am/fm

I recently finished reading Oliver Sacks' "Musicophilia" (you may recognize Sacks as the author of the book upon which the film "Awakenings" was based, or you may not). It's an interesting exploration of music and the brain, focusing on individual case studies — some of which are post-scripts to essays he's written in earlier works.

He talks about his patients, and how music affects their particular situation: Some have suffered head injuries and find that their taste in music has changed wildly, or that they've developed heretofore undiscovered talents. His encephalitic and autistic patients find a connection with the world through music that they can't achieve through everyday interaction. Others are plagued by musical hallucinations that won't leave them alone.

Written with clinical dispassion, it's not really an uplifting book, but it's not a downer. For anyone with a propensity to adopt medical symptoms as their own, it's mildly dangerous (after spending a worrisome 5 minutes convinced I had an undiscovered case of Williams Syndrome, I realized that though I have a great passion for music, I matched none of the other actual symptoms).

What it is, is kind of a catalog of ways the brain can fail you, and how music can help or hinder in a given situation. And while that take was quite interesting, I was kind of hoping for something more sciencey, like Daniel Levitin's "This is Your Brain on Music," which I read earlier this year, where he talks more about how the brain processes music and why we as a species may have evolved to have it as part of our lives.

But I did learn some fun facts, the most fun (and possibly nerdy) of which I'll share after the jump.

I don't get emo's popularity. I just don't. To me, it just sounds like whining about sad feelings and and being too scared to live life. If I'm going to music for emotional solace, I prefer more active-oriented feelings, like anger, directed passion, revenge.

But, regardless of how I feel about the genre, there's no denying that the kids like it.

And therein lies the key: "the kids." Mick Jagger and the never-say-die boomers have shown that rock is no longer a young man's game. But emo definitely is. It's all about facing the challenges of growning up — emotional responsibility, romantic love, sex — and maybe not being OK with all that; it's adolescence in sonic form.

At least that's what I learned from Andy Greenwald's book.

My coworker Korin and I were discussing bands like Dashboard the other day, and she mentioned that she had this book. In the interest of anthropological knowledge, I dove right in.

What I learned, after the jump.

Spank Rock, "Rick Rubin"

NY Times Mag had an interesting cover story on the producer/magic man this weekend.

The highlights:
• RR is a shoeless hippie genius.
• RR thinks a subscription-based system will save the music industry
• RR will not comment on whether or not he believes it's a good idea for record labels to share in (demand) the profits from a band's merch sales. (This seems rather shady to me.)
• RR has no discernible skills beyond the ability to listen to a song and know what might make it better, and whether people will listen to it or not. "So much of what I do is just being present and listening for that right sound."
• RR convinced Columbia to hire him and, at the same time, let him do work for non-Columbia artists. He also convinced them to give up plastic jewel cases for more eco-friendly options.
• RR has a kick-ass job.

Usually I think Interview magazine is a load of self-congratulating piffle (albeit piffle that makes a good read at the hair salon), but this month's cover interview with the White Stripes is pretty good. I especially like the part where they discuss joking around (read: planting lies) in their press releases. If I ever make it big as a rock star, I am going to lie all of the time about everything.

And that's part of what makes them stand out as a band. Sure, their music is excellent, but they come complete with their own mythos. Yeah, everyone knows that they lied about being brother and sister and are in fact ex-husband and wife, etc., but that's just a part of their story. As far as origin stories go, it's a damn sight more interesting than, "Well, we practiced a lot in my parents garage, and then we just started playing around." And it also makes Jack and Meg White outsized characters, ones that can carry a venue like MSG. It would come to nothing if they couldn't bring it with the music, of course, but in my opinion, it's their old-fashioned (not an accidental word choice), highly calibrated showmanship that brings them to the next level as a band.

eh, www.amNY.com

Fitting my total nerd status, not only do I listen to and write about music, I also enjoy reading about it. John Sellers' little memoir about how he's become the biggest Guided by Voices fan in the world (if you take issue with that, tell him, not me. Unless you too have a well-written, quick-readin' autobio, I don't care) charts a lifetime of indie rock discovery. If you're already hip to his jive, it's fun to play along and recognize his references (It's pathetic how excited I got after reading this description of discovering a new band: "A voice spoke of a girlfriend who's 'eating her fingers like they're just another meal.'" "It's Pavement! It's Pavement!" I wanted to announce to the entire LIRR train I was on at the time. Too bad nobody cared.). But his tone is friendly, not snobby, and even outsiders to the scene with a passing interest in the music are welcomed.

That being said, if you don't care about the music, you probably won't care about the book. It's basically a chapter by chapter chronicle of Sellers' obsession with different bands (and how each obsession affected how he lived his life, i.e., a love of Joy Division causes him to take a pilgrimage to Manchester), starting with the few "cool" tracks that made it through the Top 40 noise during a childhood growing up outside of Grand Rapids, Michigan, culminating in an ecstatic, drunken meeting with his idol, Bob Pollard. It's a good book for those of us who wear our music geekery proudly on our sleeves at an age when we should know better. It's also probably recommended reading to those trying to understand us. He's entertainingly self deprecating while simultaneously defending his right to a life of extreme fandom.

If nothing else, according to John Hodgman's blurb on the back cover (and this is partly what caused me to pick the book out of my slush pile), Sellers is a Donkey Kong champion.