Ever since I was introduced to music through TV and the radio, I've had a growing fondness for rock and roll. My parents didn't really play much music in the house and much to my dismay, I've never had a healthy discussion about music with my parents. It's really sad for me to admit that I've talked to my parents more about academics and my personal life than about music. On the other side of the coin, however, I knew whenever I discovered music I liked, it was a genuine penchant. I never had my parents tell me what to like or what not to like, and my friends could care less about what I listened to because they were too busy worrying about spending the entire summer playing video games.
Fast forward a few years later and the growing penchant soon became an obsession in my teen years: if there's anything I'm diehard about, it HAD to be related someway or another to rock and roll. I spent most of my high school years buying and absorbing as much metal as I could. My OCD with listening to classic death metal soon paved the way to its roots in thrash. The thrash roots traced its way back to heavy metal. Just when I thought I couldn't go back any further, heavy metal soon met with its godfather in the form of rock and roll.
In listening to various bands, I started form connections between the similarities, and differences, in emerging scenes. For example, Bay area thrash was influenced by the fast and excessive outputs of British heavy metal, and British heavy metal took its cues from the acid drenched psychedelic hard rock of the 60s. Just as a genealogist traces a family back to its ancestors, I hope to tie three of my favorite scenes: Proto Heavy Metal, New Wave of British Heavy Metal and Japanese Heavy Metal together, regardless of their locales and dates of formation.
Hopefully you'll learn a thing or two you didn't know about these scenes in reading my blog. If you didn't get anything out of it.. well, you could atleast spend a few minutes listening to some rockin' tunes!
Signed, yours truly.
Mo Mo
