Where were you in...

I was 15 and was just starting to self-identify as a metalhead but I had not yet latched onto the underground stuff. Pyromania was in high rotation as well as the usual suspects (Scorpions, Accept, Ozzy, Maiden, Priest.)

A year out of high school, taking a year off before college. I remember spinning Midnight Oil's 10 . . . 1 over and over again around this time, but it's not always easy to keep the chronology straight.

Scientists moved to London in early 84. I think their first gig was supporting Nick Cave at the Lyceum. I had their Blood Red River mini lp thanks to being turned onto a bunch of Australian psych stuff by a tape I got from Oni Nguyen of Sweet Charity fame.

Cave himself was just going solo. He had played a short tour billed as Nick Cave and the Cavemen including a date at the Electric ballroom in Camden which I think was the 2nd ever gig by the band. He'd debuted at the Fridge in Brixton supporting Nina Hagen which I hadn't heard about. Did see the Camden gig though and have since seen a bit of it again since it was captured for Spanish tv.

I had also got into the Moodists who wrote also living in London at the time.
& The Box who had split from being the musicians on Clock DVA's Thirst or at least several of them.
Got to see Black Flag in May at the Marquee. SWANS supporting the Fall at Heaven. & a few others. Stupidly missed the Neubauten offshoot performance at ICA.

i had graduated 8th grade from a local catholic school but was switching to the local high school as a freshman later that fall as i was 14 in newport vermont and working my first job with my states summer youth program cleaning school buses at the local high school and making money just in time for the movie breakin to come out and suddenly i and my friends were born again as we had never seen or heard anything like this before and my friends and i were instantly transformed into breakdancers getting everything we could find about it including music videos books boomboxes clothes sneakers and then i was off to see my cousins in amityville new york and gobbling up whatever i could find to feed this new craze at the busy bee mall and the massapequa sunrise mall and the wiz and then back to newport vermont to share my goods at others amazement as i was the tape jockey and mainly at the time i had soundtracks and many compilations to help explore better before focusing more on specific artists later and then we had an article in the local paper and danced at the local summer fest on the closed off main st as that was the best month of my life!

In 1984 I was 12. I was listening to pop and classic rock radio but my favorite band was Judas Priest — I had a half dozen of their albums already (Unleashed in the East, Hell Bent for Leather, British Steel, Point of Entry, Screaming for Vengeance and Defenders of the Faith). I had a slightly older friend who had introduced me to some punk (Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, Flipper) and I might have heard that Suicidal Tendencies song. I think I already had a copy of the Clash's London Calling, too, because I had really liked "Rock the Casbah" when it was a top 40 hit and had borrowed the cassette of Combat Rock from the local library several times.