I have been developing an hypothesis about the nature of ears and hearing. The premise is that hearing in humans, as in all of nature, arose primarily as a defence mechanism. It allowed the critters of the forest to either determine if something they could not see was about to be a threat to them or whether it was to be dinner for them.

Music came along  much, much later in the evolutionary roll out.

I have discussed this with some scholars in both the music and biological sciences. Diana Deutsch at USC, a developer of psychoacoustic audio illusions commented, February 2008,  that this line of inquiry was "very interesting" and that she would "ponder them" some more. There are several I have yet to hear back from. But I'll keep refining my thoughts and emails.

My main idea here is that music is fundamentally foreign to hearing evolution, in the longest view. In the shorter view; less than 100,000 years, music may have locked it's "molecules" into friend-or-foe "receptors" that were already present in the human brain. This would help account for such things a tribe-specific ritual music and national anthems. These, I think, are meta-affects. In the mico aspect hearing is still very much a safety feature, hence car horns, alarms and other "foe" or caution evoking sounds on the one hand and favourable, pleasing sounds such as meat cooking, the sound of a favored loved one or pet, or jovial laughter on the other.

It is, therefore, easy to understand how the Us vs Them mentality forms around musical genera. Metalers vs Punks, Country vs Rap, Classical vs anything else. The crux of the biscuit here is that, I believe, people make broad safety-based assumptions about people based upon the music those people listen to.

Try this: go to a place where some good-ol'-boys are and tell them that you like Rap. The first thing you will be exposed to is racist attitudes. It's almost invariably so. Why? Hate stems from fear. If you fear ethnics, you will learn to associate there "anthems" with that fear. It seems that, regardless of the quality of the music, the anthems - such as Rap is the Urbanites - will evoke that sense of fear and anathema in the mind of some listeners. I think this could be studied with fMRI.

Now, I am sure there is much more to this and I am still studying to work out my hypothesis to the level of testing, but I'm sure I will make some more interesting observations here in the next little while.

I'm only posting this because it is uncanny and weird.

This is about a "psychic dream", if such a thing exists. I usually have 3 to 5 dreams per night that I remember and write down. Not so much for self-analysis value any more as for the creative fodder; usually there's some great architecture or gizmos or music to be had.

But last night's sleep displayed a particularly unusual dream. I was in a well lit room. An old friend, his dad, his mom and I  were standing around in a "circle", as much as 4 people can make a circle. They had their backs to me, I was facing inward. In the middle was a woman I had not seen in 10 years. She gave me something and then did something (gonna leave that part blank for the sake of being scientific controls). There was then a huge burst of raw emotion, (again not saying for the sake of controls).

Now, here's the funny part: I get up this morning and she has emailed me with a Facebook friends request.

Sure, being on Facebook it was only a matter of time/interest, but the timing is such that a less rational person might be persuaded that it was a psychic coincidence. Hmmm...

More later.

Well, I haven't posted much for a while so I thought I'd add an entry. I'd really like to be more regular with this blog but duty calls here at the studio.

It's been a very busy year. New albums, new songwritters, new musical tallent. If you stay tuned I promise to post some cool, fresh tracks over the month of December as my gift to you.

On of the things that has kept us busy around here is the new video suite we built for doing YouTube videos in support of the new album Reality Takes a Vacation. We even built a green-screen room for doing some cool video trickery.

I'd like to take a second to mention the guys at Compuquest 2000 for the truly incredible HP workstations they set us up with.

Stay tuned.

The Bob & Doug Show on Saturday was a smash! They broke all records for people, bar sales and the amount of money in the 50/50 draw. Incredible.

Me, I was tired as hell. For some reason I wasn't sleeping well for a couple of days so by the time I got to the show there was a tremendous haze hanging over my noggin. And, the elevator was broken. So I had to hump all the sound gear down to the basement the hard way. Wasn't ready for that. Thankfully Sandy Robertson was there and we coordinated it nicely.

Sandy is the fellow who booked Bob & Doug while they were here. A long time friend, they also stayed at his home.
 
But that's all behind us now. The Boys have returned to England as of Thursday.

I must say that what these blokes do, sing/gtr with karaoke backtracks, is pretty amazing. There is an incredible suspension of disbelief that accompanies their shows. People know it's backtracks, but they still love it.

You Guys Rock!