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2014-10-25

Metal Dad Used to Swear a Lot

My girls can have all sorts of exposure to my old metal CDs with their scary cover art, and still have an unwavering love of My Little Pony. They don't give a crap about my music, just like I didn't about my parents' when I was a kid. Now that I'm older, I can appreciate Steely Dan, and maybe when my kids are older they'll appreciate Sepultura.

Our parents used to freak out when we listened to songs with bad lyrics, right? I blame it on two factors:

Censorship rules regarding television and movies went super lax in the Eighties, and music started following suit. You ever notice all the unnecessary swearing in stuff like action films and Pantera albums from the Eighties and Nineties? People were super jazzed about being able to legally express, broadcast and publish profanity, and they overdid it.

That, and the PMRC and the "Washington Wives" in on it were filling the nation with notions that the lyrics in songs like Ozzy's "Suicide Solution," Prince's "Darling Nikki," and other obscenity-containing songs were responsible for bad behavior of the youth of the day. It has since been found, through research, that exposure to television violence in kids has little to no effect on their propensity towards violent behavior. Violent kids, it was found, came from broken or abusive homes.

So yeah, our parents had media overdoing it with the language, and probably more boobs and cleavage and sluttiness than were necessary, plus Tipper Gore overdoing it in response.

It all culminated into my mom being butthurt about me listening to Pantera, White Zombie and Marilyn Manson when I was a kid. I still like the first two bands. Manson's sort of become a joke, a mockery of himself, but his first three albums were really good.

That was the Nineties, when The Great Speed Metal Slowdown occurred. There was still really awesome metal coming out in that decade, but it was pushed to the sidelines. The raw, dripping blood death metal was too much for polished-album-loving mainstream fans. Megadeth and Metallica were building their empires, on a fast track to where they are now, and by the heavens were they good.

But yeah, Manson and Pantera and White Zombie, they really overdid it with the swearing. They'd drop F-bombs in almost every song. It's silly to me now, but back then I was a teenager, with a mother desperately trying to keep me on the good side of the tracks while I veered vehemently toward the other. 

My propensity for swearing was big then. It was cool to swear. It had been since 3rd grade. I still remember my friend's face when I dropped an emphasized "shit" into a sentence, it was a literal jaw-drop mixed with smile. It was freeing, being able to say these dirty words, in privacy, feel no afterburn, no punishment, and go on with our lives. Swearing was our secret playground release.

Then I became a teenager and all this angry music started becoming popular. Metallica from the Eighties had nothing on Marilyn Manson from the Nineties. He took shock rock to new angles. So it was exciting to me and mortifying to everyone else. It's like Manson deliberately tried to draw a line in the sand between nations of kids at his concerts, and all types of authority figures. Which, I mean, is pretty cool, right?

I've got my own kids now. I'm a metalhead. But by no means am I the guy blaring metal around my kids. They'e got their own tastes. For example, we've been playing "Meet the Beatles" on vinyl almost every day lately. We've all got those songs on our brains, and I've been singing "Hold Me Tight" and "All My Lovin" at work pretty constantly. My kids have all the songs memorized, as well as everything on "Sgt. Pepper" and "Magical Mystery Tour." They draw pictures and watch "My Little Pony." They see my metal albums and have no interest.

Well, except Bibi. See, I got out a bunch of metal CDs from my box of CDs cause we don't have a CD player in the consarn house, to rip them onto my PS3 and then to my MP3 player, so I can blare metal at whoever comes into the prep room. And at the top of the stack was Sepultura's "Roots," and Bibi picked it up, looked at it, asked me about it and when I asked her if she'd like to hear the music on it she said "Yes." That may happen later today.

They also hear my loud-ass band practices once a week downstairs, with just me on guitar with a drummer, and it's definitely all metal. Metal is what I play on Spotify when I'm alone in the kitchen doing dishes. Although, when any of my three women are in the same room, I switch to something more group-friendly.

Because if I've done anything as a metalhead in my years of being a metalhead, it's turn people off with my music. And I'm sick of doing that.

I try not to swear anymore either.

Got an interview for a social media intern position on Monday. Well, I'm coming in to meet their team. Nobody's mentioned the word 'interview' yet. We had a formal phone interview last week, a manager from LA, one from Seattle, and I. They even asked if they could contact people I have worked with, and I said yeah and then gave them some references. I wonder who they talked to. So I got an email in the next few days asking me if I'd like to come in and meet the team and inside I was like "EFF YEAH!" and outside I was like, 'Ahem straighten my tie mr. professional monday biz talk thanx!' 

Last night I volunteered at my girl's school's Fall Harvest Festival, manning the Eyeball Bounce. It was all set up in the gymnasium, and a whole bunch of kids were there with their parents. Mine were among the youngest, uninterested in most things and too young to understand what was going on. Lucy was pretty interested in the craft table, made some paper bags with pastel chalk colors and glued-on colorful letters. Then we were done and the kids got cotton candy and I got a hot dog with catsup.

Lucy's been begging me to be done working so I can feed and play school with her. She's going to be the teacher and I'm going to be the student.