Double post today! My goodness...This image is another piece of portfolio filler, or booster if you like. I guess booster's a little more positive! It's based on this article debunking (good word...) a theory put forward by Lesley Douglas, the BBC's co-ordinator of popular music.
"According to Douglas, men and women listen to music differently. Women are more likely to interact with music emotionally, whereas men - walking calculators, all of us - hear it on an intellectual, analytical level".
I respond to music emotionally for sure. In fact I have to go and hide in the pit at Thursday gigs because as soon as the first chordal explosion of raw emotional emo power blasts from the speakers I start wailing and flailing like a infant loosing a prized spinning duck thingie (when was the last time you saw a rattle?). Apparently, I like the author, am not alone.
"Across the country, there are millions of men who react to music very emotionally just like me. I have seen men breathless with emotion at gigs by Doves or the Verve, overcome with something at the proximity to Morrissey; grown men in tears at gigs by Stevie Wonder and Smokey Robinson. I have seen Liverpool hardcases emerge with tearstained faces from a gig by Joe Strummer. I haven't been to many gigs where male voice choirs emit a unified cry of "But isn't the middle eight bonzer?"
So there. Were all whimps and we've admitted it. Are you happy now? See these tears? Do you see 'em!
Also, apparently, women are pretty good at this analytical stuff. Who'da thunk it?
"There are now scores of female rock journalists, many of whom are capable of stripping a song down to its nuts and bolts as well - and in some cases a lot better - than us blokes, as well as relating to the music's emotional impact."
So there. We're all great and therefore undemographicable (ha! There's the longest word I'll make up this week). I guess musical co-ordinators up and down the globe will cease to pigeon hole the population and stick people into nice little groups and... oh.
Oh well.
