Well, let me tell you a story. Sobek, dear beloved Father, has been trying in vain to get me into heavy metal for years. It’s never been my thing, or so I thought, so I figured He’d stopped pestering me about it because He had accepted He’d never win me over.

Apparently not. -_-

Now, this story requires some past history, so bear with me. I have this weird instinct where I just *know* if I’ll like a certain band or artist, usually just from hearing a few songs. This instinct has rarely been wrong, so I tend to listen to it when it calls.

Enter silverchair and The Prodigy. I first fell in love with these bands when I was a wee teenager. It was that instinct again, see? But mother was not a fan of this sort of music, and I’m a nice sort of kid, so I didn’t rock the boat. My time would come. And when I did begin buying their albums years later in my 20s? Lo, I did fall in love with them. My instinct was right.

Now, enter Black Sabbath. This requires a little more explanation. I’ve had a flirtation with this band for years. YEARS, people. Now, maybe it was my Christian upbringing, maybe it was because mother would not have approved at all, but I always kept Sabbath at a distance. That instinct of mine was there, but I always said no. Even though Ozzy Osbourne is fucking adorable, I still said no. I think part of me was slightly afraid at how much I would like it, as if it was my ‘dark side’ or something.

Now, enter rage and The Chaser guest progamming for NYE 2007. What did I get out of that epic experience? I fell in love with ELO, of course. And Pink Floyd to a certain extent. It aged my music collection certainly. (In an unrelated note, I also fell in love with of Montreal and The Decemberists, but that’s another story.)

ELO are actually a terrible enabler. The effect they’ve had on my music collection is rather significant, and there are some people I would never have bothered listening to otherwise. Also, Roy Wood? Fucking nuts, and also fucking awesome. <3 …It’s an ‘epic hair’ and a ‘boys in make-up’ thing. XD

(Also, the impact ELO has had on my writing is rather extraordinary and should be discussed at length elsewhere.)

Now, enter rage again their ‘rage gets hairy’ special. Now, I like a bloke with long hair, as I’ve mentioned, bonus points for leather and/or chest pr0n. So, naturally, it’s quite a good special. Twisted Sister come onto my radar and I like what I see and hear. Twisted Sister, of course, have come onto my radar in the past from my love of No Doubt.

I have also recently fallen in love with Led Zeppelin, and not just because of Go! and other assorted coincidences.

I feel there are more than three coincidences here and I ought to have twigged this was leading to some sort of clue-by four. But, of course, I’m somewhat dense to these sorts of things, so naturally, I was left slightly without warning.

Now, when I happened across a charming blog that offered bootlegs recently, and happened to offer ELO bootlegs to boot, well, I couldn’t resist, so I downloaded them. I was not looking for said bootlegs, but I found them. Now, I happened to scroll down to see what other bands they had, and lo, there was Led Zep and Black Sabbath.

How does ELO link to Black Sabbath? Well, quite easily. You see, I remembered from reading Bev Bevan’s blog that he had toured with Black Sabbath in 1983 (which I will point out is the year I was born? XD). (Listening to his radio show for months has also been awesomefuntimes and has kinda made me fall in love with other artists, but that’s another story.) This piece of knowledge had always intrigued me because going from ELO to Black Sabbath sounds so… weirdly awesome, so I checked to see if there were any Sabbath bootlegs from that particular tour. There were. I downloaded them both. I discovered my instinct had been right. Again. XD

Now, the ABC has been showing this ‘Seven Ages of Rock’ series of late. Well done, it’s an awesome series. Cue tonight’s show. Topic? Heavy metal.

So they start with Sabbath, of course, move to Judas Priest and Motley Crue and in between all this I’m hit across the head with a combination of epic hair, leather, and fucking awesome guitar. The whole Birmingham thing doesn’t help either. Cue my instinct popping up and suggesting I might rather like Sabbath and Judas Priest and Motley Crue, if I bothered to listen to them properly.

Now, earlier in the afternoon, I had written a rather pr0ny piece of fiction involving an anthropomorphised Foxtel seducing the fuck out of Charles Firth in a rather kinky and awesome fashion.

After watching ‘Seven Ages of Rock’ tonight, I feel pretty much like Charles did after Foxtel was done with him: like I’d been seduced by a rather enchanting Dom in leather who had left me rather exhausted and desperate for more by the time he was done with me.

Cue Sobek, that smarmy croc God of mine, smirking contentedly. Yes, crocodiles have an infinite amount of patience. He was just waiting for the right moment. I believe He has won this round fair and square.

Okay, I surrender, already, happy now?

(If I’m being technical, I am Gen X, since I’m the child of baby boomers. But I like my special awesome not part of either classification better. )

Anyway. I’m a rather nostalgic person. I’ve mentioned it before on here. I adore vinyl, old movies, VHS, cassettes, retro games, old consoles, all that awesome stuff I grew up with. At the same time, I’m very at ease with modern technology and the internet. I’ve been using the net since I was in my early teens, around a decade.

(Also, WWII-era code-breaking and computers and Enigma machines are all epic and winsome and Srsly, when I saw CSIRAC at the Melbourne Museum late last year, I was quite possibly the happiest little Alex alive. 8D!)

(AlsoAlso, I want to visit Bletchley Park. Like, really badly. Really, really badly. >.>)

I remember dial-up, DOS games, 14.4k modems, and dot matrix printers. I remember doing assignments and referring to actual physical encyclopaedia volumes in the library. Hell, we even had a set of ~20 year old encyclopaedias at home. They were awesome. XD

I’ve been writing websites since I was 14. That’s when I first learned HTML. I remember the first site I ever made. It had a red background and white text. It was awesome. XD

My parents have always dragged me off to op shops ever since I was a kid. They’re the sort of places where, if you’re nostalgic like me, you fall in love with old stuff. Old stuff with character. Every time I buy something from an op shop, I can’t help wondering who used to own it, why they donated it to the op shop, do they still miss it, those sort of things. I could create characters based on everything I’ve bought based on asking those questions.

(In fact, perhaps I should do that one day. Get a bunch of stuff I’ve bought and make characters based on who might’ve owned them.)

But I digress. I don’t know. I’ve got this love, fascination and adoration for analogue technology. We’ve got a record player at home, a VHS player, I think we even still have a cassette deck somewhere. Also, old stuff smell is intoxicatingly gorgeous. Like, it’s like old book smell, but more awesome. It’s old stuff smell. It’s orgasmic. XD

(Er, sorry for the brackets. My thoughts fail at being linear. XD)

At the same time, I rather like new technology and I’ve grown up with computers and CDs and other awesome things that I possibly couldn’t live without anymore. They’ve become a part of my life and world-view and as much as I adore the past, the internet and the kind of technology we have now is really quite awesome and it’s all good and I really should stop now before I ramble any more. XD

This is possibly not one of my better pieces, but whatever. It’s late, I’m tired and yeah. 8D