Hello, Marty Williams here. I wanted to offer, if I may, a brief history of my musical evolution, as I’m excited about the opportunity to share my thoughts and opinions on any and all things rock & roll , with an ear for All That Is Heavy, for Monster Riff.
Music has been a massive part of my world, going all the way back to when I was literally a toddler. My dad, freshly home from serving in the US Army during Vietnam, was a massive fan of John Fogerty and Creedence Clearwater Revival. He had brought home with him a massive, “hi-fi” home stereo setup from The ‘Nam , that prominently featured a huge, old-school, reel-to-reel tape deck, wherein he’d blast CCR , and pretty loud if memory serves me , while singing every word both hilariously and endearingly out of tune, into a wooden cooking spoon, that served as my Pop’s microphone. I’d watch him in awe as he’d belt out Proud Mary, Have You Ever Seen The Rain, Fortunate Son and all the other Fogerty standards. Driving and listening to the radio is a good memory too , as both my Pops, and my Mom would cruise an extra block or two, if their favorite songs of the day came on. I remember hearing, and enjoying both Fleetwood Mac, and Rod Stewart in my mom’s car driving around on hot, summer Albuquerque afternoons during the early 70’s . However what really lit the flame for loud, aggressive rock music for me, occurred when I was five years old, on a cold fall evening before Halloween.
My Intro to All That Is Heavy
On October 29, 1976, ABC aired The Paul Lynde Halloween Special , a Halloween-themed variety special, with the headliner being Margaret Hamilton, who reprised her role as The Wicked Witch of The West from The Wizard of Oz . This was a big deal for most everyone watching, but the musical guest that night was also a big deal, especially back then, as it was none other than KISS, who, after breaking through commercially on Alive, had dropped Destroyer earlier in the year, and were riding high. They came down in a fog-surrounded elevator, all fire and brimstone, looking like comic book characters, and proceeded to unleash an energetic, over-the-top, lip-syncing of Detroit Rock City, which left my jaw on the floor. And that was it, KISS was the band that started me, very young, down the evil path of rock & roll. I became a card-carrying member of the KISS Army, and practically wore out my copy of the disco-drenched morass that is 1979’s Dynasty (although I’ll gladly die on a hill defending that album, especially Ace Frehley’s ragged, killer version of The Rolling Stones’s 2000 Man) . I also dug a bit of the prog-tinged AOR bands of the day, like Styx , and Kansas, with their 1976 classic Leftoverture being one of my favorite albums of my early youth.
I have some older cousins who were into the “hard rock “ of the late seventies and early eighties , which coincidentally ran paralell with the emergence of MTV , so it wasn’t long before I was listening to AC/DC, Scorpions, and Def Leppard, who’s album High ‘n’ Dry , was the first album I bought with my own money, and remains one of my all-time favorite albums, and is a stone cold classic of early eighties NWOBHM, an album that if you know, you know.
From there it was an easy jump to the darker vibes of Ozzy Osbourne, Ronnie James Dio-era Black Sabbath, Judas Priest and Iron Maiden. A funny thought from the era, as I consumed Ozzy’s Blizzard Of Oz, and Diary Of A Madman , as well as Dio–Sabbath’s Heaven and Hell, and Mob Rules, myself, and my little hesher friends at the time , in the way-pre-internet days, hilariously didn’t realize that Ozzy was the original singer of Sabbath! We discovered this fact after one of us acquired the non-band sanctioned compilation album, 1976’s We Sold Our Soul for Rock ‘n’ Roll, and would then spend endless hours discussing the “feud” between Ozzy and Sabbath . Iron Maiden are huge for me though, and remain my first, non-KISS favorite band. It was all-Maiden, all the time for awhile there in middle school , as I loved both Paul Di’Anno and Bruce Dickinson, and had Killers, and Piece of Mind on non-stop rotation at the time, which lasted until a friend gave me a copy of an album called Kill ‘Em All.
It was instantly apparent that Metallica were completely different than anything going at the time, with a ferocious, crunchy sound that was unlike anything else my ears had been exposed to at that point. The summer of 1984 saw me buying Ride The Lightning new, off the shelf, and from the moment the needle dropped on the acoustic intro Fight Fire With Fire, to the last notes of The Call of Ktulu, it was obvious that this sound was the future of heavy metal. The songs on RTL aren’t just fast and aggressive, there’s an epic, timeless quality to the music, as they really did raise the bar for metal , and this was before the album, Master of Puppets, that’s widely hailed as their greatest, to say nothing of both Slayer’s Reign In Blood, and Megadeth’s Peace Sells..But Who’s Buying which both came out that same year, 1986. Metallica , at that time became, and continue to be, despite all of their missteps, my favorite band of all time.
Thrash’s aggression, and insistence on giving praise to punk rock, opened the door for me to embrace bands like The Ramones, Black Flag, Bad Brains, The Misfits, Minor Threat, Suicidal Tendencies, and tons of other bands from the classic, hardcore and punk scenes of the 80’s . I gravitated most towards The Ramones, Black Flag and Bad Brains, with all three finding themselves among my top 25 bands ever. Thrash bands had a way of grasping for punk cred back then, and seeing Cliff Burton in his Misfits shirts, or with his Crimson Ghost tattoo, James Hetfield wearing Discharge shirts in Thrasher Magazine, or Jeff Hanneman from Slayer with Dead Kennedy’s stickers on his guitar , somehow made the jump from thrash metal to listening to punk rock easier, as did me finally getting around to absorbing Motörhead, thus paving the way for crossover bands like Corrosion of Conformity ( more on them later) D.R.I, Cryptic Slaughter , and Suicidal Tendencies, and their adjacent bands, like Excel, and No Mercy.
From there, I found some of the early “Alternative” bands like The Cult, Jane’s Addiction, The Pixies and The Red Hot Chili Peppers, which easily flowed right into the early days of grunge, with me purchasing Soundgarden’s Ultramega Ok , simply because it was on Black Flag guitarist Greg Ginn’s label SST , which I quickly followed in 1989 ( the year I graduated high school!) with the crushing , Louder Than Love. One of my aforementioned cousins turned me onto Alice In Chains Facelift, and one of my favorite show memories those days was seeing the original Clash Of The Titans tour, featuring Slayer, Megadeth, and Anthrax, with Alice In Chains opening, right as Man In The Box was breaking, and watching the mega-thrashed out fans trying to make sense of the bands harrowing, apocalyptic, Sabbath-doom that the band proffered. All That Is Heavy was changing…
I spent the first of the early nineties , during the early part of my tattoo apprenticeship, submerged in the sounds of The Pacific Northwest, which by this point also included (the) Melvins, and TAD, as well as LA all-female grunge/punk band L7. I also found myself drawn to the Noise rock of Amphtamine Reptile records, as bands like The Jesus Lizard, and Unsane were in heavy rotation as well. Before long, the garage-punk of the nineties found it’s way into my ear holes, as I was soon obsessed with Rocket From the Crypt, and bands like The Mono Men, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, and The New Bomb Turks.
By the time I moved to Seattle in 1996, my garage punk addiction continued, as I was soon inthralled by The Murder City Devils, Zeke, The Makers, and Zen Guerrilla, and was still listening to the punk, Stooges-influenced bands from the grunge era, like Mudhoney. However, I always held those old Black Sabbath , Metallica, Iron Maiden, and KISS records close to my heart. Around 1999 or so, I had what I call my “great metal resurgence” as myself and a few members of The Murder City Devils, decided we were all about Monster Magnet, as they had just dropped Powertrip, and the combo of the huge, Stooges-meet-Sabbath riffs, the spaced-out 70’s rock vibe, and Dave Wyndorf’s insane lyrics, that were packaged with flames, aviators, American flags, half-naked ladies, devil horns , and fucking fire. I was all over it. I had found what I was looking for, and remembered both Monster Magnet, and Corrosion Of Conformity as Dopes To Infinity, and Deliverance both had gained enough traction with people around me in the grunge days, and I was quick to snatch them up.
Things Get Heavier
Next up was Sleep, who I had heard early on as one of my closest friends in Albuquerque was all over Holy Mountain, as well as both Blues For The Red Sun, and Welcome To Sky Valley from Kyuss, which would’ve been around ’94-’95. Next thing I knew, I was constantly scrolling the old stonerrock.com website, and it’s store, All That Is Heavy, whilst becoming engulfed in the music of Fu Manchu, High On Fire, Nebula, Brant Bjork, Electric Wizard, Karma To Burn, Cathedral, Alabama Thunderpussy , Orange Goblin, and any and all of the late nineties/early aughts stoner rock. Since the turn of the millennium, I’ve also explored 70’s funk, and classic jazz, as well as reggae, and dub. I got super into Fat Possum Records catalog, as they were releasing really killer albums from lo-fi, Mississippi Hill Country artists like RL Burnside, and Jurnior Kimbrough.
I wrote reviews and features for The Sleeping Shaman for the last five years, and owe him a lot, as he helped me get my start doing music writing, and I was turned onto so much killer music through him. These days, in my fifties, I find myself describing my musical tastes as mostly rock & roll, with metal and punk being the two strains I love the most, with thrash and stoner/doom being my sub genres in metal. Classic hardcore, seventies punk, and garage punk being my favorites on that side of the spectrum, but as always, it must be stressed that music is subjective. What I love the next guy will hate and vice versa, and that what makes music discussions so much fun, and I look forward to digging into All That Is Heavy with Monster Riff.
I think I can sum it all up when I can honestly say , that my top ten desert island records could easily be the first six Black Sabbath albums, and the first four Ramones albums. It’s really all one needs.
Love the journey. Mine has many similarities. I’m surprised Led Zep and esp Clutch were not mentioned.