BUFFALO, N.Y. — Local show attendee Alicia Zewbrowski appeared to have narrowly passed a visual inspection of her battle vest conducted by an older, drunken metalhead while minding her own business outside of the venue, sources report.
“When I saw that old dude in the Dio shirt staggering towards me, I knew I was going to get an earful and be interrogated to name three songs,” Zewbrowski explained. “So I kept my cool, got my story straight about how I got my rare Overkill backpatch at a head shop that no longer exists, and made sure I had the tone of my ‘hell yeah!’ responses down perfectly. He grumbled something about how his ‘buddy’ got him into King Diamond before moving on to a kid with a ‘St. Anger’ patch on his vest. I really dodged a bullet on that one!”
The old dude in the Dio shirt, Jared Richardson, claims it’s his duty to keep battle vests in check.
“Whenever I go to a show, and I see some young kid sporting a vest with Maiden and Priest patches all over it, it’s my job to make sure the whole wardrobe is certified sick,” Richardson said. “Sure, most of the time I might have had 3 or 16 beers before inspection, but I can’t have posers who might have a Ghost patch next to an Exciter patch walking around all willy-nilly! But I must say, she provided some helpful tips on my stitching technique.”
Many metal scene veterans emphasize the importance of keeping old heads like Richardson around to keep younger metalheads in check.
“Guys like Richardson are doing the (dark) lord’s work out there making sure these kids and their battle vests live up to true metal standards,” self-proclaimed “King of the Underground” Percy Pluff said. “Back in the day, if you went to a show and your vest happened to fail an inspection from a metal elder, you were tarred, feathered and exiled into the glam metal scene. There, they ended up with parties, drugs and female attention, and that’s every true metalhead’s nightmare.”
At press time, Richardson was reported to have spent half a show talking to people about how awesome and not thin his long hair used to be.