If You Could Go Back In Time and Give Yourself Advice (on music, What Would It Be?

I'll put this in the metal section, as I expect that's what it'll mostly be about.

I'm talking about going back and giving your younger self tips on cool bands that were around at that time but that you didn't follow or know about for whatever reason. I have several specific regrets that if I could I would steer my younger self in a different direction.

There were several bands in the 70's that, while they were great bands (clearly better than the ones I'll recommend to myself- I admit it); only offered up hard rock as a part of their reperatoire, sometimes in pretty small doses. I'm talking about Queen, Rush, as well as Styx and several others. Again great bands, but I spent a lot more time listening to them than I should have given my tastes at the time. So here is the advice I'd give my 18-21 year old self.

more Sweet and less Queen (I only knew Sweet's bubblegum stuff)
more Budgie and less Rush (I read a bad review of Budgie and didn't buy)
more (I dunno, Magnum maybe by '78 or so) rather than Styx.

I never did find an alternative to BOC.

The other advice I'd give myself is to check deeper into German rock. I only knew "Krautrock", which was interesting but kinda out there, stuff like Can and Amon Duul. What I didn't know was that there were tons of bands that were more accessible like Kin Ping Meh, Gift, Epitaph, Birth Contol, and a bunch of others with a Deep Purple or Urian Heep influence more or less. I would have enjoyed a lot of those.

p.s-also I should have drank less, but that's another post!

I would tell myself the following:

1. Don't buy cassettes, buy the vinyl and record them on blank cassettes.

2. Start buying cds in 1990.

3. Keep your vinyl!

4. Don't pay so much for those "rare" cds. All that stuff gets reissued eventually.

Judas Priest is a band I never gave much attention to back in the day. The same goes for Saxon. So they just don't have the same nostalgic value as they probably should.

Good topic but atm I am drawing a blank....

Stay away from "metal message boards". They will waste your time and cost you money.

Don't buy 'Canyon Dreams' from Tangerine Dream as your introduction to the band. Get 'Rubycon' or 'Phaedra' regardless of whether they're $10 more.

First and foremost, "Don't put that album back in the bin and walk away"

Then probably either, "Go to that second/third audition" or "Ya should of took that offer to join this/that band"

(Circa 1983) You really should be buying more vinyl.

(Circa 1988): Cassette tapes suck. Quit being a cheap ass and get a CD player already.

(Circa 1989) Hey, listen... that band "Killen" that you're gonna see live tonight? They suck. I mean, they really, REALLY suck. BUT....20 years from now, there will be metal collector geeks out there who will gladly pay a couple hundred bucks for their album... so buy up every copy of it at their merch table. TRUST me on this.

(Circa 1990): Stage diving is stupid. You really should reconsider your plan to do it at the show tonight. You and your ankle will thank me later.

Retaliate by going to the skinhead shows and start trouble at THEIR gigs.

Although Ozzy Osbourne and Nikki Sixx make good music, they are not positive role models for how to live your life!

Don't take genres so seriously. You're not impressing anybody.

Be a better guitarist so I wouldn't be stuck in cubicle hell for my adult life.

I would have held onto SOME of my vinyl back in 1990 when I sold it all. Definitely would not have sold some things that were personal to me, such as my autographed copy of HEATHENS RAGE EP. Who would have guessed it would be so highly sought after decades later and sell for hundreds of dollars on auction sites?

I would not have skipped on going to the last Death tour when it hit my home town.

Of course, looking back on life, there are many things any person would probably change. However, I tend to think things happen for a reason, so I'm not sure I would actually change much.

Fat Freddy wrote:

(Circa 1990): Stage diving is stupid. You really should reconsider your plan to do it at the show tonight. You and your ankle will thank me later.

Stage diving, while now seemingly frowned upon at most metal shows, is probably the most fun thing there is to do at a show.

I remember going to see Iced Earth in 1999 or so, and learning pretty fast that, contrary to the Anthrax and Exodus videos I saw in middle school on Headbanger's Ball, people at metal shows are generally not into shenanigans. I adapted, because I'm not trying to be a dick....but it really dashed my dreams of being in a "Toxic Waltz" like metal video. Ha.

Fortunately, I also went to punk and hardcore shows, where it was quite acceptable.

ZombieHavoc wrote:

Fat Freddy wrote:

(Circa 1990): Stage diving is stupid. You really should reconsider your plan to do it at the show tonight. You and your ankle will thank me later.

Stage diving, while now seemingly frowned upon at most metal shows, is probably the most fun thing there is to do at a show.

Oh yeah, no denyin' it's fun to do once.... ONCE. But when you're young and stupid and you go "Wow, that was cool, I gotta do that again" and you push your luck (like I did as a wee lad), you end up with a badly sprained ankle because nobody in the crowd wants to catch you on your second or third go-round.

I hate stage diving! I go to concerts to watch and listen to the bands. I don't go to catch people jumping from the stage and expecting me to catch them. All you are doing is getting in my way of watching the band perform.

I feel the same way about moshing for the most part, yet I don't mind moshing when I am performing. Haha. Double standard, I know.

ultmetal wrote:

I hate stage diving! I go to concerts to watch and listen to the bands. I don't go to catch people jumping from the stage and expecting me to catch them. All you are doing is getting in my way of watching the band perform.

I feel the same way about moshing for the most part, yet I don't mind moshing when I am performing. Haha. Double standard, I know.

What about stage diving when you are performing? I could see that being annoying to a performer, depending how the stage is and where they are coming from, and what not.

At the same time, if it didn't interfere with your playing, it'd look pretty cool to watch people dropping from the ceiling while you are playing.

I did vocals for a hardcore band, circa 2001 or thereabouts, and nothing got me more stoked than people practically hanging from the rafters above the stage.

Witchfinder wrote:

I would tell myself the following:

1. Don't buy cassettes, buy the vinyl and record them on blank cassettes.

Yes! I'm dealing with that right now as I convert my cassettes into mp3s to get rid of them. Most of them play fine but I've run across a few that don't play right anymore or, for some reason, will play fine for a while and then start sounding like the tape is wrinkled for some reason. Frustrating!

As far as bands, it would be a little difficult for the past me to take advice from the future me, especially in my pre-college years. I was a child of the '80s who grew up in a small NorCal town and didn't have access to a great selection of music. For example, I can't get enough Running Wild today but, back then, I don't know if I'd been able to find their albums. Maybe the Sacramento Tower Records. I'm not sure. There are a lot of non-metal artists, too, that I wish I'd heard when I was a kid like Fad Gadget but, again, I don't know if the local Wherehouse carried it.

One piece of advice I can think of: Less Phil Collins. Don't think I would've listened, though.

As a kid, I would've LOVED the Internet! I would've been obsessed and gotten no school work done.

ZombieHavoc wrote:

ultmetal wrote:

I hate stage diving! I go to concerts to watch and listen to the bands. I don't go to catch people jumping from the stage and expecting me to catch them. All you are doing is getting in my way of watching the band perform.

I feel the same way about moshing for the most part, yet I don't mind moshing when I am performing. Haha. Double standard, I know.

What about stage diving when you are performing? I could see that being annoying to a performer, depending how the stage is and where they are coming from, and what not.

At the same time, if it didn't interfere with your playing, it'd look pretty cool to watch people dropping from the ceiling while you are playing.

I did vocals for a hardcore band, circa 2001 or thereabouts, and nothing got me more stoked than people practically hanging from the rafters above the stage.

Never really had a big problem with that, though at one show a guy got on stage and stumbled into my mic stand and gave me a big fat lip from the mic crashing onto my mouth. Yes, that was annoying.

I remember seeing Raven back around 86 or 87 and people were trying to get on the stage and John Gallagher was just kicking them off. I mean, literally kicking them or stomping on their hands as they put their hands onto the stage. I was in the front row and had no intention of getting onto the stage and had my hand stepped on by him. I loved Raven, but I gotta say, it ticked me off at the time.

buy more vinyl and not cassettes.

dont give away your vinyl, stupid.

take care of your vinyl, as in dont' leave them in a box on the floor just waiting to be ruined by basement flooding.

Should have gave equal attention to heavy metal that came out in the 1970s as I did to the stuff of the 80's and 90's.

Buy vinyl, not cassettes.
Get into CDs at least four years earlier.
Don't be so concerned with whether it's 'metal', just whether you like it.
Also, who cares what other people think? You aren't getting it for them.
Put that one back; you'll hate it before you've even finished listening to it. (Waaaay too many albums that applies to...)

ultmetal wrote:

I remember seeing Raven back around 86 or 87 and people were trying to get on the stage and John Gallagher was just kicking them off. I mean, literally kicking them

So that's why they call the fans in the front row the "punters!"

DON'T SELL ALL YOUR EXTREMELY RARE ORIGINAL CD'S TO DIMPLE RECORDS JUST BECAUSE YOUR 20 SOMETHING, EXTREMELY DUMB AND HAVE BEEN AN IDIOT WITH YOUR MONEY SO YOU NEED QUICK MONEY TO KEEP THE LIGHTS ON!


And yes....NEVER buy cassettes.

Most of the ones already mentioned. Never buy cassettes, continue to purchase LPs as long as they were an available format, keep your original pre-1997 CDs to avoid the "loudness wars" and most importantly don't put your LPs in a storage unit when going to college...which gets broken into and the entire collection is stolen.

Time travel back to the mid-80s and stock up on every used progressive rock and jazz LP that I could get my hands on.