Bang Your Head

Last week in a study published in the British Medical Journal, Andrew McIntosh, an associate professor at the School of New South Wales, reported that flailing your head to a rock and roll song at an average tempo of 146 beats per minute can cause “mild head injury when a range of motion is greater than 75 degrees.” At faster tempos the risks can range from headaches to stroke. This was all reported in the New York Times so it must be true. The study concluded that listeners can reduce their risk of injury by listening to “adult oriented rock.”

Now this brings up a number of questions, first of which is “What the hell is ADULT ORIENTED ROCK?” Rock and roll, whether heavy metal, Chuck Berry or DEVO is created for the young by the young. Not that us old folks can’t appreciate it but I know of no category called adult oriented rock. It’s an oxymoron.

Second, why on earth would Mr. McIntosh waste his time and energy on this topic?  And third, what ever happened to the bass player from Ten Years After?

For those of us who love air guitar this could be a real bummer. That same day the Times published an interview with Jay Jay, the lead guitarist of Twisted Sister who gave tips on airport travel and told of how he was trying to fly home from a tour when Chernobyl exploded. Now I figure this guy must have suffered from thousands of head banging concussions and add to that the radioactive fallout he may have been exposed to and the guy must be absolutely bonkers.

Serious physical damage has always been a hazard of rock and roll. I watched a drunken Jerry Jeff Walker fall off a stage once. I also knew a guy who brought two gigantic Voice of the Theater speakers into his dorm room at school and had them facing one another. He would lie down on the floor in between them and crank the volume up to 10 while blasting Edgar Winter’s White Trash so almost all of Brooklyn could hear it. He’s probably deaf by now.

I wasn’t big into rock and roll until the Beatles. Prior to that I only knew whatever I heard on the radio whenever I was in my dad’s car. I seem to recall a lot of Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson and Bobby Darin. And also Leslie Gore. It was good but it was the Fab Four that really turned me around musically. The 60’s and early 70’s were rockin’ years but by the time I got to Pratt my tastes were changing – broadening you might say – and I discovered Miles Davis and Lester Young. Jazz was it for me then but rock and roll has always been part of my life. Still, I’ve never gotten even a slight headache from listening to rock. Now, the booze and drugs gave me quite a few headaches and probably much worse but I can’t fault the music.

When I go jogging I have a wide range of driving rock songs on the iPod. Everything from Fleetwood Mac to the Foo Fighters. You’d think that all that pounding in my ears and the pounding on my knees would cause some damage but I always feel better after a run.

If you really want to hear some ass-kicking, head banging music than check out Milenia. I’ll leave you with that thought.