Rant Number 1 in E-Minor

Rant Number 1 in E Minor – “I Like All Kinds of Music, Except Heavy Stuff…”

Q. “So, what kinda music are you into? :-)”

A. “Oh I like all kinds of music…except heavy music. :-)”

“:-|…”

How many times have you had this conversation?
For the sake of shits and giggles let’s conduct a thought experiment. Forget your biases of all kinds (please take a moment to do this as best you can) now tell me, if you were in the position of the person asking the question, why should the above conversation be continued at all?

Let’s examine:
For starters the person to whom you are speaking has just lied to you. No, you do not enjoy ALL music if you then admit that there exists an entire plethora of music which your ears avoid.

Anyone so prepared to display such ignorance, in my opinion, does not deserve the pleasure of the conversation. Anyone who today is still so closed minded as to believe that heavy music is something other than JUST music is, to be perfectly frank, a bit stupid. Why are people still so hesitant to accept music for what it is after 50 years and 3 generations of heavy music, in which time it has been at the heights of the mainstream on a number of occasions?

I think it is perhaps a more telling fact that anyone who says they don’t listen to heavy music but do attend gigs is either lying again or is confused and made ignorant by their prejudices (something tells me that more often than not, it’s the latter…). Any gig one attends in any medium sized venue is probably going to be using a PA system that runs on thousands of watts and reaches dangerous decibel levels. In be words of Tony Iommi (watch this space for a reference later) all that Black Sabbath were trying to achieve in their early days was an intensity of volume that meant the talking of the audience did not drown out the music. This is a given at gigs and even more so in clubs today. Why do you think in the late 60’s and early 70’s folk’s spoke of Blue Cheer and Deep Purple, not in terms of how ‘heavy’ they were but how loud they were?

It is both fortunate and unfortunate that today the term ‘heavy’ is interpreted so many different ways. Some will tell you it still refers to loudness and sheer intensity, others will maintain it means unforgiving lyrical content, still others will say its “just so heavy man” meaning they think something is heavy with no understanding of what the term is supposed to mean.

I’ll keep this experiment/rant to a reasonable shortness of length. Comments are very very welcome so let rip good people!

For Bornagainnihilist 2011
Edward Gerard Brophy