by wanttomakeadifference

Created on: January 16, 2009

My grandmother used to tell me she hoped my taste in music would change as I got older. Much to my grandmother and many others dismay, my taste in music have never really changed. Granted, at the age of 37, my musicial interests are a little more diverse than they were when I was a teenager. I enjoy a variety of musical genres such as pop, folk, and Christian rock. However, my first love remains hard rock and heavy metal.

I do have to give my mother some credit. Even as a child, she was very open-minded to the things I enjoyed listening to. She would argue that just because the music is loud or most of the bands I liked looked like drag queens, it was basically harmless. She also liked the fact that I was normally turned off by bands that seemed to constantly promote Satanic messages or used an excessive amount of profanity. My mother got it, but most people in her age group never did.

Recently I was asked, how someone who works in the field of education, frequently reads the classics, and is a Christian got into hard rock and heavy metal, and why I still enjoy that type of music as much today as I did as a child. The answer is I was exposed to it at a young age and liked how it sounded.

My first real experience in hearing hard rock came from a radio station out of Memphis called Rock 103. During the late 70's, they had a program called the Electric Lunch. The show would often play such classic hard rock bands as Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, and Rainbow. I quickly became intriqued by the sound of an electric guitar. Many of my fondest childhold memories were sharing my new found love of music with my buddies and family members.

However, my love for hard rock really began because of a guy named Todd. Todd lived across the street from my best friend. He was older than us by six or seven years and we thought he was the coolest guy ever. He drove a jeep and would frequently pull into his yard with music blaring-loud music. We looked up to him because he was everything a young male wants to be. He was great at sport, drove a cool vehicle, and I couldn't help but notice he often had his share of attractive females coming over to visit. What a life we thought he had!

The thing I respected the most about Todd was despite the fact he probably hated seeing us walk into his yard, he could not have been friendlier to a couple of snot nosed kids. One day, when we were paying our weekly visit, I noticed he had a ton of eight tracks and cassettes in the back of his jeep. I quickly

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