The Thrill of the Hunt

Before instant gratification through mass media, internet, and downloading, there was the treacherous, dismal, forced association prison known as high school. Throughout these years I was blessed to be surrounded by some of the best friends I had ever known. We all took pleasure in different genres of music and respected everyone’s own personal musical abilities and all around intelligence, although some of us chose to shadow our skills and our smarts when an outsider disrupted our circle.  

Another musical commonality we shared was our passion for the underground. The undiscovered, the unaired, and the unheard of bands of that time, and with this being the mid-nineties the stuff we preferred hearing was harder to find than a car phone.

One of the hardest records to find was Racer X’s Second Heat (and to a lesser extent,  Extreme Live: Volume 1 of their two live albums).

The internet was about to boom in a few years but back then, one could only find these rare and precious gems through magazines,  record stores, and other personal collectors who usually took out ads in the rock magazines.

On the easily available Extreme Live Volume 2 was a song called Heart of a Lion. That turned out to be a Judas Priest song that Racer X had covered, but Jimmy being the biggest Judas Priest freak was clueless as to which album this song existed. We searched every one of our known resources, mainly other collectors and more magazines, but we were without luck in finding the song but did discover an older Judas Priest album that Jimmy didn’t own – Rock & Rolla.

Hastily, Jimmy ordered the album, and while it was a good one, Heart of a Lion was nowhere to be found. We felt betrayed; we felt nearly raped and splayed for the entire world to stare and laugh at our hapless high school doinks.

Neither of us was sure if this song was even on Racer X’s Second Heat album, but it was our mission to find out.  Racer X Had released only four albums at that time – two studios and two live albums.

Monthly, we scoured the rock and metal magazines in hopes of finding Second Heat in the back-catalogues sections, and monthly the ad that contained the album for purchase always read “SOLD OUT”, and whenever we tried ordering it through the record stores the clerk would tell us it was out of print.

Our disappointment wasn’t so enraged that we wanted to thrash the record store clerks because they were actually very cool individuals who usually praised us for listening outside of the norm, so we would enact our primal anger on our musical instruments because, quite frankly anyone could kick our asses back then.

On a fateful trip to San Antonio, or maybe Houston, or perhaps even Florida – Jimmy and I were two grumpy-go-happy teens wandering a mall that was bigger than the neighborhoods either of us lived in when inside a record store Jimmy cried the elated rocker’s cry – “Duuuude!!”

Racer X – Second Heat, Track 6: Heart of a Lion. And, that’s right; ON CASSETTE.

In accordance with our group’s unwritten law, the first one to find it was the one honored in buying it, unless they were broke; then usually all bets were off and it was first come first serve, but we were all typically broke anyway so the law usually stood firm. But Jimmy did have the funds on him and we both quickly rushed to counter for him to make the purchase.

But our mission was not yet over. As soon as Jimmy bought it we tore the packaging like vultures through a rotting vagabond’s corpse in an Australian desert.  Jimmy opened the cassette case and flipped through the cassette jacket. The bi-lines informed us that Heart of a Lion was originally set for release on Judas Priest’s Defenders of the Faith album but remained unreleased. It was a thrilling dead end conclusion.

I love technology, but I don’t put my faith in it, and I don’t have too much fun with it; and while I do enjoy immediate knowledge at my fingertips and having the capabilities of locating any album that I choose to, technology will never replace the thrill of the hunt. There’s just something invigorating about the feeling of disappointment, the agony of a fruitless pursuit, and the excitement of browsing a room’s entertainment offerings and finally unearthing that lost treasure, that priceless gem that you know you will covet and cherish as a unique conversation piece.

Fuck you internet. Fuck you and goodnight.