Dear Friends,
I haven’t written about this record yet, but one of my favorite lines from Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy says something along the lines of “a Jason generation” as the song, “Television, Drug of the Nation” makes reference to the issue of violence and desensitization thanks to horror movies. I don’t know why it popped into my head today.
Truly.
Hopefully it is not some strange foreshadowing that one of my fourth graders is going to bring a machete to school and start hacking us all up. That’s pretty darn dark, but I remember there being this fear that the children of America were going to become monsters because of all the violence they watched on TV. There were books written on it.
I don’t think kids are as desensitized as people think when it comes to horrible things, but I do think they are pretty apathetic about putting a whole lot of effort into this whole ‘life’ thing.
It’s sad, but I’m doing my part to help see why caring about themselves and others is not a waste of time. Except for Evil Nancy. She can bite it.
Little twerp tried to take down my class yesterday by just being a shit. She failed. In fact, she failed miserably, and I think the class is on to her self-serving bullshit. Hopefully the lesser evil version of her comes to school. I almost thought I could maybe like her a bit after Monday and Tuesday.
Here’s to a good Friday for everyone. We need it.
*****
The metal guys I knew all thought Metallica was THE band back in 1984. My high school at the time, Deer Valley, had so many “hessians” that went there. I don’t know why the metal kids were called “hessians” but that is what they were called at DVHS circa 1984.
I was not a “hessian” but I was certainly “hessian” adjacent. I liked Iron Maiden and Motley Crue and Ozzy Osbourne a lot. I even had a Quiet Riot cassette, too, and a Def Leppard one as well that I would listen to from time to time. I liked metal.
Metallica seemed like something completely different, though, when I first heard them. They seemed to explode out of the speakers when I popped Ride the Lightning into my cassette player after getting it on a Sunday afternoon shopping excursion with my mom. We did that a lot before she would bring me home to Deer Valley where I lived with my dad.
I just realized that I have owned Ride the Lightning on three different formats.
This is because I fucking love this record. From the first notes of “Fight Fire with Fire” to the last notes of “The Call of Ktulu,” it just rips. I had never heard anyone play such fast, crisp, heavy, rocking riffs. If the pull of punk rock and bands like the Smiths hadn’t been so strong, I would have started growing my hair long then and there.
In fact, the same day that I got Ride the Lightning, I also got The Smiths’ Meat is Murder cassette, too. I kind of pride myself on that, actually. There can’t be too many people in late 1984 or early 1985 that got both of those on the same day.
“Fight Fire with Fire” is an asskicker of an opener. It pushes all the right buttons inside of me. I know every riff on this record and where to appropriately bang one’s head, too. I wore that stupid cassette out pretty quickly and picked up the vinyl.
Sadly, someone relieved me of the vinyl when I DJ’d a Mighty Sphincter show at Rip’s several years ago. I haven’t seen my OG copy of it since. Fuckers. Probably someone I know, too.
I replaced it with a remastered version, of course, because that was all I could get for a reasonable price. I still keep hoping that I just put it in a weird spot in the record collection and it will pop up.
The title track, “Ride the Lightning” is another rocker. All of these songs are fucking fantastic. I don’t mind that Metallica songs are quite long on their first two records. It’s after Ride the Lightning that sort of started wearing out their welcome with me. I like Master of Puppets, but the songs are TOO long.
“Ride the Lightning” has those great Hetfield vocal parts, too, and the late Cliff Burton’s bass lines are like fantastic hammers. It just pounds away at you and gets you ready for the next track. After two songs on Ride the Lightning you are ready to submit completely.
“For Whom the Bell Tolls” is pure metal, but the thing about Metallica in those days was that the punk also thought they were great. There was something quite raw about what Metallica was doing and just bad ass that no matter who you were, if you liked heavy, aggressive music, you were going to like Metallica.
The riffs on “For Whom The Bell Tolls” are so big and so tasty. I remember doing quite a bit of air guitaring to that one, especially after Billy G. taught me how barre chords worked. I knew how to make it look kind of real.
“Fade to Black” is kind of a cowboy song as it begins, but then it swells into another heavy masterpiece. It’s not the fastest song on the record, but it might be the prettiest. Even then, it’s not that pretty.
“Trapped Under Ice” brings the thrash attack back with the shortest song on the record at 4:04. Kirk Hammett is on fire on this one, too. His lead guitar work is, as the character “William Miller” from the film, Almost Famous, says, “Is incendiary.” When it stops, you’re like “What the fuck?” because most of the other songs on the record keep on truckin’.
“Escape” is probably my least favorite of the songs on Ride the Lightning, but even then, it’s still way better than anything Guns and Roses ever did. “Creeping Death,” on the other hand, is another classic. It’s like a dive bomb into metal mayhem. I love it.
The aforementioned “The Call of Ktulu” is another complete and total bad ass riff. One of my favorite instrumentals of all time. It makes those last 15 minutes of Ride the Lightning phenomenal. It was clear these guys had been listening to some Rush, but they went way darker and way heavier than those Canadian heroes on this one.
At times, I have listened to Ride the Lightning over and over in my life. It always gives me a good feeling, too. It makes me feel 15 again and like I’m doing something I shouldn’t be doing. Sometimes, I miss that guy.
*****
See you tomorrow.
AI knows what's up with Evil Nancy.
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