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| Me in 1984 – Age 10 |
1984, the Apple Macintosh was introduced, the Olympics were in Sarajevo, crack was introduced into Los Angeles, and I turned ten years old. Now I am not sure what kids are listening to these days at such an impressionable time, I would guess
that it’s probably Radio Disney and Justin Bieber. Me on the other hand, I can tell you that I was already a bona fide metal head. I of course didn’t have the option of downloading anything I wanted at any time and any place for free. I had to save my allowance for two weeks just to buy a $7.00 record. Back then the vinyl records were kept behind plexiglass for some reason. Imagine asking the clerk at Kmart on a busy Saturday afternoon if you could trouble him to grab the latest Cinderella record. With that being said, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at ten songs metal songs that I played on my turntable in 1984 that in some way or another shaped who I am today.
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| KISS without the makeup: Frightening! |
1. “Lick It Up” – Kiss – No idea what they were talking about, or how atrocious they would end up looking without their makeup, but what a fantastic song to really open up your imagination at age 9.
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| Dee Snider – Even more frightening. |
2. “We’re Not Gonna Take It” – Twisted Sister – I had no idea what it was, but I did know that there was absolutely no way I was going to take it either. I owned this on 45, which is now referred to as a 7” in the hipster world, and played the hell out of it.
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| A metal Jason Vorhees. |
3. “Metal Health (Bang Your Head)” – Quiet Riot – I had no idea what metal health was but the guy in the video was apparently going crazy from listening to it. I would later go crazy when trying to listen to the band’s follow up record.
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| Tiger stripes were huge in Germany. |
4. “Rock You Like A Hurricane” – Scorpions – A classic metal riff for all ages. The first time I saw the band “machine gunning” the crowd with their guitars, all in sync, I was hooked.
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| Eddie is actually more powerful than the devil. |
5. “The Number of the Beast” – Iron Maiden – As a young slightly nerdy kid obsessed with Dungeons and Dragons, this was the soundtrack to my role playing pillaging and plundering. The images scared the sh*t out of me, and the music convinced my parents that I was the omen.
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| We could almost kick Poison’s ass. |
6.”Round and Round” – Ratt – How cool was this video, A random cameo by Milton Berle in both a tux & drag, a butler serving rodents for dinner, and some serious metal riffage. Arguably hair metal’s finest moment.
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| I said Spinal Tap THEN Puppet Show! |
7. “Rock of Ages” – Def Leppard – I have four words for you “Gunter glieben glauchen globen” which roughly translates to “This song is f*#%ing awesome.”
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| British Steel! |
8. “Living After Midnight” – Judas Priest – Although I wasn’t really “living’” after midnight per se, I was staying up watching R Rated movies.
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| This was my favorite T-shirt. |
9. “Jump In the Fire” – Metallica – The original album was called Metal Up Your Ass and I wore the T-shirt to school only to get detention and be forced to wear it inside out the entire day.
10. “Back In Black” – AC/DC – This is no joke; I used to play this on a portable cassette player on the playground in grade school. Nobody is going to mess with the 9 year old rocking out to this classic. As I look back now, I was so far ahead of my time!
What were your favorite metal songs as kid? Please comment with them below. Rock on….
