A Call To Arms

After having read Jonny’s post, I decided to take some time out and think about what this show meant to me. My journey began much later in life than my compatriots. Its true that I grew up listening to Manfred Mann, Elvis Presley and the Beatles, but it was never a decision. My sister, at the time, felt that she had been born several decades late and made her life a hippies life. Her current status of life involves a spiritual fulfillment that has nothing to do with music. My parents took great pleasure in sitting around a fire place with me and telling me all about the music they listened to growing up. My mother used to dance with the best of them and my father actually saw both Jimi Hendrix and The Beatles perform live. Today, while both of them still love music, it is not an integral part of their lives. My teenage years, spent here in the Holy Land, were a whirlpool of different types of music. Even today while I have chosen Rock as my love, I still dance to Hip Hop and Pop music. Sometimes the best way to get yourself out of bed and into the right frame of mind to face the day, is to plug into Ludacris or get smooth with a little Michael Jackson (who is still the King of Pop and always will be).
It wasn’t until 12th grade that I discovered what would become an obsession for me and eventually have much to say about my general characteristic make up. The great moment that would be birth and passage into my new world, was the moment the I first heard Nothing Else Matters by the kings of metal, Metallica!! Because it’s not one of their heavier songs I can only tell you that it was a feeling of strength that captured my attention. When you are 17, you are still playing by someone else’s rules and I needed strength to start making my own. This deep soulful tune had strength I had never heard before, but still something was missing. Shortly after graduating high school, I discovered a genre of rock which had the missing ingredient I needed, Funk Metal. Limp Bizkit, in the year 2000, became, with all of its energy and rage, my strength and my power.
7 years later, I am much wiser to the roots of music and know where the anger and rebelliousness come from. The journey from being an angry little kid to the young man I am now began with Jonathan Davis’s cry of “Are You Ready!!!!!!” to a maturity that only comes with age and experience. Still, I have a long way to go and still sing along with the music pretending to be my favorite artists, performing in front of thousands of screaming fans. At 24, I don’t even come close to thinking that I have all the answers or that I know what I’m doing. That’s where the need for the rock still comes from. When you attend a concert with 60,000 people throwing their fists into the air, you ask yourself, “From whence does this energy stem? What do I share in common with these people?” The answer lies in the simple idea that we don’t know where our lives will take us and we don’t know what we have to do to get there. Music chronicles history better than the history books because while the books were written by people, the music was written by “The People”!! Rock4Rookies is my chance to show you a reality of magic, horror and beauty and guess what, you already live there. All I know is that the current status of the world hasn’t improved since the day’s rock began and until it does, my fist will remain in the air.

“If you’re going to do something wrong, do it right” - Maximum Mike