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Monday, June 16, 2014

A Metal Father's Day: Kreator!

There have been a lot of new hires at my workplace in the past couple weeks. This means having to train them, hoping that all persons involved in training them have similar styles of working to show them so they don't get frustrated and walk away from the job, leaving us short-staffed even longer, it means answering the same interview style questions, which now, being in my late 20s, even includes "Do you have any kids?", to which I always answer with an uncomfortable laugh and a happy and enthusiastic "Nooo!". I try to let them bring up the topic of music so I don't stand there and ramble on about all the metal I have been discovering in the past several months.



Kreator -Endless Pain (full album)
1985


I am sitting here listening to Kreator for the first time ever. I have been listening to a lot of Triumph from Canada (for some reason I always feel the urge to explain that they are from Canada, maybe it is my subconscious way of honoring their homeland because it somewhat reminds me of mine and I kinda sorta miss Alaska sometimes, though that seems like a far stretch from a good reason for such a compulsion), oh yeah, and I've been listening to copious amounts of DOKKEN!

Once the coworkers turn on the spigot that is the Talk of Music, I literally go on for hours about me, me, me, I, I, I.
I try to ask them questions to keep them involved, but I'm sorry, I just really don't care to hear your somewhat apathetic talk about Taylor Swift and, Jesus Christ, do I have to hear this band name another hundred thousand times before people stop assuming that just because I like heavier music that it must mean that I listen to THE MELVINS??!?!?!

(To be fair, someone has played a large of amount of The Melvins for me recently. And yeah... I dig it. Don't tell anyone though.)

I'm not trying to be an elitist when it comes to music, I am just really excited and enthusiastic about metal so that is what I talk about, wear, listen to, eat, breathe, live.... you know. At least I am lively and passionate about it!

However, speaking about a specific band. I see my friends sporting Kreator patches on their jackets a lot, and it's a name that has always been familiar, but I never really took the time to sit down and listen to them. There was one last push that got me to really sit here and give them a listen, otherwise I would be writing about the wonderful opera-like vocals of Dokken forever and ever and ever.

First off, I want to say that I have had an amazing past couple of weeks. The past few days especially have been just wonderful, we had the Georgetown Carnival here in Georgetown, Seattle, There have been some good local shows going on that my friends were involved in, etc. etc. Needless to say I have had plenty of reasons to drink, toast, and be merry. In a nutshell: I've been drunk for about 5 days straight, and today I decided that I don't need to drink. I need to cleanse my system, rehydrate, plump up my wallet, and save up to travel for my Grandma's birthday party which I have recently been informed is sometime next month.

********* Feel free to skip the next couple of paragraphs and continue reading at the asterisks below. Like, seriously, you should probably not read anything between this sentence and the asterisks that follow. Seriously.
Like, seriously.

So, about the push that made me choose to listen to Kreator today instead of everything I am already familiar with and can sing along with even if I turn blind and deaf tomorrow. Last night was a doozy. I have never, ever used that word in a sincere fashion, in my life. But here we go. I work with pizza. I deliver pizza, I manage the drivers, I work closely with the kitchen. After an awful night of management at work with a new guy in charge of making pies on the line who works about as hard as a broken park bench, half a crew of newbie (albeit friendly) drivers, the return of an hourly manager from hell, a new kitchen lead that makes the hourly manager from hell feel like a breath of fresh air, and having to send 3...

count'em one, two, THREE

of my drivers 15 miles North to pick up dough from another store at different points in time during the night, wasting their gas, their time, and my resources for a busy night... After this excruciatingly painful night of our molasses-slow kitchen consistently putting out pies in 45 minutes and still dealing with this supervisor with a terrible attitude and the worst communication skills I've seen in about 5 years, I went next door to the bar with some fellow coworkers who also could not seem to wrap their head around the poorest management that has been demonstrated on a Sunday night since we were manager-less, down to half our kitchen crew, and offering $100-$200 bonuses to anyone, ANYONE, who could provide a good referral for new-hire drivers because we were so horribly short-staffed, months and months ago.

******** Some coworkers and I went next door and got to sit down like friends for the first time in weeks. We're a good mix of people usually. I ordered a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon because, quite frankly, I am beered-out for a while. After a toast and the first sip. I realized I still hadn't called my dad to wish him a Happy Father's Day! The day was already over, I really should have done it earlier, but it's better late than never. I went outside and gave my dad a call. He and my mom were recording some show, it might have been the new craze that is "Orange is the New Black". I don't watch TV, I don't know. We caught up for a bit, and I was explaining what my new friends here are into. I talked about the metal community here and how awesome everyone has been to me. I feel like I am finally home. He asked what bands pop up a lot in conversation. Eighties hair metal and heavy metal, and that style in general. He perked up and said,

"Oh yeah, I have boxes and boxes of records and tapes of those bands. Bands like Anvil, Dokken, Kreator, right?"

And I felt like a piano got dropped on me. HELLO! My own father is a goldmine of knowledge and endless metal music who I have foolishly (and unintentionally) avoided talking about music with for the greater portion of the quarter century I have been on this Earth.

"Yes! Yes!" I said, "Exactly!"

This is how it went down in my mind anyways. We continued catching up, said Happy Father's Day, and ended the call. I went back into the bar to finish my half hour old wine and had a great time with my coworkers. I didn't even think about the shitty night again, or about the new tyrant lead. None of it matters, it's just work and I can leave my work at the door when I clock out. I now have better, more important things on my mind.

After years and years of somewhat neglecting the "old" music my dad has countless records and tapes of, I want nothing more than to go back to Anchorage and dig through them. I want to listen to every single record, every single tape. I want to learn! There's so much about my dad that I knew, yet somehow still don't know!
I want to share this person with my new friends. It seems silly to write this out honestly, but I love my dad! He's the raddest, happiest, most highly motivated, responsible, coolest, and most FUN person that could have raised me.

I am so happy and feel so lucky that I have a Metal dad.
Why I never thought about organizing some sort of Metal Father's Day thing or something, I have no idea. This is something I may help organize in the future. The fountain of ideas and inspiration is flowing.

This long-winded ramble of a post could have easily been reduced to a couple sentences...

"So I called my dad and told him about my friends. He likes the same music as them and mentioned Kreator. That's why I'm listening to Kreator right now, FINALLY."

But that's no fun.

I am enjoying Kreator, by the way. I have been listening to various albums through the course of the morning as I write this. It's very much my dad's style, and very much what I am enjoying these days. 

Happy Father's Day (though it's the day after now). If you haven't called your dad and you are able to, please give your poppa some love. You never know what you will end up talking about!


 PS- Can I say that I just noticed and realized the amazing coincidence / irony of the name of this band and the topic of this entry?
Kreator, Creator, Fathers, Dads, Makin' babies... creating life... Kreator....

yeah... kinda just blew my mind.





father's day, hair metal, sharing music with my dad, metal dads, Dokken, Triumph, Kreator, metal and father's day, poor management, attitude problems, managers with poor communication, records, tapes, work sucks, I don't know what kind of keywords to put here anymore, listen to Kreator now!

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