To watch a 13-old cover Metallica’s song Master of Puppets isn’t mind-blowing but it is impressive. The only reason I say that’s not really blowing me away is because it’s kind of obvious at this point that the boy is something of a Metallica fan and a music lover so stating that he’s a prodigy might be better, but being that amazed by it might be kind of insulting, at least to my ears. It would mean that you wouldn’t expect this kind of thing from someone that’s so obviously motivated to do something great like this. I do find his ability to recreate the song so faithfully simply awesome and worthy of the band itself. I get the feeling that if he continues to idolize Metallica and other such bands while growing up, and if he keeps to his music, he could be something special when he really reaches his peak.
I’ll be one of the first to admit that watching kids this young and perhaps a little older doing something so awesome in their lives makes me want to say “I hate you” on a more visceral, gut-clenching level since it does invoke a lot of jealousy that I couldn’t do something this awesome at that age. But thankfully that childish notion passes quickly since watching and listening to the music is enough to get a person to raise the devil horns, sing along, and egg the kid on to even greater heights. After all we want the younger generations to do something great as they grow up and come into their own abilities. We want to leave this world to those that can perform such awesome feats and wow the people around them. The jealousy that springs up fades away like a wisp of fog in the sunlight since it’s hard not to be impressed by this kind of performance.
Were this boy to grow up and become something special to any number of bands I wouldn’t be too surprised and in fact if I were his parent I would likely be signing him up, if he wanted, to competitions and possibly trying to get his demos out to as many people as possible. That’s all if he wanted to do this of course. The issue with any kid that shows this kind of potential early on in life is that they can get burned out very quickly if they decide to push and push and push until they can’t go any longer. The love of the music eventually fades when they’re forced to perform on a regular basis and aren’t allowed to just let it flow.
The hard work for anything that’s performance-based is often worth it once you get to a point where you can call your own shots. But the trick is not getting burned out before you get to that point. If the kid is just doing this for fun and doesn’t want to make it into a serious career then he’s still impressive to watch, but if he does then it might behoove his parents to go slow and cultivate his talent, not pimp it out as much as possible.
