The story of “shmee”& Why I love Heavy Metal 

I’m going to stick a pin in 1983. Seems reasonable. I was three for at least the last 5 months of that year. somewhere, sometime, one of my uncles, either Pete or maybe Rob or Kenny or Neil  or an aunt Bonnie or Susie or or Patti or Penny called me Mr. Shmee, and it stuck to me like hot glue. The point of reference is Mr.Smee , captain Hook’s right hand man in “Peter Pan”

So, I’ve since gone by shmee or shmeeli since I was a toddler. Certain members of my family + select close/old friends (KD, JI;I C U2) still call me that, and I’m 45.

It’s 1989, 4th grade and I met one badass 9 year old named Ryan Anderson. He wore a skintight black leather jacket, with a 9”x12” KISS back patch sewn on. He had the shittiest capital – A -Alberta Bright Red mullet,  dweeby, thick Coke-bottle glasses, and Buck teeth. In the words of Rupaul, he “served a lewk.”.(a look) 

I adored him. He used to bring this tiny beat up boombox to school and had a fierce stash of cassettes in his backpack.  We practically wore out the treads on records by: 

Skid row 
Warrant 
Kiss 
Guns n’ Roses
Poison 
Def Lepard***
LA Guns
Megadeth 

You can see a (heavy) pattern emerging;  as I got older, the guitars got heavier and the drums got hit even harder.

***We’d hold court in the staff parking lot at lunch hour with our shitty boombox and blast “pour some sugar on me”, while dancing fiercely and lip syncing like a pair of jr. Drag queens.

For a child , Ryan carried a big tough guy attitude, and the music he literally carried with him spoke for him before he was even within eyesight.

I gravitated towards Guns n’ Roses especially. I even saw them in Edmonton, on March 28, 1993. I was twelve. My stepdad Dean took me as a Chanukah gift. I can still picture Slash straddling two speaker stacks, floor – mounted fans blowing his massive, beautiful black hair to and fro. I wept when they played “November Rain” , and screamed like a little girl on a rollercoaster when they closed with “Paradise City“

It was probably the first arena Rock show I ever went to, come to think of it.

I digress. Guns n’ Roses also introduced me to one of the most important parts of modern rock: the pure face -melting, finger shredding guitar solo. Once I knew what to listen for, I started picking out my favorites. (The #1 G n’ R solo is in “civil war”, FYI/BTW, IMHO) 

I remember reading an interview with Axl Rose where he heaped praise upon megadeth, which in turn steered my attention towards the album “Countdown to extinction” by them, and then immediately to  “kill em all”by Metallica. There’s something (Still) so attractive to me about music you can’t possibly play without giving over every inch of yourself, physically or vocally.

As I’ve aged alongside metal,  the subgenres I’ve stayed devoted to (hardcore, mathcore , grindcore) have aged with me.

Thanks, Ryan Anderson from 4th grade!

Mixtape moment:

 

The heavy years, 1990-2026″, a playlist of all the heaviest jams this side of hell.

https://tidal.com/playlist/26a03c11-094b-4c4d-92f5-da8b5f4f7d16