I don’t get it as much as I used to get the “Are you in the right place” questions that I used to. I remember going to see Green Day and I was parking my car a police officer who was directing traffic, stopped me and said, you know you are at a rock show, right?” I wanted to say, “No, I just have a Green Day ticket that I just bought without knowing who they are and I’m paying $5 bucks to park just because I wanted to waste some cash.”
Anyway, nowadays I don’t get as many stares, but I still get a few when I am at a rock or metal show. Back in the day when I used to go to rock shows like Green Day or Rancid or up and coming acts, man I used to get looks all the time. Back in grunge days I was totally wearing flannel and combat boots in Florida. I looked like a total lesbian half the time.
It is funny, any time I go to a rock show I do look for any black at the show. Sometimes I get a head nod when I see another black person at the show. Sometimes it will just be a look, like, I see you too. I normally count how many black people I see at a show. I normally see more black guys there than black women. If I see a black woman, more times than not they are with white boyfriends, and sometimes they are into the music, but some times just there for their dudes. At Uproar there were maybe 50 black people out of the 5000 that were there. At Rockville there were about 10,000 people there may have been 100 black people there.
I’m not sure if it there are few black people who go to rock and metal shows, or as my sister was saying, maybe it’s because they want to sit at a show. I was like nah, there are always places to sit at a show. My sister also thinks it’s the area that I live in, down South, Florida, where people hae their slots they like to fit in, and put others in those slots also.
When I was in high school I left a college preparatory school and went to a regular high school my Junior year. I knew a few people, and my school was mostly minority. Spanish, Black, Asian, and a few Caucasians. However just to be me, I would wear a GNR shirt one day, New Kids on the Block shirt the next, acid washed jeans with every band I loved written all over then in black marker, then Metallica the next day. I didn’t want to be in any specific slot. I hung out with ROTC people, Metalheads/Stoners, weirdos, anyone who was fun to be around. However, I notice I didn’t have a lot of black friends, as listening to metal music in their eyes made me “want to be white”. Or as some guy called me onday a sell out.
I knew I didn’t want t be white, proud that I am black. Why does listening to rock and metal have to mean I want to be white. There are so many artists from back in the day who played rock, and who still play rock music, and artists are influenced by those musicians. I guess some people are just too narrow-minded to understand that you can be inspired by different types of music, and you can like different types of music.
For me when I was a kids I liked Motley Crue, Poison, some AC/DC, Winger, Dokken, GNR, White Lion, Megadeth, White Snake, Heart. That was what I liked and the girls in my neighborhood listened to. I started to listening to grunge in early 90’s, and I keep evolving my musical tastes. I like NIN, some alternative, 30 Seconds to Mars, some harder rock like System of a Down, some Killswitch Engage, some Metallica, just what I found to be kick ass, awesome vocals, great guitar riffs, blasting drums, kind of music that got me excited.
It is awesome to find a band like Sevendust when you have a black lead singer, or a complete black band, it is somewhat a sense of validation, I am not the only one with great taste in music.
iloveshinedown 