I'd been introduced to Set Your Goals by a coworker the previous summer, and had been hooked ever since. I had just spent two weeks repeatedly listening to their albums in anticipation of the concert. This was as excited as I'd been for any concert since Relient K back in Grade 9. Believe me, I was pumped.
I finished up my biology lab, and hauled ass down to the Starlite room. I walked in, and made a beeline for the merch tables to me a sweet Set Your Goals t-shirt. But something was wrong. I looked around the tables once, twice, three times. There was no Set Your Goals merch on display. It turned out that Set Your Goals, for whatever reason, was unable to make it to this particular stop on the tour. It was to be all metalcore, all night. I soon caught sight of the two friends I was meeting. They had been watching my consternation from the balcony, and were having a laughing fit at my expense.
These two friends are not normally so mean spirited. But in the weeks leading up to the show, there had developed some minor bad blood between us over the content of the upcoming show. As previously mentioned, I was jacked beyond belief for my beloved pop-punk Set Your Goals. These two fellows, however, belong to a breed of music lovers that I like to unofficially call Metal Supremacists.
Metal Supremacists are fans of blisteringly fast drums, abrasive guitars, complex rhythms, and unintelligibly screamed vocals. They emphasize the extremely high level of skill required to perform this style of music. For them, it's all about the pure technical mastery of the instruments, and the sheer physical feat of playing so fast for so long. But perhaps most importantly, Metal Supremacists consider most other styles of music to be inherently inferior.
In the weeks leading up the to concert, I'd posted facebook statuses about how excited I was for Set Your Goals. Metal Supremacists from all over my friends list, not just the two i was attending the show with, were quick to jump all over them. They would exalt August Burns Red and the other two mediocre nobody metalcore bands on the tour, and openly bash Set Your Goals. There were several extended flamewars, some of which spilled over into real life verbal debates. My position was that I preferred the catchy beats, hooky melodies, and relatable lyrics of pop-punk to the technical spectacle of metalcore, however obviously impressive it may be. Their position was that pop-punk is crap, Set Your Goals are talentless hacks, August Burns Red should be crowned kings of the musical universe, and I'm an idiot for not thinking so.
My friends at the show were downright giddy that Set Your Goals wasn't there, or perhaps more specifically, they were downright giddy that I didn't get to see them. But I still had a good time at the show, and ABR was very impressive, as I knew they would be. Which begs the question, why can't we all just get along? Why can't we all have our favorites while graciously accepting the tastes of others as different? This experience brought such questions into fine focus for me, at least as far as music is concerned. In the months since the show, I've found myself listening to a much wider variety of music. But more importantly, I've started respecting them more as well. If your favorite is Garth Brooks, Metallica, Lady Gaga, or Jay-Z, that's none of my damn business. I don't agree with you, but I respect your choice to like what you like for whatever reason you want.
P.S. Offer not valid for fans of Justin Bieber. THERE. IS. NO. EXCUSE.
