What do you think of this?

Yeah, i hear you. I'm an old school hard rock / metal player myself, and years ago i was kinda like your friends - didn't want to hear about anything "Blues". Then i met these two guitar brothers from Texas, and they were telling me stuff like "Yeah man you got some chops.....but if you can't say it with one note..you ain't s**t!" It initially started out as me learning some phrases and stuff just to try and impress them, but i actually got caught up in the whole blues thing , imagine that! LOL! Of course, i never went and dug back to the origins and all that, but i learned and soaked up some stuff like BB, Buddy Guy, and even the stinging attack of albert Collins. Man! it did me a lot of good...learning that stuff, the emotion and all those things that i could drag into my rock "bag". THATS what most people don't get , that people like us are "aware" , and it just makes us better players. Tell your friends to do some heavy research on Darrell Abbott - read some guitar mag interviews and such - they will learn that he was DEEPLY rooted in blues, though a lot of stuff didn't blatantly materialize in Pantera recordings, etc. but that dude was AWARE, i mean - he hung out with Billy Gibbons and Bugs Henderson for cripes sake! How can you NOT soak up something from THAT! LOL!