7 Days Ago I Was A Rock Star

“Since music is the only language with the contradictory attributes of being at once intelligible and untranslatable, the musical creator is a being comparable to the gods, and music itself the supreme mystery of the science of man.”

Claude Levi-Strauss

7 days ago I was a Rock Star.

I was chilling in a dressing room as my alter ego fearless superhero 'Brozilla' waiting for the call to hit the stage of a packed Oakengates Theatre, Telford; a prestigious venue which, in the coming weeks, will play host to An Evening With Alistair Campbell, Joe Pasquale's Extra Sensory Pasquale and acclaimed Psychic/Medium Joe Power 'The Man Who Sees Dead People'. Illustrious company.

Tonight I'm in the communal lounge area of the North Stafford Hotel writing this in the midst of a distinctly elderly clientele, none of whom appear to have been born after 1937. They eye this interloper suspiciously, stiletto sharp glances jabbed in my direction: a faint whiff of incontinence pads as they whoop with mirth at "You've been framed!" An ocean of fawn cardigans and polyester slacks stretching towards the flock wallpapered horizon.

The online blurb describes the hotel rooms here as possessing "a classic style," which is certainly true in the sense that Fawlty Towers is unquestionably a classic and the decor, fittings and fittings here are resolutely 1970s. My bathroom is essentially a verruca repository and as a result I've taken to showering in my socks. Tonight's sub-par evening meal concluded I sashayed stylishly back to my room. As I passed room 239 I heard a dog howling plaintively. I'm no dog lover. They are pointless, yapping, smelly bastards. And here's a truth for you: if you own a dog, you smell of 'dog' too. We're just too polite to say anything.

Anyway, the sound was so horrifying it literally rooted me to the spot. Sweet Jesus! Was someone actually beating it? Was it dying? Did that yelp just then sound human. I moved tentatively towards the sound, raised a tremulous hand to knock, and then figured 'Nah...' Whatever lay on the other side of the door would be fine without my intervention. And what in the name of Julian Croot was a dog doing in the hotel? I grabbed my Macbook Pro (tm) and came down to the lounge to make use of a wi-fi connection so limited it doesn't even extend to the bedrooms.

7 days ago I was a Rock Star exhorting a smiling crowd to scream "Fuck You, Brother B!" at me.

I don't think I've ever mentioned my band in this blog. I guess I find it hard to talk about. How do you express yourself to other people on the subject of your nose, for instance? It's just a part of you, isn't it? That's what music's like with me. And, erm, all of us, actually.

Every culture on the planet is bathed in music. Both its universality and its antiquity suggest that perhaps it is something our species cannot do without. Did you know that music activates the same parts of the brain and causes the same neurochemical cocktail as other pleasurable activities like eating chocolate or, ahem, orgasms? Music can also be used as an antidepressant - hard to believe if you've heard McFly, but people in Western society use music to regulate their moods, whether it's playing something upbeat in the morning or something soothing at the end of a hard day, or something that will motivate them whilst taking part in vigorous cardiovascular exercise.

Right now, I've got "The Fragile" by Nine Inch Nails on auto repeat so that I can lose myself in its throbbing sensuous melancholy and let my creative subconscious come out to play as I write.

It's interesting to look at music from an evolutionary perspective. Dr Steven Pinker of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology suggests that music is essentially purposeless - mere ‘auditory cheesecake’ - and that it is piggy backed on the other resources we have to deal with sound to make sense of what we hear and the world around us. Were we to remove music from our culture, he says, everything else would carry on in the same way. Totally unchanged.

Charles Darwin, on the other hand, opined that music was selected by evolution because it signals certain kinds of intellectual, physical and sexual fitness to a potential mate. And recently completed research shows that if women could choose who they'd like to be impregnated by, they'd choose a rock star. There's something about the rock star's genes which signals creativity, flexibility of thinking, flexibility of mind and body, an ability to express and process emotions: whilst musical talent signals sexual potency - Justin Bieber, for example.

Modern neuro science posits that our brains are fundamentally geared to make and appreciate music as it is a gymnasium for the mind. The whole of the brain is engaged and represents a collaboration between the logical side of our cognition (to pick out patterns and make sense of any words) and our emotional processing centres. Music also manages to home in on our motor centres – making us feel an impulse to move. We may hear the same piece of music again and again and it still has the same effect. In fact sometimes our response, whether emotional or physical, can be amplified.

Music is so powerful it's used to rehabilitate stroke victims AND as an instrument of torture. James Hetfield said he felt proud to have the military use Metallica's music. On a visit to Guantánamo Bay Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Couch described his intense dismay when he witnessed a detainee shackled to the floor of a cell with heavy metal music blaring. The detainee was

“rocking back and forth, mumbling as strobe lights flashed.”

Colonel Couch said that

“the treatment resembled the abuse he had been trained to resist if captured; he never expected Americans would be the ones employing it.”

7 days ago I was a Rock Star and I held an auditorium full of people in the palm of my hand.

Good night, North Stafford Hotel lounge! I'd go upstairs and trash my room, but someone beat me to it.

35 years ago.

Oh, the dog? The owners had gone down to dinner and left it on its own in the room. I passed them later on this evening taking it for a walk down the corridor...