non-metalheads around here?

[Tommy Gun]

There are wannabe-snobs who listen to jazz just like there are stupid pretentious 14-year-olds who listen to metal because they think it looks cool. If you can really feel what's going on in jazz, which takes a much different mindset than metal, you can get into it - but for most people, who don't spend a lot of time on it, it's a really odd move.

Jeff

Yeah, when you get into Jazz, you have to REALLY get into Jazz. There's no "dabbling" around in it. I played with 34-piece "Big Band" for 2 years, and recorded the guitars for a Christmas Jazz CD later, with a few of the guys from that. Jazz really expanded my horizons and abilities as a lead player. I owe every ounce of my improv abilities to Jazz. It's also where I learned Music Theory.

 

[Chryst Krispies]

I can't stand jazz...or blues either.
Snoozefest.

 

[Metal Overload]

I consider myself purely Metalhead, because is the music i really feel, that really shakes me and give me those goosebumps through the spine. im not being pompous about it and im not a kid talking shit and trying to be tough or anything of that shit that i hate (call everyone posers because they listen to other genres, wanting to be the badest guy in the city for listening extreme music blablabla, bullshit).

BUT, this doesn´t mean that i don´t enjoy to listen other stuff, i love, i mean i fucking love 70´s rock, 80´s 90´s everything that i like to call in a good way "oldie rock", some pop music (with good writing, and catchy sound) some bob marley, some folk music, i do not enjoy electronic music in any way, rap-hiphop, mexican music called "banda", "Cumbias" and alot of annoying mexican music (Popular, not folclorik, or cultural mexican music, which is really interesting).

Being metalhead, some of my favorite bands are, Journey, Grand Funk, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Ac/Dc and Scorpions (which some dont consider them metal, for me they are Heavy Rock, and masters of Heavy Ballads).

One thing i dont really like, is that metalheads are ashamed of being metalheads, i mean why??, dont understand it, know a lot of guys that listens and enjoy mostly metal music, but they dont consider themselves as Metalheads, but with no reason, they reason they give me are just ridiculous ("because i dont wear metal shirts" "because others will call me poser" "because i like punk too") but well, every head is a world, and i think that every one has their thoughts on being metalhead at heart, im proud of being it.

 

[Metaltastic]

One thing i dont really like, is that metalheads are ashamed of being metalheads, i mean why??, dont understand it, know a lot of guys that listens and enjoy mostly metal music, but they dont consider themselves as Metalheads, but with no reason, they reason they give me are just ridiculous ("because i dont wear metal shirts" "because others will call me poser" "because i like punk too") but well, every head is a world, and i think that every one has their thoughts on being metalhead at heart, im proud of being it.

SERIOUSLY; +1 to that dude

 

[Damian B]

I can appreciate anything with good musicianship and technical playing. Obviously, metal is a good genre for that, but I also enjoy jazz, funk, bluegrass, and especially classical.

 

[Chryst Krispies]

SERIOUSLY; +1 to that dude

I have a theory...

Because thanks to television and other assorted culprits, there is a stereotype whether metal fans know it or not that metalheads are either:
A- Preteen "I hate my parents" Mallcore kiddies
B- The whole unemployed unwashed, uneducated, just wants to get drunk and smoke a shitload of pot whilst listening to old Sabbath records and anything involving Metallica.

That's why I am sometimes afraid to say I like metal. I CERTAINLY don;t wanna get lumped into either.

 

[RemoWilliams]

For all the jazz snobs out there who ruin the joy of listening for others, I believe Naked City had a nice response song for that, it was called "Jazz Snob Eat Shit."

 

[Metal Overload]

I have a theory...

Because thanks to television and other assorted culprits, there is a stereotype whether metal fans know it or not that metalheads are either:
A- Preteen "I hate my parents" Mallcore kiddies
B- The whole unemployed unwashed, uneducated, just wants to get drunk and smoke a shitload of pot whilst listening to old Sabbath records and anything involving Metallica.

That's why I am sometimes afraid to say I like metal. I CERTAINLY don;t wanna get lumped into either.

That´s true dude, but that is because people are ignorant, not because you are wrong, if you are unwashed, you´ll look like that, but if you are polite and clean you will pass as everybody else, but still you are metalhead.

Is not a you vs. the world thing, but you must know who you are, what you like, and how you want to look like. i find wrong if you deny what you are and feel just because to fit in everyone else sight.

 

[DominikJW]

I like every kind of good music, from Robert Johnson to Michael Jackson

 

[dan weapon]

I'd consider myself a metal head - which includes everything from Classic rock through to brutal death metal, and almost everything in between.

I also have a (not so secret) love for Duran Duran, Tom Petty and Michael Jackson.

 

[grywolf627]

+1 to pretty much all genres listed so far. Pretty much anything that constitutes actual music (which in my mind leaves out rap/hip-hop...but hey...to each his own). But one more: big band/swing. Not the newer revival stuff, but the original stuff from the 1940's. I was raised listening to my dad's Glen Miller, Artie Shaw, and Bennie Goodman records. The complexity and the phrasing used in songs is great stuff. And the talent of some of the soloists was just phenomenal!

 

[Pot]

like Tommy Gun said: "my heart is in Metal." and i´m sure that´s why we are all here

 

[Let it burn...]

like Tommy Gun said: "my heart is in Metal." and i´m sure that´s why we are all here

+1 big time. It doesn't matter if we listen to it now or not. We all enjoyed it in the past

 

[Noumenon]

I usually try to be the hard-to-understand-guy and answer that question with "well.... I listen to music, not genres"
mostly classical atm, and some 16 horsepower, woven hand, simon & garfunkel, shining. uhm. yeah. I do have my soft spot for infected mushroom too.

 

[NickL]

People think I'm a metalhead but my metal credibility has been in the tank for years. I listen to way too much Stravinsky to be considered br00tal

some of my favorite music:

Scott Walker
Radiohead
Spirogyra
Comus
Igor Stravinski
Penderecki
Wagner (he was NOT a nazi for fuck's sake...)
Nikita Koshkin

 

[Metaltastic]

I usually try to be the pretentious, condescending assface and answer that question with "well.... I listen to music, not genres"

There we are

 

[JeffTD]

I love metal and spent the better part of the last 5 years listening to nothing but. That said, in the last 1.5 years or so, my interest in metal has been dwindling, and these days I'm way more likely to listen to Brand New, Muse, Coheed & Cambria, or Devin Townsend's solo material than anything all that heavy. I'm actually really into a lot of pop music, as well (Sara Bareilles, Colbie Caillat, Christina Aguilera, The Fray, Kelly Clarkson, etc).

Don't get me wrong - I still really do love metal... but let's be honest. Aside from a few exceptions, it's not all that musical.

 

[JeffTD]

I have a theory...

Because thanks to television and other assorted culprits, there is a stereotype whether metal fans know it or not that metalheads are either:
A- Preteen "I hate my parents" Mallcore kiddies
B- The whole unemployed unwashed, uneducated, just wants to get drunk and smoke a shitload of pot whilst listening to old Sabbath records and anything involving Metallica.

That's why I am sometimes afraid to say I like metal. I CERTAINLY don;t wanna get lumped into either.

The problem is that option B isn't too far from the truth, more often than not .

 

[Metaltastic]

I love metal and spent the better part of the last 5 years listening to nothing but. That said, in the last 1.5 years or so, my interest in metal has been dwindling, and these days I'm way more likely to listen to Brand New, Muse, Coheed & Cambria, or Devin Townsend's solo material than anything all that heavy. I'm actually really into a lot of pop music, as well (Sara Bareilles, Colbie Caillat, Christina Aguilera, The Fray, Kelly Clarkson, etc).

Don't get me wrong - I still really do love metal... but let's be honest. Aside from a few exceptions, it's not all that musical.

Well given the colossal amount of sub-genres under the banner of metal, not to mention "musical" being one of the most vague and ambiguous terms I know of, I'm just gonna leave that last part alone.

But as to the body of your post, I'd like to share a personal anecdote, if I may, so perhaps I can escape the flaming of the "Casey leaves Periphery" thread. I had a friend back in high school (we'll call him Dorian, he'd like that) who was essentially my "metal buddy" - we always talked music and guitar, and we'd often go to the 48th St. music stores (in Manhattan) after school to rock out. As high school went on, Dorian started getting better and better at guitar, listening to more and more music (personally I think for the bragging right of being a metal encyclopedia rather than actually enjoying it, but that's another matter), and getting big into production. By the end of HS, he was a better guitarist than I, knew more about metal than I, and CERTAINLY was a better producer than I (cuz I didn't really get into production until college). We would write music together all the time, spending weekend after weekend in front of the computer recording riffs and making songs (he got me into the basics of recording, and even introduced me to this forum).

But also by the end of HS, he was starting to really get into wanting to pursue the business/profitability side of music, having the latter affect his judgement both of music he listened to and music we would write together, and this really started to concern me. And when he started at NYU, well, that was pretty much the beginning of the end. He always was very much of a people-pleaser, but there's no other way to put this: he completely sold out. I know "sell-out" is a term often wielded by closed-minded people who take whatever it is they are obsessed with way too seriously, but Dorian started getting into the Manhattan "clubbing" scene, obsessing over pop music because it was marketable and profitable, and condemning most metal because it wasn't.

He also took great pains to adopt the imagery and attitudes of the "popular hedonistic rock star;" one particularly funny (in a sad sort of way) moment was when he started drinking a ton of Red Bull and building up his collection of cans, as well as wearing a Rolling Stones tongue t-shirt (even though he had never once mentioned any affinity for the band) simply because it was a popular well-known symbol and getting posters of Led Zeppelin and other 70s bands because that was the image he wanted to cultivate for himself. Now we were hanging out one time in the city back in Summer 2006, and while flipping through the posters at our favorite record store in the village (Generation Records), I came across this poster, and had to both laugh and sigh. He was obsessed with HIM at the time (and James Murphy, if you read this, you may recall our tiff over that band some time ago), mostly because of the aforementioned marketability but also his perception of Ville as the "modern rock star" or some crap, and clearly he took it pretty damn far. That's always been his thing; whenever he finds an identity he wants to adopt, he goes completely overboard with immersing himself in its archetypes (including metal, honestly, back when that was his thing, see the above mentioned huge music collection), and so many times all I could think is "who are you?" He couldn't be real with his friends, not really, and that really drove us apart (though there's never been any outright hostility, we've just grown apart though still occasionally keep in touch). Nowadays, he barely plays guitar anymore, and I've FAR surpassed him at it.

So the point of all this is that I have a great predisposition to bitterness when it comes to people of intellect saying they genuinely enjoy pop music; I'm a fan of catchiness as much as the next guy, but to a point, christ. So I have to ask, DSS3: do you really enjoy the music? If so, that's cool, and more power to you, and the same for Casey if that's his case as well - but if you're starting to become like my friend Dorian (and you're about the age where he started to douche-ify), then, well, perhaps you could reconsider.

 

[Metaltastic]

Here's a pic of us following our first time seeing GWAR back in Spring 2004 - god did that fucking rule (and check out "Dorian's" hair, he always had the most magnificent metal locks)