Friday 15 August 2014

An Annoying Thing Happened On The Way To The Judas Priest Facebook Page (An Angry Rant)

OK, that's it, metal scene, you've really, REALLY pissed me off this time!

Just today, I happened to be looking on Facebook and I noticed that Judas Priest had posted a photo on their official Facebook page of Rihanna wearing a Judas Priest shirt at one of her gigs. Now, I'll admit, I'm not fond of her music at all (there are maybe one or two songs by her which I have anything better than a polite dislike of), but I thought "OK, that's actually kind of cool: there's not a lot of people wearing Priest shirts out there in the public eye."

Then I checked the comments of that photo.

What I saw in the comments were statements that made me lose faith in humanity. I have not provided the names of the guilty parties, but I am only not doing that because I think these people do not deserve their names to be shared in the public eye. There ARE comments on the photo that are not like this (and some which pretty much say what I'm going to say), but I figured I should highlight some of the ones which pissed me off.
  • Kill it with fire, fucking posers.
  • What a bunch of bullshit. I just lost a little respect for Priest for putting this out there. U oughta be ashamed lol. Please take it down your fans are embarrassed here. At least I am.
  • Chris brown was breakin her jaw breakin her jaw
  • fuck that stupid cunt..
  • Maybe Chris brown beat some sense into her ..now she listens to real Music
  • Who is she? Has she ever heard of Judas Priest? Terrible cunt.
  • What a disgrace!!!! I cannot imagine Rhiana covering a Judas Priest song!
  • Why would we want a bunch of poppy wankers listening to good music? That's like giving fine wine to pig.
  • that disgusts me..even disgusts me more coming from Judas priest official page
  • Fuck off bitch !
  • She needs to get beat again
  • Stupid. She has someone who does her entire wardrobe I'm sure. She doesn't have a clue about Priest. If she did she wouldn't "sing" the bullshit that she does
  • Go fuck ur self rihana! Go and sing ur fucking pop music! U suck and stop copping Pure Metal!
  • Ruined a good shirt!
  • Didn't she have a Krokus shirt last week ? SCrew her
  • like she REALLY listens to Priest ?!?! GET REAL........ some wardrobe person dressed her, told her it would be "cool" .........shes a sack of talentless shit, as far as im concerened
  • I just lost a little respect for JP putting this poser on here. Get this poser off this page right now and have some respect.
  • This makes me wanna puke.
  • She's such an annoying, whiney bitch... All her songs sound like she's whining.
  • Fucke her, everybody...
  • fucking nigger
The metal music scene, everybody: a close minded group of fucking assholes who think that you cannot like metal because you don't perform it.

If ANYBODY reading this agrees with any of those comments I've put up here, then stop reading this blog now and never come back here: I don't want support from a bunch of closed minded assholes like you, I want support from people who have some degree of common sense, and you agreeing with the comments has me suspecting that your common sense is lacking more than it really should be.

Let me make something very, VERY clear: music taste and music performance are very different things. I personally prefer to perform folk music when I do sing, but, as you probably could have guessed from reading this blog, I'm pretty fond of metal music. But I also listen to other styles of music: in addition to folk and metal, I also quite like country, punk, rock and some pop and blues. I'll also give credit to styles of music which I don't like when they do something which I think is pretty good: I personally quite enjoy Lady GaGa's album Born This Way because I feel it does some very interesting stuff on it and manages to tie it together nicely to form some rather good songs, but I would still say that Lady GaGa's type of music which she normally performs isn't usually my cup of tea if someone were to ask me about it.

And, I imagine, this is similar to what the members of Priest think too. Look at the covers they have done over the course of their career: Joan Baez's "Diamonds & Rust", The Gun's "Race With The Devil", Fleetwood Mac's "The Green Manalishi (With The Two-Pronged Crown)" and Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode" can all be found on the band's albums over their career (although "Race With The Devil" is only available on the 2001 remaster of Sin After Sin). Rob Halford also mentions vocal influences that include Arthur Brown, Janis Joplin, David Bowie and Freddy Mercury, of which only Mercury could be claimed to have any noticeable link to heavy metal music.

That's one of the failings that so many people seem to have: they think that they cannot acknowledge liking anything that isn't in the style of music they describe themselves as a fan of and, as such, dismiss it as terrible just because it isn't within what they usually like to listen to.

That is not what music has ever, EVER been about. Every style of music, whether you like it or not, has something in it that will appeal to people and which, when you look at it from the right viewpoint, can teach you something that you might not get if you only stick with your comfort zone. Take rap: I personally cannot stand this style of music in the slightest, as I just find rapping to be something any idiot can do with enough practice. Yet I appreciate that, when it comes to freestyle rap, you have to basically have the same skills as a poet, as you have to come up with something to say on the spot within a limited period of time to think about it. In addition, rapping has a flow to it and, if your flow is terrible, you're not going to do well with it. So, as much as I don't like the style of music in the slightest, I respect that there is some talent to it, just not what I look for in music.

Because of this, I feel that I must do the one thing that I never thought I'd find myself doing and defend Rihanna from the metal scene's condemnation of her just for wearing a t-shirt.

...Yes, this is what my life has become, folks. Trying to be the voice of reason in a scene which has its head so far up its own arse that it considers itself above every other style of music in the world.

So, let's start with the references to Chris Brown, as I don't need to say a lot about them: if you think making fun of someone who got physically assaulted by someone else by referencing this fact is acceptable behaviour anywhere, then you are an asshole. No discussion: you're basically making fun of someone else's pain just because you don't like them. That is not acceptable behaviour ANYWHERE, and also shows that you clearly have no respect for just how damaging such an act can be to people. While Rihanna hasn't exactly shown the best response to being assaulted by Chris Brown by later getting back together with him (and breaking up with him again later), I think the point still stands: if someone gets physically assaulted by someone else, you do NOT have a right to treat that as a source of humour, no matter what you think of the person in question. Physical abuse of any sort is not funny in the real world, so, if you find that kind of thing worth making jokes about, you do not deserve to be considered a human being in my eyes, as you've shown a shocking lack of empathy and a level of cruelty that would make me wonder whether the human race would be much improved if you were to be removed from it. I will not say that you should leave the human race, as I do not think death threats are a mature thing to throw out, only that you should reevaluate whether you treating such a serious thing as a subject of humour is acceptable and, if you still see nothing wrong with it, go learn what it's actually like to have such a thing happen so you can understand why most people do not find it funny.

Moving on to the claims that Rihanna is a poser by wearing the shirt, I have to ask: do you actually KNOW Rihanna? Let me put it to you that Rihanna is actually a big metal fan and only doesn't perform metal music because that's not the kind of music she likes performing. Is there anything wrong with that? Not in my book!

However, let's assume Rihanna isn't a metal fan at all and is only wearing the shirt because she likes it or because someone else made her wear it: how exactly does her wearing the shirt say anything bad about the metal scene? All it does is have people who are fans of Rihanna going "Huh, never heard of Judas Priest before...I'll go check them out!" and they will. Maybe they'll become fans of the band, maybe they won't, but, any way you look at it, that's free publicity for the band.

Except you've made the whole scene look like it's not worth exploring because you're making a big deal out of Rihanna wearing a Judas Priest shirt and have insulted her and her fans. Great move, guys, you've just proven exactly why most people in the mainstream don't want to explore the metal scene: it is being filled with a bunch of closed minded assholes!

Moving to the next claim of losing respect for Judas Priest due to them posting the photo and demanding it be removed, I have to say that it's not up to you what a band posts on their page. It is up to them or whoever is posting on their behalf: if you don't like it, you demanding it be removed just makes you look like an overly possessive asshole who thinks you have a say in the handling of you idol's page. How would you like it if someone were to do the same thing on your personal Facebook page? You'd call them an asshole and refuse to do it, most likely! Yet you think that you have a right to do the same thing to your idol? NO, YOU FUCKING DON'T!

As for the insults...do I even need to make my thoughts clear on that one?

Metal scene, take that stick out of your arse and grow up. I don't like calling out a bunch of closed minded assholes, but, when it looks like the whole scene is doing it, I feel I have no choice except to do so!

Also, yes, I know I've used the term "closed minded assholes" a lot throughout this article. I'm trying to make a point and I refuse to descend to using far stronger (and far ruder) terms to describe the people who have done this.

Oh yeah, and, if anyone who left one of those comments reads this, would it kill you to take a few seconds to check your spelling and grammar if you DO want to make a comment? You kill off any chance of having your comment taken seriously when you look like you might be rivalled with your use of the English language by your average ten year old!

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