OK, you're on. I am taping the Contamination festival for Relapse in Carrboro next Sunday (May 10) and you are more than welcome to go with me. Mastodon, the best new (not nu) metal band in ages, is co-headlining with Cephalic Carnage (who I have never heard) and two other bands are support. Should be a good time!
I listen to a lot of very good music, which gives me authority as The Supreme Arbiter of Taste to rag on whoever I want to. I listen to many, many different bands across all genres of music. Therefore, I can make a damn good analogy of Garaj Mahal as being equivalent to Warrant because I have heard enough music from both bands to make a valid comparison.
I do not operate in a world where taste is relative. Sure, I have some guilty pleasures like Missy Elliott, but she makes incredible music and is the most revolutionary musical artist of the past six years. So, I don't know if that pleasure is so guilty. Whatever enriches yourself as a human being, as opposed to always going for the short cheese, should be the paramount criteria by which one judges music. Make every note count and every word mean something, even if it not obvious at first. My problem with what I consider "bad" music like Garaj Mahal is that none of their notes count and their words mean the most banal things. They are the progenitors of the "go with the flow" mentality of not caring about jack and it is one that I wholeheartedly reject!