[studer]

She's a voice teacher. I'm sure you can find, say, some opera connoisseur who hates all other music as a principle, but she's talking about how these singers are using their "instruments", not about what kind of music they're performing.

(the choice of vocalists was a bit pedestrian, though :-)

[jarin]

It probably wouldn't be as interesting to as many people if it was vocalists that only true metalheads had heard of.

[patio11]

I see one guy who had a reality TV show and four people I have never heard of. Pop culture, you foil me again...

[jasonkester]

Feel no shame about this. The period between 1980 and 1990 is unique in history in that no matter what form of music you identified with, you should be embarrassed about it today.

As a be-mulletted youth I owned every Iron Maiden, Dio, Judas Priest and Black Sabath album, and would happily play them for you at 140 watts per channel through the obnoxiously distorted subwoofer in the back of my Trans Am. (Seriously. T-tops, screaming eagle and all. It was bitchin').

Today, you'll find a nice black hole in my music collection from that decade. You'll find that same mysterious gap in the collection of the kid who had the Pet Shop Boys haircut back in '85. It was just a bad time for music and there were no easy choices. We did what we could, but now we need to move on.

You kids today don't know how easy you have it.

[mindcrime]

The period from 1980-1992 (or so) was a golden age for heavy-metal / hard-rock. So much incredible music was made during that period that it boggles the mind. And almost all of it stands the test of time incredibly well.

Of course great metal was made in the 1990's as well, it just went mostly unnoticed by most people, as metal retreated back to an underground status (where it probably belongs). "Extreme" metal in particular had a great run during the 90's. From the Florida Death Metal scene of the early 90's through some of the great power metal bands of the era, to the Norwegian Black Metal stuff... lots of great music came out. But gawd, the pop music of the 90's... how utterly rubbish.

[cousin_it]

Funny that. I share your assessment, but many songs from that decade are still with me. "Rebel yell", "Twist in my sobriety", "Rent". Not trendy subculture stuff to identify with, but the timeless guilty-pleasure kind of stuff you enjoy alone. Modern music is just... not the same, somehow. Not as classic sounding.

[kscaldef]

I don't know the names of the people in most bands I listen to, but have you honestly never heard of Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, and Judas Priest? I'll give you that Mercyful Fate is a little obscure. (I suppose I should also ask how old you are, given that you label Ozzy as "a guy with a reality TV show".)

[CFriedlander]

I was familiar with the names of the bands but not with their music. IO sent me MP3s with no identifying information. I had no idea who I was listening to. I'm old enough to have listened to Ozzy when "War Pigs" was released…I just never happened to. Who knows what different direction my life would have taken if I had! http://www.claudiafriedlander.com/the-liberated-voice/2010/0...

[patio11]

If you had said "Heavy metal band, comic book superhero, or TV show" for those three bands I think I might have gotten Iron Maiden right, but if this were Who Wants To Be A Millionaire I'd be asking the audience anyhow.

[dagw]

Why do people feel compelled to brag about how ignorant they are? Ignorance is never something to be proud of, no matter what the subject.

[barry-cotter]

4chan memes, goatse, tubgirl etc. seem actually valueless. I personally see almost no value in theology once philosophy started talking about the same things without reference to God. Great swathes of the critical humanities are circle jerks of interest only to people in the same very small niche, which nobody outside academia cares about.

Your time can be better spent than learning about these things. They might be interesting but they're no more worthwhile than Cougar Town or How I Met Your Mother

[dagw]

The point is not that you must strive to be an expert on everything. You don't have to know everything (or even very much) about theology or How I Met Your Mother, but you should have heard of them and perhaps even have a vauge notion of their central themes. In this day and age you can gain a superficial knowledge of just about anything in less than 10 minutes on wikipedia and with the ubiquity of the internet knowledges can easily be JITed in as and when you need it.

Hell it's even perfectly OK as such to be completely ignorant of a field. Just leave when a conversation on that topic strikes up or sit quietly in the corner and try to learn something. I'm just perplexed by people who feel the need proudly proclaim "I know nothing about TV/books/computers/sports/music etc." as if it was some sort of achievement to be proud of.

[bmelton]

I think your examples, while possibly somewhat contrived, fall quite flat.

I personally would be proud of the fact that I completely ignored anything related to "How I Met Your Mother" to delve deeper into the field of mathemetics, for example. I don't know why ignorance on a subject is so unforgiveable in your opinion.

That said, I quite enjoy HIMYM, but I certainly wouldn't fault anyone else for not having seen it.

[tkahn6]

If you can name all the stars of Jersey Shore and talk about the latest episode, that's something you should be incredibly embarrassed about.

[CWuestefeld]

* Pop culture, you foil me again...*

Because Dio and Iron Maiden were top of the pop charts?