I had a good pal, who has recently embarked on an unpaid second career as a correspondent for a startup online cultural magazine, call me this afternoon while I was driving back from a family weekend in northern Wisconsin with an amusing request for advice: how should she conduct an in-person interview with Tom Araya of Slayer?

Come again?! Last I checked, this same friend was interviewing indie filmmakers and sparring with me over sugary pop concerts. How on earth did she end up in a one-on-one with a thrash metal god? Apparently her editor scored the interview for himself to quell some youthful obsessions with the other band on the bill, Marilyn Manson, but ended up with an unbreakable commitment tonight. Much to her chagrin, Ali ended up with the assignment and is, as I type, on her way to the Allstate Arena in beautiful Rosemont, IL to chat with Araya and stand in the pit for the duration of the cocktastic show.

What was my advice, you ask? Her main concern was that she isn’t, and never has been, a Slayer fan or even a casual consumer of 80’s thrash metal. Was she going to look naïve? Unprepared? What would her magazine’s overly esoteric audience even want with a piece on an aged, living reminder of the excess, frivolity, and bad fashion of the Reagan years? I had only very generic advice, as I too missed that period and haven’t gone back to it with the hunger that I’ve attacked other eras that I missed like, I don’t know…the Beatles.

For right or wrong, I told her to own up to her ignorance and ask about the things that might be of interest to her readers, who are mostly like right beside her in the “I was listening to the Smiths in 1986” boat. Heck, I’d like to know what, if anything (beyond a living) Araya and his bandmates are still getting out of Slayer. Then again, I don’t necessarily know what they (or their fans) got out of the band in the first place…but there’s much love for their music among the otherwise-snobbish subscribers on at least one of my “music industry” email lists. So…what gives? Am I missing the genius of Slayer because I didn’t live (as a culturally aware adult, anyway) through it?

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