Told you so?

Back in 2007 I talked about the cyclic nature of music and how 80’s music was making a comeback.

This was reaffirmed with the recent release of a Talking Heads best of album:

Available at your local Starbucks.

Same as it every was…

Back to the Minors

Back in the 90s there was a big movement within Alternative, Folk Rock, and even mainstream Pop music that focused on songs in minor keys. Very complex and even dark minor chords brought us songs with deeper emotional characteristics, which made me appreciate them more than the standard 3 major chord songs that are fun and light, but not as “intelligent” as its counterpart.

It’s nice to see a few albums come out recently that seem to bring back this style of music, including Swoon by the Silversun Pickups:

How will Rock Band and Guitar Hero influence music?

With thousands if not hundreds of thousands of young teens addicted to the video games: Rock Band and Guitar Hero, I’m curios to see how this will influence the music scene in the next 5 -10 years.

The Generation Gap Theory

“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme” – Mark Twain

Famous words by Mark Twain emphasize my recent observations…

In my previous post called re-80’s, I talked about the cycles of music. I think this cyclic nature is ubiquitous. You see it in music, fashion, politics, and the economy. Not an exact duplication, but almost a refinement. Not a repeat, but a rhyme.

Funny thing is the frequency of this cycle seems to be about 25 years or so. So if this is correct it could explain a few things.

If a parent generation has children in their teens or later in their 30s, a culture gap forms between the generations. If this happens on a large enough scale, say as part of a baby boom, then it’s recognized socially as a generation gap.

Wish I had the time and resources to prove this theory. Until then this theory will simply be stuck in my head…

The Alternative Alternative

What happened to the Alternative Rock scene?

iTunes Top Songs list which was riddled by Alternative songs, doesn’t even have one Alternative in the top 10 with only Coldplay holding a position in the Top 20.

For a guy who was stuck on Alternative music for a few years now, I also just realized that my last 3 song purchases were in the Electronic and World Music genres. I guess my mind is back in exploration mode… It was fun while it lasted. I’ll have to wait until Alternative is back in style again… roughly a 25 year cycle (See my related post on re-80s).

Wonder if that cycle exists so parents and their teenage kids can reconnect on a cultural level?

Missed Radiohead @ Amphitheatre, Toronto

My luck… Both Eddie Vedder and Radiohead were in town last week. Thanks to my concert budget, had to choose just one. Eddie’s unique solo gig was too tempting to pass up.

Hope I picked the right one…

… I think I did.

BTW… This was posted using the WordPress iPhone app. Slowly getting the hang of this keyboard. More on iPhone apps later.

Eddie Vedder @ Massey Hall, Toronto

My sister contacted me last minute yesterday asking if I wanted to go to the second of two Eddie Vedder shows at Massey Hall. Honestly, at first I thought, “Another PearlJam concert?” since I’ve attended a couple in the past and was growing tired of the rock concert scene. But I’m certainly glad I accepted the invitation and was rewarded with a more mature evening with the Grunge band frontman.

Though there was a small percentage of the crowd that was still in PearlJam mode and had to add their 2 cents between songs, the rest of the evening was a seated affair with mellow unplugged renditions of his solo material, covers, and even some PearlJam songs thrown in. Just Eddie + a guitar.

Not sure why people have the urge to shout out words in between songs. For example, when Eddie Vedder pulled out a mandolin for his next song, someone in the crowd had to shout out, “ukulele!”….ooook.

Overall, a great night! Massey Hall is the best place to watch a show. Might even convince me to go to another concert.

Funky Photo, Massey Hall Lounge before show:

The iPhone dilemma

Reasons for me not to buy the new iPhone continue to mount.

Still waiting for the Rogers plans. That will make or break the deal for me.

Chunking

Just returned form completing the Ride for Heart (50K) here in TorontoMy wife had an excuse to go to a bridal shower so I did it solo this year. It’s become sort of a tradition with me to go participate in this event. out of the last 13 years, I believe I only missed one year.

Since I was on my own, I decided to bring my iPod along. Gave me a chance to get back to an audio book I had set aside. The 2.5 hour ride gave me exactly the time I needed to finish This is Your Brain on Music.

Learned an interesting fact about cognitive memory management. There are two types of memory: long term and short term or “working memory“.

Apparently working memory is limited and can normally only sustain 9 items at one time. So our brain uses “chunking” to retain more complex memory structures in working memory, thanks to knowledge retained from the past.

For example, when memorizing a phone number we “chunk” the area code as one item rather than the 3 individual digits, since we know what an area code is for say Toronto.

Napoleon is dead, long live… The Borg?

Been doing a lot of traveling for work these days which gave me a lot of airplane time to listen to my audiobooks.

Currently in the middle of the book, The Starfish and the Spider, by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom

The book relates the hierarchical style of an organizations vs. a flat or community style. Lot’s of storytelling here including how the advanced hierarchical Aztec society was taken down easily by the Spanish by walking into each city and the killing their king. However, when they encountered the Apache Indians who were a distributed community society, it wasn’t so easy.

It then relates this to today with what’s happening thanks to the internet and entities like eMule and Skype.

… and the disruption they’ve caused in the music and telecommunication industries. The music industry successfully sued Napster out of the free P2P market, but only to be replaced by others who were lawyer proof.

Chop a spider’s head off and it dies… cut a starfish in half and you end up with 2 starfish. The benefits of a distributed neural network.