(1983, Megaforce Records)
I guess I was about 11 or 12, a young ass little budding responsible delinquent, balancing a straight-A school record with discovering the joys of smoking reefer and drinking vodka away from my folks home in town nearby, hanging out at the arcade. Yeah, arcade. Thrash metal. The fucking '80s. I am always bothered when '80s retro shit is always that corny, pussy alternative moody ass music. Jean jackets and Motorhead back patches bitch, fuck all that Smiths Morrissey Depeche Mode sad girl music.
Anyways, I was old enough for years to know there wasn't no Santa Claus. I know that sounds odd to say, because kids learn young, but my oldest is 10, and I'm not sure if she realizes it yet. She could be playing along, but she does a good job of it at times, to the point I'm not sure. But I knew the deal at that point, and had for year. What I didn't know the deal about though was money, how much things cost, and what a broke ass family I was born into. So for my Christmas wish list, all I did was make a ridiculously long legal yellow pad collection of all the LPs I wanted, pretty much all metal, straight from the pages of the shitty magazines I spent all my allowance on outside of budding substance abuse, and even had a thick ass Metal Disc mailorder catalogue to give off to my parents as well. Oh man, I was stoked. My bedroom was gonna have a shelf like that Skippy kid in Trick or Treat, stuffed with real metal LPs galore, and all I'd do is sit around and be hardcore bro, sitting in my four-cornered room staring at candles, dreaming of some bodies getting dismantled. Tried to go to sleep that Christmas Eve but was wide awake, imagining the box I'd open up the next morning, cardboard 12x12, with a stack of shrinkwrapped LPs, pre-computer age ink-drawn gore splashed across semigloss cardstock covers, band names dripping with blood and guts. It was gonna be the most awesome Christmas ever. I laid awake hearing my parents shuffling around downstair till like 3 in the morning, and they shut down for the night, and so did I.
The next morning, me and my sisters go downstairs, no LP-sized box. Oh man, this sucked. In one little package, I did get Kill 'em All on tape, old school style, Megaforce only, pre-Elektra Records, white shell, no "Am I Evil?" or "Blitzkrieg" on it. I already had the Whiplash EP on tape, so a good part of it was repeat (Whiplash had those other two songs that ended up being bonuses too), but I eventually came around to appreciating it. Mostly I was bummed there was not a single fucking LP. I would bet, looking back, my folks got the only tape they could find within the local department store's tape selection that was on my list, no mail order involved. And that's fine, because I was pretty naive about shit. But at the time, it fucking sucked.
Well, a few years back, as men do in the computer age, I tried to fill in the disappointing gaps of my childhood through the ebays, getting a small selection of all those metal LPs I wanted, one by one as opposed into a giant Christmas morning box full, and one I got was Kill 'em All. It's actually sitting over on the counter by the Willie Nelson velvet painting, one of the last records I've played in the camper recently. And it's a great fucking album to this day. My oldest kid got into Metallica, and she can already identify if it's old Metallica or new Metallica by whether it sucks or not. And over time, I'd say Master of Puppets has probably achieved ultimate Metallica album status in the majority of people's minds, but there's a raw assed nature to Kill 'em All, probably due to Dave Mustaine's cocaine influence, that nothing else they ever did had. Plus, Cliff Burton man. I'm glad he died so he didn't end up being some fag like the rest of them did. (Well, I give Kirk Hammett the benefit of the doubt, especially when you compare his older potential douchiness next to James Hetfield and good fucking lord Lars Ulrich.) A dude I know who has opened for Metallica in the past five years told me they turn the PA down for opening bands so that they come off as sonically superior, like they've got some special super-metal amps that no one else has.
Also, if my daughter willingly listens to Metallica on her iPod shuffle, and yet still believes in Santa Claus, then I am an amazingly magical father of a man. Lucky for her we just still music from inside the internets nowadays, so when she gives me a list of music, I can just take the stealing laptop (we keep our home computer clean from trashy internet activities) to use the library's wi-fi connect, and have her shit filled up on Christmas morning. No art though, which is sad, because the econo-style bloody hammer LP cover is looking pretty sweet leaned next to smiling velvet Willie Nelson across the camper.
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