We worked together at the local Rax restaurant which is now long gone...I'll have to write a bit about that place another day. Anyway, when the big day came, Sharon's sister Hillary drove me to the show and we met up with Sharon and some other friends and coworkers. Everybody else stayed on the floor for the show, but since I had never really been to a metal show before and because I had been thumped on and burned with a cigarette while on the floor at the Jimmy Page show the previous year, I decided to play it safe and grab a seat somewhere away from the mosh pit.Of course, Anthrax was great that night. This was their "State of Euphoria" tour and I am pretty sure I had all of their albums by the time I got to see them live. They had a lot of material to work with and as I recall, they played a lot off of "Euphoria," but there was a fair amount from "Among the Living" and "Spreading the Disease." It was a great night. I still remember getting told to climb down from my seat by the security staff. Years later, I got to see Anthrax play at the Newport in Columbus and we ended up in the front row. I climbed up on the railing/gate that fenced in the lower floor area at that show. Nobody told me to get down at that show, but I did get pushed around a bit later on that night. Long story.
The night of the Headbanger's Ball show, Exodus came out first and played a powerful show. I had never seen or heard them before, but when the lights came down and their intro started (which was a spooky voice reciting a passage from Jessica Mitford's book Kind and Usual Punishment), I figured that it was going to be a great show. After the intro, they blasted into "The Last Act of Defiance," which chronicled the New Mexico State Prison Riot of February 1980, and they continued with a great set featuring songs from their current release at the time, "Fabulous Disaster" as well as their previous two albums. I picked up all three of their albums in the months following the show and Exodus became one of my favorite bands during my high school years.
Helloween was also on the Headbanger's Ball tour and that night was also the first time I had ever heard them. I remember that despite the noise in the place, I could hear a guy sitting next to me as he told his friend that Helloween's lead singer Michael Kiske sounded really funny when he talked. Sure enough, after their opening number, Kiske greeted the crowd and the guys next to me cracked up. In addition to his German accent, Kiske had a strange inflection inflection which was indeed kind of funny. But there was nothing funny about Helloween's terrific performance. Around the middle of the set, I had pretty much decided that I was a fan of the group. I think that their performance of "Future World" had really struck a chord with me but it was "I Want Out" (which, unbeknownst to me had enjoyed some decent airplay on MTV leading up to the tour) that really won me over.
A week or so after the show, I picked up the cassette version of the Helloween live EP "I Want Out". I absolutely loved the album and I listened to it over and over again. It was one of my favorite albums for the better part of high school. Although many years have passed, I am still really taken with this album and I listen to the CD version regularly. I read a piece about the album on the Internet recently in which on fan hails the album as one of the best live metal albums ever. I must agree. The EP features what was basically the entire set from the Headbanger's Ball show, including most of the best tracks from the "Keeper of the Seven Keys" albums. The album starts off with the "Happy Helloween" intro and then they launch into "A Little Time," which is a tremendous way to get things moving. After Kiske enjoys a brief chat with the audience, the monster movie-themed "Dr. Stein" follows and then "Future World" follows, complete with a lengthy audience participation segment. From there, the anti-war power ballad "We Got the Right" follows and after that is the signature song/title track "Future World." The EP closes with a scorching version of "How Many Tears." The track listing is really solid. Although it's a short album, there's not a bad tune in the batch, which is kind of rare.
I've heard quite a few other Helloween albums over the years, but none of them compare to the "I Want Out" EP. "Keeper of the Seven Keys" Part I and Part 2 have some great tracks, but there are quite a few stinkers and near misses on the albums. And the pre-Kiske stuff like "Walls of Jericho" never really appealed to me. I kind of stopped looking for new stuff by Helloween while I was in college and after the Headbanger's Ball tour (their only US tour from what I understand), it seemed to be a bit more difficult to find their subsequent releases (at least this seemed to be the case in the US, anyway). I had never even heard material from the later Kiske albums until after he had left the band. It was a pretty hot rumor for a while that Kiske would replace Bruce Dickinson when he had parted ways with Iron Maiden. They might have sounded a little better than they did with Blaze Bayley had that ever come true.
In 1996 or so, I happened upon the double-live album "High Live" (which is really a great album in its own right) and up until that point, I didn't even know Kiske had left the band. I am still kind of lukewarm to the Andi Deris interpretation of the older Kiske tunes and from what I have heard, there are plenty of diehard Helloween fans who feel the same way. A lot of the post-Kiske material is pretty good, but to this day it doesn't seem the band has captured the same magic that the had back in the late 1980s.
One thing that has always confused me about Helloween is their occasional use of religious messages and imagery in some of their lyrics (such as "Save Us" and "Why?"). One more than one occasion, I have picked up something in one of their songs that's made me mutter a quiet "Eww." In fact, I actually did some research a while back to make sure I wasn't listening to some kind of thinly veiled Christian rock. I was kind of relieved when I came across some Christian rock Internet pages that rather clearly denounced Helloween as "not Christian." Whew. I mean, seriously...the term "Christian rock" is pretty oxymoronic. Besides, one Stryper was bad enough, thank you very much!
So there are a few remaining Kiske era albums that I am slowly tracking down so I can hear the whole range of the vintage Helloween lineup. No doubt that some of the stuff will be hit or miss – I've read some pretty harsh reviews for "Pink Bubbles Go Ape" (although I really think the track "Kids of the Century" is pretty good) and the reviews for Kiske's final Helloween album "Chameleon" are even worse. But what the hell...As long as it rocks, I'll give it a fair shake.
Two horns up!
