When I was in my teens and into my twenties, I used to be heavily involved in music. I was a man without a band, on my tour with no manager or label to report to at the end of the day. I would drive hours to see a band no one had ever heard before.
It all started when I was listening to songs on the radio. I often wondered why certain songs were on the radio while others weren’t- who chose these so-called “singles” deemed fit for radio play and why was “alternative radio” so afraid to play a Blind Melon song other than “No Rain”?
The more I listened to complete CDs of music, the less I listened to the radio. The less I listened to the radio, the more I listened to music that would probably never be on the radio for various reasons. So, essentially, I fell in love with the underground music scene.
While I still love music, I moved on in my mid-twenties to television. A choice I’m still not certain of to this day, I would seek out shows no one had ever watched before and spent countless hours in front of the television just to say I had seen something deemed “brilliant but canceled”.
My television phase didn’t last as long as my music obsession, and rightfully so. I attribute this to several factors. First, television is a fickle, fickle business. Find a show you like, watch the first few episodes, and then bam, it’s canceled because it wasn’t getting good enough ratings. It’s like people in television (on the business end) never heard of the slow build before. I also just feel like all that television was too time-consuming. It’s much more relaxing and easier for me to put on a CD and listen to some music than have to get involved in an entire series. Needless to say, whilst my love for music survives, my fixation with television has been dwindling more and more by the year.
As my interest in television faded (and I practically turned my back on the medium), I found a new obsession: movies. I began to love everything about them and watch them like they were going out of style. “Hey, have you ever seen [insert random movie name]?” is a question I can usually answer with yes. (Some exceptions apply, as I refuse to watch certain movies- ever- such as that Titanic one)
To become truly engulfed in movies, to not only begin to like actors and genres, but to begin to have favorite directors, well, there is only so far you can go after that. You have to watch all those commercial movies that big budget studios made and want you to believe are the best ever. But then you discover the underground of movies, the ones which are the non-radio version of music. Often referred to as “b-movies”, I began watching these movies in part due to Mystery Science Theater 3000. Actually, there are several factors as to why I got into these types of movies, but let’s just say it was natural because that answer seems to be the shortest.
Along my quest for b-movies, such as “Eegah!”, “Teenagers From Outer Space” and “Carnival of Souls”, I stumbled across a movie called “Destroy All Planets”, which seemed like a good enough idea to me, but later learned was a movie in the Gamera series with a different title for its release by another company. From there, my interest in Godzilla was peaked. I opened my eyes, jumped in and became a part of the post kaiju apocalypse.
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