“If music be the food of love, play on!” Like food, music can be comforting. It can also be stimulating, annoying, or cloying. Music releases dopamine, the ‘feel good’ hormone, just like sex and actual food. Music can arouse feelings of euphoria and craving. Dopamine release is at “peak emotional arousal” during music listening, so you really ARE getting a bang for your musical buck.
“If music be the food of love, play on!” Like food, music can be comforting. It can also be stimulating, annoying, or cloying. Music releases dopamine, the ‘feel good’ hormone, just like sex and actual food. Music can arouse feelings of euphoria and craving. Dopamine release is at “peak emotional arousal” during music listening, so you really ARE getting a bang for your musical buck.
“The Internet is a lot like ancient Egypt: people writing on walls and worshipping cats.”
I have “moved” Janis Joplin from my Women in Rock series to this one. When I started the “Women of ……” series, I felt she had a foot in both camps. However, the more I listen to Joplin the more I realize her feet were far more firmly planted in the blues as her voice alone attests. There have been comparisons over the years between Maggie Bell and Janis Joplin. They are reminiscent of each other and that starts with the hair. Scotland is steeped in the blues (just listen to the pipes and some of the Celtic music) but the seeds were planted, and the roots run to the core of the earth, in the U.S.’s “deep south”. Keep in mind, much of the southern U.S. became home to the Scots fleeing the oppressive English in the late 1700’s. Combine that with the African “slave” songs….mix with oppressive heat and stir….so, sometimes I wonder, who exactly influenced whom?
February is notoriously dark and depressing and really just an advertisement for staying in bed and waiting until the spring thaw. I used to suffer Seasonal Affective Disorder but shots of Vitamin D and going outside a lot more helped. It also helped by surrounding myself with The Happy. What makes me happy, aside from my family, is music. Thankfully, we’ve come out of a series of music star deaths to lots of new music. It’s a tonic for what ails us until we can get to a beach and really lay down the party. It’s a dog’s breakfast of new and old coming across my desk and there’s plenty of each this week.
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Pat Blythe continues her series The Women of Blues with this fourth installment on a Legendary Scottish singer….
“If music be the food of love, play on!” Like food, music can be comforting. It can also be stimulating, annoying, or cloying. Music releases dopamine, the ‘feel good’ hormone, just like sex and actual food. Music can arouse feelings of euphoria and craving. Dopamine release is at “peak emotional arousal” during music listening, so you really ARE getting a bang for your musical buck.
Yeah, yeah, it’s been a week since the Saturday Night Live (SNL) special, and Bob’s given his views on the pros and cons. But I’m still thinking about what the show meant to me, in its heyday, and occasionally, since.
So, what project in your life has taken you the longest to complete? Has anything you’ve really wanted to do ever taken you 18 years? Most likely not, but that’s how long it took director Denny Tedesco to complete his documentary on a small group of musicians in Los Angeles who, from the late 1950’s through to the 1970’s, supplied the rhythm section (drums, bass, guitar, keyboards, percussion, saxophone) for hundreds, if not thousands of hit records.
Music’s a funny thing; sometimes a song will hide in the grooves of an album, unloved and unwanted, until someone uncovers the gem and makes it their own. A struggling songwriter may dream of the day that a megastar covers their work; in the right hands, a number one hit can make the writer a fortune in publishing.
Bullseye Records of Canada
Segarini: Don't Believe a Word I Say 