The Globe and Mail: Metal mania collides loudly with middle age

Metal mania collides loudly with middle age

I felt too old for the general-admission pit on the floor. I felt even older when I went down to the local pharmacy to buy earplugs.

By PHILIP MOSCOVITCH

Wednesday, July 13, 2005 Page A16

The twentyish woman in front of me began chugging her king can. Beer streamed down her face and chin. She guzzled the last of it, tossed the can to the sidewalk and stumbled through the turnstile. I was right behind her, about to once again enter the world of heavy metal.

Black T-shirts, leather jackets, biker guys, fishnets, tiny skirts, and tattoos galore: it was a familiar crowd; it was the pool of people I'd been submerging myself in over and over, since the day I'd walked into the Montreal Forum at 14 -- parental permission be damned -- to see AC/DC.

I've lost track of all the metal shows over the years. Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osbourne, Sepultura, Sacrifice, Deicide -- some were buffoonish, others downright frightening.

Several times, I thought I'd outgrown it. There were nights when I felt distant from the people around me, and, as I grew older, I was less able to relate to the visceral anger of a lot of the music. "This is my last metal show," I would think. And then the crowd would grab me, and the musicians would suddenly seem like gods again, and I would stop thinking too much and simply join in.

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I live in Nova Scotia now. Hardly a heavy-metal hotbed. And at 36, I was living a quiet life in the country with three kids. Then I saw an ad in the paper saying that Slayer was coming to town.

I used to regularly camp out for tickets, spending the night in line with fellow metalheads and wondering why anybody would fork over an exorbitant service charge for the privilege of ordering by phone. Now I called, Visa card in hand. "Do you want tickets on the floor? General admission." I thought about it for a moment -- about the press of the sweaty crowd in the pit, about bodies surfing overhead and over-enthusiastic moshers slamming into me. Once, that would have been appealing, but I was too old for it now.

I felt even older when I went down to the local pharmacy to buy earplugs. I used to consider it a badge of honour if a concert was so loud my ears rang for four days straight. But no more. With middle-age around the corner, I wanted my hearing to last as long as possible.

The pharmacist helped me pick out a pair of earplugs. Then she said, "You know, what you really have to worry about isn't the volume. It's heart failure from the pounding of the bass and drums."

Standing outside the Halifax Metro Centre, I pushed my way through the gate, and waited for the security guy to pat me down. He paused at the keys in my right pants pocket, felt them carefully, then moved on to the left side. His hands stopped on a small box. He felt its edges, then looked up at me. "What's that?"

I pulled out a clear plastic box with a few bits of foam in it. "Earplugs," I said sheepishly. We both laughed. He waved me in.

I surreptitiously screwed in the earplugs moments before Slayer hit the stage.

The first time I saw AC/DC, it was so loud I was disoriented. As lead guitarist Angus Young tore into the first notes of Hell's Bells I wondered why the band was opening with some obscure song after having just rung an enormous bell on stage. It took a good half-minute for my ears to adjust so that I could actually recognize the song -- a song I had listened to hundreds of times.

When Slayer came on, I was surprised to find that the earplugs cut through the distortion and I could actually hear the music better. What I couldn't hear was the crowd. The best part of the concert, I suddenly remembered, wasn't always the music. It was being subsumed into a crowd. A big, mindless crowd that roared with one voice. But now, instead of being swallowed up in a collective event, I was alone in my own little protective enclosure.

When the band played South of Heaven and I tried to sing -- to shout, to roar -- all I heard was my own voice ringing in my head. When I screamed my approval at God Hates Us All, I did it alone. It was like yelling in a small, empty room.

Disconnected from my surroundings and lulled by the hypnotic (if manic) beat, I actually managed . . . to doze off.

Two full hours after they walked on, Slayer took their bows. The audience sounded remarkably unenthusiastic -- until I reached a finger into each ear and popped out the earplugs.

Suddenly, they had come to life, calling for more so loudly, and with cheering so high-pitched, it actually hurt my ears.

I joined in. I was one with them, just for a moment, before the lights came up for good.

Philip Moscovitch lives in Glen Margaret, N.S.