Psychologists have been debating issues of the psycho-sematic and placebos for years. Can the brain change its chemical contents just because it thinks of something? Or maybe because it tastes something? Or maybe because it hears something?
Certainly because of hearing something...
There is something about good music that is so quenching to the soul. There are many categories of music in my library, and i don't mean genres... categories like "when i want to rock out" music and "poppy music that i am embarrassed to own, and only break out when i am alone in the car where no one can hear me, or when i am being really goofy with my friends late at night" musc... there are many categories.
These are not the categories that i am talking about. I feel like any music can physically effect the chemical content of one's mind... triggering the pumping endorphins and serotonin. Mmmmmm...
The music that really hits my soul though is the most valuable to me... the stuff where someone has really poured his or her own soul into the composition. For me several of these songs are found on one album... and i just acquired it on vinyl.
The album is "Ben Folds Live" by Ben Folds (go figure). The self described "punk for sissies" artist dropped the other two members of "Ben Folds Five" his ironically-named three piece band (consisting of a drummer and a bass player) and went on tour in 2002 with just his piano and voice.
I had never heard Fold before he visited Allegheny while I was there. I was told i should go to the concert, and i have been a fan ever since. His music was amazing, the blending of pop, rock, punk, humor and bluntness was amazing... and to cap it all off, he was an amazing entertainer.
On Ben Folds Live he played a lot of his classics, plus several of the songs of the album "Rockin' the Suburbs"... his newest released at the time.
What really hits me on this album is the stuff that was almost intended to be played solo. The soulful and real feeling come through on songs like "One Down," the classic and most-popular track "Brick," "Not the Same," and my personal favorite "Emaline." I can literally sit for hours listening to this kind of music. There is something about it that transfers a state of nostalgia that is at once familiar and strange. I find myself taken back to the time when i first heard these tracks, feeling the pain and the joy of that time in my life. The interesting thing about that nostaglia, is that these songs inspired a similar feeling of nostalgia the first time i heard them. It was taking me to a place i had never been, but somehow remembered.
I bought it on vinyl this past week, and with the warmth and clarity of brand-new 180 vinyl these tracks shine. I don't have to read some psychological study to know that music effects the brain... and this stuff is gold.
