'Aeuk': Flashes from the past vol1: Music stuff

So, while I'm working on 'Aeuk' sewer metal compilation I thought to write something about my past, childhood with two things especially; computers and music. I'll write in length, but I'll put some pictures here as well. Both those two things, computers and music, were big things for me but of course the music was (and is) the biggest thing - as long as I can remember, I enjoyed music, from the late 1970s already (I was born in 1974). My parents told that when I had just learned to draw bit more, I kept drawing lots of music notes ♩♩♩ and kept saying "when I grow up I will be a composer or a loom knitter (=manufacturing mats by handcraft)" (hah!) ... child's mind ... but yeah, I guess that tells how music was there from the beginning, somehow even before I was consciously listening to it? The way it connects to myself as how much music means to me, well it simply connects the dots, so to speak.

As music has always been number one for me, this post is about music - I'll write separately about computers (probably much shorter post, but we'll see).

I was listening to finnish children's music for my early years and whatever music parents played (and my mom used to sing all the time, too), and as I grew up a bit, I then went through the LPs my parents had (there were some funny things like ancient donald duck disney LPs etc) until in the early 1980s some electronic hit songs gave me some big vibes, about music other than just some childrens' songs. I can clearly remember one special case for example from 1982, song called 'puttin' on the ritz' by Taco (check it out <here> if you want). That song sticked to mind, I instantly loved its' vibe as 7-8 years old kid that I was then. And I'd say that song was the turning point, suddenly children's music no longer interested me while I had friends of my age who were like "childrens' music is the best! everything else, adults' music is so dull!" ... I was like OK yeah, go on, but I'm interested in something else for now. For a year or so I digged into electronic dance music, even pop music etc of that time, big sister gave me some good hints, then I found artits like Dire Straits and Bruce Springsteen, sort of bridge towards what was coming ahead ... those went past me really fast though and ... I no longer remember what was the first real "heavy rock" artist that turned me into heavy metal. I'd bet it was AC/DC (since my big bro was a big fan) or it might have been Kiss, too.

As a sidenote: Iron Maiden was there from the very early days too, as well as even Metallica from their debut album early on: I remember clearly how I was listening to the tape copy of it in late summer 1983, I think it was my sister's tape - I was listening to it and it felt like "there is something really magical here" ... but my speed metal boom didn't start yet then, not really even with "ride the lightning" but it was very much about heavy metal (perhaps Venom being the exception to rule) until 1986 or so. Even that I surely listened a lot to "ride the lightning" later as it came out, it pales totally to how much I listened to "master of puppets" from 1986 to 1987 ... yet still as magical as it felt first time hearing "kill em all", at least as magical moment was when "ride the lightning" had just been released, and I heard "fight fire with fire" played on radio. It felt like the world was exploding, ... the power and energy of that song was so unbelievable. Kind of funny but true - the reason why I never enjoyed "ride the lightning" so much as overall album, was simply because I expected it to be like "fight fire with fire" from beginning to end. But albums like that were still ahead in the future ... and not exactly done by bands like Metallica either. :)

In any case I went from dance and rock music of the time, in the early 1980s, pretty fast into discovering the world of heavy rock / heavy metal, first through my big brother (10 years older than me) who had hundreds of LPs already around mid1980s. Something sticked from early 1980s "dance music" (or whatever you want to call it) though, fast forward some 20 years into early 2000s and I "re-found" Depeche Mode. But back into heavy metal; I remember how I was proudly telling to my school mates that "my bro has 600+ heavy metal LPs". :) Discovering the world of heavy metal happened when I was about 8-9 years old, I guess, around 1982-1983. Which makes me think about certain piece of music hardware: I've always said that my best birthday present as kid was the double tape/deck portable stereo which I got when I turned 10 years old in 1984. Sure Amiga 500 was pretty damn amazing thing in 1987 christmas, but the importance of that portable double deck stereo / boom box can't be exaggerated. I remember the pure joy, being able to tape music from radio, being able to tape copy from tape to tape, and ... I also remember clearly how I asked my big sister to record certain songs by certain bands, like for example Iron Maiden's "revelations" and Kiss' "god of thunder" for me on a tape, I think also Judas Priest' "heavy duty / defenders of the faith" was on that list of requests (that JP album came out about half a year earlier) so that I could enjoy the songs with my very own "stereo system". :) Also my big sister (7 years older than me, RIP) was into heavy metal, even that she was into dance / pop etc music as well. AC/DC was a big thing for her back then, and especially first two Iron Maiden albums, I learned about Ozzy Osbourne from her, etc.

As a sidenote: Where Iron Maiden's "powerslave" was a really big thing for me, sister kept saying that how it's just ok and pales if compared to first two albums with Paul Di'Anno. Thanks to my sister's talks I learned to love Paul era of Iron Maiden too, and as years passed I could see why she felt like that. I always enjoyed Bruce a lot, but Paul was special, unique voice and such a different style all in all. Songs like "running free", "phantom of the opera", "iron maiden" (which felt like extreme metal then!) "killers", "purgatory" turned into favorites for me.

But yeah, my tape collection started to grow in spring 1984 very fast ... and boy did it grow! I wasn't anymore asking parents to buy me just toys, but instead I was more often asking to buy me C-tapes. 60 minutes tapes were okay, but 90 minutes tapes were the best, because I could tape 2 albums, one for both sides of tape. As time passed, in the early 1990s I had several hundreds of tapes, filled with all kinds of metal (mainly extreme metal). Okay, some tapes were filled with artists like Aphex Twin, The Orb, Laibach etc (ambient / electronic / experimental music side which I got into around 1992, when I was in high school). As I started having money of my own, I of course started buying lots of LPs and CDs as well (which I much later sold to my bro, whose compilation of albums is several thousands ... massive and respectable one). And actually I did have also brief rap music era in late 1980s through certain friends, it was mainly about Run DMC first, then Public Enemy. Quite certainly the rap album I've listened the most, is ... PE's "fear of a black planet" which was an amazing album back then.

I have to mention also library, music library of Rovaniemi was truly amazing treasure cave back then, from late 1980s into late 1990s for me personally - and they used to even order albums people recommended. At some point later in the 1990s there were quite a massive bunch of extreme metal albums (and forementioned "experimental side" of music) which I had requested for them to order.

But back into early 1980s: Another thing was that while in our home we only had 2 TV channels visible (can you imagine that?), YLE1 and YLE2, there was a house on our street where they had also 3 kids, one of which was a girl about my age, 1 year older than me ... so I soon discovered while playing with those kids in the neighbourhood that they have cable channels which was rarity amongst people our family knew. So, ... soon I was seeing music videos in about 1982-1985 by bands like Kiss, Iron Maiden, Ratt, AC/DC, W.A.S.P., Twisted Sister etc, early heavy rock / metal music videos there were back then. Not too many, but as you can guess, seeing the music videos rocketed my interest for heavy metal music into whole new levels. Around that time I used to draw nothing else than "bands playing on stage". 2D images, drummer, 1-2 guitarists, bassist, vocalist. It was the music videos' impact, for sure. I must have drawn hundreds and hundreds of pictures about this or that heavy metal band playing on stage. I also remember my mom at some point asking can't I draw anything else anymore? :) Music videos and especially bootlegs became a big thing for me too, it begun from certain bands' "home videos" (= video of full concert) as they were called that for a long time. Venom's live at hammersmith odeon was a lone matter of wonder for a long time, but as a teenager I bought "home videos", VHS, of bands like Kreator (live 1989), Sodom (mortal way of live, 1988), Napalm Death (live corruption, 1990, this was a huge, huge thing for me), Nuclear Assault (live at hammersmith odeon, 1989) and so on. From that I went into "VHS tape trading", instead of just C-tape trading in the early 1990s ... at best I had like 100-200 hours of bootleg live concerts on VHS around 1992-1993 or so. And of course I taped music videos from MTV's "headbangers' ball" for years, several VHS tapes of carefully crafted compilations.

As another sidenote: What happened to my bootleg VHS tape collection and C-tapes? Well, in 2000 I threw all my C-tapes to recycling ... sister was like no you can't! I was like sure I can and that's what I did (haven't really regretted, except that I also trashed original tapes which was ... stupid, yeah, some of them might have value these days). CDRs had replaced tapes, several hundreds of tapes took a lot of space and I no longer listened tapes but CDs and mp3 things were replacing the way of listening fast ... VHS tape collection the same thing, with the exception that I made a crazy task of transferring lots of bootlegs to PC in 1998/99 or so (I bought a special "TV card" hardware for PC because of that) ... but the video / resolution, quality back then was of course horrible if compared these days, quite a pixel blur, also sound quality ... yeah. Youtube appeared and started conquering the world in 2005 and at that point, very soon I understood that I no longer have any need for my lofi bootleg compilation I still had on CDRs. It was crystal clear. I did put some rare music video clips later to Youtube by myself, but most of what I had can be found from Youtube, even the death metal bootlegs from early 1990s ... of course as I certainly wasn't the only one hoarding bootlegs :) ... I can throw here one example of these music videos I put to Youtube which are still there to this day. Here's video of <B-thong's one song>.

Back to the stone age ... 1980s: Having big bro, from whom I got all kinds of heavy metal recommendations (and often albums too, I could tape LPs from him) made getting into heavy metal much easier of course.

Wanna have an example? I remember cases where I went to my big bro with best friend back then, with a task in mind; give a little piece of paper to bro, ask him to list at least 10 heavy metal bands we didn't know yet, if that's not too much hassle? Bro smiled listening to AC/DC with very loud volume in his room and told us to come back bit later for the list. So as we went back, I got the piece of paper, and jaws dropped as there were no 10 bands listed but probably like 30 bands. It felt like kid in a candy store, you know! Look at this list, so many bands to do research and check out the music, wow thanks!!! This happened many times during those years.

As I was just a kid, around 10 years old in 1984, I didn't do tape trading etc yet, that came few years later as my music pal circles grew. Naturally there was some "kids into heavy metal" type of bonding at school between us classmates. I was bringing in new bands and album recommendations from my big bro regularly and this happened especially with certain few pals. From very early school days it went already into "searching for heavier and / or faster bands". There was no word "extreme" but clearly it was a search for something that felt ... extreme. Early on bands like Raven (NWOBHM) were big thing, there were proto'thrash (or speed metal) moments in their music and it's funny to think that at first Raven felt "too noisy" for ears, especially the vocals ... Raven was big influence though, and I remember how I was excited about Metallica's and Raven's "kill em all for one" tour, even that I of course saw no bands live those days. But it was the thought alone which excited kid's mind so much, and that neat word play with tour's name ... and as I / we learned to really dig Raven (it was me who introduced schoolmates to Raven if you couldn't guess) it felt amazing that Metallica is touring with especially Raven. It also happens, that the first LP I bought as a kid ... was Raven's "life's a bitch ... and then you die" in 1986. :) Whoopsie, actually a correction here! I guess I got carried away with Raven, thus thinking & writing that first LP I bought comment ... it was not my first, I think it wasn't even second but perhaps 3rd or 4th. Because the first ever LP I bought, was "come out and play" by Twisted Sister, and I was so disappointed with that album. Not the best choice for first ever album to buy. :) (but nothing ever beats the disapppointment of buying one "cold lake" LP some 2-3 years later) ...

You might guess where it went from discovering new metal bands and getting excited about it all ... soon there was the thought of "how could I / we create some music myself?" too. So, ... I was forming one band around those times with schoolmates, if I remember right I came up with the band name (or at least was heavily deciding about it, I think the name idea came from me, too) which was simply Hellion. My love of cats came through as well, ha! We rehearsed at one friend's garage, he played guitar (acoustic one) like me too (acoustic as well), bass dude played acoustic guitar which had the 2 highest strings torn away so that it was BASS (haha!), drummer was beating plastic buckets and metallic paint buckets. The only one who had more "real" equipment was vocalist who had microphone connected to portable stereo. We even recorded some demo songs like that, playing live in garage, and I remember one thing clearly: In one song the beat in the beginning was clearly faster than it was towards the end - because drummer guy got tired of playing (and perhaps even bit bored, he wasn't much into heavy metal). :) I also remember I kind of would have wanted him to play the drums faster, ... I also remember I planned / drew coverart for tape, crafted a bright yellow cardboard cover, Hellion logo on top and then drew a skeleton being electrocuted on cover (combine Iron Maiden's Eddie and certain 'Ride the lightning' coverart and what you get?) ... ha ... I had that tape with me for a many years before I taped over it. I don't remember if I made that cover artwork for just my own tape version, could very well be like that. The creativity and the need to create, it was there at very young age already, starting to take shape. There were few other cases too in childhood era, like one jamming project with other friend(s), no band name but "demotape" where it was me and friend playing (acoustic) guitars together, with totally zero musical theory / playing knowledge. Like said, the need to create was there early on even that nothing permanent was born in these childhood music experiments.

Though it's kind of interesting to think about "creativity" and the need to be able to create some music back then in the 1980s, as a young kid not knowing about anything really. We had an open mind as kids usually do, it felt natural, everything felt like possible etc, you know. But as I grew, some years passed, from late 1980s into early 1990s, when I was let's say from 13 to 17 years old - the general attitude / opinion / vibe about finnish metal music was really, really negative and disgusting to be honest. It was honestly unbelievable, until things started to slowly change around early 1990s. Actually I think the general mood / attitude stopped lots of sparkle and thinking afterwards it probably affected me myself personally too, in the 1980s - because everyone in general was more often than not like "what, finnish heavy metal band? grow up! no one gives a shit about your band! what, you think you'd go abroad with the band, LOL, I'M DYING OUT OF LAUGHTER, grow up man! finnish heavy metal music!? Stuff like that can not make it anywhere at all, period! you'd be better off dead than trying! stop bothering me with this nonsense!" ... I mean, the general attitude / vibe was really as disgusting as that, it was I'd say even hostile at worst times, late 1980s perhaps I'd say, it was completely against anyone "making it" with his/her music. And especially if it was metal music, the more it was ridiculed. I felt things started to change gradually perhaps with bands like Stone, but even during their 1980s releases it was like "yeah it's nice, they can do it as hobby in Finland, but somewhere else? neva!" ... I'd personally say the general mood perhaps started changing around 1990/1991 when albums like Xysma's "yeah" came out (I bought it as LP from the first pressings, later sold to my bro).

But yeah, once again back to 1980s ... need for creativity slowly progressed with me diving deeper into the world of heavy metal. 1986 was clearly a divider, and I don't mean just Metallica's "master of puppets" even that it certainly was one huge factor too. What I mean by saying 1986 was a big divider and that I don't mean just "master of puppets" (which felt from the very first listen plain magical) but ... well, there was a one special release that shook me off from "plain heavy metal" type of bands instantly. Well, I remember my bro got this release as LP in 1986, but it seems it has been released in 1985 already? Anyway, here goes the info on this divider release for me as 11-12 years old kid back in 1986:

It was this one compilation album, namely 'Speed kills' (the very best in speed metal) which contained 12 bands which almost all if not all became more or less legendary (Metallica was already that, of course), the first wave of speed/thrash metal. If you need more info about this compilation, <check this out>. Even that it was especially the term speed metal which was used, no one was talking about thrash then, ... so a good example about how much that term defined the contents was that there was also Possessed on this compilation, I always saw them as "speed metal band" mainly because they were on this awesome speed kills compilation ... even that I soon got their "seven churches" album, there was song titled "death metal" - it was always speed metal for me. Because of that "speed kills" compilation album, ehh. Years and years later I realized how Possessed pretty much shared genre defining moment with Death, even that personally I always felt that "Death started death metal" (and not just because they were called Death). Chuck's growls were so much more in their own league, that it affected my view as much as the fact that Possessed happened to be on a speed metal compilation. Anyway, if you don't know this "speed kills 1" compilation, you ought to check it out and see how legendary it is overall. There were big bunch of "speed kills" compilations after that first one up to early 1990s I think, I of course checked them back in the day too - but none of the sequel compilations were match for that very first one. It's not surprising if you look at the bands who were on the original speed kills compilation, ... some bands which soon became big names, Metallica of course was it already, but also bands like Slayer, Megadeth, ... for me the "smaller" bands were the most important and for me some of them became totally legendary and some of them even cult.

Think about bands like Celtic Frost (I bought "cold lake" as teenager after sinking deeply into "morbid tales", "to mega therion" and "into the pandemonium" and I still feel my biggest musical disappointment on album I've bought is "cold lake", but that aside CF has meant a world to me overall, a truly massive influence), or Destruction (huge impact on me with their 1980s releases), Bulldozer (Italy's should I say "proto Pungen Stench style band", massive impact on me especially "the final separation" album), Hallows Eve (massive impact, especially "tales of terror"), Exodus ("bonded by blood", aww yeah!), Possessed (even that I thought it was speed metal band, but pioneering band crossing to proto death metal genre too, all their 1980s releases impacted me), Voivod (another massive impact type of band for me, all their releases from 1980s but also ever since, legendary avantgarde metal band which is still going strong) ... there were few already familiar bands to me, like Venom and Exciter, but it's noteworthy that I also found Slayer via this compilation. It is certainly clear, looking back to when this compilation took hold to me, that there was no turning back - it was a path towards faster, heavier and then simply more extreme metal. As years passed, it was clear that I was especially shaped or should I say my heavy metal groundwork got "finetuned" by love of death metal and grindcore from late 1980s into early 1990s.

I gotta write about this crystal clear memoir related to "speed kills" compilation LP in Spring 1986: I came home from school or something with my back then best friend, and my big bro saw us coming. He shouted from his corner of the house to us that "hey guys come here, I have something special, this is something all new!" ... and we ran to him of course curious what's it about. Bro was smiling widely, with LP case in his hands, having just put the album spinning. He started explaining that check this out, this is not heavy metal, this is speed metal! What, speed metal, what's that, wow cool cover art with that guitar swinging madly ... and then opening track starting playing out, "metal merchants" by Hallows Eve. It sounded right away good, even that I remember saying this isn't so fast, is it? (heh) ... but then came Exodus with "a lesson in violence" and we were blown away instantly. WOW SO THIS IS SPEED METAL!!! Next up was Destruction with their "bestial invasion" and another WOW moment; we were sold. Needless to say, track by track it felt like this compilation is pure gold, and the way it ended, the best possible way, with Celtic Frost's "into the crypts of rays" (I became massive CF fan, their early works impacted me big time). And it was exactly that, golden compilation, I hunted down all the bands which I didn't already know, and bro bought pretty much all the bands' albums one by one, the albums where the tracks were taken from into the compilation (Metallica's first two platters he already had, of course).

There was another case with bro from 1986, with quite similar story and vibes than with that forementioned "speed kills" compilation LP. It was the case of Flotsam & Jetsam. I remember almost as well how I came from school some day autumn 1986 and bro yelled for me to come check out this new band out, this new LP he had just bought. Same story, holding the LP cover in hands, just hitting the needle on side A, track 1. What is this band then? What, such a weird name, but the song titles look quite promising. Bro had already listened the album somewhat, so he smiled and waited for my reaction as he put the opening track playing.

I was instantly like WOOOOooooooOOOW this sounds pretty good right away, nasty guitarworks, this is speed metal all right!? I listened to that "doomsday for the deceiver" album quite a lot, and little did I know that some half a year later one Jason from this Flotsam & Jetsam band would join one Metallica after tragic death of Cliff Burton (RIP). Actually I wasn't happy about Jason joining Metallica, because I understood Jason was major songwriter for F&J and it felt evident that F&J could have difficulties continuing with as strong material and I'd still say after all these years that F&J's debut album is their best album, 2nd album somewhat good, then came downhill ... I respect and enjoy that they 1) have returned to their speed/thrash roots and 2) against all expectations they are actually going strong these days. But yeah.

So, as described, in the early and mid 1980's as a kid I was getting tips and guidance into heavy/speed metal from my big bro, ... then my metal passion grew so big towards the end of 1980s and especially with genres like death metal and grindcore (but especially death metal) - those genres were literally exploding ... which served me just fine. Year 1989 is definitely another year which is kind of divider, as it was then when I got certain albums through tape trading and other means (not via my brother); releases like for example Napalm Death's "scum" (after which I bought "FETO" as LP), Bolt Thrower's "realm of chaos", Death's "leprosy", Sepultura's "schizophrenia" and "beneath the remains", Morbid Angel's "altars of madness", Carcass with "reek of putrefaction" and "symphonies of sickness", etc etc etc ... suddenly my knowledge started bursting out as I was taking all the releases I could get. So, as a result of all that, with my bro our "roles" kind of changed to opposite in the early 1990s. Suddenly I was giving extreme metal release tips for him. :) He was working full time the grownup he was, and he had pretty good income so he gladly ordered massive piles of extreme metal LPs which I had recommended for him to buy. I wrote massive lists of recommended albums and also marked albums into record store catalogs he received via mail. And he wasn't disappointed with my tips - and I surely was happy about the situation too: It meant that I could get great quality tape copies of albums I myself wanted to get but which weren't necessarily easy to get via tape trading either. Happy times, indeed.

Occasionally I had money to buy albums myself too, and it's funny to think these days how I could get to know if some album was worth buying: I lived far north in Rovaniemi (which had pretty poor record stores, mainly just one "okayish" store back then) and I phoned (with landline phone of course) to far south Helsinki certain record store distros, like for example one company I still remember was Diskeri - I chatted with clerk in phone briefly about if there are any new death metal releases worth buying. This one case I remember, it was Spring 1992, very close to my 18th birthday, clerk was excitedly telling about this new band and debut album which they just got (Monstrosity's "imperial doom") and he hyped it as it could be the next Death. I asked him to play some song, so the clerk, while in phone, threw LP into player and needle on the first track. I listened that opening track via landline phone as it was been played through stereos in the other end, and was like "yeah! that sounded so good, I will order that one please!" ... and so I did, having money for one LP right then. :) Imagine if you'd check out new music like that these days, and also the sound quality via landline phone for other than talking (like ermmm music!) wasn't that amazing ... simply funny to think how things were back then.

But I guess this was more than enough about music in general, at least for now ... I think I'll write separately about computers, brief personal history from where and how it all started, and how it connected with music (and especially 'Aeuk', tracked music) in my case, perhaps also some other nicknames too (I tracked music with several nicknames, not just metal).

About pictures

It's a shame that back in the day before the age of digital cameras (not to mention modern camera phones) you didn't take much pictures - as you had to pay for each picture you developed from a film roll, you had to be careful what you took pictures of. And on top of that, you could never be sure if the pic you took was a hit or miss, ... especially the cheaper pocket cameras which I had too as kid, and bro and sis as well - you could say it's a miracle you actually have any decent pictures worth sharing about matters like these. About just some common people in common family etc.

In any case, to wrap up this personal memoir, here are some pictures more or less related to the stories described above. I've changed the faces (bet you couldn't guess that), but otherwise the pics are all 100% authentic events.