MACHINE HEAD frontman Robb Flynn has written the latest entry in his blog, The General Journals: Diary Of A Frontman... And Other Ramblings - Life Affirming. An excerpt follows:

"I was lollygaggin' on the internet the other day and I stumbled across a website called the "Best Heavy Metal Albums of 1983"

It's nothing really that special, researched, or informative, but man it hit me like a ton of bricks that A) DANG, I'm young! And B) Holy crap, that means these albums are 30 FREAKIN' YEARS OLD!!?? Not sure why this was so shocking to me. I'm actually ok with getting old, and my back hurting, my neck hurting, my butt cellulite, losing my eye-sight, and sh-arts, and having so many god damn skin-tags on my body that I look like the sale rack at TJ Maxx! No really, I'm fine with getting old.

But Kill 'Em All CANNOT be 30 freakin’ years old!! That's just not possible!!?? Melissa, Shout At The Devil, Show No Mercy, Balls To The Wall, and Holy Diver cannot be 30 years old! No way! The self-titled Suicidal Tendencies album, U2’s WAR, and Minor Threat’s Out Of Step cannot be... that's fuckin'... which would make me... did I mention my shoulder?

As I began thinking of this, my thoughts took me back to my high school days, when I got into underground metal/punk/hip hop, the shows I went to, the "records" and "cassettes" of demos and live bootlegs I listened to. This was in the pre-internet / pre-iPhone… shit, practically “pre-everything” we rely on these days.

It somehow led my train of thought to Cliff Burton, I pull up his Wiki page and low and behold, his birthday is this coming Sunday, Feb. 10th. If my math is correct, Cliff would have been 51 this year. It's amazing to think how the music world may (or may not) have been different had the tragic bus accident not taken his life. It also got me thinking about the few times that I was able to see Cliff perform when I actually WAS a young whippersnapper."

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