Metro Pulse/Yikes!/Undeadheads

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I Was a Teenage Mutant Heavy Metal Zombie

by V. Lorne Hopp

There once was a bar in Knoxville, Tenn., that was the perfect refuge from the typical teen music that overflowed out of every other joint on "The Strip." It was a place where you could bend an elbow at the bar and sociably converse with your neighbor. You could comfortably hear one another above the reassuring sounds of my gen- gen- generation drifting up from scratchy 45s in the rickety old jukebox. There, night after night, the music of the Stones, Beatles, CCR, Grateful Dead, and more played—scruffy, scrappy, rebellious sounds, and oh so alive, so soulful. You might think I'm preparing to launch into the place's epitaph. "Another victim of urban renewal," you might be saying to yourself. You're wrong! Stop talking to yourself!

No, my watering hole isn't gone. But the rickety old jukebox is. In its place is a shiny, gleaming, new jukebox, full of CDs by bands I never heard of playing music that's scruffy, scrappy, and rebellious, but oh so dead, so soulless. The transformation in the place is as dramatic and horrific as revisiting your childhood playground only to find it's been turned into a graveyard. It's as if all the patrons in my old bar got bit on their collective necks by some gangrenous, putrid, walking corpse, and... well, if you've ever seen Night of the Living Dead, you know what happened next: Yep, everybody has become undead.

The saloon I love is now overrun with seemingly mindless zombies; more specifically, vacant-eyed, adolescent, nihilistic, heavy-metal-loving zombies. Undeadheads, if you will. And unsociable undeadheads, at that. If you say something to one of them in a friendly, conversational scream, like, "Gee, this really, really, LOUD obnoxious music sure sucks, doesn't it," he won't acknowledge what you say. This is because he is too enraptured by the noise screeching from the new jukebox—a clamor that sounds like 37 rabid kittens being Cuisinarted alive and yowling their pink little tongues off, while someone in the background mutters engaging things like, "...scrofulous ... feast on your liver ... enema ... maggot, maggot, maggot." That's entertainment!

Even if metal noise weren't blasting from the jukebox, the undeadheads couldn't hear you anyway, because they don't have eardrums. It's true! These head-banging, animated corpses at my bar who appear to speak to each other between barrages of metal madness aren't talking at all! They're lip-synching! You may be skeptical, but I've reasoned it out: They play their noise so loud because they have to feel it to understand it. Remember the movie, Children of a Lesser God? These are the ugly, unwanted Stepchildren of the Lesser God's Pet Weasel.

Maybe you think this is just generational sour grapes. It's not! Just read and leave the thinking to me, okay? Because I thought for a long time about the generation issue before beginning this diatribe. I thought long and hard about the rift that develops between generations as the new one struggles to establish an identity separate from its predecessor. I thought about how we of the currently dominant generation should be tolerant of the rising generation's inexperience and obvious stupidity. Mostly, I thought over and over again, "I've become my father! I've become my father!" And I place the blame for this despicable self-revelation at the feet (if I could find them beneath the folds of material sagging from their baggy pants) of the heavy metal crowd at my old watering hole.

See, criticizing the next generation's music is a very father-like thing to do. My father used to rant about the Beatles every chance he got. (Example: "Eh, I thought that Elvis fellow was bad, but these characters got him beat! What did they do, get together and have a competition to see who had the least talent? And what's with these silly names—Beetles, Jefferson Turtle, or whatever? What's wrong with a normal name, like Bing Crosby?") So I've avoided listening to new music for the past 10 years. I rationalized that if I didn't hear it, I wouldn't be obliged to condemn it, because condemning the next generation's music means that you've become your father.

Over the past 10 years, I have spent a lot of time with my fingers in my ears, because I didn't want to become my father, didn't want to become "the previous generation." But the takeover of my bar by the undead deaf and dumb and dumber has seared the sad truth into my consciousness: I am officially a has-been. "Been there, done that," applies all too well to me.

Anyway, I have become my father as he became his father before him. I'm trying to make the best of it. I'm taking pot shots at the next generation's music with the same zeal as he blasted away at mine. (Example: "What's with these macabre names like 'Megadeth' and 'Marilyn Manson?' What happened to fun, silly, nonsensical names like 'Strawberry Alarm Clock' or 'Simon and Garfunkel'?") I've even learned a little about heavy metal in order to criticize it that much more. And you can find out what I discovered in "Undeadheads II: Revenge of the Heavy Metal Zombies," coming some day to a Metro Pulse near you. Just to keep you on the edge of your seat until then, here's a short clip from "Undeadheads II": "Uhm, ooh, ahhh. Oh, oh, oh—OH YEAH! OH YES!! OH YES, BABY, YE-" Sorry. Wrong tape. Anyway, keep an eye out for the conclusion to "Undeadheads." It'll be more fun than rewinding a used roll of toilet paper. And almost as hygienic.