Not only do I buy a lot of music, I listen to a lot of music. On a good day, I might actually spend more than 4 hours rocking out with my music. Ever since I ripped all my CDs to my computer and was able to listen to anything I have at any time, I found that I’d get tired of particular songs way faster, since it was just that much easier to put them on repeat until I couldn’t take it any longer.
I’d say that I have an above average musical knowledge. Some degree of training on four instruments factors into it. But the amount of time I devote to music listening is a part of it as well. So reading Blink by Malcolm Gladwell was very interesting. The idea behind the book is that snap decisions that we make on first impression are frequently backed up with all sorts of data and can be way more informed than you might think. There’s a chapter in there about a musician named Kenna. His story is something about how before he was signed, all the industry pros who heard his demo were totally wowed and loved him. He played some small clubs to packed houses and rave reviews. The industry people thought he was going to be the next big thing. But when his songs were sent out to be consumer tested, to see what people thought of it on a first impression, it didn’t fair that well.
Now, this was all even more interesting to me, because shortly before reading Blink, I’d been over at my brother’s house. We were playing poker and listening to music. We’d been listening to music for several hours when a song came on - a song that immediately prompted me to ask “Who is this?” It was Kenna - I was someone for whom this was music I loved on first listen. My listening habits put me into a similar mind set to others for whom music is their life.
Soon after that, I was hanging out with my friend Anu, who works in the music industry. We had a long talk about music and our favorite albums of the year and what we were listening to now. He played his fave of 2006 for me and it was strange, so very strange. It was so different, with all sorts of sounds that weren’t quite standard music to me. Which made me wonder, maybe the more music you listen to, the more it all sounds the same. You start to see the connections between everything you hear, until you realize how similar things are. And all that’s left is to find something dramatically different than the norm.
I think that was why Kenna stood out for me. He sounded different than what I was listening to. He’s not really all that out there - his music makes sense to me. But it was different enough for me to actually take notice, in a good way. The trouble is that for the average listener, they don’t want to hear something unexpected, or at least they don’t think they do. So they hear something new that they don’t quite get, it’s jarring and uncomfortable and they say “I don’t think I like this.” But for people like Anu and me, that’s what we’re looking for. And he’s taken that to an even more extreme level so that I can’t quite follow what he’s hearing other.
That’s not to say that people cannot appreciate music like Kenna unless they’re uber-music nerds or anything. It’s just that our first impressions of the music are different…
