I find myself loathe to agree with any statement emanating from rock star Sting, but he voices a thought I was just pondering.

I can’t imagine a more conservative music than rock ‘n’ roll,” he said. “It’s tyranny in the backbeat. It’s 4/4 time. It’s the same three chords ’round and ’round. It’s almost like a fundamentalist religion. Stravinsky is more rebellious than rock ‘n’ roll by far. Rock ‘n’ roll has become like a dead art.”

I love rock ‘n roll, of course, but I can’t help but notice how resistant it is to experimentation. It’s partly just the radio driven mandate that songs can’t be more than four minutes long. But when you consider the almost violent denunciation of experimental or progressive rock from the cool hipsters*, it does remind you of some fundamentalist preacher frothing at the mouth while he condemns homosexuals.

* I recognize that’s an oversimplification of things. Prog rock was hated on in the 70s, but when it turned into “math rock” in the 90s and the Mars Volta in the naughts, it gained a kind of Uber nerd chic. But I think the general trend amongst rock critics is still that “basic” rock ‘n roll is superior to anything with a more intellectual edge to it.

That said, it seems like most of the classical world is pretty set in its ways as well, same with jazz, same with bluegrass etc. Maybe the larger point here is that any music style eventually become so well defined that it gets cemented in place. Only freethinking rebels, such as myself, can entertain thoughts of expanding a particular genre’s horizon.

Also worth noting: my favorite band, Devo, has a new album coming out. The group seems to be continuing their ironic (or is it?!) embrace of corporate culture and target marketing, but I’ve long since lost any interest. The few songs I’ve heard so far were yawns.

The new acid logic is up, and I have two new articles, both themed around music. First is “Lady Gaga VS. Ke$ha” which starts out discussing the technological upheaval of the music industry and then moves towards addressing its effect on two well-known pop stars. The second is called “The Bucket List” and is my synopsis of what’s needed to “make it” in the music industry. (I, of course, am an embittered failure, so I’m not sure why you would take my advice, but it’s there for the offering.)

The final chapter in “This Is Your Brain on Music” looks into various theories about why man developed music. The theory that the author, Daniel Levitin, posits is that music evolved out of man’s mating rituals. Music started out primarily as drumming, accompanied by tribal dancing, which was a means for a male to show his fitness as a mate. He was essentially saying, “I’m healthy and have endurance and will be able to go on long hunting missions and bring back food for you.”

That might explain rhythm, but what about melody? Here, Levitan makes note of a study in which it was discovered that female birds ovulate more in the presence of male birds singing unusually complex songs (for a bird.) It’s theorized that these males are advertising their intelligence — “Look what I can do with this melody!” And, while it doesn’t always seem so, females value intelligence in a mate, because it aids survival. (Even before reading this book I extrapolated a bit on this theory myself in my piece “The Devil Paints” where I argued that art requires the same kind of intelligence that deception does.) Unlike birds, man is not limited merely to singing to display his musical abilities; he can play a variety of instruments as well.

No doubt my heavily mustached feminist readers are growing irate. “What about women?” they ask. If music exists merely for men to advertise themselves sexually why do women play music? I’d argue that men look for similar traits in women as women do in men: intelligence, physical fitness etc. and these traits can be shown in a woman’s musical talent. However, men don’t value these traits as highly as women — big boobs are more important. A virtuoso female violinist certainly raises her perceived value in the sexual contest. However, her “negatives,” say, being too old to give birth to children, or appearing particularly unhealthy, may outweigh her musical ability.

In many ways, what drove us to pursue music tens of thousands of years ago is still at work. I talk above about men advertising themselves during tribal dancing as if it’s some primitive ritual but, you can see the same thing in any disco. In fact, this prompts a realization about myself. I’ve never been much of a dancer, and during the rare occasion when a woman comes up to me and asked to dance, I usually say something like “I’m not much of a dancer.” I now see the real context of that conversation. The woman is stating, “I would like to give you an opportunity to showcase your genetic benefits to determine whether I should accept your semen into my vaginal orifice in the hopes of creating a child with our shared DNA.” And I’m replying, “I’m sorry, my semen is too inferior for your needs.”

I really need to learn how to dance.

I’ve been reading a very interesting book clearly called “This Is Your Brain on Music.” The crux of the book is examining how our brains process and understand music, but the scope is actually much broader and more interesting than that, getting into what makes certain instruments sound different from others, evolutionary psychology and a whole host of topics. There’s even a section delving into why we like the music we like, providing useful ammunition for anyone who’s ever gotten into an argument with someone else about the merits of this or that band or song.

I think the most important message I’ve taken away from this book is this: it’s okay to be bored with music. I think we’ve all had music foisted upon us which, we are told, is supposed to be the height of mankind’s artistic development and we’ve sat there hiding our yawns (most of Opera for me.) So why are we bored? Well, the book explains what it is about music that catches our ears (or doesn’t.) One interesting point the author makes is that music is akin to a game or puzzle. As a song goes along, we are making predictions (sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously) as to what’s coming next — what note is this melody going to arrive at, when do we get to the chorus etc. When we predict correctly, we get a certain pleasure at being right, and when a song foils our prediction in an interesting way, we get intrigued.

However, like games, complexity is an issue. Games that are too simple bore us, as do games that are too complex. The same can be said for music. Songs that seem utterly predictable in melody, harmony, structure and even timber grow tiresome. None of us listen to children’s songs anymore. (This is a point I made several months ago in my now well respected article “Nippleclamps and Beethoven.) On the flipside, music that is so complex that we have no idea where it’s going — this is jazz for a lot of people, it’s a lot of classical music and foreign music for me — also tires us.

This matches with my general experiences listening to music. There’s music I first heard 20 years ago that I found unapproachable — it made no sense to me — that I now love. Inversely, as I listen back to some of the music in my youth, while I don’t dislike it, I feel like I’ve moved past it, it doesn’t have much to offer any more.

Interestingly, there are people with a condition called “amusia” who simply don’t have the ability to even process music. To them, music sounds like random noises. Humanity would do well to conduct open brain studies on these people, without anesthetic, to see what makes them tick.