[purpleland]

Addressed to another, "So far you are making the case that not only is Dimebag Darrell inferior to Mozart but the whole of rock culture is inferior..."

I have quite a wide range of appreciation and preferences in music styles, genres, etc., including truly authentic Blues (w/acoustic guitar), New Orleans Jazz, Beatles, Baroque, et al. But, the only aspect where Hard Metal Rock is superior to all other musical styles/genres is its harsh cacaphony. A marching band made up of a hundred out-of-tune Bagpipe drones is sweeter and more inspiring, and less terrifying than Hard Rock...stampeding Camels and Crows...and other sensitive animals.

It's plain UGLY racketity riffs - not really music. Just my opinion...in preservation of my nervous system.

Thank God for free speech and tolerance...and Bach.

Merry Christmas...Happy Mannheim Steamroller too!

[Blind Eye Jones]

Your right that Metal is very harsh to the ears, and so is some modern expressionist classical music (Schonenberg, Berg, Webern). In some ways Metal bands are not as bad as some Avant Gard noise bands that are recently big in Japan, eg., Nihilist Spasm Band. Metal bands usually pride themselves on their tightness and speed in pulling off those riffs. It's usually very angry and aggressive music. Noise bands like free form jazz bands are another story altogether. Sometimes we don't like the tonal qualities and other times it's the choice of notes which make music sound dissonant. But dissonance is in some ways relative to culture. For example, what we take as light jazz would have been harsh to Bach's ears. Our ears have been conditioned or "tuned" to jazz by constant exposure through our culture. It we listen to another's culture's music, eg., Chinese Opera, that too can easily get on our nerves and sound very unpleasant.

Have a happy Christmas!