It was my Birthday last week , and as every year I got a flashback of the old days, this year the flashback was about the old music days, when I became 14 years old I was introduced to Nirvana, And ever since I became a rock/Metal Fan.
I lived in Irbid which is a small city in the north of Jordan, There wasn't much to do for a teenager there; Internet was the newest thing at that time, where only the rich can go to an internet cafe; and not everyone owned a computer!.
We used to buy tapes to listen to music, My dad Used to give me (3 JOD = 5$) every week as pocket money, a music tape was 1.5 JOD (not original of course).
there where only 3 music shops in Irbid, 2 of them had mostly pop music ( that was when Nsync was the biggest thing ever) and a little rock collection ( I had more rock tapes than they did), The Third was the real mind blower!.
At that time, Heavy metal music was an underground industry, everyone who likes rock music was thought to be satanic,and everyone had access to heavy metal music. It was hard to get any good music, except at what I'm going to call in this post "It".
It was a music shop with no name, and the biggest alphabetically ordered music tapes, the biggest collection ever, and right behind the counter there was a hard to see group of shelves where all the things I really wanted were kept... Anathema, Metallica, Slipknot, Haggard, Korn and many other great bands where listed there where no one can see them, and Since internet wasn't so accessible at the time, It was hard to know what's new, what's good and what's not, so here came Osama's turn.
Every Thursday I skipped the last class at school and walk for 20 minutes to reach It, If Osama (which is the name of the owner of It) had any customers and I want to ask him anything he looked at me and said "wait", When the customers are gone I could ask him about a band I heard about or about a musician I found Mentioned in Smash hits magazine since Metal hammer Magazine was also hard to find!.
He never gave me the Music I Wanted, he always gave me advice to take something else, explained to me the different types of Heavy Metal, made me listen to samples while he eats his small sized onion cream flavored pringles with mango juice ( a killer combination if you ask me!) and every tape I bought (which cost 50% of my weekly income at the time!) was a wonderful experience.
Osama started to open only on Wednesdays for few hours, then closed for ever, Few years ago, I found out that Osama owned a huge music store in the UK, and he went back there because he couldn't fit in!.
I am really Grateful for Him , I think a huge part of my personality developed this way because of the music I listened and still listen to.
Note: thanks to allouh who encouraged me to write about this.
Yours,
Adi Nashashibi
I lived in Irbid which is a small city in the north of Jordan, There wasn't much to do for a teenager there; Internet was the newest thing at that time, where only the rich can go to an internet cafe; and not everyone owned a computer!.
We used to buy tapes to listen to music, My dad Used to give me (3 JOD = 5$) every week as pocket money, a music tape was 1.5 JOD (not original of course).
there where only 3 music shops in Irbid, 2 of them had mostly pop music ( that was when Nsync was the biggest thing ever) and a little rock collection ( I had more rock tapes than they did), The Third was the real mind blower!.
At that time, Heavy metal music was an underground industry, everyone who likes rock music was thought to be satanic,and everyone had access to heavy metal music. It was hard to get any good music, except at what I'm going to call in this post "It".
It was a music shop with no name, and the biggest alphabetically ordered music tapes, the biggest collection ever, and right behind the counter there was a hard to see group of shelves where all the things I really wanted were kept... Anathema, Metallica, Slipknot, Haggard, Korn and many other great bands where listed there where no one can see them, and Since internet wasn't so accessible at the time, It was hard to know what's new, what's good and what's not, so here came Osama's turn.
Every Thursday I skipped the last class at school and walk for 20 minutes to reach It, If Osama (which is the name of the owner of It) had any customers and I want to ask him anything he looked at me and said "wait", When the customers are gone I could ask him about a band I heard about or about a musician I found Mentioned in Smash hits magazine since Metal hammer Magazine was also hard to find!.
He never gave me the Music I Wanted, he always gave me advice to take something else, explained to me the different types of Heavy Metal, made me listen to samples while he eats his small sized onion cream flavored pringles with mango juice ( a killer combination if you ask me!) and every tape I bought (which cost 50% of my weekly income at the time!) was a wonderful experience.
Osama started to open only on Wednesdays for few hours, then closed for ever, Few years ago, I found out that Osama owned a huge music store in the UK, and he went back there because he couldn't fit in!.
I am really Grateful for Him , I think a huge part of my personality developed this way because of the music I listened and still listen to.
Note: thanks to allouh who encouraged me to write about this.
Yours,
Adi Nashashibi
don't mention dude :)
ReplyDeletei remember when i used to go with ozz to osama's store... it was like metalheads' heaven over there!
Oh, it's a shame that he had to close up shop. I wonder if he realizes what an impact he's had on your life, though.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you've shared this part of your past...
Nice read :) i really enjoyed this and was relating to when i was 14-15 that was when i got introduced to metal music thru my cousin.. he was metal addict! and used to have too many tapes for metal music.. some of them many metalheads here never heard of.. he had also Metal Hummer magazines and posters.. only after couple of years of arguing and begging he agreed to gave me Max Cavalera's poster <3 :)
ReplyDeleteI really miss my cousin.. he works now in Dubai.. u brought back amazing memories :)
I also remember first tape i bought (since i used to borrow my cousin's) I was in Russia.. and omg i wanna see the shops there! so many rock and metal tapes and CDs!! posters and magazines and everything! i wanna go back there! hehe
again, nice read :)
allouh : yeah man it was wonderful there.
ReplyDeleteKathryn: thanks a lot, and I don't know if knew knew the effect he did, but I think he knew how important it was for him to teach me all this stuff.
Jano: thank you too for you great comment and even greater post :)