Tuesday, September 27, 2011

The Song that Changed My Life

The market rallied huge this morning, but I could not even see the volume bar for the SPY in Finviz. Sure enough a huge fade late in day made the whole thing suspect. It's still not a market you do anything but day trade, or maybe find high value stocks to buy and hold for a long time. As such, I don't have much to offer tonight on markets. Let's see if this will interest you.

The Song that Changed My Life
This post is inspired by a Twitter question as well as Dinosaurtrader's awesome post about the 20 year anniversary of Nirvana's Nevermind album.

I have always been a bit different than most people I grew up with. Most of the time it did not matter too much, but sometimes it did. Most of my friends were playing football and baseball, or joining gangs and getting in trouble around grade 5 in 1987. I don't like all the pads in football, I hate baseball, and Lowell was not a kind place for idiots back then. I don't know exactly how things may have turned out if not for watching Mtv one day when I was 11. Who can know such things?

Here is a list of the top 100 songs of 1987. You can see Bon Jovi, Posion, and other glam rock was well represented. I loved that stuff and I still do. But as I awaited the top 20 video countdown to come on (no YouTube!!) I was hoping Bon Jovi was still in the #1 spot. Ozzy Osbourne had just released his album "Tribute" which featured Randy Rhoads on lead guitar before his death. All I thought I knew about Ozzy at the time was that he worshipped the devil or something. Pass. Until the song opened up:

And I was stunned. I listened to the whole thing in silence and awe. I had never heard anything so powerful and raw. I couldn't move, I knew this was always going to be my favorite song and that I was meant to have found it.

I dashed out of the house when it was done and rode my bike 4 miles downtown to the tape store (yes a tape store) to get a copy. I listened to it until it broke. I am serious, it got overheated and broke. I was pissed, tapes were not cheap.

So how did this change my life other than expose me to heavy metal? Because everyone I knew hated the music and thought it was stupid. They all cracked on me to no end. This may sound silly, but when you are 11 what your "friends" think is huge. You could get left out by just the clothes you wear or the music you listened to. I didn't care. I knew this was my song, my music, my call.

And I have never worried about what other people think since. A couple years later I started riding my bike way across town to the West End Gym (the old one on Powell street) and started boxing, something I always wanted to do but my mother forbade it (It would be years until my mother found out). No one I knew would go with me, they all thought I was crazy. But I knew it was right for me. I knew what I wanted.

And on and on. To this day I still have 3 unopened CD copies of the Tribute album just in case I need them. There is one in the car as well. Ok, maybe that's a bit creepy. But I owe my independence to Ozzy and Randy, least I could do is buy a few albums.

Have a good night.

11 comments:

The Sovereign Bohemian said...

Cool story about the music. Have a good night!

Anonymous said...

Haha most definitely cool.. Good read..
T

EconomicDisconnect said...

You too Sov.

Thanks T.

Jennifer Hillier said...

I can't tell you how much I loved this post. (Oh wait, I just did.)

I know you're a big shot financial blogger and everything, but I loved hearing this story. It feels like you let me into your childhood bedroom and started telling me about all the old albums, old photographs, and old posters on the walls.

Thanks for sharing. You inspire me.

EconomicDisconnect said...

JH, I am small time for sure. Glad you liked it, a little glimpse into GYSC.

Anonymous said...

but do those posters even compare to David Cassidy and Scott Baio posters that were found on my wall.. next to White snake, Motley Crue and Farrah Faucet.. yes I said Farrah Faucet.. A girl can dream too.. ;)
Loved the story because it's a glimpse but also it brought out so many of my own childhood memories. super cool
T

David Batista said...

Loved this story! Thanks for sharing. I like metal, but I'm not crazy about music in general so my selection is rather mundane I must say.

But, like you, I was always the odd duck out growing up. It's interesting we have that in common.

GawainsGhost said...

I feel you, GYC. I really do.

I can't think of one song that changed my life, but I definitely know the album. 7th grade, 1974, I was over at my friend Sean's house, when his older brother Clayton come in. Clayton was a radical, realy cool, with long hair and everything. We both looked up to him.

"Dudes, you gotta listen to this." Black Sabbath, Master of Reality. Wow, I had never heard anything like it before.

See, at the time, this was a largely rural and agricultural area, nothing but miles and miles of cropland, spotted with small towns. In terms of the miles the school busses covered, the school district was the largest in the world. That's a fact. There were some 3000 students enrolled in the high school, divided into two groups, the rednecks and the chicanos.

The rednecks listened to country, of course, while the chicanos listened to mariachi and disco. That was pretty much all you could hear on the radio back then.

In junior high and high school, every year these two groups would get together and have a riot. I'm talking about 300-500 guys on each side, beating the crap out of each other. The teachers couldn't stop it, because they were grossly outnumbered. My friends and I simply stayed on the sidelines and made bets.

See, we had our own little clique, the Freaks. There were five of us, and we listened to Black Sabbath, Kiss and AC/DC. Shunned at school, we were called devil worshippers.

Once a teach actually said to me, "Every time you listen to that music, you get a black spot on your heart, and soon your whole heart will be black." I asked her, "What college did you go to?"

One night, I was over at my friend Vincent's house. We were staying up late, partying. There was this new radio station in town, KBFM 104,the only one that played rock and roll. During The Expansion Hour, around 4:00 AM, the DJ started taking requests. So we called in and requested Black Sabbath, Technical Ecstacy.

He played the whole album! Second side first. To this day, that's how I listen to Tech Ec, side 2 then side 1. It's better that way.

EconomicDisconnect said...

David, seems we have a lot in common. Scary!

Gawains,
excellent story!

GawainsGhost said...

Yeah, well, for Friday Night Entertainment, I recommend Black Sabbath, "Lord of This World."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwWMKC3U01w

GawainsGhost said...

I'll tell you something else too.

I went to the Kiss Renunion tour at the Alamo Dome in San Antonio. I think that was in 2006.

I had great seats, 14th row. I was wandering around, and all these guys and girls, that I hadn't even seen since high school, kept coming up to me. Dozens of them. "I knew you'd be here. This is my first Kiss concert."

Uh, huh. This is what is known as vindication. The same kids who called me a devil worshipper were showing up at a concert twenty years after the fact.

And where all of these clowns when Black Sabbath came to play? Nowhere to be found.

This is what I'm talking about.

Talk to me when you show up at the next Black Sabbath concert.