Holy God. I Love Fantasy. Not because its cool, but that it is so incredibly complex and followed with such amazing devotions and obsession. I believe it is because of the followers of fantasy that I am drawn further. I can remember in college, I would sit reading about the deadheads, fascinated at the amount of devotion one person had for an area of entertainment. Fandom of any kind became interesting to me. Comic Books, Video Games, Anime, Jam Bands, Electronic Music and Fantasy. Once I decided to get into an fall into an area of fandom, I would let myself go and become completely immersed in the culture. I would be the subtle tourist who blended into his surroundings, sometimes forgetting that I did this not out of love for the genre, but because of the idea. I would forget my reasons for being there and begin enjoying every minute. My recent excursion has been into the realms of high fantasy. This coincided with my desire to play Dungeons And Dragons, at the tender age of 27. Once I became locked into a consistent game, I started to read fantasy novels and play my girlfriend's RPGs on her DS. Its incredible. There is a concrete mythos which exists in the very broad genre of high fantasy (archetypes, elements, themes and settings) I used to think that this mythos existed due to a lack of creativity. It is only know that I realize that because of High Fantasy's devotion to crafting a world, it makes it more enveloping than newer genres (low fantasy, Steampunk, Cyberpunk).Uriah Heep's 1972 release Demons And Wizards is not a full fledged fantasy album in the sense of fantasy albums today (Rhapsody, Dragonland,) In the 1970's during the inception of Role Playing Games, existed a more subtle, fantastic way of telling stories. The Fantasy is used in Demons And Wizards is an allegory to illustrate personal struggles or feelings. This is the same type of fantasy used by Led Zeppelin. While this allegorical theme has been carried on today, it was more legendary at birth. Before heavy metal and the height of progressive rock existed a special time. A special time where fantasy was based around books instead of movies and the inception of role playing games were emerging from the darkness. This was a time for wizards, elves and monsters. This was an infant fantasy, one that is permanently encased in the choruses of Demons and Wizards. This was a fantasy that would be carried on the shoulders of progressive rock and heavy metal into the dawn of tomorrow. Demons and Wizards is still amazing to listen to and gives me shivers to think about how far we've really come....in the realms of something so incredibly nerdy.
"The Wizard" from Demons And Wizards
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