Generations of Metalheads: Passing On My Bass

This year, I am passing on an object that, by virtue of giving it to my teenaged daughter, effectively becomes a family heirloom -- my bass guitar.  On her own initiative, she asked this summer if she could get it out of storage -- I hadn't played it for years, since now I putter around with a banjo that previously belonged to my dad -- and start learning how to play.  I was surprised, and very happy, that she wanted to learn an instrument -- she is already a strong singer -- and to learn this instrument particularly in order to play metal songs, specifically KISS songs!

So, for the last four weeks, she's been plunking away here, downloading tabulature, practicing, and taking lessons from a bassist at a local music store.  I've recently had it overhauled -- the buddy-of-a-former-brother-in-law who "rewired" it a decade back did what I hesitate even to call a "job," even with the qualifier of "bad" -- and she got to play it today for the first time actually plugged in.  Not into a bass amp, and not turned up all that high, but still enough for her to get a sense of the raw sonic power that the instrument she held, fretted, and plucked!  So, I'm experiencing the kind of excitement and pride that parents feel when one of their children decides to follow along, not necessarily in their footsteps, but along a similar and shared path.  And added to that is the simple fact that I've discovered that my teenage daughter is a genuine metalhead!

Metal Origins: Some Key Early Bands

There's been a tendency in recent years -- one I see particularly among fans into more recent "genre" metal (all the stuff ranging from "black" to "sludge" to "viking" . . .) -- to accord the origins of heavy metal primarily to on band, Black Sabbath.  This claim has been given considerable weight by a key practitioner and early innovator, Rob Halford, for whom it's become somewhat of a party-line that first there was Sabbath, and really nobody else doing it, and then there was Judas Priest.  My aim, in this and some follow-up posts yet to come, is to argue that this is far from the case -- that the story is much more complicated and interesting than that.

Don't get me wrong -- in the narrative as I reconstruct it, Black Sabbath certainly gets given their rightful pride of place.  They possess a napoleonic status of "first among equals."  I'd even go so far as to say that without Sabbath, metal might have coalesced rather differently -- and perhaps less powerfully, less coherently -- as a genre.  But it's a mistake to portray them as the sole seminal band.

Inaugural Post: A New (but Old) Metal Renaissance

This new blog represents a project that those who know me well also know I've long been thinking about -- and talking about -- a forum where elements from my public and professional persona and my more private passions can be brought together, juxtaposed, integrated.  More than half my life at this point, I've worked as a philosopher.  And, nearly all of my life, I've been a metalhead.

Until now, with exceptions of a few posts in my main blog, Orexis Dianoētikē -- where I've reflected on heavy metal music in terms of memory, affectivity, temporality -- I've maintained separation between these two equally vital, similarly important spheres.  But today -- which marks my 43rd birthday -- I'm embarking upon something novel for me as a public philosopher, bringing my longstanding love for heavy metal out of the shadows, away from the periphery, and into the limelight, onto the stage.  I've decided that I need a place to write down -- and work out further -- thoughts, reflections, realizations, puzzles and paradoxes that I've partly and privately shared with friends, family, colleagues -- and with my wife and partner, in whom I'm fortunate enough to find someone who enjoys both classic metal and philosophy as passionately as I do.