Friend1
When I was around 14 or 15, the stuff that was hitting the air waves was the groove laden super heavy stuff like Linkin Park, Creed, Nickelback, Limp Bizkit. Music on the internet was beginning to explode. In fact listening to either of these bands almost instantly reminds me of my adolescence (which wasn’t always florescent).
The first band that truly blew my mind was Linkin Park. I remember getting goosebumps while watching the In The End video. I heard the song first through the phone ,my over enthusiastic friend had just heard it and couldn’t wait for me to hear it. I remember him yelling “CAN YOU FUCKING BELIEVE THIS ” in the background every now and then while the song was playing. In about a week’s time he had made me a tape with him having drawn a bunch of skulls on it’s covers. Cool when you’re 15. I became a fan of Hybrid Theory almost instantly.Ever song on the album right from track 1 hit me clean in the stomach knocking the wind out of me.
As much as I loved the album in its entirety, I remember one song that especially stood out. The song was “Cure for an Itch “. It was almost as though one of them Linkin Parkians had shrunk himself ,gotten into my head and was stretching it from the inside.
FRIEND1 had an important role to play, he got me introduced to the stuff that would turn into a borderline obsession in the years to come. (Wow, sounded like a drug addict there for a second).
Friend2
Friend2 was from college . Tall dark chap. Friend2 would parade around college with his earphones on and discman in his hands. Not only did he listen to a lot of music , he made sure that everyone around him knew that he listened to a lot of music. Someone who fits the rock fan prototype really,long hair, black t -shirts ,torn jeans,armed with an arsenal of bull shit facts that you know you don’t give a shit about,an air of snobbish superiority, flashing the evil horns at any given opportunity,giving the finger at any given opportunity .Yeah ,you get the picture ,don’t you. You had one in your college too , din’t you.
Irrespective of how much you love a particular type of music there are only so many times you can listen to it. At that time the Linkin Park novelty was beginning to wear off. I had been listening to nu and rap metal for a while and barring the mentioned genres ,rock music was still something that was by and large quite alien to me and barring the mentioned genres ,rock music was by and large something that was alien to me.