Metal Is Back Baby!

I've been a metal head since the late 1970's growing up in Chicago suburbia. I learned about hard rock music from 3 sources: radio, record stores, and concerts. The Windy City area had it all when it came to this. I grew up bangin' out to Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, Nazereth, Montrose, and AC/DC to name a few.

When the 1980's came, I was in head-bangin' heaven! Chicago radio gave us killer stations like The Loop and WMET. Both competed for hard rock listeners, and brought the sounds of Iron Maiden and Judas Preist to commercial radio in Chi-town.

In the mid to late 80's both those stations wimped out for "Adult rock" and shed their metal. So other suburban stations emerged playing real metal! WRRG in River Grove launched a lot of bands like Metallica, Anvil, Trouble, and the like with Metal Mania hosted by Rockin' Ron Simon. I use to listen every Saturday night to his show then head to the Thirsty Whale to see the bands he played.

Then came more metal on the dial with Real Precious Metal RPM on 103FM, which was a haven for nightly hair bands of the 80's like Ratt, Bon Jovi, Winger and whatever that had lipstick. This was hard to listen to at times for true metal heads---until Labor Day 1986!

Adult Contemporary station WYEN 106-7FM dropped Elton John and Madonna for Slayer and Megadeth as Z-Rock 106-7FM made its awesome debut! 24 hours a day of non-stop metal-with no wimp music. I mean Slayer and Motorhead at like 7 in the morning! Awesome--totally awesome!

Great on-air talent like Wild Bill Scott (he was on WMET and The Loop back in the day), Mad Max Hammer, Shelly Steel, Killer Craig, Freeze Disease and lets not forget Boobie Bondage! It was unreal! I heard my first King Diamond song on there. Paul Dianno's Battlezone, Zoetrope (another Chicago fav), Anthrax, Metal Church, Accept--every killer band from 1980's metal!

A little over a year later I turn on my radio and hear Yanni crap! Z-Rock switched to The Wave, some new-age mindless middle aged crappy format. Rockers in Chicago united, staged rallies, bitched to the Trib and Times, just went nuts and into depression! I was sooo bummed! The music seemed like it was over and my main outlet for this lifestyle had just vanished!

I made mix-tapes in my car of bands I knew on Z-Rock and played them over and over again until the tapes snapped! About a year later I read in the Illinois Entertainer that a bunch of former hard rock radio and Z-Rock jocks were starting up another station on 1330AM--later named G-Force 1330. It was like Z-Rock on steroids! They had Z-Rock alumni like Wild Bill & Boobie, and locals like The G-Ster, Rockin' Ron Simon, Jammin' Janet and Scott Davidson.

It seemed like the AM band was the ONLY place to hear real metal on Chicago radio in late 80's and into the 90's. G-Force eventually became Rebel Radio, with Scott Davidson becoming the new voice for metal on the airwaves. Yeah, only a few could hear the station, but they patched a bunch of small AM stations together around town, a somewhat-wannabe network which never quite made it. But at least they kept it going as corporate giants moved into the Chicago landscape and changed radio forever!

Today I have XM and Internet radio to listen to. But honestly it just ain't the same. I mean, going to AM/PM Minimart to get some beer and hear the kid behind the counter crankin' out Slayer on Z-Rock--WOW--I could never forget that!

Metal is coming back into the mainstream these days. Just tune into The Metal Show on VH1 sometime, metal heads are now in our 40s and 50s--finally we're now the baby-boomers of real rock as metal becomes mainstream! We're back baby--so bang your head!