According to Dr McFerran, teenagers who listen to heavy metal might be placing themselves at risk for depression, anxiety, and suicide:

“Examples of this are when someone listens to the same song or album of heavy metal music over and over again and doesn’t listen to anything else. They do this to isolate themselves or escape from reality.

“If this behavior continues over a period of time then it might indicate that this young person is suffering from depression or anxiety, and at worst, might suggest suicidal tendencies.”

Ummm… Haven’t we been here before?

Oh noes! The metal brootalz! Won’t someone think of the children?!

Ok, having convincingly declared my bias…

In none of the “articles” about this (all of which – other than the above-linked from Guitar World – are essentially reprinting the press release, so I won’t even bother linking to them) is there any link to, or even mention of, a paper – published, in press, or even submitted. So, in similar fashion to the moronic “study” about caffeine-induced hallucinations that, incidentally, also came from a university in Melbourne, I cannot look at the actual methods, results, or analysis engaged in by Dr McFerran.

The lack of logic, and the alarmist tone, displayed in the press release however, do not give me cause to think the study would be particularly rigorous, or itself logical.

“The mp3 revolution means that young people are accessing music more than ever before and it’s not uncommon for some to listen to music for seven or eight hours a day,” she said.

… She said. She did. She said.

Let’s deconstruct this and see if it means anything. “Not uncommon” for “some”… to me is saying that “some” people (however many that is) but not others, will “not uncommon”ly (however often that is) listen to music for 7-8 hours a day. It doesn’t tell me who make up that “some”, or what music they’re listening to, or why, or the context … Or indeed anything useful.

And really, what it is designed to say, is not what I take from it; what it is meant to do is create the image of the children (“won’t someone please think of the children?!”) spending too much time listening to music (which is after all the devil’s pastime – unless it’s whatever music Dr McFerran is keen on in the Melbourne Conservatory of Music.

Probably not the metal brootalz.

“Most young people listen to a range of music in positive ways; to block out crowds, to lift their mood or to give them energy when exercising, but young people at risk of depression are more likely to be listening to music, particularly heavy metal music, in a negative way.”

So … Hang on. Back up the metal-bashing bus just a minute.

You’ve just suggested, have you not, that the arrow of causation is the other way? That depressed/anxious/suicidal kids might listen to metal more than do the non-depressed/anxious/suicidal kids? … not that the heavy metal is what’s making them depressed, anxious, and suicidal. They are perhaps seeking solace, support, expression, whatever, in that music.

But that’s a bad thing if it’s heavy metal.

Because, y’know … the brootalz.

Or perhaps it’s just a spurious association. I wonder, how did Dr McFerran arrive at her startling conclusions? Why, by:

“…conducting in-depth interviews with 50 young people aged between 13 and 18, along with a national survey of 1000 young people”

Well hold the phone. That’ll do it for me. Especially without any substantive details (who they selected, how they selected, how they controlled, what they asked…); they might just spoil a good story.

You know, I’m almost surprised there was no mention of satanism and back-masked messages.

I hate, hate, hate this sort of crap: putting out melodramatic press releases with no data, no mention of evidence to back up the sensationalist claims made – and then dutiful churnalists just regurgitate it without a scrap of critical thought.

So. Unless Dr McFerran does produce a good-quality peer-reviewed paper that shows solid evidence to back up what she says, I say: enjoy your metal brootalz. \m/

Fame, it seems, is a harsh mistress. There is a striking – and superficially surprising – dichotomy evident in the world of the popular musician. The rest of the world sees glamour, riches, obnoxious self-indulgence, glitz, parties and excess .. Oh, and quite a few early deaths. Yeah… There is that… Kind of a bummer, really.

But we then hear about how the dead star was lonely and unhappy, and feel kind of puzzled, because the image presented to us is of success and hedonism. We certainly don’t see them as alone, because they always appear to be surrounded by others. And if we see them unhappy we often regard it as spoiled petulance. I mean, how can they have anything to really be unhappy about? Look at their glamourous life and all the stuff and fabulous friends they have.

Right?

I guess Jani Lane might disagree were he here to do so….

The life these idols lead, it seems to me, is self-sustaining, but also self-defeating. As Sebastian Bach describes in the post I linked earlier, once the gig is done, and the after-party is finished, and everyone goes home, the star goes to their hotel room. Silent and alone. But all the rest of their existence is the total opposite, so how do they deal with that?

A common theme in rock star’s descriptions of their lives is that they basically exist on stage, and in buses and hotel rooms. So they are thrown wildly between adulation and abandonment. It’s no wonder that the latter is hard to deal with. No wonder the star often wants to just keep partying – because they know when it ends they’ll be alone.

A relatively common thing to see on twitter in a rock star’s feed is them retweeting positive things other people have tweeted about them. Sometimes this is remarked upon (not kindly). The more you think about it though, the less surprising it becomes. Of course, as the positive comments are just about the external appearance of their existence – them as an idol, rather than them as people – it is ultimately as defeating as it is immediately sustaining. It can prop up the ego, but that just leaves more space to crash into when the hotel room empties, as it were.

The first I saw of this – though I didn’t really grasp it at the time – would have been watching The Jimi Hendrix Story. He really was quite alone, despite all the people around him. I recall later reading about Brian May suffering depression, and thinking “how can that happen?” He’s a rock star. He’s got everything.

Right?

… Guess not.

Rock stars are really like Birds of Paradise: it’s a sexual display on a massive scale. Consequently they attract many people – but it is, or can be, superficial. Particularly when the music business itself is factored in, and you think about all the hangers-on and various sycophants, how is the star to figure out the real motives of the people surrounding them? How do they find or keep real friends? That’s not necessarily the easiest thing in the world for the average person; how much less so for someone who feels they must constantly be second-guessing the intentions of any friend or acquaintance?

That led us to reflect on rock star tweets in general. They’re not exactly replete with suggestions of time spent with friends. Music biz acquaintances, yes. Other stars, the beautiful people, yes.

“Catch you all later I’m off to a BBQ with me best mate”? Not so much.

Ok maybe they just don’t want to share that sort of thing… But I’m not convinced it’s really that simple. It just doesn’t seem that the sort of relationships most of us take for granted are that easy or common for stars. So it appears there’s not much middle ground to balance out the extremes of idolisation and isolation.

Lest you think I’m pitying the dude with the badass hair whirling a guitar around onstage, with the adoring cries of tens of thousands ringing in his ears, let me be clear that they choose (if any of us can truly be said to choose) their path, and they do get plenty of rewards for doing so.

The litany of premature deaths, alone and sad, is pretty sobering though (apologies for the unpleasantly hyper-religious tone of that link, but it seems to have driven them to collate a fairly thorough list – though they’re not all suicide, or drugs etc, they’re all pretty young).

I’m not sure I have an overall point … Other than to highlight the dichotomy, and the way that pretty much every aspect of the lifestyle accompanying that type and degree of success reinforces it. Without a balancing middle ground then, the unhappiness that these people talk about becomes much more explicable.

As perhaps do the deaths.

In memory of Jani Lane, here’s my favourite Warrant song (though I was never a big Warrant fan, I really love this song):

“I don’t need to be the king of the world.
As long as I’m the hero of this little girl.”

… or the latest commenter on my All Along the Watchtower video: someone called Multishades complains about my hair movement, & the guitar – which s/he says is totally wrong … but says I sound great … but that I should “move on”.

I don’t really know what this person actually means. Really truly I don’t. Leaving aside the weirdness of commenting on my hair moving … the guitar is wrong, but sounds great, but I should “move on”?

No idea – so I thought I’d share with you all.

Simple time signatures – basically – are things like 2/4 3/8 4/4 and so on. Compound time signatures are when that top number gets above 4 – so things like 5/4 6/8 … 9/8 13/8 … and so on. With a time signature, the bottom number tells you what divisions of a whole note (semibreve) we’re looking at, and the top note is how many of those occur in a bar. So for example, in the piece I’m working on at the moment, which is in 7/8, there are 7 quavers (or eighth notes).

However, it expressly does not mean there are 7 beats in the bar. Yes, in a simple time signature the top number does tell you how many beats there are in a bar (so in 4/4 there are 4 beats per bar, each lasting a crotchet, or quarter note) – unless you’re listening to Dave Brubeck or someone like that. Compound time however, refers to the way the beats are made up: each beat contains 2 or more usually 3 of the notes specified by the bottom number (NB: it’s not a fraction, so it’s not numerator and denominator, so I have to seem clunky and continue writing “top number” and “bottom number” … it shouldn’t even have the / in-between, but for the purpose of typing it out I have to have it there). Thus my piece in 7/8 has three beats per bar. This can be 2+2+3 as I am doing, or 3+2+2, or 2+3+2 – whatever takes your warped fancy.

But when you fire up GarageBand and set a compound time signature, and start the metronome, it clicks away the top number of times per bar (7, in my latest case). This has always bothered me on an intellectual level, but this morning I found a practically troublesome aspect.

Yesterday I took some time for recording, and found myself failing dismally to play the 7/8 part, even though when playing it unaccompanied it’s almost no trouble now. I was falling into 4/4, adding another note by accident, or inserting micro-pauses, or just falling away from the beat. This continued for quite some time, and was really beginning to bug me. This morning I had a brain wave: I set up drums playing on the beats – the three real beats, not the seven not-actually-beats-because-it’s-a-compound-time-signature-you-nongs that GarageBand bangs out.

Lo and behold, I found myself playing it with no (more) trouble (than usual). I think what it is, is that when you just hear clack click click click click click click clack click click click click click click clack click click click click click click clack click click click click click click it’s very easy to just hear it in 4/4, because there’s no variation other than the one accented tone at the start of each bar. Even when what I’m playing is 7 notes per bar, so 1 per click, you can get thrown into simple time, and thus buggered up. When you have it just clicking on the beats, you hear the actual rhythm of the time signature, and the music, and can therefore feel and play it properly.

See? Knowing theory is practically important, not just wanky intellectual wossname

Newly a fan, I checked out some more, such as:

and:

Seriously, how could you not love a song called “Fire, Battle, Metal!”?

Wikipedia tells me that the band was put together a bit oddly; in fact “until the moment the first promotional photos were shot, the entire band had never been in the same place at the same time before. Some members did not even know each other.” Despite that, they rock. Very much. There are shades of Maiden, shades of Priest, they’re named after a Dio album … Well cool. \m/ Some of it is also rather reminiscent of Malmsteen’s vocal stuff.

By which I don’t mean Malmsteen singing …