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Between my wife, two members of The Unavowed (my band), and myself charging through a few rock autobiographies and the recent fun the band has been having getting ready for the two big shows at the end of May, I recently started thinking about my musical past.

Since there are no sordid stories of hardcore drug abuse or womanizing in the bands I've been in, I thought I'd write down a few entries about my first, nervous steps into making music.

Iron Maiden was not only my first foray into a world of music not dictated my my parents, they were also the primary reason I wanted to pick up an instrument and be in some kind of band. I have memories of being eleven or twelve years old and setting up garbage cans and pots in the basement. This was my drum set. I'd sit down there and pound the fuck out of that "kit" howling along; singing guitar parts and screaming lyrics I had written down on scraps of paper. My brother would sit there and say shit like "You didn't write that!" and my folks responded with a near hatred of the noise I was making.

Whatever. Fuck it. It was fun.

A little bit later I constructed a guitar out of scraps of wood, nails and strings and would spend time jumping around to Maiden's Killers or Piece Of Mind pretending I was on a stage somewhere, out there.

There was no way I would ask my parents for an actual instrument. At this point it was all I could do to summon the courage to ask them for another Iron Maiden tape. All this would change in my final year of middle school.

By this time I had found a few other bands I was into and I was hanging around a bunch of guys who shared the same appreciation for heavy music as I did. Sure, they lived in the projects, but I didn't give a fuck. We'd all hang around blasting Maiden and Ozzy and generally being ignored by the rest of the kids which was fine by us. I also happened to live across the street from a guy named Rob who was the quintessential Metal Head. Rob was a few years older than me and there was a constant stream of cool ass music blaring from his bedroom window. When he left the house he was decked out from head to toe in denim, leather, and spikes; his big mop of curly, brown hair blowing in the breeze. Rob had also dubbed me a few tapes of bands he thought I may like: Omen, Onslaught, a slew of Iron Maiden B side imports, Ozzy, and Mercyful Fate. To top it off he hung around with the guys from a local band called Annihilator, and had given me a copy of their "Welcome To Your Death" demo.

Near the end of the school year, grade 8, the teachers announced that there would be a talent show. Three of us decided that we would form a band and write a Metal tune to play. It started with me bugging my buddy Dave to play guitar while I played his drum set. Then we realized that I couldn't play drums for shit so Dave gave me use of his guitar while he played drums. Turns out I couldn't play guitar for shit either. So we brought in my best friend, Doug, to play guitar and I would "sing".

Doug had this shitty, Sears guitar and he could play a few basic things. Dave took one look at the guitar and told Doug to use his, a kick ass, black Washburn. We took a few days and wrote a song called "Twilight Zone" mostly because one of the things Doug could play was the Twilight Zone theme (the only other things he could play was "Smoke On The Water" on one string and some weird finger picked thing that ended up being the middle of "Twilight Zone"). Dave showed him how to play power chords, Doug came up with a simple riff, I scribbled some lyrics, and the song was born. By this time another buddy, Eric, was hanging out with us during these rehearsals and we recorded "Twilight Zone" on a ghetto blaster with Eric adding a bass line played on a keyboard.

I no longer have a copy and wish I still did.

We were pretty happy with what we had so Doug christened us The Unholy Revelations and we signed up for the talent show.

Of course, we had no way to actually play. Our only amp was this mini, 10 watt thing Doug had. It's brand name was "The Gas Can" because it was in the shape of a plastic gas can, so we decided to to an air band just for the audition. Eric chose a tune by a band I had yet to hear of: Metallica.

I hadn't even heard of the band, let alone the song, and there I was; up in front of five teachers trying to fake playing guitar while Eric ran around like a madman lip syncing to this loud, noisy mess called "Seek and Destroy".

(Side note: Eric took up vocals for the air band because he knew the song. I used Doug's piece of crap guitar, which, as it turns out, would be my shitty guitar in a couple of years. Doug used Dave's guitar and Dave used the school drum kit.)

I'm pretty sure the teachers HATED the music, but they let us in anyway... as long as we chose a song that was under five minutes in length.

By now I was all over this new band. I got Dave to make me a tape of Master Of Puppets (newly released) and I went home, holed myself up in my bedroom and introduced myself to Metallica. They blew me away to say the least.

When I got home from school one afternoon, I went across the street and saw Rob. He asked what was new and I told him I was in this band with my friends and asked if he would listen to our song. He took my tape, put it on, and blasted it. When the tune ended he said that it was pretty basic stuff, but considering that we were all twelve/thirteen or so, it wasn't too fucking bad. When I informed him that we were maybe going to play the song for a the school talent show he told me to go for it and "scare the shit out of the other kids!" I mentioned that the guys in the band had introduced me to Metallica. Rob smiled and said: "Heh, I was wondering when you'd find out about them." He sent me on my way with a new tape ("Hell Awaits" by another band I had never heard of called Slayer) and had also given me loan of a huge studded wristband and a bullet belt specifically for the talent show.

Between the makeshift band I was in, these new bands blaring in my ears, and the bullet belt wrapped around my waist, I decided that I wanted to play music. Loud, obnoxious music. At that point I *did not* want to do an air band for the talent show. I wanted to do the song we had all written and I bugged the piss out of the rest of the guys to make sure this happened.

We did try to do this but a couple of things happened. First off, in the school music room Doug was using the stereo as a guitar amp and Dave was using the drum kit. We did manage to get through "Twilight Zone" once simply because a few girls were there and were badgering us to play this tune we had written (I don't think they really believed we had written anything). We got through almost the entire song when the music teacher walked in and freaked on us for using the school stereo as a guitar amp. That was the end of that.

The other thing that stopped us was the fact that Doug had even more stage fright than I had at that time. I was nervous as fuck; stumbling through my immature lyrics hardly making eye contact with anyone, but Doug played his guitar almost trying to find a way to back into one of the isolation rooms. He looked visibly relieved when the teachers informed us that there was no way amp the guitar.

We had to do the air band after all. Whatever.

Eric, Dave, and Doug chose Metallica's "Whiplash" - partly because it was under the five minute mark that we were given and partly because the word fuck is used twice, but sung so fast that the teachers would, most likely, not pick up on it.

We were third up following a girl playing piano, and another bunch of girls doing a Beatles air band (which was actually pretty good). After the female Beatles left the stage and the curtain closed we sauntered on stage decked out in studs and spikes and tight denim. I was wearing a shirt I had made especially for the occasion: I had painted the entire front with a scene of Hell with Death holding court on a fiery mountain (shut up, I was 12 or 13 at the time and it was fucking cool!). The student MC, who's name eludes me at the moment, came out and announced that next up was "The Unholy Revelations!!!!!". The curtain opened. Mr. Tracy, the shop teacher, hit play and the shit hit the fan.

We went fucking apeshit. I was new to this type of Heavy Metal so I just ran around and jumped in the air like an idiot. Doug and Dave were in full headbanging mode, causing a good portion of the student body to laugh their asses off. Eric was a madman; holding the fake mic in one hand and punching the air with the other. At one point, when the end of the first chorus hit, he screamed "WHIPLASH!!!" and jumped off the stage and nearly steamrolled the first couple of rows of kids.

It was awesome.

The song is only about four minutes long, but it went by in what seemed like only a few seconds. I was having the time of my life. We may not have been able to play the actual song we had written but that didn't matter. I was hooked.

After the talent show we got swarmed by a few kids who thought we were kick ass. A couple wanted a tape of our actual song (I don't remember if we ever gave it to them). There were others who made fun of us. We didn't give two shits. We were all standing around the tree we always hung out by, each one of us wired to the gills with excitement. We also caught crap from one teacher who was a super-duper, God fearing weirdo because we had performed "evil, noisy music". (Turns out she had also given crap to the girls who did the Beatles air band for the exact same reason. A friend of mine was sitting next to her and told me that she had her fingers in her ears for both performances).

What a day it was. We ended up going back to Dave's place for a bit and farting around on the instruments. I was one hundred percent positive at that point that I would play in a band and make awesome music.

This ended up happening, even though things changed a little over the next couple of years. By the time Metallica hit up the Ottawa Civic Center in 1989 on the ... And Justice For All tour, I was in grade 10, and our band consisted of Doug (who had switched from guitar to drums - I got my first guitar from him) and Geoff (a huge kid who played bass), I was playing guitar and singing, and we had changed our name from The Unholy Revelations to Die-Oxide.

The only thing that sucked was that we were jamming in my parents basement...

To be continued...