A funny thing happened to me last night. As I was going home at around 7:30pm, I put the car radio on and switched to NU 107. (I was all alone, by the way.)

I heard a familiar heavy metal mellow intro. By “familiar”, I mean I know the song is a heavy metal one but I don’t necessarily know the title of the song. I thought, “Hmmm, new band. Feels like they know what they are doing though.”

“Wow, I really like the guitar riffs on this one. ” I said to myself. The distorted guitars chugging away was very “clean”.  The voice was very powerful - suits a heavy metal band (some metal bands have weird-voiced vocalists). Read more »

August 3, 1963

Arguably, the album that revolutionized rock n roll… and launched grunge into mainstream.

The baby in the album is now a teenager. He’s seventeen years old and thinks it would have been cooler to be a teen in the 90’s.  I couldn’t agree with him more. Although I still think my teen life in the 90’s sucked, the rock music scene at that time was much more intense. His name is Spencer Elden, by the way.

Death Magnetic… Metallica’s ninth album.

Mission Metallica… view the trailer.

Metallica… still the best heavy metal band of all time.

I already heard some riffs from some songs and they sounded like 80’s and 90’s Metallica. Hopefully most, if not all, songs sound like those what I’ve heard.

… and they brought back the solos.

I recently purchased a Michael Jackson concert DVD. I know he’s yesterday’s news but I have always been in awe of his performance since I was a child.

Through the years, my musical inclination changed from folk to hip-hop to heavy metal (and all genres of rock) and back to folk to hip-hop and to any good music, but my admiration of Michael Jackson’s music (or performance) never dwindled. He may be the king of pop but he should be on a genre of his own. You can’t categorize Michael Jackson. He’s like the exception to a rule. Well, in my book at least.

By the way, when the time comes and you appreciate any genre of music, it means you are getting old. I’m still a die-hard Metallica fan but I have “softened up” to appreciate music by Josh Groban(!), Black Eyed Peas, Usher, etc. Read more »