Metal Health will drive you nuts!

Fans of hard rock & heavy/trash/speed/etc metal, beware! Head banging is dangerous. Or so, says an expert.

 

I was driving home last night, listening to BBC world over the radio, and the show featured an Australian associate professor, Andrew McIntosh, who said head banging not only can cause neck injury, headache and dizziness, but also brain damage.

 

Head banging is bad? In a song called Metal Health, by top notch heavy metal band, Quiet Row, the late vocalist Kevin DuBrow screams, “Bang your heeaaad! Metal health will drive you mad” That’s an instruction buddy, and you better bang your head.

 

I am typically not your head banger….well, more of head bobber.  I mean, we all do that right, bobbing head, but it could go wild depending on the tempo of the music, the harder the rock, or the speedier the metal. It’s especially not good when you are in the car, at the traffic light, waiting for it to go green.

 

Next lane driver’s wife           : Why is he bobbing his head so violently?

Next lane driver                     : I don’t know. Rehearsing oral sex perhaps.

Next lane driver’s wife           : I want to go home NOW!

 

Though, I am not into head banging, I empathise with head bangers. That is an immediate reaction to great metallic riffs, and thundering drums. How many of you did not even move your head a bit when the Brian May kicks in the big one in the middle of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody – voted as the ultimate car song recently?

 

Speaking of car songs, how many of you have serious conflicts with your passenger with choice of radio stations or songs? I mean if you are driving, you have all the right…err…right?

 

Not so with my fiancée, Linda. The radio player hogging girl has control over it, and she hates my metal collection. Once, and this is unintentional coz the radio DJ must have dozed off, I was forced to listen to three Michael Bolton songs CONSECUTIVELY! Enough horror to make me Run To The Hills (Iron Maiden).

 

Now that, professor Andrew McIntosh, causes brain damage.

 

Aside: As a punishment, I made Linda listen to a Black Sabbath song, and warned her that next time it might be Slipknot. I know it’s cruel, but three Michael Boltons is torture of the worst kind. End of aside.

 

Alas, during the radio show, McIntosh cited Bohemian Rhapsody as one of the brain damaging songs. How could you Mac? Upon hearing it, I wanted to go to the Parliament and protest, and lodge a police report.

 

According to McIntosh, to avoid all those issues, compulsive head bangers can wear some sort of neck brace, to control the movement of the neck not to tilt to a dangerous level. Right. Imagine a rock concert with neck brace wearing head bangers.  Instead of throwing T-Shirts and underwear, the performers would soon be barraged by attack of the killer neck-braces the head bangers are getting rid off. In short, it won’t work.

 

McIntosh is also trying to get heavy metal bands to be the ambassadors of anti-head banging campaign.

 

Rock star: We’re gonna rock you, tonight. But before that, we have a public announcement to make, head banging is injurious to health…

Audience: Booooo…..

 

Marketing wise that would be suicide.

 

It’s funny that an associate professor from Australia should come up with this study. This, considering that he hails from the same country as one of the greatest hard rock/heavy metal act in the world, AC/DC. Yes, the same famous, wealthy, long living band that still forgets to buy its founder and lead guitarist, Angus Young, a longer pair of pants.

 

Another suggestion McIntosh came out with, and I am not frickin’ kidding here, is to alternate the heavy metal songs with softer ones. “You can listen to Spinal Tap, and then listen to Lionel Ritchie’s Hello. You can listen to (AC/DC’s) Highway To Hell and then, Fly Me To The Moon”.

 

Again, I am not joking. Imagine AC/DC belting out Highway To Hell, takes a break, and then Chairman of the Board, the Ole Blue Eyes himself takes the stage to fly you to the moon. In the crowd of head banging metal heads!

 

The final suggestion made me conclude that McIntosh is nuts. Not only that, he is dangerous to all hard rock/heavy metal fans in this world. I googled him and came with this and realized that he is not even a Heavy Metal fan.

 

Heavy metal fans of the world, let us unite. Let’s pool in some cash and get some professor to do a study that will conclude that listening to the likes of Bolton, Billy Joel, Whitney Houston not only turn your brain to scramble eggs, but also make you acquire all the tropical disease known to mankind and catkind.

 

Let’s start by writing the cheques to my name…