Headbangers

I got my first exposure to rock and roll subculture around the end of grade six. As summer approached, one of the tougher kids in my grade started bringing a portable stereo to school. He would play all sorts of popular heavy metal bands circa 1984 (I remember QR getting heavy rotation). I had gone to Cubs with this kid a few years earlier, and we got along well despite our different backgrounds (different like Nelson and Milhouse... you guess which was which).

I have no older brothers or sisters and my parents are pretty square, musically speaking. I also did not have a music video channel at my place, so any initial observations I had about headbanger culture were made through school. The first thing I realized is that the people who liked this sort of music were the ones who'd always been the "bad kids". Smoking on the schoolgrounds, not doing homework, etc. They were the ones everyone was afraid to piss off.

The bad kids were overt in their badness, yet they never initiated trouble through bullying of smaller or weaker kids. That was done by kids who were not overtly bad; they didn't wear heavy metal band t-shirts and high-top sneakers. More likely, they wore jackets made by their Atom or Peewee hockey teams. Some of them were into metal, but only casually, since it was popular at the time.

Obviously, I was not in either of these social groups in elementary school and neither were the majority of my friends. If anything, I tried harder to befriend the jocks. They didn't seem as scary on the whole, though in practice they were much more cruel. Headbangers just looked too dangerous to approach at all. But it was interesting to observe them. I was envious of their no-one-can-fuck-with-us status. I'd wanted it badly for a long time.

As a result, I started getting into metal without actually hanging out with metalheads. It made me feel empowered and protected. As I entered my teen years I began to look the part a little more. I grew out my hair (mullet-style!), wore hunting jackets, tight jeans and white high-top sneakers with the hugest tongues I could find. If the tongues stood straight up, all the better. Despite this I really just looked like a nerdy mama's boy in headbangers' clothing. I didn't really care though.

Through it all, I never did fall in with the headbanger crowd. I had a chance to. I showed up at a new junior high (in Darkside, where I had just moved from CB) at the start of grade eight looking more metal than ever before. I was put in a class with other such folk. It was awesome! Everyone was really nice. I didn't get the sense that anyone in that room was going to be mean to me. We all liked the same bands. Oh sure, almost everybody smoked and was kind of a burnout, but I didn't care. I felt safe and at home. But this would not last.

About two weeks into the year the new school received my transcripts from CB and I was moved to another class. There was only one metalhead there besides me, and he was waaay too scary to make friends with. Otherwise, it was mostly preppies. And some of them were real bastards to me.

The area of the school where the 'bangers hung out was called The Rock. This was literally a big rock, the size of the front part of a car. It was situated just off the school grounds, a convenient location for smoking. Most of the kids from the old class went there at recess. I'd walk by them on the way home for lunch. There were leather jackets, fringed jackets, denim jackets with Dio backpatches... there were girls with huge, tall bangs in big white boots and acid-wash jeans.

I stayed good friends with Ray, a guy from the old class... he was sort of my gateway to the headbanger world, yet I didn't really hang out with him in groups of people, more just by ourselves. He told me that the headbangers would have huge parties in the woods on weekends. I knew that going to such a place would be too scary for me, even if I could sneak past mom and dad. Those kids would be...

...drinking!

My friend wouldn't admit it, but I think he was of the same mindset. We did get to see the aftermath of the parties though. As thirteen-year-old kids with no income we were always trying to figure out ways to scam money. Ray had an inside track on when and where these backwoods blowouts were going on; we could show up the next morning and collect the empties! We did this a bunch of times. One particularly impressive haul came in a wooded area that is now a suburb in Co-Harb. There had to be over a hundred beer bottles lying on the ground, and those were just the intact ones. My parents have a picture of Ray and I standing with this epic collection of beer bottles we'd dragged home (how, I have no idea). You've just got to document events like that.

I look back fondly on 80s headbanger culture. I was sort of part of it, but mainly I was an outsider looking joyfully in at a world where no one dares fuck with you. In retrospect, I don't know if I'd be better off today for having fully entered that world. I guess that's why I romanticize sometimes about being a burnout. With that in mind, I went on to write this song. I'm not ashamed of the fact that the lyrics make very little sense.

Party At The Rock

(written by me, 1997. recorded by "pop band #3", 1997)

Mommy's in the basement, daddy's in the loo*
Everybody's hangin out, don't know what to do
Call me on the phone, there's a party goin on
Now we're gonna score, then we're getting really gone

I'm gonna be with the freaks tonight
Don't wanna stay home watchin TV tonight
Cause everybody knows that we're goin
To the Party At The Rock

Joey's in the mental ward, Stevie thinks he's cool
Johnny's at the arcade cause he's droppin outta school
Tonight'll be the night, everybody's gonna go
See me at the hospital, I'll see you at the show.


*What was I thinking using the word "loo"?? I'm not even British!