Heaven, Warrior's "Fighting for the Earth" and the almighty Queensryche "Queen of the Ryche' videos. They even played Keel's "the Right to Rock"...it's strange how 30 years later I can remember those lesser bands videos form the show.

The local record stores were impossible to get much more than mainstream metal - you'd have to order stuff in 'on Import" and it'd cost a few $$ extra etc. records would take a month to come and they'd ring you when the album came in. The 30 minutes home on the bus were agonising cos you could see (sometimes for the first time) what the band actually looked like and read the lyrics - but you couldn't hear the music until you got it home. Then I'd tape it onto cassette and play it in my walkman whenever i wanted. Then we'd spend hours reproducing our own hand-drawn album covers (and track listings) for the taped cassette versions wed made. W'd spent hours trying to draw the album covers and color them in so they look exactly like the album covers.

My best mate's dad went to the US and bought back 3 albums for us - Twisted Sister 'Stay Hungry', Motley Crue 'Shout at the Devil' and Ratt's debut. I remember him calling me and saying come over and listen. I was so excited riding my BMX over there to hear them all. Funnily enough he decided he didn't like heavy metal soon after so I got the albums. The a few years later, my mum and dad spent 3 months in Europe and before they went I asked my dad to bring home the new Motley Crue album (hadn't been released before they left) which was to be called 'Theatre of Pain'. Back then you couldn't hear pre-release tracks or anything like that so you had no idea how a new album would sound until you actually got it. I recall feeling really disappointed when I put it on - was so lightweight compared to Shout at the Devil.....

I remember a friend's dad went to Japan and bought back Queensryche's  "Rage for Order" and some Venom and other stuff. It was such a big deal when someone got a new album like that - we'd have like a listening party in his bedroom just rocking out to these new albums from bands we could only dream about.

There was a famous metal shop here in the city called "Metal for Melbourne". Everyone knew it. Was the only metal store in all of the city. My friends and I would catch the train into the CBD to go to it - and stand out the front for 20 minutes too scared to walk in. The windows were all covered in posters and flyers and you couldn't see in; and all the guys going in/coming out were so much older, wearing leather and studs, long hair, earnings etc. For 14 year old private school boys we were shitting our pants. Inside they had everything - wristbands, bullet belts, picture discs, posters, badges, back-patches, t-shirts....fucking awesome shop. they'd publish a handwritten Top 100 albums list and 'new releases' lists and photocopy them and we'd always grab one off the counter as we left then spend all week reading them.

My friend bought the WASP "Fuck Like a Beast" picture disc from there for some absorbent amount and we thought we were such heroes. Ha ha.

The other memory I have is that once a month with my pocket money (allowance) I would go straight to the news agency and buy a metal magazine. My favourite was always CIRCUS coz they had so much Motley Crue, Twisted Sister, WASP and RATT. Id cut out all the pictures and paste them onto my school books or put them on my walls.  Hit Parader was another,. When I went to Hong Kong I bought a copy of BUURN Magazine - but it was all in Japanese so I took it to school and my Japanese teacher read me some of the articles in class! Ha ha so much fun....seriously I could type another 2 pages on old pre-internet metal memories like these.

This is THE SHIT! Love stuff like this.

And kudos to the KREATOR of the thread!

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3 hours ago, Skull_Kollektor said:

This is THE SHIT! Love stuff like this.

And kudos to the KREATOR of the thread!

No problem. It's a TESTAMENT to the DESTRUCTION of an old way of life. I hope it's not OVERKILL. Right, now I'm off for some SODOMy...

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  • 1 month later...

Oh dear, that takes me back...

My musical journey starts not only before the internet, but before even MTV and cable T.V *lol*

I was almost 10 and had just gone back to school after the summer holidays. Then one day I passed some of the older boys in one of the corridors and I was a bit scared of them, because trust me 15-16 year old boys can look really huge in the eyes of a skinny little girl :D But at the same time I was fascinated by them...because there they were with their longish hair, leather jackets with band logos, tight jeans, and well some had acne too, but never mind...I thought they looked really cool. And apparently they were sneaking into the school's hi-fi system and before anybody knew it, AC/DC were blasting through every single loud speaker, in every class room...and I was sold! *lol*

But being skinny, goofy, and not a very pretty girl...I never got into their gang which was very male dominated, but I used to listen to their music when ever I got the chance. And then due to the above personal characteristics I discovered punk instead: in the begining I lived out in the country side, but I had punk rock penpals who told me where I could get hold of tapes and such...then followed a roughly 10 year period of mostly punk, but I still listened to metal...and in connection with that I began listening to some goth.

Then the 1990's came and ouch...that hurt!!!! Punk had grown pathetic with too many political correct vegans...and even worse grunge metal came along!!!! I swear....had it not been for Black Metal then I would not be into music at all today! Black Metal saved my sanity!!! And it got me into writing, too!!!

And then came the internet...

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 2017-5-11 at 1:31 PM, Torturga said:

Oh dear, that takes me back...

My musical journey starts not only before the internet, but before even MTV and cable T.V *lol*

I was almost 10 and had just gone back to school after the summer holidays. Then one day I passed some of the older boys in one of the corridors and I was a bit scared of them, because trust me 15-16 year old boys can look really huge in the eyes of a skinny little girl :D But at the same time I was fascinated by them...because there they were with their longish hair, leather jackets with band logos, tight jeans, and well some had acne too, but never mind...I thought they looked really cool. And apparently they were sneaking into the school's hi-fi system and before anybody knew it, AC/DC were blasting through every single loud speaker, in every class room...and I was sold! *lol*

But being skinny, goofy, and not a very pretty girl...I never got into their gang which was very male dominated, but I used to listen to their music when ever I got the chance. And then due to the above personal characteristics I discovered punk instead: in the begining I lived out in the country side, but I had punk rock penpals who told me where I could get hold of tapes and such...then followed a roughly 10 year period of mostly punk, but I still listened to metal...and in connection with that I began listening to some goth.

Then the 1990's came and ouch...that hurt!!!! Punk had grown pathetic with too many political correct vegans...and even worse grunge metal came along!!!! I swear....had it not been for Black Metal then I would not be into music at all today! Black Metal saved my sanity!!! And it got me into writing, too!!!

And then came the internet...

Love the AC/DC over the school PA, that's a good one. My friend and I once played Type O Negative's 'My Girfriend's Girlfriend' over the system as the school swimming sports in 1997 and it was just amazing. It's funny the certain memories you hang on to. 

Also, I'm offended that no one horns-up'd my hilarious thrash metal puns from the post above. What's wrong with you people! It was champagne comedy! ;)

Cool reflection, Tortuga! 

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  • 2 weeks later...

In 1997 I used to work in a small supermarket with my best friend and we would make these mix tapes for our boss. He was a 'regular' middle aged guy at the time yet for some reason he really loved the gothic metal and doom stuff we would put on these tapes for him, along with Korn and Deftones. We would listen to these tapes on a tape deck in the supermarket office, which was always so crazily messy. If you were asked to work in the store room it was great because you didn't have to serve any customers and you could just listen to music and talk while you moved boxes around and checked off stock. 

The guy would start drinking cans of beer at around 4pm in the office, go out and serve customers, come back in and drink more beer. He used to buy my friend and I alcohol when we were under age and leave it in the empty block next door and we would come back that evening and collect it. Man, it was amazing.

On the last day of high school my friend and I hung out in our boss's van while he was in the shop working, drinking Wild Turkey and Cola bottles, listening to Paradise Lost on that tape deck before heading back to school for recess and lunch. One of the greatest days of my life. 

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