15yo "Masters Of Metal"...?

[ION BRITTON]

[Split from the relations-thread (?!) in LoM./Admin]

it is in this day and age people suddenly become metal masters at 15 or whatever, it is too easy to become too knowledgable much too quickly, there should be a natural progression in love of metal; you start with the basics, anything else just pisses me off. And another side-effect of that is wanting to show off.

Dude, you don't know how much i agree with you.

[The Knell]

well said daniel.

[Sacrilegio]

Daniel, I agree with you 100%.

[The Knell]

Daniel, I agree with you 100%.

weird, I expected you to write this

[MEXDefenderOfSteel]

it is in this day and age people suddenly become metal masters at 15 or whatever, it is too easy to become too knowledgable much too quickly, there should be a natural progression in love of metal; you start with the basics, anything else just pisses me off. And another side-effect of that is wanting to show off.

Dude, you don't know how much i agree with you.

and you dont know how that fact pisses me off.....lets thank the Internet

[Sacrilegio]

Daniel, I agree with you 100%.

weird, I expected you to write this

Why?

[mordred]

it is in this day and age people suddenly become metal masters at 15 or whatever, it is too easy to become too knowledgable much too quickly, there should be a natural progression in love of metal; you start with the basics, anything else just pisses me off. And another side-effect of that is wanting to show off.

Dude, you don't know how much i agree with you.

It's called being young, naive, enthusiastic and hungry for more knowledge. Most of us have been there ourselves, it was no big deal then and it ain't now.

[ION BRITTON]

I doubt whether kids with 10.000 mp3s, 250 t-shirts and 10 original CDs can be called enthusiastic and hungry for more knowledge. Not that ALL of them think and act this way, but the biggest part does, at least from what i've experienced so far.

[GJ]

We're just getting old and tired (from browsning through thousands of magazines, catalogues, acrobaticly hanging over thousands of miles of records at fairs, shops, flea-markets, in cellars and attics, building shelves, rearranging and moving collections, listening to old timer hard rockers ranting over the non-musicality of Iron Maiden, WASP claiming that thrash metal just is a stupid trend that is bound to die within months...).
We are excused.

Edit: insertion of an "of"

[mordred]

I doubt whether kids with 10.000 mp3s, 250 t-shirts and 10 original CDs can be called enthusiastic and hungry for more knowledge. Not that ALL of them think and act this way, but the biggest part does, at least from what i've experienced so far.

Amassing mp3's is also a way of enthusiasm and knowledge seeking (although that was not what I was mainly refering to, I thought of the typically youthful "I know this ultra cool cult band and you don't and I have this mega super rare demo tape and you don't" attitude). If they were not enthusiastic and did not want more knowledge they would not fill their hard drives with music and they would not spend 12 hours a day browsing The metal archives.

You don't have to be old to be wise, but it helps. Of course we should always press the issue that stealing music is never right, but we should also let kids be kids and hope that they eventually will come to their senses. I was a kid myself not too long ago. When I was 15 or 16 mp3 sharing was not really a factor yet, but sure me and my friends copied albums. Matter of facts were that I had 400 swedish kronor a month, which was enough for buying two cd's, or three if they were mid price. Needless to say, piss rare records were out of the question. I still remember how I wanted an X-Wild CD that was only available as a japanese import at the time. It cost about twice the price of a normal CD, but it seemed an unfathomable fortune to me. Dubbing or burning my friend's albums was the only way I would to get to hear more than two new albums a month.

It's easy to TELL a kid he should buy all the music he wants to listen to and it's easty to TELL him that if he doesn't have money to buy more than two cd's he should wait 'til he grows up and gets a job.

['pataphysicien]

it is in this day and age people suddenly become metal masters at 15 or whatever, it is too easy to become too knowledgable much too quickly, there should be a natural progression in love of metal; you start with the basics, anything else just pisses me off. And another side-effect of that is wanting to show off.

Dude, you don't know how much i agree with you.

It's called being young, naive, enthusiastic and hungry for more knowledge. Most of us have been there ourselves, it was no big deal then and it ain't now.

well, if you discount the fact that previously people had to seek out and BUY the records. at the same time having more young 'metal masters' around might be of some benefit to labels and bands as well. it's hard to tell, there are good and bad sides to this. are there more buyers of 'underground' metal now than ever? I'd tend to think so, looking at how much more exposure the digital age means. more small labels? maybe, hard to tell. I'd guess so. relatively more people buying records? I don't know. I doubt it.

where would my music-life be without the internet? I don't know. I never had friends that were into metal and I never felt part of any 'scene'. so I am thankful for the input I get from so many people online. I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with having 'easy access' to so much music. imagine the scenario where someone has to seek out his own metal in a no-internet world, hears a couple of shit albums by chance and writes off metal. all it might have taken to get him hooked would have been that one download. I know that's how it's been for me a lot of times and I'm pretty sure for a lot of you as well. sometimes I think that the most true of online warriors would like to forget how much great music they might never have come across were it not for internet communication. what would the state of obscure and cult metal be without it today? I'd dare say we might still be in the nineties musically.

and Daniel, what's a 'natural progression in love of metal'? how can one 'progress too quickly'? seriously if you think about that again I don't think it'll make much sense to you. it's a personal journey and it's impossible to say how that journey should be. a matter of individual people living individual lives, with all the chance encounters and not-taken paths we all have in our lives. going and universalizing some imaginary 'true path to the true metal' is not a good description for how the world works. it's nice for romanticizing some ideal-versions of the world maybe. "[...]you start with the basics[...]" you say. what the fuck are the basics? of course I know the myth and lore and stories of origin and the whole musical ancestry business metalheads are keen on. I am as well, not only for metal. but again I wouldn't universalize a right version there. I'm ignorant to so much of what others might see as the 'basics', but what does that change about my love for the music I am not ignorant to? I think there is a tendency for metalheads living in the 'true' paradigm to exaggerate the common ground, the canon of metal. it's good for building the community feeling (and making an 'outside' that 'doesn't get it'), but individuals are different. even with the 'basics'. a good thing too, otherwise for instance all 'the classics' would sound the same.

on topic. meh. single since the end of last summer (?). I can't even fucking remember it. shorter relationships the last years, not much fucking around. nothing comes close to the first serious relationship I had, which lasted 5ish years. I really wouldn't mind something good and serious again. a person it clicks with, no doubts whether it really is the right thing y'know. somebody who has lived, has a personality of their own, is passionate, kind, silly etc. it wouldn't really matter what kinds of music she's into. experience tells me that what's important, what one comes to love or dislike about a person has so much to do with the individual you encounter in a specific place and time and so little with ideal versions of a 'future partner'. sure I wouldn't mind a woman into good metal, if that wasn't all of her. anyhoo. wouln't mind 'falling' for someone again, would be awesome. love is teh best.

['pataphysicien]

It's easy to TELL a kid he should buy all the music he wants to listen to and it's easty to TELL him that if he doesn't have money to buy more than two cd's he should wait 'til he grows up and gets a job.

I sympathize with that point. I'm German studying in Norway. now Germany is a rich country by global standards, but in Norway I'm truly not a rich person. add to that the fact that I am an almost full-time student. going out to drink beer is fucking impossible. buying beer in a shop is already a big investment to give you a picture. while I still lived at home many years ago, went to school and had a job I used to buy music. then I had a long time downloading without really worrying about the moral side of it. in recent years I've more and more come back to buying. also because of discovering and becoming committed to bands, labels and styles that truly deserve and need the support. and because I got older I suppose, became more political in the way that I became more attentive to my role in the world, what kind of world I want to live in, my role in shaping it, what my morals are etc. plus a fascination with vinyl that is also not very old. BUT I still download music now and then (never share online though, too many uncertainties over unintended consequences) because if I had to wait until I had the money to buy all the stuff I like, I would maybe be able to buy it in many years time. who knows if I'll ever be wealthy enough to do it? and who knows if I had decided I like the music in the first place? the important thing is that I try to buy as much as I can possibly afford now (sometimes more) and the stuff I don't buy now I know I'll buy in the future. the ideal I strive after is at some point owning all the (official) releases that are really close to me. to die old with a collection of all the albums that give me goosebumps. vinyl ideally. pretty much every 'downloading kid' (strangely not suspecting adults, longtime metalheads, maybe even the 'true by personal confession', are we?) can potentially come through to that. but of course people are different, regrettably in this case.

[ION BRITTON]

I never said that every kid SHOULD buy anything he likes and that he will be punished if he doesn't do so. It is understood that youngsters have more financial difficulties, but it's one thing to buy something whenever the circumstances allow it and quite another to buy one CD every two years, if you know what i mean.

I personally didn't and still don't buy CDs/LPs because someone older or younger than me, doesn't matter, told me to do so. OK, now that i'm employed i can afford buying a bit more, but every time i made/make a purchase was/is because i wanted to have an original copy of the album. And that was done for various reason: wanting to have the complete artwork, a CD that wouldn't skip or wouldn't become useless in 3 years, supporting the band, generally the mentality that i must give something in order to take something was the one that i always felt was right for me. Kids today believe that everything should be free for anyone and that they have the right to complain when they can't find something available on the internet. NO DAMMIT, the bands and the labels behind them have sweated their guts out for us to enjoy their music, they have invested money, energy and a lot of time for their work, i'm of the opinion that they deserve something in return. Some kids think otherwise. And then we wonder why bands and indy labels retire....

Another reason for what i said is that the 100GB of mp3s on a hard disk doesn't really say much for the youth's ''insatiable hunger for metal'', at least not to me. I have met young dudes who claimed that they know this or that ultra fucking obscure band, claiming how deep into metal they are, how they feel steel running through their veins, you know that kind of attitude, but guess what: when i put the x track of the band they claimed to be fond of, they shook their heads in amazements saying ''what is this we are listening to?". To make things worse, some of the same kids, couldn't recognise a simple JUDAS FUCKIN' PRIEST classic or an ACCEPT track. That's what daniel's meant (i think) when he said that there should be ''a natural progression in love of metal". You can't start listening to SCARLET RAYNE, if you haven't heard the early works of QUEENSRYCHE. This doesn't mean that if you like SR then you should necessarily love 'RYCHE, but you must at least be familiar with their work. That's the way it goes for me, anything else is considered as ''show off''.
So, a hard disk full of mp3s doesn't necessarily prove anything about a kid's dedication to metal or about his hunger for exploring the genre as most of them simply DO NOT listen to what they have downloaded. The attitude is ''The fuller the hard disk, the more metal we are''

Again, i'm talking from what I have seen so far. I don't say that all these should be the rule for ALL the young metalheads, but sadly they apply for the vast majority.

[tomas]

I'm 26 and I don't have any Queensryche or Accept LPs.
I wouldn't even know what Queensryche sounds like.
But I love Lester Maddox and Lord Ryur

[nightsblood]

I'm w/ Mordred. When we were kids we did the same things that kids do now, we just had blank tapes and fanzines instead of mp3s and websites. The tools available to kids today may let them do things faster and on a bigger scale, but the principle is the same. I taped all kinds of stuff that I never bought; lack of money was part of it, but some items were hard to find and others I simply didn't like enough that I wanted to buy 'em; some of these got taped over, others hung around for whatever reason.

Ion makes a good point about kids who d/l everything and listen to nothing, but such posers have always been around. The day I moved into my college dorm my roommate was telling me what a huge Metallica fan he was, so i put in 'Kill 'em All'- scared the crap out of him He only knew 'enter sandman and other Metallica songs that had videos on MTV.

'Real' collectors often buy more than they can listen to as well; how many of us have a stack of cd's and albums that we've been meaning to play some more but we never seem to get around to? Having a couple of dozen cd's that you need to spend more time listening to isn't as ridiculous as having 50GB backlogged, but again the principle is the same.

I also understand the sentiment that 'real fans' should buy cd's to support bands, but you have to be careful about making such rules as to what defines a 'real fan'. Song files are here to stay. What if someone pays for the downloads? What if they love an album, know it by heart, but just cant afford a copy or it's sold out? Bands may be able to make more money through downloads; sites like cdbaby claim that 91% of the download cost goes in the bands' pockets, and the band didn't have to pay to press cds, print booklets, mail them, etc.

Just my 2 cents... I tend to be leery of such 'rules' b/c I never fit the 'rules' for being a 'real' metal fan in the first place. I've never had long hair, wanted a motorcycle, owned a leather jacket, sewn patches onto my denim jacket, etc. That doesn't mean that I don't enjoy the music immensely.