September 18, 2009
Dr Feelgood's failings from Guardian Unlimited: Culture Vulture
Dr Feelgood's failings from Guardian Unlimited: Culture VultureDr Feelgood's failings
12:36pm
Very different formulas for feeling good ... records by the Boo Radleys and the Pixies
Startling news from the world of science: a psychologist has apparently found the formula for the perfect pop song. The aptly-named Dr Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, who lectures at Goldsmiths, says the holy grail perennially sought by the likes of Simon Cowell can be expressed as P + Pos + T + BPM + I = S (where P = Pitch, Pos = the % of positive lyrics, T=Tonality, BPM = Beats per Minute, I = Images/Memories associated with the music, S = Serotonin level).Quite apart from the fact that such stories generally prove to be bad science, as documented by Ben Goldacre, this impressive bit of algebra immediately loses most of its credibility when you learn that such maths declares Wake Up Boo! by the Boo Radleys to be the very pinnacle of pop perfection.
The scientists did not measure my serotonin levels when listening to this record, which I've always found to be a complete abomination, I fear - precisely because it strains so obviously after a rather queasy idea of perfect pop. Dr Chamorro-Premuzic refers to film music's capacity to intensify mood, and this song always reminds me of those coercively "life-affirming" moments at the end of Hollywood movies where the starchy old patriarch finally recognises his son's great talent for breakdancing, or somesuch, the strings swell and your feelings are bullied into a kitschy crescendo. If you don't blow your groceries first.
We all have different ears, of course, and Wake Up Boo! (described by Chamorro-Premuzic as "three minutes of feelgood therapy") may sound great to some people. But the other important thing to point out is that even if feeling good is the point of pop music, there are many different ways it can deliver such uplift - sometimes by consoling your melancholy, sometimes by affirming your right to be in a really foul mood.
A case in point, none of whose releases make the Chamorro-Premuzic list, is the output of independent label 4AD - poised to celebrate a quarter-century of successful leftfield releases.
Despite a strong visual identity across its artwork, 4AD's output is very various - from the swirling, florid guitarscapes of the Cocteau Twins to the jazz-grunge of Nick Cave's Birthday Party - but the good feelings on offer from its roster have never been of the "hullo birds, hullo sky" variety exemplified by Wake Up Boo! (This, remember, is the label which once briefly succeeded in making the Bulgarian female voice choirs highly fashionable, with La Mystere des Voix Bulgares.) And 4AD is not all about fringe or "cult" music - the Pixies were a 4AD band, and M/A/R/R/S's number one Pump up the Volume was also on the label.
The dismaying thing about Chamorro-Premuzic's research is the idea that pop music should work like soma in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World - a zombiefying source of serotonin working to keep us all in place as quiet drones. Thankfully, as the ongoing success of mavericks like 4AD shows, the research is as empty of meaning as the lyrics to most "feelgood" pop songs.
Chris Chan - Can't Touch This (Autism Mix) DON'T KNOW WHY THIS HAS HEAT, BUT IT SHOULD CUZ IT'S MY FAVORITE VIDEO
AND COME TO THE CHANNEL AND CHECK OUT MY NEW KANYE WEST AND WHITNEY AND KURT COBAIN VIDS. AND PLUG IN CHRIS CHAN ON MY LIJIT BLOG SEARCH AND READ MY IN DEPTH ARTICLE ABOUT HIM. HE'S A MESSSSS
BBC - View from the South Bank: Spelling out the losses
BBC - View from the South Bank: Spelling out the lossesSpelling out the losses
It's been a sad week with the loss of three cultural innovators in as many days.
First, snake-hipped dance god Patrick Swayze, then the man who invented the whole TV chef trend, Keith Floyd, and now the screen writer Troy Kennedy Martin.
The Glasgow-born writer created some of the most classic work on British television over the last few decades - everything from Z Cars to Edge of Darkness.
He was also known for his writing in cinema - in particular, his screenplay for the Italian Job.
And more recently Red Heat, which he co-wrote for Arnold Schwarzengger.
Z-Cars, which he wrote before he was even 30, revolutionised television in the 1960s with a gritty realism which hadn't been attempted before.
He claimed to have the idea of a police series set in patrol cars in the north of England while ill with mumps and listening to real police patrols on VHF radio.
Although he was one of a team of writers on the show, it was he who was credited with its creation, he held the copyright and he got paid a fee for every episode.
He also brought the series to an end in 1978, writing the final episode in which some of the best known characters returned.
In 1985, he wrote Edge of Darkness, a chilling thriller about a nuclear conspiracy in which Bob Peck played a policeman investigating his daughter's murder.
Again, he broke new ground by demanding to be able to write up to the wire, allowing him to include contemporary references and avoid any interference from his paymasters.
It's a way of writing current screenwriters can only dream of and for Kennedy Martin, it was also a short-lived period of freedom.
I spoke to him a few times on the phone, usually about an obituary for one of his many screenwriting friends and colleagues.
Among them John McGrath, who worked with him in the BBC script editors department in the 1960s.
He was always charming and helpful, with an encylopaedic knowledge of British television.
And a writer of his calibre - and a Scot to boot - would have been equally dismayed at the demise of another great Scottish literary institution.
Chambers, who've been publishing their dictionaries in Edinburgh since 1819, will now close their offices in the capital with the loss of 27 jobs.
The dictionary - famous among Scrabble players for including a wider spread of eclectic words than some other dictionaries, will still be published but only in London.
The use of online spell checks has been blamed for the downturn in business.
While the telephone directories and piles of back issues of newspapers may no longer clutter your average newsroom, I'm one of a handful of Luddites who still likes to keep a dictionary, a thesaurus and a few good grammar books to hand.
Too bad there are fewer and fewer of us around.
Rock legend Hendrix dies after party - What Next? ELVIS
BBC ON THIS DAY | 18 | 1970: Rock legend Hendrix dies after party
Jimi Hendrix created a revolutionary new sound for electric guitar music
The inquest heard he had taken nine sleeping pills but there was no evidence of drug addiction.
The guitarist's father, Al Hendrix, a landscape gardener, was the sole beneficiary of the will, estimated to be worth in the region of $500,000.
He set up a company, Experience Hendrix, with the aim of preserving his son's musical legacy.
On his death in 2002, the company was inherited by his step-daughter Janie. But Jimi's brother Leon claimed he had been unfairly written out of the will and launched a lawsuit in 2004 to try to overturn it.
In 2003 a survey by the Rolling Stone magazine named Jimi Hendrix the greatest guitarist in rock history.
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