Last year I did a podcast interview with Oliver Brackenbury, host of Unknown Worlds of the Merril Collection. I remember having fun with this one and taking a pretty deep dive into sword-and-sorcery on it, including writing Flame and Crimson and speculation on the future of the genre.
The episode is now live and you can listen here. Give it a listen!
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| The Ultimate Sword-and-Sorcery podcast |
We had way more fun than we had any right to, but if you can't laugh watching Deathstalker 2 you were obviously born without a sense of humor.
Check out the episode here. We also talked Flame and Crimson quite a bit as well.
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| You won't find this level of beefcake ... |
The topic? Deathstalker 2: Duel of the Titans.
Somehow I had never watched Deathstalker 2. I look back upon my many years of renting the most exploitative videos I and my high school buddies could find, idle time spent scrolling YouTube, the additional (painful) video research I conducted for Flame and Crimson, and I wonder how this one eluded me. The only explanation I can come up with is that Deathstalker 1 is so outrageously awful, near irredeemable, that I wanted no further part of the series.
In addition, I’ve consciously avoided the S&S films of the 80s. It got too depressing to see a subgenre that gave us Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, The Dying Earth, Conan and Kull, Elric, etc. handled so badly on the silver screen.
But, in recent years I’ve made peace with sword-and-sorcery films. I view them now as a cornball corner of pop culture history to enjoy as guilty pleasures. And, I’m already glad I got the opportunity to guest on Rogues because Deathstalker 2 is fun. Sword-and-sorcery fans will find their subgenre treated with about as much subtlety and reverence as Animal House did for undergraduate education. I would describe it as objectively a bad film, but subjectively awesome. It knows what it is, and while not a true parody like Men in Tights for example it is entirely a tongue-in-cheek take on S&S.
Make no mistake, this is by any measure a bad movie. Really bad. The acting is below the level of a soap opera, the plot barely a thread, the script full of holes, and the sets and props are cheap and flimsy and entirely recycled. It lacks proof of having been backed by anything resembling a budget; in fact, there really wasn’t one. If there was, it was spent by the cast and crew in Argentinian dive bars. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the hell out of it. It’s a poor man’s Army of Darkness.
You can currently find Deathstalker 1 and 2 on Tubi, a free movie service. My advice: Skip the first and head straight to the sequel. And look for our insights and analysis of this fine film on an upcoming episode of Rogues in the House.
The end of the year is a time for reflection, and so here I offer up a look back on a swordly-and-sorcerous 2021.
2021 in hindsight felt a lot like 2020. The ongoing and seemingly eternal COVID-19 pandemic is probably the biggest culprit. As I noted in a previous post most of my waking productive hours are consumed by my day job, and ever since our company sent us home to work in March 2020 my days feel very similar, chained to a screen in the basement. Which explains the 22 months or so of relative sameness.
From a blogging/writing sword-and-sorcery standpoint I had a fairly busy and productive year. I wrote some original posts here on the blog, and a lot more besides between Tales from the Magician’s Skull and the blog of DMR Books. And, I contributed pieces for The Dark Man journal, The Journal of Popular Culture, and Whetstone.
As always, I wish I had done more.
Most popular posts
From a page-view only perspective, here were my most popular posts on the Silver Key.
What sword-and-sorcery needs, 814 views. Weird because this was very much a throwaway/10 minutes of inspiration/no forethought or planning-type post. Anyways, it picked up a lot of steam on various platforms, some praise, some criticism, and much discussion. Which is what sword-and-sorcery needs.
The Dying Earth: A case for sword-and-sorcery, 626 views. This one picked up a lot of traction from the folks over at Goodman Games, as that fine outfit was launching a Dying Earth RPG around this time. Also it seems to be somewhat unique, and mildly controversial. Some don’t think Vance’s The Dying Earth is S&S, and so your mileage may vary.
Of Heady Topper and the craft brewery revolution, 402 views. People like good beer? I know I do, and plan to drink my share over the next 10 days. Viva New England IPAs and the craft beer scene.
Signs of a (modest) S&S revival, 388 views. Another spur of the moment post, I was seeing a lot of optimistic signs of an ongoing S&S resurgence, led by the new rotoscoped animated film The Spine of Night, and this one got a lot of traffic from Facebook and elsewhere. Make no mistake, S&S is still a very niche and somewhat tenuous subgenre, and apparently anathema to major publishers. But, there is SOMETHING going on, and I hope it continues to gain steam.
Sometimes you get lucky: An S&S haul, 349 views. I scored a major win this year when a dude from a Facebook S&S group I’m part of who happened to be local to my home state of Massachusetts announced he was moving across the country, and needed to unload his cache of S&S titles to someone who would appreciate them. Needless to say, I’m that guy. People love book porn and there you have it, the recipe for a popular post. Also, I am grateful that I have a proper home for these books and my growing collection, and can add a newly renovated office/man cave to my 2021 accomplishments.
What can we take from this? Talking about sword-and-sorcery sells, as does beer (put both together and you’ve got a great evening of entertainment. I know, I’ve done it). More broadly, “meta” posts about sword-and-sorcery/the state of the subgenre/etc. rather than individual authors or titles seem to resonate, and occasionally gain traction on the likes of Reddit and Twitter, which in turn drive the most page views. Sword-and-sorcery literature as a whole drives most of the traffic to this page. Back when I started the Silver Key in 2007 I was getting an overwhelming amount of traffic from roleplaying blogs, as somehow I got picked up by a few sites devoted to AD&D and the Old School Renaissance (OSR) movement. That largely seems to have died off, as has large volumes of blog traffic in general. I still like blogs and blogging and find it an infinitely superior medium to the ephemeral viral this second/gone in 10 seconds reality of social media. I know there are other options, but I don’t really know what a substack is and can’t be bothered to research it. So, I anticipate continuing here as long as the Blogger platform exists and Google doesn’t yank the plug.
A few other noteworthy items to cover.
Talking sword-and-sorcery
I was guest on three podcasts/panels in 2021, two of which are available (linked on the right of this blog). The other, an episode for Friends of the Merril Collection, I’m told will be published in the first quarter of 2022. I’m always on edge on these programs (thanks social anxiety) and much more comfortable behind the keyboard, but I love listening to podcasts, and I know they are great vehicles for learning and entertainment. And I’m getting more comfortable with them. I’m glad to be asked, and for the opportunity to step out of my comfort zone. Therein lies personal growth.
Achievements
Flame and Crimson won the Atlantean award from the Robert E. Howard Foundation. What an honor this was. I still don’t know who nominated my work but I’m eternally grateful. The plaque with Howard’s engraved visage is hanging on the wall of my sword-and-sorcery bar/mancave. F&C continues to generate very positive reviews and ratings on the likes of Goodreads and Amazon.
Vikings and S&S
Although it didn’t garner the most page hits I’m happy with this recent post for DMR Books, (Not) Lost in Translation: The influence of Old Norse Saga and myth on Robert E. Howard and sword-and-sorcery. I made this connection in Flame and Crimson but expanded on it over on DMR. I’m proud of this bit of original scholarship; I have not seen the link between S&S and Old Norse Saga and myth made so forthrightly anywhere else.
Reading
My reading slipped a bit from 2020, just 40 books and counting, which means I will finish well short of my goal of 52 books. Anything I offer up would be an excuse, so I’ll just say I want to waste less precious evening hours in 2022 when I could be reading instead. My reading was a mix of old and new, and I’ll post the list before the year is out, but I can say that the best new (to me) sword-and-sorcery author I read this year was Schuyler Hernstrom (his excellent The Eye of Sounnu). My review can be found here on the DMR blog.
The future
What will 2022 bring? Who can say. In the near future I will be attending a Whetstone Lantern Hour on Jan. 18 where Whetstone editor Jason Ray Carney and some other S&S fans will be gathering to discuss the first couple chapters of Flame and Crimson. Catch me there, or here on the blog, or at an Iron Maiden or Judas Priest concert near you. I’ll be seeing both bands in 2022, pandemic willing.
In summary, thanks for reading, and commenting, and following my meagre work here and elsewhere. I hope you all have an amazing Christmas and New Year.
Not Jean Valjean. But, maybe not quite who you’d expect, either.
On this blog I have assumed a certain persona, centered around my various interests, which you can deduce through my posts. A guy who loves sword-and-sorcery, heavy metal, horror. All true, and I will remain a fan of these things until the day I die. A published author, recently, of Flame and Crimson: A History of Sword-and-Sorcery, a book I’m glad I wrote, and that I believe my favorite subgenre needed.
But then I realize, from that esoteric online profile you may deduce I’m some long-haired tattooed buff dude, or maybe a basement dwelling nerd trapped in the 80s. For the record, I claim just a little bit from each of those descriptions. But my posts here would likely lead you to an inaccurate perception of the man behind the keyboard.
The truth is a lot more prosaic. The truth is, I’m just an average guy.
Sword-and-sorcery is maybe 2% of my story. I live a full life as a knowledge worker, a dad, a homeowner, and all the other trappings and commitments typical of a middle-age (48 year old) dude living in 21st century suburbia.
So, feel free to stop there, but if you want more, here’s a little about me.
One of the few positive by-products of the COVID-19 pandemic was that it finally forced my hand on a new home office. Since vacating the work office and being sent home by my employer on March 13, 2020, I had been working in an unfinished basement. I carved out a decent space but it was quite crude, with my meager furniture surrounded by cement walls and floor and exposed insulation. Worst of all, the basement lacked a heat source, and fell to the low-mid 50s in the winter here in New England. Many days I would slap on a winter hat and heavily insulated work shirt (a very liberal definition of office casual) before descending into the "office."
I needed to make a change. At first I was thinking a dedicated heat source and continuing with the previous setup, but ultimately decided it was time for an upgrade to a legit home office.
I contracted my friend Wayne, who recently started his own carpentry business (W.C. North, which I recommend unreservedly for any of my Massachusetts followers). Work commenced in April and wrapped up with finishes in May. I laid the carpet and did the painting myself.
I couldn't be happier with the final product. Unofficially I've taken to calling it the mullet room. It is business in the front, party in the back, divided between my computer and work desk, and bar and book collection.
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| Party in the back! |
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| Work desk. Not a lot of excitement here. |
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| Frazetta and beer, two tastes that go great together. |
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| Original oil by Tom Barber. |
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| I did not look like these dudes, but was, in spirit. |
I grew up in the time period and was a teenager in the same timeline
of Teenage Wasteland, the late 1980s.
My own experiences were different from the kids in the book—I would say that my
hometown of Reading, MA was more affluent than Bergenfield, New Jersey, with more
promise in my particular geographic area, more jobs due to the presence of a
good economy in nearby Boston and its suburbs. My family was not affluent—my dad
held a blue collar job building and developing centrifuges at a production plant
in Brighton, while my mom took care of her three kids and did odd jobs (office
cleaning, baby sitting) to help make ends meet, before eventually taking a job
as a legal secretary as we got older. We were not anything close to wealthy, we
didn’t always get what we wanted for birthdays or Christmas, and we wore hand
me downs and a mixture of new and used clothing, and lived in a modest cape on
a dead-end, blue-collar street. My town had its burnouts like those described
in Gaines’ book: Reading High had a back parking lot where (incredibly, looking
back from today) you could smoke. We had the metal kids, long-haired and denim
jacketed, opposite the jocks. Some went to the nearby vocational school and became
mechanics.
I had brushes with the burnout culture, but had a foot in
each camp, which in hindsight may have made me somewhat unique. I played football,
and track, and kept my hair short, and my grades were unremarkable, C’s and B’s,
save for English, where I could pull As with little difficulty. But I also wore
metal T shirts and hung out with a semi-fringe, though not burnout crowd. We
loved metal, we drank when we could get our hands on beer or cheap vodka. A few
of my friends smoked—cigarettes, and again when we could get our hands on
it/post high school, weed. But, we didn’t do hard drugs, and we mostly stayed
out of trouble with the police, a few scrapes here and there aside.
Like the kids in Teenage
Wasteland I didn’t know what the fuck I wanted to do with my life. Not even
a clue. I went to state college because I was a decent student, but mainly
because it was the thing most kids did—not all kids, not for example my friend
Wayne who went from retail to house siding to carpentry, and now today has his
own small business. Not a couple other acquaintances and occasional drinking
buddies who drifted into substance abuse. But most. Although thankfully I didn’t
drift down that latter path, I was nonetheless a drifter, sliding into college,
going along for the ride, partying and going to class. At college I had two
major, life-altering occurrences—I met my future wife (we started dating as
sophomores, and got married a year after graduation, in August of 1996) and I discovered
a love of reading and writing after a false start in sociology and criminal
justice. Eventually I chose English as a major and worked on my college newspaper.
I excelled in all my English and writing classes because I loved the material.
I guess I was lucky, and met the right girl, which led to
buying our first town house, setting me on the path of home ownership (two
houses later, I’m living in the dream in a large colonial), and starting a family
with two girls of my own. My love of reading and writing turned into a job on a
small local newspaper, at the tail end of viability of local journalism. That later
turned into a job at a medical b-to-b publishing company and my current,
well-paying job and stable career.
Given my modest upbringing, the opportunities I had to take
my life in a different, darker, direction, how did I end up where I am today
and not in some dead-end, like that described in Teenage Wasteland?
The 80s had their issues. It was the decade of excess
(again, for some), and probably the beginning of the have/have not wealth
divide that is plaguing the country today. Manufacturing, blue-collar jobs like
my dad held were being steadily eroded (my dad retired at the right time, in the
late 90s, just as his company was bought and moved overseas. His old plant is
now a condo). I stayed out front of ruin by cashing out on our first home (though
taking a hit on our second), and getting out of print journalism just as the
internet killed newspapering. I was competent—I’m being unnecessarily humble, I
was an editorial star at my current job—which allowed me to survive the financial
crisis of 2007-2008 and a deep round of layoffs. Due to severe mismanagement at
the same company we endured an even worse series of layoffs and eventual purchase
in 2012/2013, and I again survived those.
Kids were troubled back in the 80s. I saw some of that
first-hand, and some of the consequences. But, kids were also troubled in the
60s, and 70s, and the 90s. And now today, with everyone wondering about the
effects of staring at cell phones all day. “Kids these days” has probably been
muttered by every single adult since ancient Greece, and in fact it has. Socrates
himself wrote, “the children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt
for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of
exercise.” Sound familiar?
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| 1994? Sue and I, just getting started. |
I guess you could say (to use modern vernacular) that I was “privileged.” Some of that is true, in that I grew up in a stable if unremarkable U.S. suburbia of the late 20th century, not war-torn Bosnia. But I reject that as the sole story. I worked consistently, my entire life.
I have had jobs since I was 11-12, and worked at every school break, doing
every odd job you can possibly imagine. Shagging carriages, digging fence post
holes, sweeping floors, delivering newspapers. As a professional I didn’t take
work home with me, I didn’t kiss ass, but I always (and still) believed in
obligation, and keeping promises. Maybe it’s the old Northern European/Danish
blood in me, and my reverence for the oath and/or Protestant work ethic, but when I’m being paid to do a job
from 8:30-5, I work, and I do it to the best of my ability. I don’t believe in
half-assing anything I commit to. I don’t always commit, but when I do I’m in,
and my work, if not always brilliant, ranges from well-done competence, to
exceeding expectations. When you do this, over and over again, you will
eventually be noticed, and promoted. I have seen others in very similar circumstances and with similar abilities fail.
The world is a troubled place, and always has been, and despite our best efforts to socially engineer it, probably always will be. Some people
will get shit breaks. But I think hard work and dogged persistence can still
lift you up from teenage wasteland.
Some recent news and items of interest that readers might find interesting.
My Q&A with Bard author Keith Taylor has been posted in two parts on the DMR website. If you're at all interested in his life, early writing career, collaboration with Andy Offutt, health, and current plans and writings, and much more besides, I recommend checking them out. Keith was super generous with his time composing these wonderful answers. Part one is here, and part two here.
The dudes over at the Cromcast released their final episode of season 13, covering Karl Edward Wagner's Bloodstone, and gave some good coverage to my DMR essay on the (possible) influence of The Lord of the Rings on that book. This is why I write these essays--not for the fortune and fame, but in the hopes that people will read them, interact with them, maybe leave thinking a little differently about their favorite works and authors.
I sent an essay over to Bill Ward at Tales from the Magician's Skull asking and attempting to answer the question, "Is Jack Vance's The Dying Earth Sword-and-Sorcery?", in 1,000 words. Not easy. That I believe will be published in June.
My buddy Wayne hung up my beloved Miller Lite sign in my new basement office/bar/man cave last night. And with that final flourish, it's done, man, and I'm pretty darned happy with the finished project. I'll post some pictures here soon. I describe it as a mullet--business in front (work station and desk) party in the back (bar and bookshelves featuring much S&S and other books).
Recently I've completed a couple of essays that will be published, both as early as tomorrow, by Dave Ritzlin over at DMR Books and Bill Ward at Tales from the Magician's Skull. "Myth manifesting in the present: Robert E. Howard’s “Marchers of Valhalla”* was a semi-spontaneous eruption of sheer joy to see Howard making myth, very much in the vein of J.R.R. Tolkien, with this wonderful, lesser-known story that Dave recently reprinted in Renegade Swords 2. Anything with Vikings in it gets my attention, and when you combine REH at his wild, poetic best with mythic Aesir I'm all in.
The piece for Tales from the Magician's Skull, "Under the spell of Keith Taylor's Bard Songs"* was likewise inspired by two new-to-me stories from Keith Taylor from Renegades Swords 2 (these stories were first printed in the revival of Weird Tales back in 1988). Since then, I was able to obtain Keith's email address and wrote to him, and he's generously and at length been answering a series of 10 questions I posed to him about his early influences, writing career, and current health and upcoming plans. Great stuff from Keith which I hope to publish in some form or fashion.
(*Bonus points to those who spot the Blind Guardian references in both essays; they're pretty obvious).
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| Monster Tales! |
I have many fond memories of youthful reading. When I was in elementary school I was enthralled with the likes of Fire-Hunter by Jim Kjelgaard, Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe (abbreviated/illustrated version), and was engrossed/entertained/scared shitless by Monster Tales: Vampires, Werewolves & Things. I'm still looking for a reasonably-priced copy.
With the benefit of hindsight I realize that these books were leading me, inevitably, toward sword-and-sorcery. Barbaric/pre-historic heroes. Warfare. Monsters and the weird. Throw into a bubbling cauldron and you get S&S. Soon I would find The Savage Sword of Conan, and my path was fixed. But I was already leaning heavily in that direction.
My gateways to sword-and-sorcery are here at Tales from the Magician's Skull.
As mentioned on my last post, I was recently invited to guest on the Innsmouth Book Club podcast. That recording is now up; you can listen here (note: the podcast is hosted on Patreon but you don't have to be a patron to listen).
I have to say I was probably at my relaxed best; I had a lot of fun with this show. I spent a fair bit of my time on my childhood memories of what got me into S&S. I also relayed a story of the time I visited the abandoned Danvers State Hospital, one of the eeriest experiences of my life. I do after all live in Lovecraft country, a long stone's throw from the historical Innsmouth, Newburyport MA.
The two hosts were great and a lot of fun, and were well-read and asked some good questions that allowed me to ramble. It's amazing that you can just hop on a Zoom call and shoot the shit for an hour with two like-minded dudes from Britain. What a world.
The first 30 minutes or so are the two guests talking about Xuthal of the Dusk, with me joining later.
If you want to get invited on a podcast, the thing to do is to write a book (it's that easy! Well, not the writing of the book part, which is rather hard). Then apparently you have become an authority, or a quasi-celebrity, instead of an average boring dad who likes to read about men stabbing monsters, and each other, during his spare time.
Tomorrow I will be serving as guest on the UK-based Innsmouth Book Club, a podcast which covers HPL, CAS, REH, and other like authors. The hosts will be covering "The Slithering Shadow"/"Xuthal of the Dusk," then I'll be on to talk S&S more broadly. Little do these guests know I live within a stone's throw of the historical Innsmouth, Newburyport MA. And have seen Deep Ones (or maybe they were just drunk bar patrons ... who knows).
Next month I've been asked to guest on a new show called Unknown Worlds of the Merril Collection, with the episode to appear sometime this summer.
I've also been told that a podcast episode I did with Robert Zoltan on the Literary Wonder & Adventure Show last June is nearing 2K views. Check that out here.
Among the reasons I love to write is that it allows me to express my true and actual voice, which due to a combination of natural introversion (I definitely recharge in solitude, away from people) and mild social anxiety is far easier for me to do in the written word than in conversation. That's why I've resisted starting a podcast myself. I fear I'm not very glib, or interesting. Just interested in certain things, like S&S and heavy metal, if that makes sense.
I hope I can deliver something of value to these programs. Even against my natural inclinations I'm leaning into the apprehension and doing my part to spread the gospel of sword-and-sorcery.
On the writing side of things, I recently had published an academic essay, "From Pulps to Paperbacks: The role of medium in the development of sword-and-sorcery fiction," in The Journal of American Culture. The publisher is the Wiley Online Library and it's behind a paywall, but if you're interested and/or have library or other free access, you can find it here. One of my discoveries during the research and writing of Flame and Crimson was that sword-and-sorcery was shaped as much by medium as by the idiosyncratic contributions of individual authors. That's what this essay is about, covering the role of pulps, magazines and fanzines (in particular Amra), and mass-market paperbacks, on how sword-and-sorcery came to be. It was done on a very tight deadline after Jason Ray Carney, editor of The Dark Man, asked me to fill in for someone else who had to bail last minute, and so it relies on much material from Flame and Crimson. But the focus is more squarely on the medium, not the authors. I do hope it opens up S&S to some academic-types and other cultural observers.
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| Now that's old school. |
My top shelf has got the collected works of Rudyard Kipling, Rafael Sabatini’s Scaramouche, and several books by E.R. Eddison and Poul Anderson. The next shelf down are the Lancer Conan Saga, Karl Edward’s Kane, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Not exactly George R.R. Martin, Patrick Rothfuss, or John Scalzi. Any of which I could be into, but am really not, even if some day I do plan to finish A Song of Ice and Fire, if Martin ever gets around to it.
I do take comfort in the fact that I’m not alone. An adherent of Anglo-Saxon literature and Icelandic Saga, J.R.R. Tolkien was of the mind that anything after the Canterbury Tales was (mostly) not worth his time. I’m glad I’m not that extreme, or else I never would have discovered The Lord of the Rings or “Beyond the Black River.” But, in another sense I’m quite like Tolkien, my eyes cast ever backwards at the literature of a lost age. We’ll never have another golden age of sword-and-sorcery, when drugstores carried Conan the Buccaneer on their wire spinners and Thundarr the Barbarian thundered through living rooms on Saturday mornings. But that doesn’t mean I’ve moved on from those glory days. Today my drugstore is Abe Books and Ebay, where I hunt down old copies of Pursuit on Ganymede and Raven 5: A Time of Dying. And I know there are many others like me, based on what I’ve seen in the Facebook groups I belong to.
My tastes in reading are analogous to my tastes in music, which is likewise the music of my youth. My favorite bands are Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, KISS, Rush, and AC/DC. Some of these guys are still writing new material—some of it damned good—but mostly they are associated with their heyday in the 70s and 80s. If you’re a fan, you’re ancient history, pal.
I would not say I’m a hopeless case, irrevocably trapped in the past. I can and do enjoy some new stuff. Battle Beast, a young Finnish metal band for example, caught my attention, and now have muscled their way into my playlist alongside the likes of Blind Guardian and Pantera. I like Joe Abercrombie, including the likes of The Heroes (2011). At this very moment I’m reading and enjoying Brian Keene’s The Lost Level (2015), which just came out in the last decade.
But on some level even these “new” finds are anachronistic, often deliberately so, which continues to prove my point that I like old shit. For example, The Lost Level is a clear homage to the likes of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Pellucidar series. Battle Beast is an unabashed throwback to the 80s. It should come as no surprise that the band draws inspiration for its sound and lyrics from that era. Even in the new stuff I consume, I’m drawn inevitably to older forms of expression.
I do wonder: Do we develop our tastes during a formative time in our lives and become part of us forever? Does some biochemical process shape our malleable brains between the ages of 8-18, and permanently alter our mental wiring? Musician and musicologist Nolan Gasser offers some answers along those lines, arguing that the music you listened to as a youth placed you within a culture that formed part of your identity:
“I actually use the term ‘intraculture’ to describe cultures that take place within a culture,” he explains, likening them to subgenres of music. “A lot of it has to do with where you grew up and what kind of musical influences are in the air, but we participate in so many subcultures of affinity, just based on what we like. Intracultures provide us with access to music just because you’re a part of a group, and that group means something to you.”
“Music becomes that stake in the ground — ‘this is who I am,’” says Gasser. “But at the same time, the music people listened to at an early age becomes their native home comfort music. When they grow up, that music will be part of who they are, tied in with memories and growing up. All of these powers are why music is so important to us.”
There is no doubt that heavy metal had its own culture and ethos, one that I participated in, and on some level still do. I may be indistinguishable from your average everyday middle-aged middle class dude, but I have a metal spirit in me, an anti-authoritarian streak and a pride in having tastes that are harsher than the mainstream, even anathema in some quarters. I’m sure that’s part of the reason why I maintain such an enduring loyalty for these bands.
Interesting is my lack of nostalgia in other areas—I enjoy the latest psychology and self-help books, for example. I delight in the latest and greatest beer from new breweries (Heady Topper is way better than Pabst Blue Ribbon). I’ve come to enjoy podcasts as a new medium for consuming information and entertainment, even though I still prefer the printed page over e-books.
It’s really only certain forms of art, in particular music and fantasy literature, where my preferences clearly lie with works pre-1990.
Another possible explanation: Were the authors and musicians of my youth simply better at their craft? Were these subgenres—heavy metal and sword-and-sorcery—more widely practiced because they were more lucrative, or more creatively vital, and hence attracted more and greater talent, producing better art than we see today? Perhaps. Some authors can and did make a living writing for Weird Tales back in the day, and of course many metal acts made a fortune in the 80s. Artists don’t enjoy the same market realities today. The bar to writing and publishing stories and music is easier than ever, but I don’t believe it’s as easy to make a living at either these days.
Who knows. Be it a matter of identity and cultural imprinting, or idiosyncratic tastes, it’s hard to say why I enjoy the old shit. All I know that is that heavy metal and Tolkien and sword-and-sorcery were my obsessions then, remain so today, and likely always will be.
