Through the Past Dorkily: Shout at the Devil

Editor's note: Through the Past Dorkily is a recurring feature that looks back at the embarrassingly dorky diary I kept as a 16-year-old in 1984.

Thursday, February 9, 1984

WAAF Top 5 at Five
1. Jump - Van Halen
2. In the Beginning/Shout at the Devil - Motley Crue
3. Sister Christian - Night Ranger
4. Sign of Fire - The Fixx
5. Don't Say Goodnight - Jon Butcher Axis

They did it again! The Leafs beat Boston, 6-3, in Boston. Allan Bester kept them in the game with excellent goaltending! The dude is simply awesome! The Leaf goals were 2 by Anderson (28 and 29), 2 by Derlago (23 and 24) and 2 by Ihnacak (8 and 9). Way to go, Leafs!!

School was alright today. The Algebra test was easy. I got a Geometry test tomorrow.

Canada beat Austria 8-1 in the Olympics. They're 2-0. The U.S. lost again.

- The (victorious) Barbarian

Friday, February 10, 1984

WAAF Top 5 at Five
1. Jump - Van Halen
2. Sister Christian - Night Ranger
3. Leave It - Yes
4. Looks That Kill - Motley Crue
5. Send Me an Angel - Real Life

We didn't have to take that Geometry test after all. We get it on Monday.

I got my appointment finally! It's on Feb. 27 at 10 a.m.! Alright!

I got an 85 on the Algebra test, an 80 (+ 10 francs) in French and 83 in Bi Sci.

Got a letter and some pictures from (old buddy from Richland, Wash.) today. It was pretty cool.

The Metal Shop has been extended to an hour! But it's on from 12 to 1 on Friday nights.

Later.

- The Barbarian

Postscript: The appointment I'm all fired up about was my driving test. There are few things more important to a teenage boy than his driver's license, and I was oh-so-close. Of course, I didn't have a car, but at least I could borrow one of my parents' cars from time to time.

Funny thing about Leafs goalie Allan Bester. He really wasn't THAT awesome, but he was decent on a lot of fairly underwhelming '80s Leafs teams. On one of my trips to Toronto circa 1991, I picked up posters of Bester and Fred McGriff of the Jays. Within months, both were traded. Not sure what that means, but it was weird. Anyway, Bester was an underrated goalie but far from awesome.  

The Metal Shop was the heavy metal show on WAAF, hosted by a Brit named Andy Wolf. I used to listen to it faithfully, as I did WBCN's Heavy Metal from Hell on Sunday nights. There was a fair amount of hair metal played during regular hours as you can see by the Top 5 at Five countdowns, but these shows played deeper, heavier stuff like Iron Maiden and Judas Priest and lesser known acts like Y&T and Metallica (at the time, they were lesser known) that I was into. 

Speaking of metal, the success of Motley Crue was based on a faux-Satanism schtick they were pulling. I was a good Christian boy but I loved my metal and could see that these guys were just playing at the Satanic stuff, unlike, say, Venom or Slayer. So I didn't have a problem with "Shout at the Devil," because they were, like, shouting AT him, not WITH him. Right? (And besides, this song was a total ripoff of Maiden's "Number of the Beast," in theme if not riff).