Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/523863
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 7 JUNE 2015 Opinion 24 A ll this talk of 'summoning evil spirits' at school brought back a few distant memories of my own: most of them involving the greatest hits of Black Sabbath (volume I to V), and trying to play 'Stairway To Heaven' backwards on an old turntable. Sadly, I never got to hear whatever Satanic invocations were supposed to have been recorded that way on the song. All I got for my pains was an irredeemably scratched vinyl edition of 'Led Zeppelin IV', with the result that I could never play its most famous track forwards again. But oh, the good old days! And how we laughed when our teachers warned us about the dangers to which were exposing our immortal soul, each time we head-banged to AC/Dc's 'Highway to Hell', or Sabbath's 'N.I.B' (with its rousing chorus of: 'My name is Lucifer, please take my hand…'). The funny thing, of course, was that our teachers were very evidently more frightened of such things as 'devils' than we were. And I remember thinking, even back then, how odd it was that an older and supposedly 'wiser' generation would actually take all that 'black magic' nonsense seriously… when to both Ozzie Osbourne and all his teenage fans, it was obviously nothing but a gimmicky stunt to sell records. And a fine bunch of records they were too (and still are today), I might add. But make no mistake: the school I went to did take all that nonsense seriously at the time. It was a little bit like the plot of that movie about a town which bans music and dancing on 'morality' grounds… what was it again? 'Last Tango in Paceville'? No, that's not right… Ah yes! Footloose. Knew there was a Paceville connection somewhere… Anyway: as in Footloose (the film, not the popular Paceville vomitarium), an attempt was made to ban heavy metal in my schooldays, for fear of exposure to the legions of Satan. The 'Music of the Devil', it was called: which I took to be was a tremendous (if unwitting) tribute to two of my childhood heroes, Ozzie and Jimmy Page… both of whom would have been to say the least chuffed at the compliment. They even made us take letters to our parents at home – to be returned signed the following day – informing them (Lies! All lies!) that not only was such music 'dangerous' owing to its obvious affinities with the arcane arts of sorcery and witchcraft; but that heavy metal, as a musical genre, had no other merit whatsoever. That it was, in a word, 'trash'. Preposterous! Personally, I was never into trash metal myself – actually I'm not sure it even existed at the time – but still: if you're going to demonise (ahem) an entire genre of heavy metal, at least get the goddamn sub- genre right. In any case, like that songbird in that track I could never listen to again, it made me wonder. If our teachers knew so little about this, yet claimed to know so much… what about all the other subjects they taught us? How much did they really know about them? Come to think of it, I'm still wondering about that today. But the good news is that they never actually succeeded in banning heavy metal in the end. In a sense, they were outpaced by technology: the invention of the 'Walkman' enabled such forbidden genres to go underground… or more specifically, to go to bed, and be listened to with the lights off. As for the supposed 'effects' of the Satanic influence of such music on vulnerable little souls such as myself… well, with the exception of a rash I got once, which seemed to spell out the numerals '666'… oh, and the fact that my head sometimes spins 360 degrees, and I automatically projectile-vomit green puke every time I meet a priest… no, I can't say I ever noticed any myself. This brings me to the current brouhaha concerning today's schoolchildren, who are – unsurprisingly – doing pretty much what we all did when we were younger, and toying with the same old black magic nonsense that seems to scare adults so much. I suppose it's sort of commendable that such a solid, well-founded tradition of schoolyard pseudo-Satanism has been kept alive over the generations. It would be sad indeed, if all that head-banging had no other lasting effect than to spawn an entire generation with neck problems. But at the same time, I have to say I'm a little disappointed with today's youth. I mean… Pencils? Paper? 'Charlie Charlie'? You call that devil-worship? Seriously? In our days, at least we accorded our devils a certain presence and gravitas… even if we didn't actually believe in their existence for a second. These, were after all, the minions of the Prince of Darkness himself. And long before Iron Maiden and Sepultura started taking an interest, they were the principle protagonists of such epics as Milton's 'Paradise Lost' – from which nearly all doom metal bands pilfered their lyrics sooner or later ('no merit whatsoever', indeed…) Now: can you imagine Satan doing the roll-call in Pandemonium, following the calamitous precipitation from Paradise? Be'elzebub? Present. Belial? Present. Moloch? Present. Mammon? Present. Mephistopheles? Present. Charlie Charlie? (Silence) Now 'Charlie Charlie' and the Raphael Vassallo Pencils? Paper? 'Charlie Charlie'? You call that devil- worship? Seriously? 'Charlie Charlie' is the stuff of chocolate factories, for crying out loud. It's the name of comic characters with dogs called 'Snoopy'