Stage Banter Of The Day 4/17/2014 (Actually Of All Time): Venom's Cronos At City Gardens, 1986

It's Alive (and NSFW): All right. I'm admittedly cheating with this one. This is not exactly an obscurity. I have bonded with a whole congregation of brothers and sisters over the mythical bootleg recording of Venom's Cronos' between-song addresses to the audience at a show at Trenton, NJ's legendary City Gardens in 1986. (That must have been close to the time Jon Stewart worked there as a bartender.) It's an established metal classic, up there with Machine Head and Paranoid. The web has told about it before and still does. I have personal friends who have memorized every word of this recording. It has catchphrases and snippets that rival Spinal Tap in terms of memorability. I'm surprised we don't have more bands named things like "This Comes From Where Venom Comes From" or "You're Wild, Man... Willlld." If by some extreme accident of omission, or by your being close friends with a volleyball named Wilson over the past two decades, you have not yet heard this outstandingly edited distillation of all metal is and can be, slip on your headphones and take the next nine minutes off. Have your co-workers and friends hear it. Start discussion groups about it. Transcribe it. Have it translated into your favorite Cryllic tongue. Turn it into your own personal Rosetta Stone or Screwtape Letters or Tuesdays With Morrie. Because Cronos is going to touch you now, and you'll know beyond any doubt that you have been touched by Cronos.

Indeed. Indeed.