The Difference Between Brandon and I

Hi all, it's Jeff here, goin solo for this one (because that's how I roll sometimes).

Anyway, upon starting up this newfangled blog thing that Bri and I have going here, my friend Brandon called into question the legitimacy of our first post. Beyond referring to it as "some stupid shit about a kiwi", he spewed some other random insults at me, mostly related to calling my manhood into question. This got me to thinking: (the criticism of the blog that is, not the ludicrous insults to my manliness) Brandon and I are the best of friends, but we are so different. WHY? We disagree about a lot of things, even more fundamental things than whether a kiwi is a bird or fruit, or who cares about that, besides. One area where we have always disagreed is in musical taste. While our tastes intersect in a few key areas, I figure that he generally just appreciates different things in music than I do. Allow me to illustrate this to you, using one of those awesome pentagonal shaped ratio chart thingies. I've separated our musical interests into what I've determined to be 5 key categories: Instrumentals/Rhythm, Redeemable Vocals, Screaming, Facemelting Solos, and of course, Fanhood of the bands Slayer and Pantera. The chart is pictured below.

NOW things are starting to make sense to me. It is clear with only a cursory glance that the root of our differences is in what we value in music. The first thing you might notice is that Brandon likes 3 things in music almost exclusively. These 3 things being: Screaming, Facemelting Solos, and songs by Slayer and Pantera. While the ratio chart does show that he has a passing interest in Instrumentals and Rhythm, it's clear that redeemable Vocals are not at all an important part of music to him. Being a vocalist myself, I kind of take that personally, and perhaps could conclude that Brandon has some sort of universal bias against vocalists and all their pursuits. Perhaps he would like this blog more if it contained more talk of bands like the one pictured below.

Why can't he like a nice, lyrically, rhythmically balanced band like, say, for instance, Steely Dan. At the very least, they look far less threatening than.....

GAH! well, perhaps they haven't aged so well, but trust me, they are nice guys. Let's try again.

 See! There we go. Now that's a friendly, nonthreatening group of musicians whose music sounds less like a polar bear having an orgasm and more like something real people like to listen to. Which leads me into the discussion of my much more balanced ratio chart. Right away you'll notice that, while I have a vested interest in facemelting solos, I definitely do not have an off-the-charts obsession with Screaming OR Slayer and Pantera. Rather, my interests span Vocally sound, shoe-tapping music that I can listen to without being an accused Satanist.
Now, for those of you who don't know, I used to drive Brandon to school most days, and we liked to listen to music in the car. And while we found some common ground with Muse, Queens of the Stone Age and the like, Brandon often would ridicule my singing along to some of my favorite songs, (VOCALIST HATER, I TELL YOU!) just as often as I would mock him for his undying obsession with these guys:

 As opposed to something able to be taken a little more seriously, such as Beck:

 In any case, upon reading this, I'm sure Brandon will bring up one of my favorite bands, The Mars Volta. Now, not only does he constantly ridicule the lead vocals for their likeness to sirens or a girl's voice, but he also hates on the brilliant instrumentals that make them one of the transcendent Prog Rock bands of their era. Considering they get closer to screaming than anything else I listen to, and they also include facemelting solos in most of their songs, I struggle to understand why Brandon hates them! It would appear that the only logical conclusion is that he hates them because they are not, in fact, Slayer or Pantera, or perhaps because he doubts the Slayer/Pantera fanhood OF the Mars Volta band members.

In conclusion, I hope now that you see why Brandon dislikes my blog, and also why we disagree on so many things. It turns out that we just like different kinds of music because of certain elements in that music, and in the end, that's okay. I still like Brandon for who he is, even if he prefers this:

to this: