I don’t remember the specific occasion that ended up giving me the nickname Metalhead for everyone in Dalton’s family, but one day everyone started calling me that. I have never been a real metalhead, which is why it’s so funny, but it stuck. I think some people in his family didn’t even know my name, just Metalhead.
At Dalton’s funeral, when I spoke, I introduced myself as Mike, and after a pause, added Metalhead to some knowing nods.
The reason I bring this up is that in a recent exploration of my old tapes in the storage room, I came across one that really made me smile.
Just one of the tons of tapes (and later CD’s) we made for each other of new albums or songs that were hitting hard at the time. I put together some songs on a trusty TDK tape and used one of the many pharmacy pads that he had given me to write out the track list. Even looking back on this one, it’s a strange mixture of music.
I’m thinking this was from 1993 when the Lenny Kravitz album was released. To this day I still own no Depeche Mode, so not even sure how that got on there. I’m going to have to look up Fear Factory… no idea.
I didn’t write anything on the J-card but as you can see, it was once “Duran Duran – Rio” and I recorded over it.
I was a broke dad of 2 at that point and money for new tapes was out of the question. Sometimes hard decisions about tapes needed to be made. I wanted to give this music to Dalton more than I wanted “Rio” available on analog. I have a vague recollection of being in a hurry to get this done so we could listen to it in Dalton’s car while we drove somewhere. Mystery songs were essential for the car. I just jotted down the tracks and stuff it into the case.
However at some point, Dalton made a simple notation on the J-card.
This makes it worth more than the songs within.
Miss you Dalton.
The Aural Retentive 