manipulative cats and music-loving chimps

You might have seen the stories about this a couple of weeks ago... Scientific American and a few other news venues reported on research telling us what most cat owners already know: that cats manipulate us with their purrs and their meows. Here's two SA podcast transcripts on the subject:

• manipulative cats
• coercive cats

This other tidbit is newer - research involving a young chimp suggests we may be biologically inclined to prefer consonance over dissonance in musical sounds. The chimp repeatedly chose to listen to consonant passages in preference to dissonance, and because of her lack of previous exposure to music, researchers feel this demonstrates that musical taste is not a uniquely human trait. It's not universal though - related tests with birds and monkeys have shown their ability to differentiate between consonance and dissonance, but no preference one way or the other.

The article mentions finding similar preferences to the chimp's in human babies - many years ago I unintentionally discovered babies' discriminating musical ears... I was trying to distract a crying baby by playing guitar and singing to her but I was on edge (she had powerful lungs) and though the music seemed to help, if I hit a sour note she just wailed all the louder. No surprise that she's gone on to be a musician herself (and producing much fewer sour notes than me).

Earth running out of viable dirt & new review(s)

Apparently climate change (or climate chaos, as I prefer to call it), has other facets than those people most frequently talk about. This podcast from Scientific American suggests that "intensive farming" strips necessary carbon from soil, letting it loose into the atmosphere.

The commentator lists a few strategies to control this problem, including eating less meat.

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Recently reviewed by me in e!:

• Madder Mortem - Eight Ways

For some odd reason, exclaim! never posted my Paganfest review. Look for it here soon (if it's not too irrelevantly out of date).

GREEN DAY: Last week I went to see Green Day. I wouldn't have gone on my own, but my niece is a major fan so it became kind of a family & friends outing. The "forced will call" ticket thing seemed a bit ominous at first, but the long line reaching into the bowels of Copps Coliseum moved quickly, and the quality of our seats (thanks to me) was a more than adequate pay-off for the wait.

Openers The Bravery were poppy and catchy, rather amusing actually, and I was surprised to recognize some of their songs from the radio. (I didn't realized I listened to that much alt rock radio...) The niece found them a little repetitive but the youngest member of our crew enjoyed their set immensely.

Of course, the night was all about Green Day. Copps looked pretty empty until just before Green Day hit the stage but then the place just swarmed with responsive fans. GD started full on and stayed full on for about two and a half hours. I was exhausted watching Billie Joe Armstrong jump and run around, with his voice somehow surviving nearly flawless for the entire show.

The three core members of the band provided a visual and sonic focal point, but additional musicians sang back-up, and played guitar, keys, sax, accordion... Several fans, most of them small boys, got a chance to jump on stage as well - performing, interacting with the band and the crowd. And it all ended with a 'calm us down' cadence - a solo/acoustic guitar performance of "Time of Your Life" (or whatever the title is). I wasn't sure if that one would be too cheesy to play, but it brought the night to a close without completely reducing things to Friends-ish nostal-cheez (I was surprised).

Our whole party felt we'd got our money's worth (yup, I paid for this one) and emerged with a greater appreciation for the band. When I first heard that annoying song off Dookie back in '94 ("Longview," maybe?) I had no idea Green Day would become a rock phenomenon or that I would see it in action.

judas priest and virtual relocations

Thanks to a good friend, I unexpectedly got the chance to see Judas Priest and Whitesnake this week when I'd been thinking I was going to miss this tour. We caught a few songs by Pop Evil (I hadn't even known they existed until I saw them and their hard-to-read banner on stage), arriving in plenty of time for the main attraction.

Amusingly, Whitesnake (or David Coverdale with various hired hands) mostly played songs off the 1987 self-titled album plus a few others. That was okay with me - that was one of the first records I played on the stereo I got for Christmas that year. Coverdale's need for backing track vocals was a little disappointing but I'd rather he had them than not if he can't sustain those delightful high screeches anymore.

Priest's choice of British Steel also had nostalgic resonance for me as that was the first Judas Priest album I ever bought (though I'm a little suspicious of their "30th anniversary" math). Rob Halford doesn't move very fast these days, but the songs sounded as good as ever, including the few non-British Steel tracks they played. No pictures, but I bet some by Adam Wills will be going up on Hellbound.ca any day now.

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If www.killeatexploittheweak.tk was one of your web destinations you'll notice a change. There hasn't been much activity over there since our radio show went off the air - I've decided to retire the site, at least for the time being. The link now directs you here. If you're interested in old playlists, interview lists and the like, let me know.

music & the body

That mysterious perfect pitch. We all may have it when we're born. A few of us seem to retain it. Perhaps those with a particular mutation on chromosome eight. Apparently it's also a European thing. Wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that the scale the researchers are using is probably Western European?

More universal is the correlation between music and bodily responses. Our appreciation of music is not simply emotional or aesthetic. Tempo and volume changes produce coinciding changes in listeners' heart rate, blood pressure, breathing... Most of this is just affirmation of what the avid music listener already knows, feels, but researchers are trying to understand the 'why' of our responses to music.

vegans no more likely to break a leg than anyone else

You may have seen a headline recently about vegans having lower bone density than non-vegans. This Discovery News article is one example.

Well, don't stop reading at the headline. If you make your way through the rest of the article you'll notice a few more significant points:

• the study found that vegans were no more likely to be treated for bone fracture than non-vegans
• it didn't study the contents of various vegan diets (which can differ in terms of diversity, quality, etc. between different vegans)
• calcium intake, including drinking dairy products, is only one of many factors in bone density - such as vitamin D intake.

So don't let the headlines scare you. Eating vegan isn't a one-way ticket to osteoporosis any more than any other diet.

happy canadian metal day!

Over at hellbound.ca us writerly folks have been waxing nostalgic and drooling all over our favourite Canadian metal albums. Turns out we love Voïvod and Devin Townsend but our collective list includes some more surprising choices as well. Settling on one record was not an easy task. I never had any trouble putting together a Canada Day playlist for Kill Eat Exploit the Weak radio, but naming one album as my Canadian favourite required a lot more reflection and compromise.

I've already mentioned my Saros interview up on Hellbound (I've got reviews up of The Legion and Sons of Seasons as well). So it's probably time for an update on my other reviewing activities, which I admit, have been sparse. All these were for exclaim!:

Amorphis - Skyforger

Autumn - Altitude

Candlemass - Death Magic Doom

Ensoph - Rex Mundi X-ILE

In Flames reissues

Khors - Mysticism

Leprous - Tall Poppy Syndrome

My Dying Bridge - For Lies I Sire

Ruins - Cauldron