Corlyss_D wrote:jack stowaway wrote:If this board were exclusively focussed on classical music it would hold zero interest for me. In fact, the reason I resigned from the forum in its early days was the refusal of the then-moderators to countenance a board for non-classical music discussion.
CMG was so long in the birthing after we were kicked out of the MSN Classical Music Form that when it finally did debut, I wasn't very interested in it. Once you and the other orphans came over from Amazon when they shut down their discussion boards, Ward was persuaded to entertain briefly a non-music forum. But then he changed his mind after a couple of weeks and eliminated the non-music board. I took French leave and went to Baldric's site where I remained until Ward died and Lance and I took over CMG.
One of the reasons I enjoy visiting fan sites is the unabashed enthusiasm expressed by posters for the object of their affections. There is a special sort of joy in their admiration which I have rarely, if ever, encountered on classical music forums.
Well, we were hoping that was what could be had here - people sharing their enthusiasm without having to feel they were being subjected to a cultural IQ test. But some of that "tone" will creep in because we can't control everyone's reactions to the discussions in the music room.
Finally, kudos to Corlyss for bringing up this topic. I can't recall ever listening to a heavy metal piece, but my curiousity has been tweaked sufficiently that I would like to give it a go. Anyone care to make a recommendation?
Thank you most kindly, Jack. I was interested in getting some of our members who had made the journey from headbanger to classical fan to speak up and shed some light on the genre and what interested them about it to begin with. If we have a rock historian out there, I'd like to hear from him too. Did someone mention an article in wikipedia? Is it good? Is it reliable?
Corlyss, and Jack, I'm with you here. Corlyss, I really, truly despise what you so accurately refer to as "cultural IQ tests", and while there isn't much of that here (thankfully, or else I wouldn't still be posting), I do see it pop up every now and then.
Jack, I'm no authority on heavy metal or anything, but the first two Black Sabbath albums,
Black Sabbath and
Paranoid, as I mentioned before, are masterpieces from start to finish.
While I've never been a headbanger, I'll share a bit about my journey into classical music anyway; like some others have mentioned, I've never liked more commercial, trite bands like Motley Crue, Twisted Sister, etc. When I was a kid, I listened to top 40 radio, and rap. My mother would sing me Hank Williams and folk songs, but I didn't start exploring all kinds of genres of music until I went to college. Then I started listening to jazz, some metal, blues, experimental music, and punk, and funk, and soul, and later on, country, folk, and classical. Jazz, rock, blues, soul, and punk will always be my first loves, because I spent my formative years listening to these forms of music. But classical music now occupies a true place of honor in my heart, and it was hearing Bach that brought me into its universe. A friend of mine told me about
The Art of the Fugue, "It's as though Bach's playing 64 games of chess at once--and he wins them all!", and that got me listening.
And even though this is a thread about metal, one last addendum: rap is an easy target. But the best rap, as far as I'm concerned, is right up there with Chaucer--and yes, I've read Chaucer, in his original language. I would even venture to say that Chaucer might have appreciated some of the better rappers' sardonic, satirical humor, their double entendres, the thoughtful, sometimes politically charged, rich, varied, pornographic (Chaucer could be pretty filthy himself, as could Boccaccio) and often wildly funny world of their slang, the way that the music is composed of scraps of different music into an aural collage. I know everyone here will disagree with me about what I typed above, but I don't care. Is plenty of rap crap? Hell yes, but that can be said of every art form. I would ask you--how much rap have you listened to? How much of a chance have you given it? If you hate it, fine. I loathe a lot of classical music. But there is rap out there that is worth hearing. And what I love so much about going to rap concerts, and some rock concerts, and punk concerts, is that they are overtly physical,
participatory experiences. The boundary between the performer and the audience is blurred, and the intensity is incredible. The audience dances; they often know all the lyrics to the songs and sing along; many times members will jump, or get pulled onstage, and sing with the band. The performers will sometimes get down offstage and dance with the audience, and even embrace some members. The rap concerts I've been to have been rooted in the call-and-response tradition, which I will always find amazing and powerful. I'm an agnostic, but the closest thing I've ever had to a religious experience---other than hiking in the mountains or scuba diving in the ocean (and nothing humans have produced, or will ever produce will ever trump the natural world, but that's another topic), has been concerts such as these. They're a full-body kind of happening, and I love it.
Whew! My apologies for the tangent. Back to your regularly scheduled programming.
Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.
Yes, really! Well, 3 hours of it. 
Why? What?