The core of rock.....

July 27^th – You know how things suddenly occur and you think;

“I’ll bet no-one’s ever thought of this…I must be a genius”? Or at the other end of the scale and with myself firmly in the picture;

“If someone as thick as me can see this then how come no one else can; I must be barmy”?

OK?

Well, in the spirit of disclosing most of myself through this column, let me share something with you.

The use of music to alter mood and mob behaviour is well documented, as Snr. Noriega (column passim) found that out to his cost when he lost a country to AC/DC. When the Ecstasy boom collided with dance music in the 80’s it banded together hundreds sometimes thousands of strangers into a loving, caring, dancing whole. The use of music in public places to alter shopping patterns by creating feelings of euphoria or tribalism in the potential purchaser is something we encounter every day. The play pattern of music used in factories and places of work to manipulate the output and outlook of workers (George Orwell was so far ahead of his time) has been with us for thirty years and (getting on the main subject of today’s little chat…at last) the use of music to deter vandals from hanging around certain areas at night has achieved excellent results, pity is it’s classical music that’s been trialled and monitored for this last piece of behavioural alteration.

What I’ve found with classical music is that it’s an excellent way to start to the day. Like stroking an amenable dog, it lowers heart rate, slows down the pulse and has also been proven to lower blood pressure in the strokee…that’s the dog, not the music; my guess is Beethoven wouldn’t take too kindly to being petted…well, of course, now it wouldn’t bother him, but back then, when he was warm? My guess is you’d’ve gotten short shrift, particularly, come to think, if you’d sort of approached quietly from behind him and started stroking his hair, him being deaf an’ all… Anyway, listening to most pieces of classical music sets the tone for the day; calm bordering on the serene (unless it’s a symphony by Wagner, of course) and with a feeling of expansiveness and understanding. Well (and here’s the breakthrough) that effect is the same when you’re driving a car!

There you have it. If you  listen  to classical music in the car it makes you a more compassionate, caring, less-likely-to-get-into-a-road-rage, polite driver, and when you consider that you’re in charge of two-plus tons of careening metal…? Well, all gotta help, hasn’t it?

Now, if this is the case with classical music then it follows that the obverse side of this is that if you listen to rap or any of the metals (heavy, thrash, funk, nu, rap, black, symphonic black, unblack, Viking (can only be performed whilst wearing a sword and horned helmet?) cello, Christian, crust, dark, death, death ‘n’ roll, melodic death, technical death (not really dead, just technically dead) death/doom, sludge (scraping the bottom of the barrel here, methinks), drone (Obama’s favourite) experimental, extreme, folk, Celtic (metal you can wear a kilt to) medieval, Pagan, glam, gothic, grindcore, deathgrind, goregrind, industrial, Latin, metalcore, melodic metalcore, deathcore, mathcore (“1,2,3,4”?)... you think I'm making these up, don't you? Think again my chickadees... Nintendocore (‘Super-Mario I’m gonna fuck you up!!!!’?) neo-classical core, post metal (surely that should be ‘metal post’…?) power metal, progressive metal, Djent (?)…speed metal, stonor rock, symphonic metal, thrash (music to be a male sadist by) crossover thrash (music to be a male sadist by but wearing a dress) groove, Teutonic (“eins, zwei drei, vier”?) or, heaven forbid you should be so ordinary, traditional heavy metal, any combination of these above genres should be avoided whilst driving a car as, it follows, listening to such aggressive music will tank you up and make you more likely to be an aggressive driver! There you have it. My Eureka moment!

I can feel the shockwave as all my readers (all three of you) sit back in your collective chairs with a gasp at this revelation. I know, I know, this discovery came on me as something of an epiphany too.

Imagine, then, my disappointment when I read that, on this day in 1958 A study by Esso Oil (formerly Standard Oil, eventually Exxon) discovered that drivers speed more and therefore waste more fuel when listening to ‘the new fad of rock and roll music’!

1958! Talk about a deflation of the ego. The only saving grace between Esso and I is that I consider it would be better to slow drivers down; they probably looked on R&R as a bonus. Whatever, looks like I’m so far off the pace as to be listed as slowcore or queercore or crunkcore or…