The last time I saw Luna live was probably '94 or '95, but they were always amazing when I saw them.

I highly recommend the Luna documentary "Tell Me Do You Miss Me".

I'll have to check that out.

I haven't payed the Patrick Stump vid yet, but I have it open and paused in another tab. When did Patrick start cosplaying Matt Smith from Dr. Who?

What did you think of Dean Wareham's book, Jon?

Interesting question. I've known Dean since the Galaxie 500 days and conducted a long radio interview with him when the book first came out. If all you know of him is the book, he doesn't seem very likable. He's always had a bit of an attitude but is one of those people that's quite nice once you get to know him. In discussing the section of the book that deals with him leaving his wife to be with Britta, I said to him, "I can empathize with what you were going through, but I can't sympathize." He nodded and replied, "I can see that." And we're still friends.

Unrelated, I totally missed this but Don Kirshner died a few days ago: [link]

I appreciated Wareham's self-honesty, his willingness to look like a dick.

And frankly, there was nothing atrocious in his behavior. He wasn't punching ducklings in the face.

And frankly, there was nothing atrocious in his behavior. He wasn't punching ducklings in the face.

Hey! Some ducklings deserve it.

To be fair, that duckling was looking shifty.

I appreciated Wareham's self-honesty, his willingness to look like a dick.

Yeah, I can forgive a lot of dickishness in a person if they're self-aware of their dickishness.

When did Patrick start cosplaying Matt Smith from Dr. Who?

Just before SXSW.

I'm waiting for the fez. The fez would be cool.

Hint: when playing the vid. Go for audio first. You should totally watch the video too eventually but ease into it.

The Neuroscience Of Music

Why does music make us feel? On the one hand, music is a purely abstract art form, devoid of language or explicit ideas. The stories it tells are all subtlety and subtext. And yet, even though music says little, it still manages to touch us deep, to tickle some universal nerves. When listening to our favorite songs, our body betrays all the symptoms of emotional arousal. The pupils in our eyes dilate, our pulse and blood pressure rise, the electrical conductance of our skin is lowered, and the cerebellum, a brain region associated with bodily movement, becomes strangely active. Blood is even re-directed to the muscles in our legs. (Some speculate that this is why we begin tapping our feet.) In other words, sound stirs us at our biological roots. As Schopenhauer wrote, “It is we ourselves who are tortured by the strings.”

...

While music can often seem (at least to the outsider) like a labyrinth of intricate patterns – it’s art at its most mathematical – it turns out that the most important part of every song or symphony is when the patterns break down, when the sound becomes unpredictable. If the music is too obvious, it is annoyingly boring, like an alarm clock. (Numerous studies, after all, have demonstrated that dopamine neurons quickly adapt to predictable rewards. If we know what’s going to happen next, then we don’t get excited.) This is why composers introduce the tonic note in the beginning of the song and then studiously avoid it until the end. The longer we are denied the pattern we expect, the greater the emotional release when the pattern returns, safe and sound. That is when we get the chills.