I flunked geometry during my sophomore year of high school. I'm not proud of it, but math was never my forte. As such, I was forced to go to summer school. Quite unsurprisingly, I was not enthused about this development, but if I didn't to it, I wasn't going to be allowed to return to my school. I ended up going to Portsmouth Abbey out in Rhode Island (about fifteen minutes outside of lovely Newport). My good friend Keith's dad was a teacher there and ran the summer program. While it certainly beat going to a place in the sweltering city, the prospect of spending the lion's share of my summer away from my home and my friends, re-studying the maddening properties of the isosceles triangle was less than ideal. Given my tireless penchant of histrionics, I acted as if this predicament was comparable to Steve McQueen's plight in "Papillon." But what could I do? It was my own fault.
I spent the majority of that May feverishly taping the best bits of my record collection. After all, I wasn't about to spend the summer without tunes! This was 1983. While the airwaves were thick with endless rotations of "Every Breath You Take" by The Police (Synchronicity had just hit stores), my listening habits were otherwise ruled by two bands: Iron Maiden and Devo. While also quite keen on Def Leppard's Pyromania, U2's War and Golden Shower of Hits by the Circle Jerks, the crucial two cited bands remained my favorites. Hearing Killing Joke for the first time a year later would change all that, of course, but that's another post.
They're an incongruous pair, Iron Maiden and Devo, and virtually polar opposites. While both have strenuously arguable roots in Punk Rock, their similarities ended abruptly there. `Maiden wrote cinematic heavy metal epics, rife with galloping rhythms, heroic guitar solos and -- once Bruce Dickinson joined the fold -- valkyriesque vocal acrobatics. Devo wrote viscerally sardonic anti-paens to a sick society, replete with deliberately odd time-signatures, jittery riffs, yelping vocals and -- on their first two albums, at least -- a penchant for oft-atonal skronk. `Maiden wrote songs about warfare, squalor, the occult and bloodshed. Devo wrote songs about dysfunction, mutation, lust and sexual frustration. `Maiden adhered to conventional rock instrumentation. Devo feverishly embraced new technology. `Maiden wore leather, spikes, the odd regrettable bit of spandex and grew their hair long. Devo were comparatively clean cut and dressed like disturbed employees of a sewage-treatment plant. `Maiden's mascot was Eddie, a grimacing undead axe-murderer. Devo's mascot was Booji Boy (pronounced Boogie) a disquietingly infantilized, helium-voiced boy-child who looked like one of the Campbell's Kids on crack. These were two entirely different bands who probably regarded each other -- if at all -- with palpable disdain. But to me, they were both completely essential.
Mom drove me down to Rhode Island to drop me off and I somberly checked into my dormitory. I was booked into a room with a Puerto Rican kid seemingly half my age who was inexplicably obsessed with hair gel, masturbation and Styx's Kilroy Was Here (to this day, I cannot hear "Mr. Roboto" without remembering a few disquieting instances of walking in on him while in flagrante delicto). I put up two posters on my wall the day I arrived. One featured the sleeve of the then-recently-released Piece of Mind by Iron Maiden (featuring newly-lobotomized Eddie struggling to free himself from a straight-jacket). The other was the poster that had come inside Devo's New Traditionalists album. It was these two bands that were going to get me through this.
The summer, of course, ended up being a lot of fun. I made several friends -- a couple of like-minded metalheads (who didn't understand my love for Devo at all) and a zealous Adam & the Ants fan among them. When not struggling with geometry, I was savvy enough to take a typing class, learning a skill that would serve me well for the rest of my life (certainly more so than fuckin' geometry). I now type like the wind as a result. As far as my reason for being there in the first place, the gods of mathematics did little to cut me any slack. In all candor, I basically ended up failing geometry again, but my teacher -- a mellow dude named Mr. Lovett -- let me eek by with a (barely) passing grade. Mission accomplished. I still credit my round-the-clock, high-volume airings of "Number of the Beast," "Uncontrollable Urge," "The Trooper" and "Smart Patrol/Mr. DNA" as a critical part of my survival.
Twenty-five years (!!!) later, I strangely have tickets to go see both Iron Maiden and Devo in the next two weeks. While grayer and fatter in both instances, these bands are endearingly still at it, and both still deliver the goods. Iron Maiden keep recording new material, god bless'em. Devo stick to the oldies, although they're supposedly recording a new album as I type this (and there was that Dell computers ad). I'm seeing `Maiden tomorrow night at the Garden as part of their Somewhere Back In Time tour, which promisingly features all old material (up through and including 1984's Powerslave). I'm not going to pretend that these events are about anything other than nostalgia for me. That said, I am curious to hear new Devo material. Iron Maiden, to their credit, have rarely wavered from their time-tested formula. As such, one could be reasonably assured that their new material will invariably sound just like their old material. That's what they do, after all. In any case, this old man is planning on enjoying himself thoroughly at both shows.
And I'm still crap at geometry.
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