Family Reunion

Find out how a Halloween party I attended as a teenager resurfaced digitally and reconnected me with the good old days via a podcast. It’s a family reunion at which headbanging is welcome.

Selections from my early concert days in San Antonio and Dallas

On a chilly night many moons ago, I cajoled my way into borrowing my dad’s car so I could go to a Halloween party. I was seventeen and excited about the prospect of meeting new people. While I had grown up in San Antonio, my family moved to the Dallas area for the duration of my high school years. We moved back to S.A. in late summer 1983, and while I reunited with my best friend in town, I was eager to make more friends in order to become a part of a new social circle.  

I’m pretty sure the party took place at the home of someone named Ricky, who was a friend of a friend of my friend. When we walked in the front door, my eyes drank in a large number of people my age enjoying a gathering already in full swing. A sea of teenagers and twenty-something people took up residence around the main living area of the home. The party-goers came from my tribe: heavy metal fans, many in black concert shirts and blue jeans.

I felt both nervous like the new kid at school and also at home. I had discovered and embraced the world of heavy metal music just a couple of years earlier, which made this crowd of strangers feel familiar. I drank a couple of beers and huddled with my friend, feeling like a grown-up whose fake I.D. had passed muster in a bar. 

After speaking to strangers here and there, I ended up in a conversation with two guys with long blonde hair who were a couple of years older than me. When they asked if I could give them a ride to the grocery store to pick up party supplies, I didn’t have to think twice. My parents would have cringed at the idea of my getting into a car with strangers, but in that transitory, exploratory stage of life, everything seems like a potential adventure. Besides, my friend knew one of the young men, a guy named Don who played bass in a local band called Slayer (not to be confused with the L.A. Slayer band). The other guy was Jason, a singer for an Austin prog-rock metal band called Watchtower. 

I fired up my dad’s Oldsmobile and a cigarette and chauffeured my new acquaintances to a nearby H.E.B. grocery store. As Jason and Don strolled down the aisles collecting items, they kept me thoroughly entertained. This duo talked loudly, made jokes, sang a ribald lyric from a song they made up, and tossed a couple of loaves of bread around like footballs. While these days, I am often hardpressed to remember what I had for breakfast that day, the details of this trek through the grocery store stuck with me. My friend and I shadowed these two young lads through the store, watching their antics and impressed, the way teenage girls get during situations like that. 

I remember giggling a lot and being thrilled with this turning point in my evening. After a particularly lonely summer prior to moving back to San Antonio, I felt hope now. The group at Ricky’s house felt familiar and comfortable to me, and two of its more vocal members, by virtue of just being themselves at a Halloween party, made me feel accepted. 

After we returned to the party, Jason and Don moved on to interactions with other guests, as did my friend and me. I stayed out way past curfew and got grounded upon my return home. It didn’t matter – I had arrived, as far as I was concerned.

Some ticket stubs from the Cameo Theatre, Back Room, and other venues

Over the next several months, a tiny, former movie theater on the outskirts of downtown became a frequent hangout for me and the friends I began to make. The Cameo Theatre hosted many gigs by local rock bands, including Watchtower, Slayer, Juggernaut, Karion, Militia, and others. While I did not become friends with Jason and Don, I saw their bands perform many times. We all traveled in the same circle now; this small but loyal group of metal misfits, who showed up faithfully at myriad concerts and spent hours bonding over passionate discussions about our favorite heavy metal bands. 

Over the next few years, many of my nights were spent at the Cameo, arenas, and other venues in San Antonio and Austin, enjoying both local and world-famous bands. I couldn’t imagine a life in which I did not constantly go to concerts. I accumulated a ticket stub collection that passed 100 long before the metal-infused decade that was the 80s ended. 

Then, as life so often has the nerve to do, things changed. I parted company with friends from that era, and constant concert attendance became a focus of my past. I no longer strapped on rock band t-shirts daily like some sort of armor. I struggled to try to find my place in the working world, wanting to write for a living but floundering out of a lack of knowledge and confidence.

My story jumps ahead here because of something I stumbled across this past Thanksgiving weekend. A social media post on a friend’s page showcased a new podcast called Talk Louder. The podcast celebrates heavy metal from the decades past and is hosted by two men my age who still embrace the music. One of the hosts? Jason McMaster from that Halloween party almost forty years ago. The other host is a guy named “Metal Dave” Glessner. Dave spoke of many of the same gigs I attended, cementing him as part of my circle back in the day, although we did not know each other then.   

These two veterans of my old crew had put together a podcast that allows them to, in their own words, “geek out” on the metal and rock music from the old days. I began to swim through the sea of podcasts, soaking in topics including local bands from way back when, famous bands they love, memorable concerts, music magazines from the old days, record stores they frequented, favorite power ballads, and more. The podcast served as a digital time machine for me, transporting me back into the flip-flops, Levi’s jeans, and Scorpions t-shirts of a teenage girl and twenty-something young woman. 

I flashed on stories from those days I had filed away years and decades ago. I talked back to my phone during podcasts when Dave and Jason brought up that which remains so familiar to me. Yes, I was at that concert, too! I used to ask my mom to buy me those rock music magazines when I was a kid, too! That’s also my favorite Armored Saint album! Y’all aren’t the only ones who rode in Bob’s old green van! 

The podcasts turned into one long family reunion. I feel like I had been unexpectedly reunited with cousins I had not seen since we met as teenagers. My extended family now led the charge through a host of powerful, identity-forming memories that made up so much of who I used to be. So much of who I still am, in some ways. Listening to the podcast reignited the electric feelings that only come from youth and the fearlessness that accompanies it.  

The Cameo Theatre

In the time since I closed the doors on the Cameo Theatre days, Jason progressed from the band Watchtower to another one called Dangerous Toys. That band achieved some success, with a video on MTV, and tours that paired them with some of their metal heroes. Since then, he has seized the microphone for other area bands, keeping his foot in the musical door while working more traditional day jobs. 

Jason now lives in Lockhart, Texas, and teaches at – and I cannot emphasize enough how cool this is – School of Rock. Yes, that one. Even fans of the film may not know that a real school based on the one Jack Black conceptualized onscreen opened up, with campuses around the country. Jason now uses his extensive rock music knowledge and experience as a working musician to teach kids and teenagers voice, bass, and guitar lessons. The performance-based curriculum culminates in several live performances by students. 

Dave Glessner lives in Austin and banked an impressive amount of work as a freelance music journalist, alongside a regular day job. He has contributed to magazines including Metal Edge, Classic Rock, and Texas Music, as well as several newspapers. Dave has passed on his love of metal music from our glory days to his son, who is thirteen and a budding young musician. 

As these two men pointed out in one podcast episode, they both started out as kids fascinated with rock and metal bands. In a pre-internet world, they used to pour through music magazines to glean any information they could on their heroes. As fate – and a lot of hard work – would have it, Dave grew up to write for these magazines, and Jason grew up to be featured in them. It put me to mind how I wanted so much to be a writer when I was a kid, and I now make my living as a writer. Funny how the various branches of this family tree came full circle.

I’m still making my way through all the podcasts, and each one contains moments of joy. I feel like I’m riding shotgun alongside my old self, cranking up one of my shitty-quality mixed tapes on my car stereo, heading to a concert, or a trip to buy vinyl at Sound Warehouse or Hogwild Records. I’m already psychologically camped out in a time of great reflection in my life, and a podcast showed up out of nowhere to help me remember and sort out one of the most developmental chapters of my young life. 

Jason said in one episode, “It’s 1982 every day for me”, and I get it. I recently put on Metallica’s epic album Ride the Lightning while writing an article for work. I still hear it the way I did when I was just eighteen.  Listening to it yet again consumed me so much that I had to minimize all my work tabs on my computer, put on my headphones, and zone out to the power of those songs. Whenever I hear this album, I am transported back to lining up at the Cameo Theatre to see Metallica play before most people had heard of them. It’s always 1985 in my life when I hear it.

Whenever I put on the first Iron Maiden album, I instantly time travel to sitting at my friend’s breakfast table with her, her parents out for the evening, and their turntable in full swing. I always hear this album the way I did as an impressionable, mesmerized, fourteen-year-old being initiated into a new world of heavy metal music. It’s always 1981 in my life when I hear it. 

When I listen to the first several KISS albums, I access my primal love of this freaky new band I became obsessed with as a kid and who served as my gateway drug to rock-n-roll. It’s always the 1970s in my life when I hear it. 

I can’t say I still love all the same music from back then, as some of it leaves me cold or at least indifferent now, but much of it still moves me and goes in and out of rotation. Jason and Dave joke sometimes that they do a “Beavis and Butthead podcast”, but I think that sells their show short. The two men engage in thoughtful conversation, detailed memories, and humor that often has me laughing out loud. 

The conversations remind me of how much of my transition into adulthood and the foundation of my musical taste can be found in the Cameo Theatre days. Talk Louder is like a support group for people who don’t really want to be cured, thank you very much. I may not be in touch with people from my old denim and leather glory days, but I know without a doubt that many of them would appreciate this podcast as much as I do. 

If this sounds like a family reunion you’d be interested in, check it out. Visit their website to learn where you can hear or watch the podcast. Before you know it, you’ll be thumbing through your concert ticket stub collection or seeing if that old Judas Priest t-shirt or jean jacket you had your mom sew band patches on still fits. You’ll be joining in on the debate of whether there really is a Van Halen worth considering after David Lee Roth left. If you’re like me, you’ll lose your mind because someone else finally understands that UFO’s song “Terri” may be the best, saddest, most impactful love gone bad song ever recorded. 

You’ll laugh at remembering some of the Beavis & Butthead moments you engaged in from time to time because, ya know, youth and rock-n-roll. You will likely get out old vinyl treasures or download favorites from decades past, and probably end up banging your head. And really, whether you’re 15 or 55, ain’t nothin’ wrong with that.