“If it’s illegal to rock and roll, throw my ass in jail!” – Kurt Cobain
I have been rebellious lately with my writing. Meaning, I haven’t posted for a while because I just haven’t had the spark. I feel like I have been in limbo with the open ended series, “The End”, about the closure of Go-Go Babyz. I haven’t officially sold the business so I f=don’t have a final installment to write for the series. It’s quite frustrating. I have slid a post in here and there but nothing consistent and everything has felt a bit off so I just sat back and hid in the shadows of my mind, creating and contemplating as I often do. But now I must rebel against my reclusive mind and write. So here is part two of the series I started a couple months ago.
They say rock and roll is for the rebellious; the outcasts, misfits, degenerates, fill in the blank with any degrading adjective. They also say you can’t kill rock and roll. I don’t know who “they” are, but I agree, you can’t kill rock and roll. It’s true, “rock and roll can never die” Neil Young said it himself.
Rock and Roll is a pretty broad term covering so many different genres and styles ranging from R&B, funk, punk, hard rock, soft rock, shock rock, classic rock, and even heavy metal. Ian “Lemmy” Kilmister, often referred to as the godfather of heavy metal, would introduce Motorhead at their shows by saying “we’re Motorhead and we play rock and roll.” That is some hard ass rock and roll music, and I love it.
I grew up with music all around me; Neil Diamond, John Denver and all sorts of weird stuff that just didn’t do it for me. It was just background noise. What did do it for me were the sounds of Led Zeppelin, The Police, Pink Floyd, Judas Priest, Deep Purple and other bands from the late sixties and seventies. These were the sounds played on the “rock” stations of my childhood. It helped having older sisters that listened to rock and roll too. Then I heard the sounds of Rush and my love for music exploded, especially anything with a harder sound to it; Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Ozzy, Dio, Van Halen, Scorpions, Motley Crue and others I am sure I forgot about.
At this point you could say I was a heavy metal rock and roll fan. Although, I did have some experience with a few punk bands like the Dead Kennedys thanks to Benji, I started collecting my own records of all my favorite bands that I mentioned above. Then it happened in what seemed like a wrinkle in time. One of my friends bought a compilation called “Metal Massacre I” and when the needle reached the last song on the album my life changed forever. It was a song called “Hit The Lights” by a band called Metallica. We had never heard anything as raw, gritty, and powerful. These guys seemed to defy the laws of everything traditional. My life would never be the same.
That was the moment that sent me deep into creating the soundtrack of my life. Ranging from thrash, speed, black, death, British, new, prog and everything in between. I had a draw to the fast, heavy, and raw sounds of metal and punk and the melodic foundation of good old rock and roll and blues. These bands did their own thing. They didn’t follow the rules of the status quo. They didn’t even seem to follow the rules of musical composition. They did what they wanted to do, and it somehow worked. And, I liked that.
The question is, “did rock n roll, and music in general, turn me into a rebel or simply awaken the rebel within?” I don’t know for sure, but music has always been my greatest love and for forty years now I have followed the beat of what I love most. Perhaps it is the creative composition of the music, the attitude, the energy, the emotion, and the power of the scene. Or, maybe it is just part my makeup and the music just enhances and brings to life what is already there.
What I can say for certain is that whatever the cause the result has been a life long journey of doing what I do and defying the laws of tradition as I do it. I just never did well following rules and being forced to color within the lines. From creating my own music to creating my own recipes, I choose to do it my own way and join the crusade of the brave.
Talk Soon,
Kevin W @LEAP272
Owner-Operator
You have to leap if you want to live
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