Musical Milestone #3: Speed

The revolution continued, and the long hairs of the world regrouped into two specific camps: self-respecting human beings who liked music, and totally lame dipshits. For the next few months, I continued to play the bass as fast as hell, and the Zenmasters guitar prowess evolved at a scary rate. He was a blazing blur of angry fingers that strove to keep up with the increasingly powerful orchestrations in his head. We were onto something, but we didn’t know what.

One day after school, Zenmaster and I left campus and were kicking back at the adjacent park before we went home. A girl that I had my eye on all year showed up. She was like a heavy metal supermodel with long blonde hair, a million dollar smile, super tight jeans, black vans, and a different Iron Maiden baseball jersey for every day of the month. She walked up with a jam box and pressed play. The music that came from that blessed stereo gave me a new will to live. It was loud, and it made Iron Maiden seem like a lounge band. The singer sounded mad. The guitars were thicker and faster and meaner than anything I’d ever heard. The zenmaster and I were dumbfounded as we shared an epiphany… This was the next level….This was what we’d been looking for. It wasn’t just heavy metal… it was SPEED metal. It was Metallica, and all at once, we knew that everything was gonna be OK.