Sometimes it’s easy to forget (and take for granted) the information we have here so readily available at UCLA. Particularly as our university is based in the epicenter of the world’s entertainment industry, we are fortunate to have such immediate access to information located in our backyard.
Today I examined the Collection of Heavy Metal Music Material.
This finding aid was prepared by Megan Fraser. Finding aid is generally collected works of materials and information that may help other researchers. This collection is located in the Special Collections aisle of the Charles E. Young Research Library. Additional boxes of the collection can be requested from the SRLF library off-campus.
According to the data on the collection itself:
“Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that began to emerge in the late 1960s. Many subgenres fall within metal music, including glam metal, thrash metal, and death metal. In Los Angeles, the Sunset Strip area of West Hollywood was home to a vibrant heavy metal scene, particularly in the 1980s.”
The collection is organized by six distinct series:
- Books and DVD’s
- Show Fliers
- Photographs, ephemera, memorabilia
- Fanzines
- Magazines
- Recordings
What kinds of historical narratives might you be able to tell, based on the materials in this collection?
- Many of the books alone (which includes biographies and autobiographies), contain signed autographs of heavy metal artists, which may be interesting for graphological analysis.
- In series 2, approximately 600 fliers of events from largely 1980s-1990s are collected and organized geographically. Some even have remnants of masking tape. You could study the art of the fliers and examine popular groups that played together and compare the fanbase of Los Angeles versus San Francisco. Additionally, event fliers provide a historical context to venues that exist today.
- Series 3 contained memorabilia, such as tshirts, backstage passes, makeup, playing cards, posters, and more. You could get a feel for how people dressed and what exactly made up the heavy metal aesthetic from the contents.
What would be missing from your narrative, if you based it entirely on records in this collection? What kinds of sources would you need to find in order to address those gaps?
- Immediately what comes to mind is the lack of actual music in this collection. While the collection is rich on the culture of Heavy Metal music, it lacks physical albums of the artists that make up this comprehensive collection. Additionally, there are no recordings of concerts or documentaries included in this collection. A researcher would need to go and find CD albums and listen to the music of the artists they’re studying to better describe and understand this subculture and music genre.