HR80s for 20 years!

It's been just about 20 years since I started listening to HR80s. I know it was in August 2001, a little while before my 16th birthday. Yeah, I've always been young for this stuff, but it's always been my favorite music!

My family got our first PC in late 2000, and it came with MusicMatch Radio. I heard a few Motley Crue songs, and I got interested in the genre. Some late 90s/early 00s Sega games like Sonic Adventure, Sega Rally 1995, and Ferrari F355 Challenge also gave me an early taste in the genre before I even knew what it was. I decided to use this newfangled internet to figure out exactly what this was that I liked so much. Silly enough, one of the best clues I had was the term "butt rock" which I read in some gaming magazine articles about those Sega games.

I eventually found my way to Winamp, and I found HR80s on its listing of internet radio stations. I tuned in for the first time that day in August 2001, and the first song I heard was Parental Guidance by Judas Priest. I gave the station a listen over the next few days and didn't entirely get it, but then I began to understand what I was hearing. I began to put two and two together. I heard Motley Crue. I heard Mr. Big. The To Be With You band? Really? Yes! I heard Poison! Skid Row! Alice Cooper! The European stuff like Iron Maiden and Helloween! And so much more! It took me a while to figure out how Monster Ballads factored into the picture, though...

9/11 happened, and it seemed like everything was going to fall apart in the world, but HR80s kept on rocking. It helped me through the rest of that year both with international events affecting us all and with some personal stuff going on in my teenage life at the time. In science class in October, I was jamming in my head to Beggar's Day by Skid Row. Around that time, I heard Keeper of the Seven Keys by Helloween for the first time, and that changed my musical life forever. Helloween became my favorite band. Alice Cooper went from being my dad's music to being my music. And it wasn't just 70s and 80s Alice! It was Alice into the 00s! Guns N Roses became the first CD I ever bought.

Things have changed over the past 20 years. Napster, Limewire, Kazaa, that stuff has come and gone. Vintage Vinyl in New Jersey recently left us. Speaking of vinyl, we never saw that becoming a bigger seller than CDs again, but everything physical pales in comparison to iTunes and the like nowadays. Guitar Hero has risen and fallen. Various shows here on the station have passed through the station's stay on the internet. I'll never forget listening to OSMS, Metal Lessons Radio, Red and Jerry, and especially Hairball John. I loved Hairball John so much. My mom would say that I was listening to my hairy balls. One time my parents wanted to go out for a family dinner at a diner on a Monday night, and I was upset the entire time. I was missing Hairball John!

Bands are coming, going, evolving, and pandering. More and more of these bands are going away. I remember in the early 00s there wasn't a lot of good news for these bands. The most noteworthy thing back then was the tragic Great White fire. I'm glad a bunch of these bands got at least a bit more recognition since 2010 or so. I became a fan during the lowest point, so it made me happy to see them come back. But nothing lasts forever. David Coverdale's talking about calling it quits. Kiss might actually be retiring this time. I heard Krokus is on the way out, too. Looking at the billboard of Starland Ballroom since they started announcing shows again, I think the only band I recognized was Testament. No more Twisted Sister. No Alice Cooper. No Skid Row. Some of them might come back, but it used to be hair half the time there.

HR80s probably has less years ahead of it than it does behind it, but I'm going to keep on enjoying it and letting it help me enjoy the genre for as long as it lasts. If HR80s has taught me one thing, it's that the rock will roll on no matter how bleak it looks. So while we might end up in the 90s and 00s doldrums again, while the venues might not be recognizable, while the stores and other places might not even exist anymore, the spirit will carry on. There's still a lot of life left in the little genre we love. Edguy and Avantasia still have plenty left to give. Airbourne is going to rock for some time to come. Sebastian Bach still has a lot of gas left in the tank!

I read one time that metal has been breeding eccentricity instead of breeding new audiences. I think that's a good way to put it. It's still special. It's not old. It's just older. In some ways, it's even better. You just have to look and get outside of your comfort zone. Though they're not on HR80s, I found out about Band Maid from Japan and have absolutely fallen in love with most of their albums. There's so much out there that branches out from our little slice in time that is fun, meaningful, and powerful. That's what I always found the most appealing about this era of music and the styles that it influenced and the styles that influenced it. Nothing has more gusto. Nothing.

Thank you, HR80s, Chris, Grinder, Impaler, Hairball John, Acid Chimp (RIP), Red, Jerry, the Burning Albums guy, the Metal Lessons Radio guys, Metallin' Mary, and everyone else who has made this possible for so many years. I appreciate it all! Thank you very much!

Well said!!

You just have to look and get outside of your comfort zone. Though they're not on HR80s, I found out about Band Maid from Japan and have absolutely fallen in love with most of their albums. There's so much out there that branches out from our little slice in time that is fun, meaningful, and powerful.

I pride myself on reaching out to every kind of metal, to check it out; power, symphonic, glam, thrash, doom..everything! And have found some gems that I love like Epica, Nightwish, Havok, as examples, and more recently (as Chuplayer noted) Band-Maid and one, if not, the best power metal band on the planet right now, Lovebites (another all female Japanese band that freakin kills!). Frozen Crown is another that hails from Italy, and the list goes on. Rock and metal are not dead, it's constantly reborn, one just needs to seek it out, and support it by actually BUYING the albums (dig or cd). I think New Music to Check Out 2 forum here helps, I post vids from all kinds of bands, even those that do not fit the format, and see other users do that too. So a nice go to for what is going on out there.

I came onboard in Oct of 2006 and am still here. It's hard to see the station struggle with new uploads and so on, but we chug along and keep going what we can and keep the forum up to date with new goodies!

Thanks Chuplayer for the great post.

My journey into metal began in 1981 in 7th grade. I was very fortunate to sit next to a kid that had written the names of bands all over his brown paper sack book covers! What is this Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, and Black Sabbath. I sat behind another kid in social studies that had a Black Sabbath Mob Rules tee shirt. That terrifying image from the album cover was inspirational. I stumbled my way to WCCC and discovered music like nothing I had ever heard before. Two things that stand out to me during the time I listened to WCCC (now K-Love) was there was an Ozzy concert simulcast on the radio, and then I hearing of Randy Rhoads death in March of 82.

I moved to suburban Boston in the summer of 1982 and went to 8th grade with the first person I knew that played guitar, he was a huge Kiss fan. I was never into Kiss before, but he introduced me to Creatures of the Night and then the whole back catalog of Kiss.

Somewhere around 1984-1985 WHJY in providence started a Saturday night metal program with DJ Doug Frye. My tastes quickly moved form Ozzy, Priest, and Ratt to Dokken then Accept then Metallica! WBCN (now demised) in Boston followed with a Sunday night metal show. I recorded so much music from those shows. I remember hearing Megadeth on the WBCN program promoting Killing is My Business....

In 1988 I left Boston for St. Louis, there was a decent rock station there, KSHE 95, but I don't remember them having a dedicated metal show. I never got into glam metal and ballads and the such. So when songs like Pour Some Sugar on Me or anything by Poison was played I just lost interest. Maybe its the statement of a cynical fan but to me the "death" of 80s metal occurred when Metallica decided they wanted to be GNR. Couple that with a couple of lousy Iron Maiden albums, and off I went to country music and a bit of alternative like Alice in Chains.

Missing aggressive melodic music and by the mid 90s I started to Bad Religion, Pennywise, Social Distortion etc. I love that music still, but missed epic metal.

Brave New World and Bruce's return to Iron Maiden in 2000 brought me back to metal. By that point I had two children, and lived in Cincinnati. Finding new music was still hard though. At some point I found HR80s on the internet. I don't have any recollection of how I discovered it or precisely when I found it. The thing that stands out the most to me is hearing one of the songs form Iced Earth's Gettysburg and being amazed, I went out and bought The Glorious Burden and the triple cd Alive in Athens at Phil's Records. This was probably around 2005 or 2006.

Maybe I was too much of a crank in my post knocking Richie Kotzen et al, but I just don't care for glam metal and romantic ballads(or death/black metal). My tastes lay much more in the traditional NWOBHM/Power/Symphonic/Prog Metal vein, with thrash and speed also on the play list.

But even with SAM choosing some music I really don't like, HR80s is the best place for old and new(ish) metal that I know of. I discover music from my metal desert years all the time, which is nice, it gives me a line to new music that is in fact old! All the day crew folks posting in the New Music forum are a godsend, helping me to learn what's going on in Metal with old and new bands. I have found a lot of great music through these posts! May this place last long after I'm dead and buried!