I was young. It was the 90s, and I’d just gotten into college, and the most interesting thing going on in my life was the women I was talking to.
Ugh!
That’s a lie.
I didn’t talk to girls.
I didn’t have any interesting stories.
I was an idiot, and I barely did anything interesting with myself.
But there was this one girl I’d talked to. She was the bassist of a band, and she asked me what music I listened to.
“Rock music,” I blurted out. “Metallica”.
She gave me a look.
I didn't even like Metallica.
That night I rummaged through my tape stash and found seven tapes, two of which were rock albums -- Metallica and Bryan Adams. I didn’t really liked the Metallica album, and I’d just bought Bryan Adams because everyone else had bought it. Nice collection of rock music.
It’s also advisable to forget what the other five tapes were.
My next run in with rock music was in the most unusual of places – a cousin’s house in South India. Unusual, because I don’t think of my family and, by extension, my native place as cool.
My cousin had a butt load of tapes, but only two of them were rock albums -- Def Leppard's Vault and Iron Maiden’s The X-Factor.
I spent hours listening to both of them on my walkman. Vault was nice, but what really caught my attention was Iron Maiden’s The Sign of the Cross. I was floored. Chanting, guitars screaming in rage, Blaze Bayley singing a really haunting tune. So good!
At the time, the rest of the tracks on the tape didn’t impress me as much. As I grew up I appreciated them, but back then Sign of the Cross was the best god damn thing I’d ever heard.
I returned home determined to save money and buy more tapes. According to my calculations, I could buy three tapes in two months if I saved all my allowance.
I, of course, had the self control and patience of a three year old. The money went out as quickly as it came in. No, quicker. I’d buy Ninja Turtles stickers, or chocolates or I’d push it down the arcade and play side scrollers and fighting games.
According to my new calculations, I could afford three tapes in a year.
That's when Vicky, a boy from the society complex I lived in, decided he wanted to get rid of all the tapes he owned. It was a huge plastic bag filled with goodies like Megadeth, Iron Maiden, Slaughter, Metallica, Pantera, Guns and Roses, and a bunch of other bands.
This was one of those epic moments in your life, one of those moments that changes your life completely, a turning point in your life, music-wise.
I don’t know what would have happened, had I not stumbled upon that huge ass collection of tapes, had Vicky decided not to give up his collection. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have been listening to Rock Music almost twenty tears since. Or maybe I would. Maybe I would find a way to it eventually. But that’s when I began to love music.
I heard Bruce Dickinson, the Voice of Iron Maiden, scream. He screamed like there was no tomorrow. It was haunting, and it was probably the best voice I'd ever heard till date.
And he laughed like the Devil would.
Over the years, I moved on from Iron Maiden and Megadeth to Motley Crue, Static X, Papa Roach, Blink 182, Rob Zombie, and the bizarre Frankenstein Drag Queens From Planet 13 (which is a very good band I might add). But I always kept coming back to Maiden, and Megadeth. For me, these were the classics, the ones that introduced and named Rock music for me.
Twenty years later, I'm sitting in a bus, ear phones stuck so far into my ears, I can barely hear what the streets sound like. I have a smile on me, and I think people might be giving me weird looks.
It doesn’t matter.
What matters was the song.
I'm humming to myself, barely able to stop myself from screaming out loud.
It's Herculean task.
