9/11 Remembered - Where Were You When The Towers Collapsed?

One of the most widely asked questions asked by the generation which preceeded mine was "where were you when Kennedy was assassinated?" Although I don't really remember it, I know exactly where I was, I was lying in a crib since I was barely a month old. It was a moment in time captured forever in the minds of those who were old enough to remember it.

The question of the current generation is "where were you when the towers collapsed?" I remember it as if it happened yesterday. It was a brilliantly clear, crisp September morning which I was fortunate enough to be able to ride my Harley to work. As I made my way to work, I distinctly remember riding alongside David Hidy, a local banker, who was driving his beautiful dark blue Corvette. I remember pulling up beside him and waving and he waved back. I roared on to work and took a seat at my desk much like every other morning. I began the workday planning my projects when Ginger Nail popped up on MSN Messenger and asked if I had seen what happened. I told her I had no idea what what she was talking about so I tried to pull up CNN.com, which is one of my favorite news websites. For the first time ever, the site was down and only displayed the message "Due to heavier than usual traffic, our website is down." Being that I'm in the web development business, I knew it had to be major to bring their servers down. Eventually the sites came up with plain text and only very few pictures of what had happened. Due to the heavy traffic it took a while before I could actually see video of the event.

It took a while for the gravity of the situation to sink in. Once it did I just felt numb, angry, disappointed and betrayed that the people in charge had gotten too relaxed and let our guard down. The World Trade Center had already sustained a previous attack spearheaded by the same terrorist, it's unfathomable that we would allow it to happen in the same place for the second time.

This past weekend I was fortunate to have provided sound for the Sara Low 5K Run which was held at Batesville High School where Sara Low (pictured above) was a flight attendant in one of the airplanes that crashed into the World Trade Center, ran track and led the Pioneers to a state championship in track. I hadn't really thought much about it until right before the event began. Mindy Lace, friend of Sara gave a very emotional speech in remembrance of her friend followed by a prayer and special music, then a speech by Mike Low, Sara's father who attended the memorial service at Ground Zero.

Dwight Eisenhower once said "A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both." I believe this is more evident in our country now than ever. We should never forget the events of 9/11, and keep our troops in Iraq and everywhere else in the world in our thoughts, as well as hope that the leaders of our country will do everything in their power to prevent such an atrocity from ever happening again.

#7 Most Influential Album - "...And Justice For All?" by Metallica

I grew up during the "album rock" era, which included midnight album spotlights chock full of selections by Robin Trower, Pink Floyd, Yes and many others who produced albums which in some cases entire sides of the album (Google "album" sometime if you're too old to know what they were) were only one song (listen to Pink Floyd's "Meddle" and you'll see what I mean). By the time the 80's rolled around, apparantly the ADD era was ushered in and people could no longer contain a train of thought for any longer than 3 minutes and 30 seconds. I never really cared for the bubble gum so-called "metal" of the 80's where men looked and dressed more like women and the women did. Motley Crue had a couple decent albums then quickly sold out, but beyond that is was pretty much all cookie cutter cheese.

Metallica broke that mold with "..And Justice For All?" released in 1988. Often referred to simply as "Justice" this album is a monster without apology, which I believe the average length of each track was around 6 1/2 minutes.

If you've never heard this album, I highly recommend listening to it with headphones on. "Blackened" kicks the album off and it's one of the most definitive metal tracks ever. The twin guitars fade in signaling that something big is about to happen and it does.

"One", in my opinion is one of the most ass-kicking metal tracks of all time, which if you've ever seen the video you would understand it is clearly a song about the results of war, and contains clips from the classic film "Johnny Got His Gun". The album contains other strong tracks such as "Shortest Straw" and "Eye of the Beholder", but "Dyers Eve", which ends the album, is one of the most overlooked tracks on the album which after years ended up on many of the band's set lists on their recent concerts.

The first time I saw the band, amazingly enough, was in Bald Knob, Arkansas at the site of all the old Strawberry Jam concerts put on by Barth Grayson, which featured two other bands Raven and Axe. I think there were maybe 300 people there and I believe people stayed away either because they were either scared to death of that type of music or just didn't get it. I thought Metallica was the best band there, but to me they were slightly better than the average garage band which I played in at the time. After their set, the members just roamed around the crowd and drank beer and cheered on the other bands like everyone else. Little did I know at that time would they become such a global force in the decades to come.

I really liked their previous releases "Master of Puppets", which could have easily registered higher than "Justice", and "Kill 'Em All" was a great debut, but the "Justice" album really captured the true essence of the band and very few other albums have ever, or ever will, match this type of creativity and energy.