Perhaps the coolest thing of all has been getting even closer to people who share this unique passion that is Heavy Metal.”
By Eduardo [dutecnic], creator of Minuto HM
My story with rock music began, as in many cases, with the influences of the music played at home. On one side, my mother listened a lot to Fabio Júnior, Roberto Carlos, and Jovem Guarda. On my father's side, mainly Beatles records. Although there was some division, the Fab Four were the most played band at home. Here's a link to a photo of me happily listening to the Liverpool band…
In 1986, when I was four years old, my father recorded a cassette tape with some Beatles songs, mainly from what is known as the band's "first phase," or the "love" phase. And having a tape, for me, was the ultimate experience: I listened to it endlessly!
Over the years, I slowly began listening to other types of music, still influenced by what my father listened to at home or on the radio stations in São Paulo, especially the defunct Rádio Rock (89.1 FM). The Rolling Stones were perhaps the second band I listened to most until I was eight or nine years old. In the early 90s, I discovered Queen and that great band Guns N' Roses and immediately fell in love with them, receiving my first CD ever, Use Your Illusion 2, around that time. The grunge craze had little influence on my taste, as I confused those two songs, Smells Like Teen Spirit and The Unforgiven, which played on Rádio Rock, thinking the first was Metallica and the second was Nirvana. Also, I remember going to the Americanas store in the new Penha Shopping Mall and pestering my father to buy the double album The Wall, which was very expensive at the time – a story I tell in more detail here .
Another episode I remember from that time was a Sunday afternoon when, at a former neighbor's house, I was playing ping-pong with friends from the street with a radio playing music by Legião Urbana and Iron Maiden. On side A, the Brazilian band, and on side B, Iron Maiden. I asked for the tape to make a copy and understand what that band on side B was all about, since I never had any appreciation for the Brazilian band. But Iron Maiden wasn't a band I liked immediately.
In 1993, I went to my first big concert, Paul McCartney, the story of which I tell here . Then in 1995, I went to the rainy (and now defunct) Hollywood Rock festival, on the night the Rolling Stones were playing. Around this time, my passion for Metallica intensified considerably, and Iron Maiden was already a band I liked. I listened to some Oasis, liked (What's The Story) Morning Glory, but didn't pursue it further. I remember that I won/bought my Black Album there, discovered Kiss through Alive III, and soon moved on to …And Justice For All. This was the turning point for heavy metal for good.
In mid-1997, through a friend from high school, I also started listening to a lot of Iron Maiden. *The Real Live One* became a staple on my Discman. I saw Iron Maiden in São Paulo in 1998 and fulfilled my dream of seeing Metallica in 1999, as I recount here . It was then that I truly discovered how good it was to attend live shows, even if those bands weren't, let's say, at their best. Also in 1999, I was able to see Bruce Dickinson and Kiss for the first time, at a huge financial sacrifice – little did I know that this would become a routine in my life.
In 2000, I became friends with another friend in college, also passionate about metal and with very similar tastes to mine. We started going to a lot of shows from then on, and my collection of records and any metal-related items grew exponentially.
Between 2004 and 2005, I met another very important person for my musical "formation" at work, and through her, I learned a lot, in addition to being introduced to other people from other states who are true living encyclopedias of our beloved style. There, we created an email list where we talked about news and discussed everything related to the genre. When we bumped into each other in the hallways at work, this person and I would say, "Got a minute to talk about metal? A 'HM Minute'?" – and that's how I started using "HM Minute" in all the emails sent to the list…
The emails were great, and especially the content exchanged was too good to just stay there, somewhat disorganized and getting "lost." In 2009, I had the idea to create a blog with the simple purpose of "organizing" and "categorizing" what we exchanged via email. Thus, Minuto HM was born .
Since then, the blog has given me hundreds of cool things, both in terms of shows and knowledge, technology, and so on; there are many indirect gains as well. But perhaps the coolest thing of all has been meeting and/or getting even closer to people who share this unique passion that is heavy metal.
Click here to learn about the HM Minute.
