The Battle Of Growing Older

So, I'm about to turn 35 in a couple of days. Now, this may not seem like a big deal to many, especially many fellow collectors who have a few more miles on their meter, but it somehow feels like it to me. 40 is not that far away once you turn 35. Yeah, age is just a number and you're only as old as you feel, yadda yadda. But deep down, we all know these are just hollow phrases. Subconsciously (or not) I've been listening to a lot of music I was listening to when I first got into hardcore and punk. Yesterday I wrote that the Beastie Boys were a gateway band for me, well the same is true for Rage Against The Machine. They were touring on this LP when I caught them live at a big festival and that turned everything around for me. It also helped they had Guerilla Radio on the soundtrack of THPS2, which was basically all I was doing at the time when I was not skateboarding. All of that seems forever ago and growing older just sucks.

A Detour And A Happy End

When Green Day and The Offspring became huge in the mid 90's, both bands were sort of my gateway bands to punk and hardcore. Well, they could have been, if I had shown a little more commitment and had been a little less influenced by my friends and classmates back then. That could have been sort of a cool introduction to my hardcore CV. However, I took a teeny tiny detour of about 4-5 years during which I listened to all kinds of (in hindsight mostly crappy) music. Some bands I still like, most of them are best kept under a cloak of silence, haha. 

The band that re-ignited everything for me was Rage Against The Machine. In 2000 I was at a huge festival in Germany and I caught their set more or less by chance. I was there to see a lot of other bands and a buddy and I just went to the main stage because there was nothing interesting going on at the other stages. When I heard the music and saw Zack going wild on the stage and pouring out so much energy, I was hooked immediately. All of a sudden I didn't really know why I'd wanted to see all these other bands. I think I bought Battle Of Los Angeles, which had just come out, the day after I was home from the festival. And from there everything unraveled. Never mind it took me a few more years to find out Zach had also been in one of the best hardcore bands ever and only close to 17 years to finally pick up something by RATM on vinyl.