DORKS LOVE METAL!
Thursday, July 24th, 2008 at 1:23pm by Corey Mitchell
What is the dorkiest thing you have ever done to show your love of metal?
I’ve had a few supreme dork moments of metal in my 42 years of geekdom. I once made myself up as King Diamond for the big Halloween street bash on Sixth Street in Austin, Texas, way back in 1985. Out of more than 100,000 revelers, a whopping 13 people knew who the hell I was dressed up as.
My dorkiest moment, however, took place way back in 1984, when I was seventeen years old.
My friends and I decided to participate in a lip-sync contest at a teen club in Pasadena, Texas called Fast Times. This was right after Motley Crue’s Shout at the Devil came out and the band was not quite huge yet. I was already a big fan of the band and was really into their debut LP, Too Fast For Love. As a result, I chose the song “A Piece of Your Action” for our performance. I should have gone with “Shout at the Devil” or “Looks That Kill” which would have been a little more familiar to the audience.
Needless to say, we got our asses kicked by a bunch of cheerleaders who pranced around in short-shorts to the tune of Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.”
Check out the shots of me as Vince Neil, Lupe Garcia as Mick Mars, Larry Hamaker as Nikki Sixx, and Pete Ortiz as Tommy Lee. Ah, nothing beats memories of my drunken, dorky high school days.
So what about you? Got any uncool metal moments you’d care to share? Can you admit that you are not always about the scowl? Share your dorkiest metal moments here with us.
[Corey Mitchell is a Los Angeles Times best-selling author of six true crime books including his latest, Pure Murder, the brutal account of the murders of two teenage girls in Houston, Texas, by six teenage boys. He is also the founder of the #1 true crime blog, In Cold Blog.]
When I was 17, about 4 years ago. I made my own Corey Taylor/Slipknot mask on Halloween for dress up at work day… I scared about evey little kid in there that day and felt like kind of an asshole. But I wore the same mask while I was at a house/costume party last year on my college campus and everyone knew who I was, so it was kind of redeeming.
Well, the dorkiest thing that I’ve done so far is really low on the dork scale, I think. All I did was turn a white t-shirt into a Megadeth shirt using a Megadeth font and an iron-on patch. I still haven’t worn it in public yet though.
Nothing this gay…
@John: Ha! I was waiting for that one.
@Elync: Speaking of Megadeth, I used to work as a college label rep for SBK Records back in the late 80s/early 90s. Yes, that meant I had the pleasure of repping SBK artists such as Vanilla and Wilson Phillips to record stores in Austin, Texas. There was only one metal band, some horrible outfit called Dead On. We did, however, rep the soundtrack for the movie Shocker which included artists such as Megadeth, Iggy Pop, and Dangerous Toys. Megadeth’s track was Alice Cooper’s “No More Mr. Nice Guy” and Rattlehead Vic coming out of a couple of radioactive waste barrels was the predominant marketing tool. To promote the record, SBK sent me a box of cassingles and a yellow plastic rain poncho with radioactive warning logos all over it. My job was to walk around in the poncho passing out free cassingles. I shilled at a big concert I promoted and also at my 9-5 job Halloween party. Hmmm, I wonder why that record flopped?
The above should read “Vanilla Ice.” Yes, the rap era.
That’s pretty brave to post those pictures, Corey.
The only thin\g that I can think of is I had this white jean jacket when I was a senior in highschool and I started by using a sharpie and writing megadeth in the best mockery of megedeth style font I could across the bottom of the back of the jacket. After that is was a huge Metallica binge and purge logo across the back and it got out of control from there with Pantera, iron maiden, GnR…it was a white jean jacket with band names and logos all over it in red black and blue sharpie…I thought it was cool as fuck back then. But that’s the best I can do.
8 years ago when I was 16 I started my first band with some friends. The band’s name was Destroyer and we pretty much rocked straight up thrash. Our first show was in some kid’s backyard for a birthday party and we decided that it would be a unique idea to cover Drowning Pool’s “Bodies” to get the crowd pumped.
For this one song we all purchased various Scream and Skull masks and wore long wigs.
Not only did we look like fools but the sound outside was awful, and the makeshift stage that was setup sucked. At one point our singer jumped off an amp and cut out the power to our entire band.
Probably the dorkiest metal thing I did was dress as Ministry’s Al Jourgenson for Halloween back in the mid-nineties. I had a long scraggly black wig and this awesome jacket adorned with long dreadlocks of human hair that I found in a Salvation Army dumpster. (My mother eventually made me throw the damn thing out.)
Most people in my high school thought I was Rob Zombie. :-(
hhmmm only thing i can think of was putting on the alice cooper make up
tho i was going to a alice cooper gig so i dont think thats overly dorky, tho i got alotta looks that day cos i was out in london for the whole day before heading off to the gig with the make up on haha
Stopping during sex to bust out some serious air guitar to Iron Maiden, only one highlight in a long list of dorky metal moments.
I still own a sleeveless denim jacket with patches all over it. I still say its the most metal thing that ever metal’d. Also I black metal scowl in public all the time without thinking about it.
I dressed up as Lita Ford for an 80s party once… leather pants and all lol. Anyways who needs to dress up when you can just get drenched in blood from a Gwar concert – no costume needed (turned my blonde hair pink for a “bloody” month). Oh and for Halloween one year me and a few buddies dressed up with make up like the guys from Immortal, it was wicked.
I went to a RATT/POISON concert last year.
As someone who actually was an adult throughout most of the ’80s, just about everything “metal” I did or wore was dorky (in retrospect, of course).
Oh, and it’s good to see you as a writer here, Corey.
I too was in a talent show in high school where we did a lip sync to Shout at the Devil. We were called Roadkill. We had risers made out of concrete blocks and 2×4’s. We convinced some cheerleaders to rush the stage and tear at our clothes. We got 2nd place. We beat the band that did a real cover of Enter Sandman. They just kicked me out of that band 2 weeks before, because I wanted to start doing more aggressive covers, and branch into grunge. This was ‘91. I got revenge on those douche bags.
Well, I must say, I cannot even start thinking about trying to compare with you guys, seeing as you’re older than me of course. Most of you stories take place while you were in high school… Well I’m still in high school…
@Dmatello- That is truely awesome…
When I was single I was having sex with this chick and some song came on the radio. I don’t remember what song it was but I said: “aww Shiiiit” and was about to start humping to the rhythm of the song but she started to panick, thiking that the rubber broke or something and kind of ruined the moment for me.
I came to work 2 Halloweens ago dressed up as King Diamond, Mercyful Fate era corpse paint.
Here I thought liking Limp Bizkit as a kid was embarrassing, sheesh.
I can’t remember having a most embarrassing metal moment, I imagine there are quite a few, I can recall standing in the yard as a kid swinging my head around(and I had Ozzy’s hair too, the Sabbath hair), singing the opening line of Crazy Train and strumming a rake along with Randy in my head only to turn around and see four members of my family giggling.
Does that count?
kinda like how i made a shirt for my band when i was about 16-17. it was just a white hanes tee with the band name on a big beer can that said “6.66 percent alc/vol” and “finest brewery in hell” or something like that written in marker. equally as sad is the fact that i showed up to band practice with it and the rest of the band loved it and all made their own. pretty gay, huh???
@ Metalmartyr: That’s pretty brave to post those pictures, Corey.
Yeah, more like pretty stupid. There goes any chance I had at running for office.
@Damotello: Hahahahaha!!!! That is a beautiful thing. Please, share more of those dorkier moments with us.
@Sammy: Thanks for the kind words. MetalSucks has always been my favorite blog of any kind so I am honored that they let me spill my nonsense here every now and then.
In my American History class a couple of years ago we had an 80’s day
Me and a buddy dressed in Old school Slayer stuff
The dorkiest metal thing I ever did was paint myself up like King Diamond for a halloween party when I was 19 (about 9 years ago now). I got enough odd looks from the people I was at the party with that it necessitated my leaving early because evidently the hosts weren’t comfortable with the upside down cross on my forehead.
[...] glory days of corpsepaint and titties known as the Shout at the Devil tour way back in 1983. (See Dorks Love Metal! for more hilarity.) I had fallen out of man-love with the band right around the Dr. Feelgood-era so [...]
Dude, the guy dressed up as Tommy Lee in the first picture looks like Frank N Furter. Has he ever considered the job of a RHPS extra? xD