Friday, February 5, 2010

black metal


Friends seem to be my favorite topic these days. They just keep it coming. I have certainly nestled myself in the center of a bounty of amazing creative people and my latest news is evidence that this accumulation of wunderkind started long ago. As far back as, well, the ripe old age of 7. I met my friend Paige on the first day of second grade. My older sister Candi had just walked me down the hallway of our new school and left me at my classroom. I was terrified and started to cry while I walked over and sat down at my desk. Before I knew it there was a girl standing next to me telling me not to cry. I looked up at her and said, "I want Candi" and she said, " well... I don't have any." Haha. I laughed so hard I forgot I was scared and I had already made a new friend. A best friend actually. Our reign of terror spanned our elementary and high school careers and even into our twenties. I moved to Nashville, while she moved to Memphis. It was a haul. The distance made it hard to hang out, along with our maniacal early twenties in general. Let's face it... we were nuts. We ended up at odds and lost touch.
Until this week I had no idea where she was or what she'd been up to for the last 8 years. Though, of course, I had often wondered. Good thing she found me!! Apparently, just like me, she's been busy. For the last 4 years she's been running an independent metal label called Negative Existence. WHAT!? Along with her boyfriend Alex, she started this label and distro that now carries more than 3000 titles from black metal and death metal artists, including more than a half-dozen artists from their own label. Mind= BLOWN.

Coincidentally... Until the Light Takes Us opens at the Belcourt this weekend. A movie about black metal and "it's rise to worldwide notoriety in the mid-nineties when a rash of suicides, murders, and church burnings accompanied the explosive artistic growth and output of a music scene that would forever redefine what heavy metal is and what it stands for to other musicians, artists and music fans world-wide..." read more HERE