This antiTorial was originally published in August of 2003. With the
first anniversary of the tragic fire at The Station Night Club, I decided
to rerun it for those that missed it the first time around. It has been
slightly edited to coincide with the anniversary date (originally 6 months,
now a year).
I once got into a fight over Ozzy Osbourne.
I was in fifth grade and earlier in that same year I had an epiphany the
first time I saw Quiet Riot’s “Come On Feel the Noise” on MTV. A lightbulb
went off in my head and something said “this is it!”. I had discovered
heavy metal and it would change my life. I quickly moved on from Quiet
Riot to more established metal artists like Judas Priest and Ozzy Osbourne.
One day I was walking home from school
and these two “trendy” kids started giving me a hard time. My memory of
the incident isn’t exactly clear but it turned into us insulting each other
over music. I might have told them that “Simon LeBon was a fag,” (Duran
Duran was the hot trendy band at the time) and they came in with “Ozzy
sucks”. I wasn’t having that and it soon turned to blows, with those two
guys against little ol’ me. Lucky for my skinny underweight ass, the fight
broke out a couple doors from my house and my older brother raced out and
beat those two kids off.
It seems funny now looking back that I
got into a fight to defend Ozzy, especially with what his image had become
courtesy of his wife and MTV. But back then Ozzy was God to all self-respecting
metalheads!
I did get the last laugh a few years later.
It must have been in 8th or 9th grade and I had to go to the locker room
to get something after school. It was pretty much deserted with the exception
of two guys (yup you guessed it, the same two I had fought) who were in
there blasting “Blizzard Of Ozz”. God, I love hypocrites.
Another incident I will never forget occurred
in the fall of my 8th grade year. I was riding my bike home through a shortcut
in the dried up riverbed near my house when I ran into “Hammer”.
Hammer was an older kid, must have been 17 at the time but he was huge
with really long hair and we all looked up to him. He was like the king
of the metalheads in our town. I remembered how proud I was the day he
gave me a nickname; “mini-metalhead”. Yeah, it seems lame now, but
back them when the older kids I looked up to called me that it was a sign
of acceptance and a badge of honor.
So I walked my bike along with Hammer and
he told me that I needed to gather up all the “rockers” at the Jr. High
and have them meet in the parking lot of the high school at 3:00 o’clock
on Tuesday because we were gonna beat the shit out of the football team.
(metalheads in my town were known as “rockers” in those days).
I was really into reading “The Outsiders”
at that age, since I readily identified with the “greaser” characters of
the book. So there we were about to have our own “rumble”. I was excited
and raced to school on Monday and told all my friends to be there!
Our honor was at stake. What happened was
on the previous Friday, one of our crowd, a guy named Robert Maze, was
sucker punched by a jock in the lunch line at the high school. When he
went to fight the guy back, all his jock friends jumped in and you can
figure out the rest.
The closing bell rang on Tuesday and I
meet up with all of my friends in front of the school. There were about
20 of us and we grabbed our bike chains, ready to rumble. We walked over
to the high school (about three blocks away) and once we got there, we
beheld a site I’ll never forget. The large parking lot was filled with
metalheads. There must have been at least 200, if not more, metalheads
there ready to teach the jocks a lesson. Rockers came from miles around
to join in, some as far away as Long Beach (about 20 miles from where we
were at). The jocks didn’t stand a chance and their coach obviously agreed
because he quickly high-tailed the team into the locker room and called
the cops.
Once the cops got there, we dispersed peacefully,
but the jocks learned a lesson that day; you don’t mess with the rockers.
And that’s the main point of why I am writing this.
We are all in this together. I know for
me personally music has been a defining element in my life, ever since
I caught the bug way back when from that Quiet Riot video. A lot of my
friends, I know through music in one shape or another. It’s part of who
I am and sets me apart from the “regular” people out there, even today.
Most people think of music as simply entertainment,
they go from trend to trend without any thought. But I know a lot of our
regular readers are like me, music to them is much more than background
noise or catchy jingles on the radio. It’s a part of their makeup;
who they are.
Let’s face it, that’s what brings a lot
of us together here at antiMUSIC. We may come from totally different walks
of life, live under different socio-economic backgrounds, even our politics
are vastly varied from one person to the next, from hardcore communist
to hardline libertarians. But we all share a common bond which keeps us
coming back day after day and interacting with each other here at this
little corner of cyberspace. Despite the anonymous nature of pen-names
or words on the screen, a lot of us have gotten to know each other
from our visits here. And it was all born out of a love for music, that
was the defining factor that has brought us together in much the same way
that it brought hundreds of rockers together that day long ago in that
parking lot to defend the honor of our friend.
Some people have paid the ultimate price
for that love of music. That’s the heart of what I am writing about here
today. It’s been one year since the tragic nightclub fire in Rhode Island
claimed the lives of a hundred people at a Great White concert. These were
die-hard fans of hard rock, not your run of the mill trendy concertgoers.
Let’s be honest, Great White hadn’t been in the limelight for sometime,
so those who payout the money to see them perform are the hardcore fans.
While their contemporaries sat at home watching TV or went to the trendy
nightspots to dance, they were out at concerts keeping the form of music
they loved alive.
We’re not here to talk about blame for
why they lost their lives. Sure, it wasn’t a great idea to use pyro in
such a small club and it sure as hell wasn’t a great idea for the club
owners to line the walls with highly flammable “packing foam” for soundproofing.
That’s not the point of this article; the lawyers will sort that out eventually.
The point is, anyone of us could have just
as easily met the same fate as those hundred. I know most of our regular
readers aren’t typically the same as those who would attend a Great White
concert but we do have a lot in common with those who did on that fateful
night, February 20th, 2003.
What happened in Rhode Island could just
as easily happen at any number of small clubs all over the world. I know
I’ve been to my fair share of “firetraps” to see concerts, especially from
underground bands. I know most of you have too. And chances are the
thought of something like the fire that happened at The Station happening
at one of our favorite music clubs never even occured to us. It must have
been the same for those there that night. They just went out to see a band
they loved perform.
That night a few hundred people who love
a brand of hard rock that isn’t exactly in fashion ventured out for a night
of fun and music. Many of them have been to that club before for numerous
concerts. While the kids they grew up with, who followed the trends, most
likely grew out of the music years ago, something about the music lit a
spark in those who attended the show that they never let go of and they
never traded their Great White CD’s in for Celine Dion. Change Great
White for your favorite band and you can see where I’m coming from.
This tragedy should really hit home for
all of us who really love music. It doesn’t matter if we are fans of that
brand of rock or not, it could have happened at any show. This personally
touched me because I did know the band member who died in the fire, although
I readily admit not well.
Ty Longley wanted one thing above all in
life, to make music. He was a genuinely good guy and carried himself in
a lighthearted manor. When you first met him, he made you feel like you’ve
known him for years; he was so at ease with people and always full of humor.
I know the last thing he would have wanted to do was hurt his fans. He
was living out his dream by playing with Great White and looking forward
to getting home to start a family with his pregnant girlfriend Heidi. His
is just one story among the hundred that can be told about those who perished
in the fire simply because they loved a form of music. I'm not trying to
make them out to be heroes who died for rock n roll, but in a way they
are.
As the first anniversary of the tragedy
approaches, I have been reflecting back on the little time I spent with
Ty and am grateful to have known him. I know those who knew the 100 hundred
people who died in the fire are still morning their death. A lot are playing
the “what if” game and wishing that the fateful night had never occurred.
But we can’t turn back time and make it all go away.
What we can do, is never forget those who
died that night. They lost their lives because they were true believers
who loved a certain form of music or they wouldn’t have been there. If
you had the chance to ask them if they would be willing to die for the
music, the answer would most likely be no, but all of us who venture out
to small clubs for live music may also be taking that chance every single
time we enter the door to hear a band play.
We are all in this together because of
the music. It binds us in a way that those who don’t share that love will
never understand. Whether it’s punk, metal, hardcore, 80’s hard rock or
nu-metal, we may listen to different music but we all share the same respect
and love for the music that connects with us at a deep level of our beings.
It sounds cheesy, but there really is no other way to describe it. I'm
sure for a lot of those who went to the Station that night to see Great
White it was the same way. It was the same thing that brought all our rocker
friends together that one tuesday afternoon to defend our friend's and
our honor.
So on February 20th at 11:00 PM EST, take
a moment to remember those who died in this tragic fire. Though we may
not have ever met any of them, in many ways they were our friends.
-Keavin
L to R: antiMUSIC's Keavin Wiggins, Joni Vie,
her husband Enuff Z'nuff's Donnie Vie and Ty Longley
Halloween Eve '02 @ The Cat Club
Fan Speak:
What do you think?
Fan
Speak:
Posted by mudpuppy: great article. i'm curently a senior in
highschool and dont 'fit in', but i do have my music, and i feel i can
relate to what someone says in their music when they are being truly honest
about it(real music, not that industry created, cloned plastic cr*p they
want you to think is music, like that pathetic avril and 182 cr*p), and
when you hear somthing you can relate to you defenetly don't feel as alone
knowing that there are people out there dealing with sh*t, and some of
the time it is the same cr*p u go through. That's whats great about real
music- it conects people, and helps to console, or let out your anger,
or whatever type of catharsis u might be in need of. the most important
thing in life is to find out who u r, in my opinion, and stay true to yourself,
and as long as there r honest people(not necsarily nice and all sunshiny
and happy), there will always be true honest music.
Posted by
KiFi62: I sure love music but find it very difficult
to relate with other people through it, music can make you feel a sense
of belonging too, but isn't that what the outcasts run away from? to be
individual? even if I try I cant understand anyone else's point of view
in music nor them to me so I guess it's...kinda fecked up...I've lost me
point?
Posted by
Keavin: Glad some people got something, if anything,
out of this. Jesus, great seeing someone my own age on here! I had the
opposite reaction with Maiden and Metallica. I loved Maiden from the get
go but hated Metallica when all my friends jumped on their bandwagon (that's
a topic for a future antiTorial). I'm still a metalhead at heart, still
love the music but like you I've branched out into other stuff. Always
listened classic rock stuff but now my listening habits are pretty varied
but there is always a healthy helping of hard rock in metal in the mix.
And I totally agree with you on listening to some of that stuff now. A
while ago I came across my old Vinnie Vincent Invasion tape and popped
it in and had a few chuckles. So of that stuff was downright cheesy but
I thought it was so cool when it came out. Was never a big Grim Reaper
fan but I loved their "big" video and I saw it a while ago on VH1 classic
and laughed my ass off! I can see how people who didn't grow up in the
80's can only see it for the cheesiness but I wouldn't have wanted to grow
up in any other time.
Posted by
Jesus Schwartz: ...Quiet Riot in fifth grade, that was
exactly the turning point for me as well; I remember making their mask
out of constuction paper, and since I had gotten glasses about the same
time I had to cut extra holes so my glasses would go on as well...Ozzy,
Judas Priest, and AC/DC were still very big at the time as well, but I
thought Iron Maiden was too heavy, until 8th grade when I first heard Metallica
and then I thought Iron Maiden was too soft; that was when "Somewhere In
Time" came out, so in a way I was right...I don't consider myself a metalhead
these days, since I actually can stomach some of the newer stuff on the
radio and the underground stuff has gotten either too unintelligible or
way too intricate for my simple three-chord tastes, but I still jam the
same music I listened to 20 years ago, although it's a bit hard to hear
Twisted Sister, Krokus, Loudness, Vinnie Vincent Invasion, and Grim Reaper
without laughing a little bit, especially when I remember how much it meant
to me as a kid and how corny those same tapes sound nowadays...thanks for
the memories, and for making me feel not so old...
Posted by
Dr Fever: Very powerful stuff their, Keavin. I could
say more, but I think you said everything my man.
Posted by
MadHat: Fantastic Site For Ty Longley and R.I.
Station Fire Friends located at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Ty_Longley/
. . Tons of great stuff here!
Posted by
DeadSun: Being born with a copy of the Clash's
self titled debut under every infant's arm--- wow--- you just think of
everything O' Green One. That would have been pisser, though I DO think
that White Riot shouldn't be played too loudly if the physician is performing
a circumcision.
Posted by
GREENMUSE: possibly the best thing ive ever read.when
i grow up i want to write like keavin.for me the album that was the gateway
into the realms of rocknroll was def leppards hysteria,yeah i know its
not the coolest thing in the world,but hey lets face we all arent borne
with a copy of the clash's self titled tucked under our arm.though if i
had it my way we would.it was mainly through an older kid whom i got my
musical ideas from,chris was by far the coolest kid in the neighborhood,and
it was a real honor to hang around him and skate and listen to the latest
in 80's rock.i got my first real skateboard from him,a g&s chris miller,even
saw my first taste of porn at his house,something to do with a nun with
large breasts is all i remember.i never had the luxury of fitting into
a group,unless there is a group for kids labled gay,then i would have fit
there.not even the kids who sat in the cafeteria playing dungeons and dragons
all day would be seen with me,i dont mean the normal players of the game,i
mean the ones who really belive they are tr'lion,king of the elves wouldnt
be seen around me,but later on in vo-tech(the vocational school for the
future derlicts of america),i was in the automotive class. i was like the
beloved gimp,i was the only one who liked rock,by this time i was into
marilyn manson so i was really considered the oddity(it was around 95 or
so so he still rocked then),everyone else there was either a country or
rap fan,this led to a weird sort of grouping,but for the most part we got
on well.my antics got people to like me.so i cant say ive fought anyone
over music,but people still ask my why i listen to such garbage.
Posted by
Rainbow: Loved the article! I love, miss and think
about Ty everyday, and I realize I, too, could have been there along with
those people that night. RIP I Love You Ty!
Posted by
lrm110484: I didn't really fit into any group at
all in high school. I'll admit that I attempted to fit in during my freshman
year. I had just moved after being a complete loser who had never owned
a tape or CD and didn't know sh*t about music at my old school. The only
music I ever had heard was contemporary christian, which was what my mom
played on the radio. I was sick of being out of it, so I started listening
to rap, or whatever the hell other people were listening to. Then came
the question, "Who am I?", which I couldn't answer. Luckily, I visited
the Rock and Roll hall of fame the next summer, which made me realize how
blind I had been to older music, and music in general. That was the turning
point. Now I listen to old, good metal as well as hard, virtuosic rock.
I've even been playing a lot of blues lately. Now I can't stand MTV or
any current musical trends, because they prevent you from thinking or finding
yourself. As being a victim of a crime makes you hate that particular crime
more, being a victim of the trend allowed me to throw away the bullsh*t,
MTV and Billboard promoted CDs that I had earlier, and think for myself.
Posted by
Zodiac: I consider myself a rocker, Im still in
highschool and most of the people there are trendy, whether it be Ja Rule,
Eminem or Korn. I fall into the small small group, that is made up pretty
much by myself of ALT-Rock geeks. At least people know me as the pumpkinhead
and resident indie snob at my school, but I have a love for classic rock
and older metal, even classical, and mississippi delta blues. Generally
the 'rockers' are going to be the ones making the music in Ten years, the
jocks, trendies or others will never relize that, and their kids will be
blindly listening to the music of the people they once hated. Oh well,
I have my telecaster, CDs, and computer, thats all I need.
Posted by
AliceCooperette: That was a good one. I remember fighting
the "Ozzy doesn't suck" battle a lot in high school. It was an easy way
for people to get a cheap play-fight (good excuse to start yelling) going
with me. After the hogbournes had run for a bit, one of my friends I hadn't
talked to in a while IMed me to ask if I'd finally decided which of the
two Greatest of the Greats (Alice Cooper and Hoggy) was better. Cruel bathtard,
but it was all for a good laugh. I deny ever being a Hoggy fan. --- [new
paragraph] --- I met some of my best friends totally by mistake, just by
talking about music in class. Oh, and a nice chunk of them I met in Orchestra
class. Of course... the talking never involved classical music. If anything
will inspire you to hate a piece, it's being forced to learn to play it.
You know the instrumental they play for the BEEF commercials? That sends
me into mad fits of fear and rage.
Posted by
Cloud Connected: I think this is a great article. Although
I would probably fall into the "jock" category if most of you met me, I
can truly identify with the "Rockers". I love music and it is much more
to me than a passing fad. And most of my friends like the trendy bull$hit
that's on the radio all day long so I can see where he's coming from there.
Great piece of work Keavin...keep it up.
Posted by
DeadSun: ( raises mug of coffee )--- a fantastic
piece, Keavin. I caught the Metal Bug at the ripe old age of seven, when
I heard "We're Not Gonna Take It" on the radio--- that would have been
1984, I believe. I was the only fifth grader I knew who owned Slayer's
"Reign in Blood"--- no BS, I had to hide the damn tape from my parents.
Sometimes I got crap for the music that I liked, but then again I was the
kid who had no reservations about blasting an irksome peer in the teeth
despite my inherent thinness--- you win some, you lose some; but you don't
let some prick push you around. Reading that article made me remember quite
a bit about growing up. Like you wrote, music was a big part of my youth---
and still is to a remarkable degree. Great article, Keavin.
Posted by
the voice of reason: One of the besdt music articles i've read
in a long time. probably one of the best ever. Keavin, this piece is truly
a work of art. Rock on to all the true music fans!
Posted by
Hobo: I dont understand cause down here in AUS
the metalheads are all f*cking what we call jocks (ie: beefy and fit) and
we all have the occasional (say fortnightly) puff from the magic dragon
- and are all part of the massive drinking culture in Australia.
Posted by
the max: Heh, Rocker and Jock rumble....funny stuff.
I remember a fight at my school between a metalhead and a little gangsta/stoner
poser. That lasted all of 5 seconds 1 punch and 4 elbows. It wasn't so
much a music thing. It was over the favorite lunchtime hangout (Bobbie's
Pizza).
Posted by
Hobo: Sincere and heartfelt, brought a tear
to my eye - crazy ol' Keavin. And while I'll agree with your article for
the time being - I unfortunately realise that it will be but mere minutes
before I'm battling the evil barbarian hordes of mTV once again. RIP Ty.
Posted by
Ramses: This is definately one of the best editorials
I and probably many others have ever read. Great job!
Posted by
MasterOfPuppetz: Bravo! your right on it man.
Posted by
Aryias: Rock on, my brother, and may you (and
everyone else) never meet that fate.
