Ok, well I have you all beat on age. Yes, as far as I know, I am the resident old fart at 39 years old. I was born in Washington DC, grew up in Maryland, and I now live in North Carolina. I've been a metal fan since about 1982. Upon hearing Iron Maiden's
Number of the Beast and Judas Priest's
Screaming For Vengeance for the first time it changed my life forever. I'm old enough to say that I was lucky enough to see Maiden on tour for NOTB, POM, PS, SIT, and SSOASS. I bought the original Queensryche EP on vinyl, I met Accept while they toured for Metal Heart, and I saw Def Leppard in the round while they toured for Hysteria..twice (and I wore my Union Jack t-shirt). The rest of the list of shows I've seen over the years is just too long but that should give you some idea of how it all began for me. I picked up guitar about the same time I found metal so I've been playing for about 25 years. I've recently bought a Premier drum kit and I've been progressing damn well as a drummer.
I attended catholic school from kindergarten through high school. However, the high school I attended was very progressive and taught us about every world religion which lead me to question everything. I am now an atheist. I was never that outgoing as a teenager but I had plenty of great close friends. My love of music lead me to my first job after high school as a manager of a CD store for a local retail music chain in the Washington DC area. To this day it has been the coolest job that I've ever had. Well, all good things come to an end, as the chain was bought by a larger music retailer who I just could not work for so I moved on.
Not knowing what I wanted to be when I grew up I went into photography for a little while, that lead to a manager position with a photo retailer, I became bored after a few years of doing that and I moved on to do accounting for an imported auto parts distributor/retailer for a out 6 years. All the while still playing and gigging here and there. I then began to work full time as a substitute teacher for the school system that my two older children were attending. When my youngest son was diagnosed with autism in 2002 I went to work in special education. I loved it but working with severely affected autistic children is a stressful tiring gig. It's even tougher when you come home to your own child afterward who has delays and learning disabilities. So, when we moved (in 2006) to North Carolina I gave up on working in education and now I'm finally in a position to go to college full time. I'm now in school for computer networking and security.
I met (who I thought was great at the time) my first wife in 1988. We had two kids who are now 20 and 16 years old. We have since divorced. I met my current wife of 10 years in 1998 and we have an 8 year old son.
I fell out of love with music when Nirvana and grunge hit it big. Metal in the US kind of faded away. The only band that I really followed faithfully through the early 90's was Dream Theater. Then the internet became more accessible so when we bought one of our first computers and I landed online I found that metal was alive and well all over the rest of the planet. It was around then that I discovered Cradle of Filth (Cruelty and the Beast), Stratovarius, Helloween (Deris), Bruce Dickinson's
Chemical Wedding, Evereve, Sentenced, and Primal Fear. That has lead me to today where I am still as much a metal fan as I was in 1982.
So, I realize that I could technically be categorized as a fossil but I still love metal. I'm not stuck in the 80's, I don't long for the past, and I don't nor have ever had a mullet. Um, I also love horror films, horror books, The NFL, and our two dogs TJ and Raven.
