Country music and mind control

I was reading a friend Eric’s blog today and something he said caught my eye. I commented, but I thought I would ramble on it here.

He was complaining about country music in Vegas and suggesting that its a good thing that he doesn’t have a gun because if he did, he fears he

“would not have the self control to resist going in and shooting everyone in the place… how could anyone worth saving actually listen to that crap?”

A little harsh perhaps, but understandable given how toxic some country can be.

But its seems to me that there is more to it than just bad music. I feel like there is a constant barrage of things to distract me from whats going on in the world. I feel like I am deluged in minutiae and trivia, diverting and easily digested, that occupies my time and stops me from getting a good handle on what is really happening in the world.

Its like country music, along with much else we get foisted on us by the communications and media industry, is handed to us to save us the time to really understand, really engage with our lives. And with the world around us. Like some sort of emotional fast food that satisfies the cravings for engagement without actually providing any significant nutritional value. And the long term effects are largely unknown.

I wonder sometimes if we spend so much time listening to the predigested emotions in music, thinking “oh my god that’s exactly how I feel” that we abdicate our right, our need to work through emotions ourselves. Since Celine, or Britney or Alanis or Missy or Donna have gone through it, we can just take their answers as our own. But I don’t think there are emotional shortcuts.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love music. As of this moment I have 21 days, 01 hours, 01 minutes and 56 seconds worth of music on this computers hard drive, and my ipod‡. But I suspect, and forgive me this seems like a radical idea, that we need to look beyond stirring ballads for answers.

But when it comes time for our leaders to relate to us, that pretty much what we get. While in the US in 2004 I watched both the Republican and Democratic conventions with a certain sick fascination. As a producer I was quite simply AMAZED at the production values, the quality of performance and the complete lack of content in the majority of the proceedings. Well the bits people were tuned in for any way.

And its the people who suffer the most who seem most easily distracted and persuaded by the hype. We as a culture seem particularly vulnerable to the uber redneck singing ultra patriotic songs about bombing terrorists and shtooping twins. As a result they, we don’t have time to realise that a tax cut for the rich ISNT going to help us and industrial relations reform IS going to drive wages down.

It would sound like science fiction to say that there is a way to alter peoples awareness and thinking using sound, but apparently its true. Spookily enough, the idea is being explored in the new CBS series Threshold. Where are Molly Caffrey and that disturbingly hot Peter Dinklage when we need them?

‡ All legally purchased of course, in case you are reading Mr Bainwol, because music piracy is wrong and probably ILLEGAL.