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Music

My father would probably disagree with that title, though...

I really, really like heavy metal. Very heavy metal.

Don't run screaming just yet!

Most people seem to think that heavy metal is nothing but noise. Granted, not everyone can appreciate heavy metal or even hear it as music; but for those who can, it is still music. Now, if you think heavy metal just sounds awful and you can't get into it musically, I can certainly respect that. (Well, unless you've never actually tried listening to it, that is.) However, I find that most negative reactions to heavy metal have nothing to do with the music itself, but rather with popular misconceptions about it. Here are some of the usual ones:

• Metal is satanic: Granted, there are some groups whose imagery is extremely unpleasant. Hint: This is a marketing gimmick. They know perfectly well that many of their listeners are people who feel marginalized, and who therefore enjoy shocking the sedate. Graphic, disgusting imagery and lyrics always sell well among these people.
   
• Metal lyrics are always vile: In reality, they explore many topics: love, loneliness, betrayal, fear, death, despair, alienation, anger; often even religion and god. Some songs just have happy nonsense lyrics. If you like your music simple, unchallenging, and uniformly happy, then you probably should go somewhere else; but for those who like a bit of a mental challenge, this is the place to be. Oh, also it's common to complain that nobody can understand what the lyrics are saying anyway (although you would think that if they were, in fact, always vile, that would be a good thing). I find that I can generally understand the lyrics; it's probably just a matter of practice. I don't believe there is that much higher a percentage of incomprehensible lyrics in metal than there is in any other musical genre; certainly I've found plenty of songs in other genres whose lyrics I can't puzzle out at all.
   
• Metal fans are scary, violent, dangerous people: I'm sure there are some, just as there are some violent, dangerous people in any group. However, all the metal fans I know are decent people who also happen to be highly intelligent, and usually well-educated. At concerts I've been to, the fans are uniformly polite and pleasant. (The only concert violence I've ever witnessed was at the performance of an Irish folk band called Great Big Sea. One fan attacked another, who landed literally at my feet; by the time security pulled them apart, there was a giant pool of blood on the floor. Not nice.)

Here's the part many people find surprising: Heavy metal isn't all I like! Yes, I am living proof that you can be a metalhead, yet listen to other stuff too! I think the automatic assumption is that if you like that horrible stuff, there must be something fundamentally wrong with your understanding of music. It's simply not true. For instance, most metalheads I have known have also had a strong liking for classical music; I am no exception.

There are also plenty of kinds of music that I don't like at all; these include rap, dance, country, and jazz. Whatever currently passes for pop is usually on this list as well.

I'm a very considerate metalhead; I never subject anyone to my music if they don't also like it.

Anyway. Moving right along...

Music I Own

The music collection isn't as out of control as the book collection, but for convenience I will still provide the list sorted and filtered various ways.

• Rock & Heavy Metal
• Classical
• Other
• The whole list

Or, if you just cannot survive without sorting and filtering the list a few other ways, why, you can download the whole database (Access 97 format; about 150 KB).