Folio Weekly staff writer Dan Brown remembers his youthful infatuation with the dark side of hard rock & heavy metal bands, back when such music was always considered “evil” by our parents (which made us like it all the more). Ironically, the occasion for Dan’s article is The Winter Jam, billed as “Christian Music’s Largest Annual Tour,” coming to the Jacksonville, FL Veteran’s Memorial Arena on January 13 at 7:00 p.m. These bands apparently rock out; their ad includes the comment “Slayer fans welcome.” Dan told me, “I’m admittedly an absolute lover of God, but I also wanted to share my own story, 99.9% of which is true. Glad you dug it. Here’s to heresy.”
Dan says, “As the years rolled by, my brother guided my arcane conversion to the dark side and I followed his lead down the Left Hand Path of Rock. We soon found others who shared our nefarious, preteen tastes and gorged ourselves on bands like Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and any album featuring anything vaguely demonic (goats were a plus) or a buxom, scantily clad woman (preferably riding a goat.) During the ’80s, the words “backwards masking” were added to our lexicon when we found Jacob Aranza’s 1983 book, Backwards Masking Unmasked” a veritable field guide to the most malevolent musical acts on the planet.”
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