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.