For this week, I decided to write my blog post on “Collection of Heavy Metal Music,” which was found through the UCLA Finding Aid, a tool that allows people to search for collections that UC Regents own and where to find them. “Collection of Heavy Metal Music” is a physical collection of published works, archival material, and ephemera related to heavy metal music and fan culture. Specifically these includes biography books and DVDs, show fliers, photographs, etc which could be requested so you can examine and experience the heavy metal culture in person.
A little background on Heavy Metal Music:
Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that began in the late 1960s. Particularly in the 1980s, heavy metal was extremely prominent right near us (Go Bruins!), located in the Sunset Strip area of West Hollywood, Los Angeles! Within metal music, there consists of a variety of subgenres such as glam metal, thrash metal, and death metal.
Historical Narratives from Collection:
Experience life as a heavy metal fan back in the 1980s. With the materials in the “Collection of Heavy Metal Music,” you can listen to the heavy metal music through vinyl records, audiocassettes, and compact discs (some of which have even been signed by the audience) and see the show fliers and photographs of concerts. This also gives us the opportunity to live vicariously through musicians by reading their biographies and autobiographies and understand the exact struggles they faced as Heavy Metal musicians and the crowd they drew.
Lacking from Narrative:
Although this collection would provide a good picture of the heavy metal scene, it lacks an objective approach of this genre. I think it would be very interesting to see a third-party’s perspective of the heavy metal scene and how highly heavy metal was regarded among all the genres. Were they viewed as just something rebellious teenagers liked?
Additional Sources for Big Picture:
To resolve this lack of objective view, I would need information from the general population who are not heavy metal fans, perhaps articles critiquing the heavy metal scene. With this additional source, it would provide a more comprehensive, holistic view of the Heavy Metal scene.
Overall, this was very interesting to examine. I had not known that such collections exist (and owned by our own school UCLA too!) and that the people can simply request to view these. I also did not know about the UCLA Finding Aid, which would be very useful in any research type of paper.
Hi, I really enjoyed reading your post. It is an interesting point that the narrative on the genre and fan culture would have been more objective and accurate, if third-party’s (who are not the provider or fan of the heavy metal music) point of view were provided. It makes sense, since whenever a new form of genre or culture becomes prevalent, the society of the time is responsible to provide its own survey and feedback on the change of trend. We are entitled to examine our culture consistently to see if it is heading towards a positive trend or the opposite. And if not positive, studying the reason behind the trend would help us come up with corresponding solutions to more fundamental source of problem. Nice Job !!!