I was inspired to start a fanzine after that, IAN Mag, which I titled after myself so I could cash the checks.
Those two factions were a mutual admiration society, and I was supercharged to be in the middle of it all. I skipped school in the spring of 1986 to go see Metallica opening for Ozzy Osbourne, the big moment for underground metal going mainstream, and ended up spending the afternoon goofing around with Cliff, Kirk, and James from Metallica, and also everybody in Samhain except Glenn Danzig. So out of necessity I got into tape trading, and got into intense bands like Voor, Cryptic Slaughter, Genocide/Repulsion, and of course Death. I had long hair, wore a bullet belt, and listened to Destruction, and suddenly I was surrounded by kids unaware of anything beyond Motley Crue and Aerosmith. We moved to Indiana in 1985, and it was culture shock. I got plugged into the underground through that, bought some Nasty Savage and Hirax demos, and advertised my show in 'zines like the great Kick*Ass Monthly. That's way upstate, but Manowar hails from there, and Metallica and Anthrax had just recorded their debut albums in that area. We came back to the States in 1983, when I was 13, and I started doing radio shows at WEOS in Geneva, NY, playing Venom, Anvil, Mercyful Fate, Slayer, Voivod, and lots of lost obscure bands like Thrust, Armed Forces, and Witchkiller. To put it in perspective, when I bought Scorpions' Virgin Killer, with the kinky pedo cover, the high school aged girl in the photo seemed way older than me. During junior high school, I lived with my mom in Germany, and when I was 11-12 years old I was using my lunch money to buy Iron Maiden singles, Accept, Motorhead, Judas Priest, and Black Sabbath records. I was thinking about this recently - I'm only moderately old now, but because I got into metal when I was extremely young I remember all this truly ancient history.
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