Unforgiven over Metallica

I've probably lost a friend with my earlier remarks about Metallica, and that's sad because I learned to enjoy the band and I most assuredly adored the Metallica fan.

Back in 1999, when I'd returned to Springfield, the young colleague started to tell me about meeting Lars Ulrich in a St. Louis bar. "Who?" I said. He gave me the look that any young person will give someone older who's clueless, and delivered a brief description of Mr. Ulrich's brilliance on drums. Then he went on with his story.

I then started to buy all of Metallica's albums. I was slow on the uptake--look, I was born 21 years before the young storyteller was. And Metallica is an acquired taste, I believe, for people my age. Last winter, I'd uploaded all our CDs to my computer, and I was quite surprised recently when I found "Enter Sandman" likable. I'd always loved "Fade to Black."

But my former colleague can be very unforgiving. After Matt Damon made a dismissive remark about Ulrich in some talk show or other, the colleague steadfastly refused to see any of Damon's films, with one exception.

I guess I'm toast.

OK, OK, I did e-mail the young fellow one scathing piece about the Motor City Madman and his politics.

Sidetracked

I'm sidetracked again, and I blame romance novelist Sandra Marton, as an e-mail mention of hers about the Rolling Stones got me to looking for the tale of my first two concerts. The first concert was probably in 1965, when the Stones first hit San Bernardino, California. I was 11. I asked Dad to take me there, and when he didn't take the bait, I cried, always a good move. Yeah, we went to that concert. In 1966, my mother agreed to let me see a Stones concert in Cambridge, England. She mortified me by insisting that I wear ankle socks instead of the regulation knee socks. This was a formal occasion, she told me.

It's hard to remember my next few concerts. Who can remember the sixties? I can recall Arlo Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Procol Harum. Procol Harum came probably in 1971. Then college and grad school intervened, as well as poverty. Only in the 1990s did I go to a few concerts again: two famous modern jazz bands, and one Bob Dylan thing. Bob Dylan was in his metal phase, and the acoustics at the hall weren't good for those of us in the cheap seats. One song sounded awfully familiar, but I just couldn't make it out until near the end. "All Along the Watchtower." I'd loved Dylan's and Hendrix's recorded versions.

In my computer search, I found an old column of mine, from the year 2000. The piece about the delightful Metallica fan mentioned in a post below was unfortunate, as I exposed this young co-worker to his parents. I had his permission to use his anecdote in my pathetic food column (which ran on Sundays on the first page of the Home section), but the poor fellow had no idea that his parents ever read such a thing.

The former co-worker is a brilliant storyteller, and he had used his stuff about swatting a swarm of yellow jackets outside his apartment, to great effect, but when telling it to his parents, he'd left out the fact that the magazine he employed for the killing was Playboy (the Darva Conger edition).

His mother called him up: "You read Playboy?" His dad, however, was understanding. "At least it wasn't Juggs."

Innocent that I was, I had never heard of Juggs.

More about Mr. Winger

Back to back today, I listened to three solo CDs by Kip Winger and then to Winger's "Pull." Yummmmmm. Yes, he's good.

I asked Kip Winger to marry me. Well, not exactly, as he was born years after I was. I wrote:

I'd ask you to marry me, but you are already married, as am I. And I've vowed that if I ever take on another husband, he'll be at least fifteen years older than I am. That gets scary because even if the next wedding happens next year (not bloody likely), the fellow will be 69 [or more, I should have added].

Not that there's anything wrong with that. Some of my best friends are older than I am.

Afraid that I'd been too obscure, I explained a reference from my last bit:

Btw, my column about you has an embedded joke in the last word, "decorum." Jokes are never good if they have to be explained, but so it goes. That minor quip goes back to the scene in "Rock Star" with groupies and pussy passes. Mats, the Steel Dragon road manager, says, "Ladies, ladies, ladies, please, please, a little bit of decorum, please."

A story about Kip Winger

I've never claimed to have sophisticated tastes.

I was trained, so to speak, in literary criticism, and my dad, who just retired as a classics professor, has been a jazz musician and an actor on the side.

But I've worked in journalism, I read romance novels, and I prefer J.S. Bach to Mozart. Not at all promising.

When my favorite romance novelist had a character who badmouthed Gustav Mahler, I asked the spouse what he thought. What did I know, after all? "Sucks," he said, though with more sophisticated language. "Modern crap." Ever curious, I went to YouTube, and the first Mahler clip I turned up fascinated me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7sgq-UgWR4

I sent it downstairs to my husband, and he said it had definite promise. Perhaps.

I've been listening over and over to the Emmy-nominated "Dick in a Box," which makes me guffaw. Less funny, for a woman of my age, is to read about Nikki Sixx's recent autobiography, with the happy revelations about boffing three generations at once--as I'm 53, that hits me where it hurts, even though I was never a groupie. Oh, and there is Metallica, to which I came late in life, and of whose politics I cannot approve. But because of a beloved former colleague and boss's passion for the group, I bought all their albums and even the "Live Shit" boxed set. The first thing that I said to this young colleague, years ago, after listening to the Black Album, was that it scared the heck out of me. I was surprised recently when I could listen to more than Balladica. (Yes, give me "Mama Said.")

ANYWAY--and it's no small "anyway"--I got to thinking about my favorite glam-metal act, Winger.

The hair, the ballet moves--hell, I was thoroughly hooked in the late 1980s and very early 1990s. And then MTV decided to go with rap and game shows.

Married women are allowed their tame animal lusts, as are married men. Tame.

I'd worked up a whole fantasy story about me and Kip Winger. I'd done the same with Star Trek's Mr. Spock and various other sexy but unattainable males. My fantasy story about Kip, which I'm trying to reconstruct, involved me with a guitar in my hands. That is quite a stretch, as I failed both in violin and in guitar even before I hit my teens.

Anyway! With this Timberlake/Mahler/Sixx harmonic convergence, I decided to look up Kip Winger on YouTube and elsewhere.

All those videos and all those concerts. The acoustic stuff. I dragged my husband up to my computer and played him two YouTube pieces. The first was the old video of Winger's "Seventeen." Ed, who never liked hair rock (silly man), insisted that I cut off the song. Ed is one of those men who say, "Just shut up and play!" I was still drooling. But when I turned on one of Kip Winger's solo acoustic pieces, the spouse was wowed. "The guy can sing AND play!" I knew that.

But I hadn't known until days ago about the album "Pull" (with the boffo anti-war song "Who's the One"), which I've ordered. And I certainly hadn't known about Kip Winger's solo career. I'd been sidetracked by the vagaries of TV, a full-time copy-editing job, and a fascination with the female side of the rock equation. Sarah McLachlan and Melissa Etheridge in particular.

So now I have to order all the rest of Mr. Winger's work in due course. Yes, even women my age have financial clout, but there's a matter of decorum.