Like lots of people, music has had a tremendous effect on me.
It has shaped me into the person I am today, has helped with my focus, it has opened my eyes, and it has generally made the world less boring. That's why I truly hate it when people use music as an excuse when things go wrong, or shift the blame to music because they

believe it helped someone commit a crime.

Remember the shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado in 1999?
 

The cause of that was shifted to the music of Rammstein, Marilyn Manson, and various others, because the boys who did the shooting at Columbine listened to the music of these bands.

Now I'm not a fan of those bands, with the exception of Rammstein. So I personally felt a bit attacked.
It was almost as if everyone who listened to this music was a criminal in the making.

And that made me think back to the time of Iron Maiden during their Beast On The Road tour in 1982, when they were not allowed to play in Chile because they were seen as devil worshipers, and thus a Satanic band.
The Catholic church and the government of Chile weren't having that.
And all this because of the song "The Number of the Beast".

Those who opposed to Iron Maiden playing in Chile never took the time to actually read the lyrics and understand what the song was about. It was such an unfair thing for the fans.

 

Three years later, in 1985, a tiny organization called the PMRC (Parents Music Resource Center), <boo-hiss-boo!> which was founded by the "Washington Wives", the wives of certain politcal and influential figures working in Washington DC, went head to head with musicians, and indeed the entire music industry, to have records labelled with Parental Advisory stickers, if they felt a certain song contained something that might be damaging to their child, like sex, drugs, alcohol, the occult or bad language.
Well by all means, don't sell anymore newspapers then.
It was fun to see John Denver not siding with the PMRC.

They actually thought that a man as wholesome as Denver would support them. But he had another agenda.

He felt the labelling would be counterproductive, as his song "Rocky Mountain High" had already been deemed unsuitable in 1973 because the U.S. Federal Communications Commission felt it promoted drug use!
That particular song has nothing to do with drugs, but it explains the feeling of elation he experienced when he was in the vicinity of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, where he lived. And he used that example before the PMRC to, again, explain that song lyrics can be taken out of context and so easily misunderstood.

 

(On a side note, John Denver really wasn't as wholesome as some think he was. If I've made you curious, just Google him like I did.)

 

The big hero of the day at that hearing was Dee Snider, of Twister Sister, who was there because two of their songs were under review; "We're not gonna take it", for promoting violence, and "Under the Blade", for presumably referring to sadomasochism, bondage, and rape.
I strongly urge you to have a look at this video so you can watch the man in action at that Senate Hearing of 1985.
He could have used the opportunity to completely blast the members of the Senate Committee, but he knew damn well that would just completely ruin what he was fighting for.
Instead he stayed calm, and eloquently brought his points to the public.
And in doing so, he wow-ed EVERYONE!

 

You see, many people see metalheads as longhaired idiots who have no class, no talent, and no brains.
If that's the case, why is it there are more incidents and altercations at hip hop concerts than at heavy metal concerts, since the music is so evil? Aren't we all Satanic?
Just because the Norwegian Black Metal scene is violent and horrible, doesn't mean every metalhead is the same way.
Trust me, the categories of heavy metal are surprisingly numerous.
And within these categories are many subcultures.

Marilyn Manson, Bruce Dickinson, Dee Snider ... are just three examples of well-spoken, very literate, and well-educated men who have the ability to be magnificent teachers, if they wanted to be.
Instead they teach through music.

In actuality, every member of Iron Maiden and Rammstein, have above-average IQs and know how to use them.

 

Remember Hitler? He was a big fan of Richard Wagner.
Are we to think that the holocaust wouldn't have happened if he had listened to something else?
Or can we now push all lovers of classical music into a category of mass-murderers?
Damn, what if Hitler had liked oompah music instead? The German forces would have been too shit-faced to even think of starting a war.

 

Anyway ... 1984 saw a huge change for me, when one day on the way home from my paper route, I cycled along some houses, when I was treated to a type of music I had never heard before.

Up until then, I only liked Status Quo, Queen, Bay City Rollers, Kiss, Led Zepplin, Deep Purple, Madness, Duran Duran and UB40. 

But this was a lot different.

I hit the brakes and listened for a while at the fence of this house, then the guy playing the music invited me in for a better listen. 

When I asked him who this was, he showed me the album cover: Iron Maiden - Piece of Mind. (see the top of this page)
I had NEVER seen artwork like this in my life! But I loved it.
And this song (The Trooper) was absolutely unbelievable. It was so powerful and refreshing. 
When I visited the next day, he had already put that song on a tape for me, with a few other songs by the same band (from a different album), and various other artists.
That one song changed me forever.

I was walking a dangerous road at the time, with people who were capable of steering me to a life of wrong decisions.
I carefully listened to that one song over and over and understood what it was about.
The character of the song, the trooper in this song, bravely soldiering on and not letting anything stop him.
He had courage, strength, and determination.
And since that day I was able to draw those exact same qualities just by thinking of that song, or of that image.
Which is why I have various pictures of The Trooper around me (on my walls, my coffee mug, my mobile phone).

 

But in the years that came after, as I got older, my music taste grew wider. But even per category I have my favourites:

 

• Heavy Metal (Iron Maiden, Rammstein, Disturbed, Anthrax, Led Zepplin, Deep Purple, Slayer, Megadeth, and Metallica)
   

• Rock n roll (AC/DC, Fleetwood Mac, Pink Floyd, Status Quo, Cheap Trick, Skunk Anansie, and Queen)
   

• Classical (Mozart, Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky, Bizet, von Suppe, Shostakovich, Strauss, Bach, Pachelbel, Ravel, Chopin, Grieg, Liszt, Schubert, Handel, and of course Beethoven.)

 

• Pop (Depeche Mode, UB40, Bay City Rollers, Madness, Duran Duran, and Rihanna)

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• Blues (Stevie Ray Vaughan, BB King, John Lee Hooker, and Willie Dixon)
   

• EBM (Centhron, Vault 113, Just Deux, and Eisenfunk)

 

• 60's (Jimi Hendrix, The Turtles, Mamas and the Papas, The Doors, Loving Spoonful, and Cream)

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• 60's, 70's & 80's Funk + Soul (pretty much every band and artist from that era + Jamiroquai from 1993 until now)
   

• Chillout music (Koan, Carbon Based Lifeforms, E-Mantra, Thievery Corporation, Supreme Beings of Leisure, Mike Oldfield, and physchedelic chillout mixes)

 

\m/   Rock On and Up The Irons!   \m/

 

p.s. this website was mostly created while listening to the album "When The Silence Is Speaking"  by Koan.