Forever Nerdy

by Brian Posehn

  Then I bought their next record, The Kids Are Back. I loved the title track, and “You Can’t Stop Rock and Roll” is the album highlight. Next came Stay Hungry, with “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” “Burn in Hell,” “I Wanna Rock,” and, of course, “Stay Hungry.” I was stoked when they played “Burn in Hell” on Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. I loved their music and their imagery. When Tipper Gore went after metal lyrics, Twisted was one of her first targets. I knew then that I had made the right choice in bands.

  Sadly, their Come Out and Play record was pretty rough, with their first single a weak cover of “Leader of the Pack.” A fifties doo-wop song. What in the fuck were those cornballs thinking? By then I was going way, way heavier. W.A.S.P. had a similar look and image but heavier songs, so I was a W.A.S.P. fan. For a little while. At the same time I was a Twisted MFer—I also liked fellow East Coast rockers Bon Jovi. Hold on. The first record. A lot of Bon Jovi sucks, but I played the crap out of that first record, especially “Runaway.” It’s super catchy. And my wife likes it, so watch your shit, cynical metalheads—she’ll punch you in the mouth.

  Iron Maiden changed singers, their sound, and their place in history when the punky brawler Paul Dianno was replaced by Bruce Dickenson, an operatic heavy-metal madman born to rule arenas. That was when Maiden cemented their place on my all-time favorite band list with 1982’s Number of the Beast. I loved Maiden’s more complex lyrics and musical composition. They were no KISS, but Maiden would basically save high school for me by putting out Piece of Mind in 1983 and Powerslave my senior year. The music dominated my Walkman. And I spent most of my junior and senior classes doodling their logo and their ever-changing undead mascot, Eddie.

  This Is Spinal Tap came out in 1984. I hated it. I didn’t buy it. As a metalhead, I was offended: How could these guys make fun of the coolest music ever? They probably never listened to heavy metal. I’ve only liked This Is Spinal Tap for about fifteen years. As a teenage metalhead, I didn’t think it was funny. I hated that they were making fun of Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Judas Priest, and Iron Maiden. My main problem was that I didn’t think they earned the right to make fun of metal: they didn’t get to make fun of it if they didn’t love it like me.

  My cousin Todd also wasn’t done turning me on to new music. He played me UFO’s “Strangers in the Night” while we were drinking beers in the hills of Redwood City during one visit, and I heard “Love to Love” for the first time. Fucking epic tune. Check it out right now if you’ve never heard it. Michael Schenker rips it. So melodic and as beautiful as heavy music gets. I was becoming a Michael Schenker fan. He had already left UFO by the time I became a fan, but he was starting a solo career, and I was into it.

  I liked Ronnie James Dio because of the two albums he recorded with Black Sabbath, and I was aware of his Rainbow music and was a fan of the hit “Man on the Silver Mountain.” Metal blasphemy: I thought it was a Sabbath song for a couple of months. Then I heard his solo project, Holy Diver, and I was officially a Dio fan. I had it on cassette at Christmas of 1983 in Tahoe, and my cousin Todd and I would take off and grab beers and hang out and talk—eventually weed became part of it. We still do that when what is left of our family gets together: at some point Todd and I will break off. I love the dude. That year Todd was already away at college at UC Santa Barbara.

  He was dating college girls, so his musical contribution for the Christmas bonding session was David Bowie, Let’s Dance and some Pat Methany. At the time I was shitting on everything that wasn’t metal, and he was clearly maturing away from hard rock, or at least he wasn’t all hard rock, all the time. I loved the Bowie record because I was already a fan of Scary Monsters and his earlier stuff. And Todd made an impression on me: it was good to mix it up and not listen to the same shit all the time.

  My musical interests opened up because of him as well as the fact that the girls who actually talked to me were into new wave and early punk. I already liked punk, but wanting to talk to smart, cute girls with cool hair introduced me to Oingo Boingo, The Police, The Pretenders, and, later, Depeche Mode, The Cure, The Smiths, and a lot of other bands with “the” in their name, including The The. I still listen to way more new wave than you’d expect or be comfortable with, but I’ll save that for the next book.

  Heavier shit was starting to pop up. It intrigued me. Krop and Baden and I were all obsessed with seeking out the next heaviest band. Soon I discovered Armored Saint. I picked up the self-titled debut based only on its appearance. The cover featured heavy-metal knights of the round table. The back cover featured a bunch of metal dudes from LA. They looked cool, and they sounded even cooler. Heavier than other shit at the time. John Bush, later of Anthrax, is still one of my favorite singers. Next I heard British proto-thrash three-piece Raven.

  Raven’s record All for One ripped. One of my biggest regrets as a metalhead was not going to see the Kill ’Em All for One tour with Metallica. They played the Stone in SF. I didn’t go because I was kinda afraid. I don’t know what I thought was gonna happen. A year later I would go to any show.

  Then I heard the German metal band Accept and their single “Fast as a Shark.” It was my first thrash song—fast-as-shit guitars, huge chorus, ripping solo, and the vocals. I also bought other proto-thrash: Riot, Fire Down Under and the debut vinyl from Tokyo Blade and the leather-pouch-wearing Manowar.

  We got into Yngwie J. Malmsteen through tape trading with KC. Classically influenced shredding by a flamboyant Swede. He turned us on to Metallica too. Soon Metallica would dominate our lives, so much so that they deserve their own chapter. After Metallica would come Anthrax and then the rest of the big four: Megadeth and Slayer. More about them later. Anthrax’s debut cover, Fistful of Metal, was not slick by any means; it was a sloppy drawing of a fist coming through a dude’s mouth. They would get even better after a line-up change, but I couldn’t believe how fast songs like “Metal Thrashing Mad” and “Panic” were. The riffing was insanely fast. The drummer sounded nuts.

  I also found some bands on my own. Zebra were one of my bands. Summer of ’83—not super heavy but a Zep-influenced three-piece from New Orleans. They had a Zeppelin vibe and were most famous for their single “Tell Me What You Want.” A lot of bands in the eighties went for the big Zeppelin sound—Kingdom Come; Bonzo’s son, Jason Bonham, had his own band, Bonham; and Whitesnake added a bow to their guitars for “Still of the Night” and got as close to Zep as you can get; and Zebra was the first eighties band to do it. I played the shit out of that record and bought three T-shirts when I saw them in Oakland. By the end of my senior year I was going to concerts all the time.

  I saw Rush, Van Halen, Scorpions, Judas Priest, and U2 all in one year. I was scalping tickets like Mike Damone in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. I started up my little ticket business at the beginning of the ’83–84 school year when I noticed most kids at my school didn’t even know where to purchase tickets. So I decided to buy extras when I got my own tickets, then I would sell them to other kids at a slightly higher price to finance my shows and buy more tickets. I even bought tickets for shows I wasn’t going to, like The Who and Alabama, two popular bands at my school that I could give a shit about. I wanted to see The Clash open for The Who. But I didn’t go. Now I really wish I did. Those shows financed all my concerts for that year and paid for alcoholic beverages, shitty food, and gas.

  In 1984 I went to the Cow Palace with a few friends to see Van Halen live for the first time. My small business had paid for tickets for a couple of friends and myself and a pony keg to celebrate the radicalness of Van Halen. We pounded beers in the back of my friend Dave’s truck on the drive down to SF. Like most people at the show, we were wasted when we got there. We walked onto the floor of the venue, where it was general seating, which means no seats. I saw a girl puke and then immediately pass out in her puke. Party!

  Two weeks later Dave, Pete, and I went to Sacramento to see Judas Priest and Great White with two freshman girls. Dave was a rich kid, which I guess
is how he knew these two super-cute, rich freshmen girls—there is a club, you know. It was an outdoor show at Cal Expo, and we were hanging out, waiting for the metal to commence. Pete was showing off—to who, I’m not sure—and he decided to push me out of the way. The freshman girls laughed. Oh, that’s who. A minute later Pete was standing where I had been, and I’m seething and thinking about revenge—and then a bird shit on his shoulder. Right on his stupid, bare, tank-top-wearing shoulder. It was one of the greatest moments of my life at that time. It still is.

  While I was writing this I recently flew up to Oakland to meet up with Krop and Baden to see Scorpions and Megadeth at the Oakland Coliseum. It was nostalgic fun; we had seen the Scorps together thirty-five years ago. At the same fucking place. We were way more sober and restrained this time around, but it felt really special to still share our nerdy love of this band with each other all these years later. Those guys were a big part of me becoming the metal nerd I am. And they both would play a part in what I later became. But first we all fucked around for a little while.

  TWELVE

  EIGHTEEN AND NO LIFE

  As I said, I barely graduated that summer of ’84. When I received my final credits from the film class I took at the junior college, I had no fucking idea what I was going to do. So I didn’t do much between the fall of 1984 and the spring of 1985 other than work at a gas station, have crushes on a couple of girls, go to a bunch of concerts, and attend Santa Rosa Junior College for two semesters. That spring I took a local neighborhood girl on my first date. Her name was Kathy, and she was super cute, smart, and sweet. And she was kinda nerdy and didn’t hate me.

  Kathy’s mom was on my paper route. Her parents were divorced, and she had moved in with her mom. I had a crush the second I saw her. It would take months of talking and flirting and, I don’t know, courting? She finally said yes, and her mom was cool with it. Actually, I think her mom was a fan of mine and played a part in it. Because we only had one date, and soon Kathy was seriously dating a nerdy little punk rock/new wave kid named Tony who lived across from Kathy. He was a bigger nerd than me and half my size—so I guess he was a smaller nerd than me—but he was into new wave and even more outwardly dorky than I was. He had more confidence than me, though, but so did Donkey-Dick Earl. Fittingly, Kathy and I saw the movie Revenge of the Nerds on our first date.

  During that year I almost died getting nachos one day. But isn’t everybody who dies just trying to get nachos, really? I was working a shift at the gas station with my friend Dan, and it was my turn to head to Circle K for our nacho run. It was a rainy day. It’s where they shot John Carpenter’s The Fog, so of course it was raining. So I’m heading back to work with nachos and sodas in my brown beater, a four-door Mercury Comet. I dubbed it the Turd Mobile. It hadn’t always been a beater. It had been my Grandpa George’s car, and I drove it into the ground in a short period of time.

  “Hot for Teacher” by Van Halen was the song of the day. And I had it cranked. The guitar solo was starting as I was heading down the narrow two-lane Madrone Road, framed by vineyards on both sides. Way ahead of me a car came hydroplaning off the bridge, taking up both lanes. Everything slowed down, like you always hear, but scarier. I’d only been driving for two years, so, in a panic, I thought of the advice from Drivers Ed and things I’d read in the DMV manuals. Nothing.

  At the last second I yanked the wheel to the right to avoid slamming head-on into this guy. I popped off the road at around sixty miles an hour, hit the muddy trail, and soon came to a stop as the dust settled in the rain and the other car went sliding past me. As soon as I came out of slow motion, David Lee Roth commented on the scary situation in typical Roth style: “Oh my God.” The timing was perfect. I laughed and yelled, “Holy shit, I almost died.” And David Lee Roth had topped the moment off with a quip. I drove back to the gas station, rattled but alive and happy as shit to have nachos for lunch.

  I also went to a bunch of live shows that year—I was obsessed at that point. Yngwie Malmsteen was playing in Sacramento, so I made the road trip with Krop and Baden. We decided to make a day of it and drive up early. On our way to check out a couple of record stores in the suburbs, one of them a Tower Records I would later work for, we visited my Grandpa Ed. I remember thinking he was extra cranky that day. I later received a note from him, questioning my judgment for hanging out with two “boys who were clearly questioning their sexuality.” Because that’s what growing your hair and wearing a denim jacket meant.

  The letter covered that old trope that people judge you by the company you keep. He warned me that I might want to rethink my friendships with them. I didn’t. Around that same time my nanas and Uncle Gary were visiting us for the holidays when Krop came by to get me one night. After we left Nana Irene said, “Boy, Brian’s girlfriend wasn’t very attractive.” Uncle Gary laughed and said, “Nan, that was a guy.” I guess I included those stories to show that grandparents just don’t understand.

  One really big thing happened that year. From age eighteen to nineteen I grew eight inches. No shit, I ended high school at five foot ten, and by the time I was nineteen I measured six foot six. As I have said in my act, I was six foot six-point-six—the height of the beast. I went through growing pains. Actual, literal growing pains. I would wake up screaming because I could feel my bones fucking growing. It felt like I was making a horror movie transformation, like American Werewolf or Jeff Goldblum in The Fly remake.

  Then, in July of 1985, I turned nineteen, and my mom had finally had enough of my shit. I get it: I was a fucking lying turd to her. I also was using my mom’s credit card to buy records—good ones, like Dokken, Anthrax, Yngwie. I had quit the gas station and worked at a natural juice company in Sonoma with Pete and my pal Randy. But I got fired for being late all the time. After the juice company let me go, I yelled at the owner in the parking lot and called her the C-word. Classy. Me—because I didn’t call her “classy.” That confrontation is on my regrets pile.

  I also bought a bunch of beers. Weed wasn’t my thing yet, but I drank like a fucking fish, a fucking fish that loved shitty beer, shitty vodka, and shitty tequila. My mom and Ken the Monster made the mistake of trusting me alone in her apartment while she took a trip to Hawaii. I wrecked our apartment and swallowed a cup full of chew spit. Did I puke? Sure did. Hard. I’m gagging as I write this. So in the summer of ’85 I turned nineteen, and my mom said, “See ya. P.S. Wouldn’t want to be ya.” Nope, she didn’t say that. I wish she were that funny.

  All that said, I do not blame her for booting my dumb ass. Man, was I a disrespectful dick. Like a bartender, she said she didn’t care where I went, but I couldn’t stay there. A shitty, unoriginal bartender. My Grandpa Ed had said I could move to Sacramento to live with him. Instead, I went to crash with the Goodman brothers, who were going to a tech school in Phoenix. I went to see The Goonies with Pete and Joel and then headed out on an eleven-hour drive to a weird fucking summer.

  Half a day later I arrived in Phoenix and needed a job. I got hired at Taco Bell and had to go buy brown polyester pants for my uniform with money I wanted to eat with. By the end of the week I had worked my way up to the drive-thru. Saying, “Welcome to Taco Hell” in my devil voice into the PA isn’t what got me fired, but I’m sure it didn’t help.

  After ten days at Taco Bell I turned in my browns and got hired as a lot boy at a Chevy dealership. That summer in Phoenix was a hot, sticky blur of parties, concerts, booze, cocaine, speed, beat-running brand-new cars, and flirting with cute Phoenix rocker chicks who wanted nothing to do with my skinny, goofy ass. Thanks to my hard-partying friends, I had discovered the magic of crank, crystal meth, CR—it was super popular in the desert in the mid-eighties. I still wasn’t a weed guy; instead, I was snorting all the go-go powder I could get.

  By September I had no money and a hundred handwritten pages of my novel—I had started writing a horror novel. More importantly, though, I had no money. And the lot job was not going well. So I begged my mom to let m
e come home. I moved back in with mom but never finished the book. I only made it another three months with my mom before she again asked me to leave. I had quit working at McDonald’s and didn’t tell my mom, and my Grandpa George and Grandma Grace came to visit me one day and enjoy some terrible food. They asked my former coworkers where I was, and I’m guessing they joyfully told them I didn’t work there anymore. Fuck my grandpa for checking in on me.

  And yes, I worked at McDonald’s. When I got back to Sonoma I went to our new McDonald’s and got hired on the spot. I think I lasted two months. Over the next couple of years I got hired at about six fast-food places and three pizza restaurants. It was easy to get hired, but you had to work your ass off, so I hated it. When my mom booted me the second time, I moved in with my Grandpa Ed in Fair Oaks, a Sacramento suburb, and started over. Again.

  I got hired at another McDonald’s and started junior college. And not that surprisingly, my mom and I got along once I didn’t live with her anymore. The situation would get even better once I found stand-up. It was also around then when she broke up with Ken the Monster. It had nothing to do with me, but I think they both realized they weren’t a great fit and moved on. But I think they still did it every once in a while. BLAAARRRGGG!! BLEECCHH!!! UUCCCHHH!!

  I guess here is as good a place as any to tell you how Ken’s story wrapped up. My mom and I and all her friends would see him around the area and trade stories. He was really into recycling before anybody—that is to say, he would walk around Sonoma and surrounding towns collecting aluminum cans and return them for additional income.