Head Banging In Heaven

This is how I'll remember him. Sweaty as hell, bounding back and forth on stage in garish leopard outfits, sopping hair matted to his face like overcooked spaghetti, and flinging that candy cane microphone stand with menacing flair. And always, always with a wild-ass smile on his face. The man looked half-insane, and a part of me believed he'd actually been committed and was let out on furlough by mistake.

I was a huge metalhead in high school. AC/DC, Def Leppard (they were borderline metal back then), Ratt, Cinderella, Ozzie, Tesla, Van Halen, Scorpions, Dokken, and yes, Quiet Riot. So the first time I heard "Cum On Feel The Noize," I nearly wet myself. I heard, nay, SAW it on MTV. This was back when MTV actually played videos. First came the pounding drums, then that VOICE. It sounded like a barking dog with gravel in its mouth. It was aggressive, angry, and powerful. It was ANTI-SOCIAL, and I liked it.

The song's lyrics are simple. They're about rocking out, letting go, and not giving a shit about what anyone thinks. Not exactly Chaucer. But when he put his voice behind those lyrics, it was like hearing a National Anthem for the Disaffected. And weren't we all disaffected in high school? (C'mon, be honest. If you felt totally comfortable in high school, there is something wrong with you.) His voice and this song got me totally pumped whenever I heard it. And for a couple of years, I heard it a bit too often. They played it before basketball games, during our track meets, and at our school dances. It was literally everywhere. Eventually, I got sick of hearing it. Play any song too often, and it becomes boring and ordinary. So out of my mental playlist it went, for a very long time.

It's funny how sad I get when seemingly innocuous people die, particularly B-list celebrities whom I haven't thought about in years. Maybe it's because their passing takes me back to moments in my life when they were at their peak. I become nostalgic for those simple days, and then melancholy at the inexorable passing of time. It's a cliche, but time goes by faster every year.

When I heard that Kevin DuBrow was found dead in Las Vegas last Sunday, I thought back to my carefree high school days, and remembered how I felt when I first heard his gravelly bark. I remembered how much fun my friends and I had turning the lyrics "Girls ROCK your boyz!" into an obscenity. I remembered my teenage fist-pumping and head-banging, and adolescent concerns that seemed like a really big deal at the time, but looking back, were actually quite trivial.

Then I went to YouTube and played this video twenty times.



R.I.P., Kevin.