"Obsolete ways of Communication"
Written by Tony Juarez
How many friends or followers you have? How many
social media outlets do you use? How
long does it take to get a reply from someone in any part of the world? Do you ever wonder how most metal heads used
to communicate and get music back in the late 80's-early-mid 90's?
Once upon a time, before the internet and social
media. There were different ways to
connect and meet other crazy metal-heads like yourself. Actually, the only ways to meet other metal
-heads was through writing letters and meeting people at shows. Nowadays, is so
easy and fast to communicate with people from any country in the world. You can send an email or message through any
social media outlet and get it delivered in seconds or instantly. The current-most
popular ways communicate with people are (in my opinion) less personal,
meaningless, but at the same time necessary.
I'm not going to be a hypocrite and say that I don't use these methods,
because I do. But, the way we used to
network back in the old days was more personal, and fun. Back in the day, most
fanzines and magazines used to have a mail-letter section, where people would
send letters, looking for other people that was into the same music genres,
bands, ideas or specific interests. Every single letter that got published, had
a name, address and what they were into, so you had an idea if that was an
interesting person to write to. So, a lot of people wrote letters to a lot of
people, some would reply, some wouldn't, and that was the beginning of a
metal-friendship, that could have been temporarily or long term friendship.
Talking about my personal experience, when I was
like 16 or 17 years old. I sent letter to a well known Mexican Metal magazine
called, Rock Pop (yeah, I know, what a name, right?). I've always been very humble and I usually
don't have any expectations. So, I never
thought they would publish my letter, but they did. As simple as it sounds,
that made my day. The day I went to the local
magazine stand to purchase the magazine, and I opened it and saw my letter, I
felt like a kid and I was screaming of happiness. I started screaming loud at
the magazine stand, saying "my letter got published!", and people
were looking at me like I was crazy. I started getting letters everyday, for
several weeks (just letters from Mexican Metal heads, since I didn't know
English back then). I gladly replied
every letter and most of them wrote back, except a couple people that didn't
reply. So, as I kept replying back a few times, some people stopped writing
back. In the end, I was writing to like
30 metal-heads on a regular basis. I used to spend hours writing letters,
sometimes I used to stay up past midnight writing letters. I know, it sounds like a lot of work and
perhaps sounds too boring for the new generations, but I never felt that way, I
had so much fun doing that. It was definitely a blast and I would do that
again. Every person you wrote to was different, some of them just liked to talk
about metal, and more brief talk. Some
other people liked to talk about life, metal, and more personal stuff. So, some letters were longer and more
in-depth than others. Also, lets not forget that besides the letters, people
used to send lots of flyers as well.
There were lots of flyers circulating worldwide. Bands, zines, distros used to send flyers
through snail mail, and they were getting all over the world. This was a very effective way to advertise
your bands, zines or distros at a low cost.
You just had to send a bunch of flyers to some people and they would
spread them for you, all over the world. Those were the days when you were
happy seeing the mailman coming to your mailbox. Getting the letters out of the
mailbox, finding a comfortable place to sit down, opening the letters, checking
the flyers first, then reading the letters.
All this was like a ritual, something that the new generations wouldn't
understand. Pen and paper is something people hardly use nowadays, but back in
the day, those items were our weapons or tools to network with other people. I
remember, sometimes people used to draw logos or some art on the letters ( I
used to do the same thing too). Also,
people used to write on the back of a letter size flyer; that was cool
too. After writing to someone for a
while, you had curiosity to see what the person looked like, so we traded
pictures as well. I also remember, some people used to write at the end of the
letter, "P.S: return my stamps", or "send back my
stamps". It took me a while to
figure that out why the were saying that, but that's another story. Trading
demos (mostly tapes) was something everyone was doing back then. That was a way to discover new bands and
upsize your music collection. People used to send your their lists, and what
they were looking for as well. Waiting a
long time to receive a package was painful, but very rewarding. You were anxious, but when you finally
received it, was great satisfaction. I remember clearly when I was trying to do
my own zine back in the early 90's. I
sent letters with interviews to a lot of bands without any expectations. Again, I was not expecting any response from
anybody, but several bands did reply and sent their interviews back
answered. The coolest package that I
received was from a band called ATTOXXXICO (HC/Punk). I was a huge fan of this band, and when I
received the interview answered by the drummer and their manager on tape was
awesome! I was running through the
house, screaming of excitement. In fact,
I still have the cassette, and still sounds the same way as it did almost 3
decades ago. As weird as it sounds, corresponding with other metal-heads
through hand written letters, you were able to build some solid friendships.
Some of my closest pen-pals, metal friends invited me to visit them and hang
out. Even though we never met in person before, they offered me to stay at
their house. They told me, "As long
as you have a round trip bus ticket, don't worry about food, a place to stay or
even beer". I visited a few of them, and they welcomed me to their house,
met their families, and they treated me like they knew me for years, even
though we just met in person at that time. I felt like, metal-heads had a very
solid camaraderie. I lived great experiences meeting very cool people back
then, and I will always remember those memories. I've met very cool- humble
people and visited new places, had fun hanging out with them, and drinking beer
as well. That's one of the coolest things in life, when you hang out with
people that like the same music and have the same ideas, and when you are
young, nothing can beat that. Sadly, for whatever reason, we lost contact
throughout the years, but I was able to find a few of them through social
media. Times change and everything
changes. Unfortunately, some of my old friends don't think like they used to
anymore. I get it, we are older, mature,
and have responsibilities and perhaps stress.
My life had changed, and maybe they think I've changed. I almost forgot,
back in 1998, I sent a letter to the greatest magazine in the world, Metal
Maniacs. This time, since I knew
English, I did get letters from all over the world. I corresponded with several Metal heads for
2-3 years, but the excitement from people writing letters, was not the same as
it did back in the old days. The started slowly wanting to communicate by email. It was definitely, not the same. Some of you
might wonder, how we managed to write some many letters back then, and the
answer is simple. We didn't have any
cell phones, no social media, so that's all we had, that was the only way. It's sad to see how people spend all day
looking at their cell phones, off and on all day long. I wonder if they can
spend a day without it, one full day.
The
ways to communicate always change and evolve, I wonder if in 10-20 years would
be different or perhaps more advanced.
Perhaps, people would be writing letters again. I doubt it!
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