HEADBANGERS BALL - E38 - Jean Jackets, Patches, and Gun Racks

What's goin' on, Headbangers!? I'm Erick Benhardtson, your host for SGT Rock's Headbangers Ball! It's great to see you again! Come on over and join us Vets for the party up here on Freedom Hill, overlooking the beautiful Rappahannock river, broadcasting at 150,000 Watts of pure Heavy Metal power where the beer is always cold, the food is always hot, and the music is always loud.

Anthrax, Megadeth, Metallica, and Slayer are responsible for creating some of the 80’s most extreme and uncompromising music. Christened the "Big Four" are the originators of the style that came to be known as thrash, which took the thundering force of traditional heavy metal, injected it with punk's sneering aggression and delivered the whole thing with a relentless, insistent groove. Although the thrash tag is rarely used today, the music and its attitude have inspired a new generation of musicians, and its signifying characteristics-rapid-fire, heavily palm-muted guitar riffs, pounding double-bass drumming, and vocals that shunned histrionics in favor of a gruff, street level delivery live on in the sound of countless current metal acts.

Being a teenager of in the 80s, if you wanted to hear a new band, you hung out in the bootleg tape scene. We traded tapes like trading cards, man. It was a great time to be a kid in America. Thrash gave us a place in life. As a redneck kid, bailin’ hay with thrash blaring through the boom box motivated my brothers and I up to work harder. Being out in the fields with my brothers singin along with our favorite thrash band is a memory I will forever cherish.

If you were a redneck heavy metal kid in the 80s and the 90s, when you went to hang out in the city, you flew your colors! Jean jackets of the day were not just only a form of expression, it was a way to meet people who loved the bands you loved. Back before the internet, you went places to meet people instead of hiding behind a computer screen and a keyboard. You knew who you could get along with and who was a poser, not just by their jacket, but how they carried themselves. See, back in the GenX era of growing up in this country, not only did we listen to thrash metal, but we also cared about school, about being a good student, about getting ahead in life. Yet, one thing about us Redneck kids that made us different from the city folk.

We had gun racks with our shotguns and rifles. In the back window of the pickup trucks and in the trunks of cars, they had gun racks with their guns bungeed down. Why? Because when school got out, you had maybe…MAYBE 2 hours of sunlight left to go out and put rounds through something to contribute to the family food stock in the freezers. That’s what makes us county headbangers different from the city folk, but we got along. Why? Because metal brought us together.

You want to know what it was like to be a metal kid in the 80s? Watch Heavy Metal Parking Lot and Thrash Metal Parking Lot. You’ll see jean jackets, gun racks, and kids from the tape trading scene on camera. And the one thing they are vs kids of today? They’re happy. And that is why the GenX generation of rock and metal led the way for the happy kids of new thrash metal scene across the planet and I’m glad to say I’m a plank owner of it.

…And on that note folks!

Headbangers! This is the show you've been waiting all week for with the sounds of the world's best rock, hard rock, and metal bands, on the planet! Put on your best, call up all your crew, get ready for the ruckus, crank this shit to 11, tell your friend to hold your beer, get in that pit and lose your fuckin' mind! THIS IS YOUR...HEADBANGERS BALL!
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