This album started a trend for me. I began listening to more of the glam bands. I started to enjoy the music of Poison, Scorpions and Cinderella. Bon Jovi and the Scorpions quickly became my two favorite bands on the planet. (My first concert was the Scorpions, but that is a story for another time.) I had the posters on my wall courtesy of the late, legendary Metal Edge magazine. I had a nice collection of cassettes accumulating on my bookshelf. Included in these were Look What the Cat Dragged In, Lovedrive and To Hell With the Devil. Also included here was New Jersey, Bon Jovi’s follow-up to Slippery When Wet, a birthday gift from the same friend who sold me his cassette tape a couple years earlier. And this collection also included one I had to keep hidden due to its explicit content: Appetite for Destruction, an album which has remained one of my all-time favorites to this very day.
My love of rock music continued into junior high school but was taken to a new level with the help of a newly found friend, Loren. I had already begun listening to artist such as Queensryche and Ozzy Osbourne but she introduced me to the music of Motley Crue and Faith No More, two bands which turned me towards heavier music, but more on that later. By this time, compact discs had come around so for us to copy music onto cassettes for each other was not a difficult process. I received Dr. Feelgood and The Real Thing and in return provided Crazy World and Stick It To Ya for her. More of this happened over the next couple years, with Cherry Pie, Face the Heat, Flesh & Blood, Adrenalize and Angel Dust all going one direction or another.
Now the same friend who had sold me Slippery When Wet made me a similar deal for Metallica’s …And Justice For All, by far the heaviest album in my collection. Needless to say, the trend continued with the addition of albums such as the “Black Album” and Facelift, which is far more metal than grunge. Then along came albums from White Zombie, Type O Negative and Pantera. My musical path was secure now. It was rock or nothing.
Today not much has changed. I still love the bands I grew up listening to like Bon Jovi, Motley Crue and Poison. I have come to love other bands who emerged over the years as well. I everything from P.O.D. to Lordi to Godsmack to Rammstein in my collection now. It’s amazing to me all this started with a short car ride to a little league game. But you know what? I’m glad as hell it did. And I’ll be the one in the nursing home someday rocking out to “Enter Sandman”, “Du Hast” or “”Shelter Me”.
