1. It’s officially the season for a bazillion “Best of the Year” lists, and I’m already guilty of starting to create some of my own. Loudwire is putting the “Rock Goddess of the Year” question to reader vote, and contenders include blog regulars Lzzy Hale (Halestorm), Maria Brink (In This Moment), plus breakout talents like Emily Armstrong (Dead Sara) and fan favorites like Amy Lee (Evanescence). Disclosure: Emily got my vote on account of being an absolute BADASS, as demonstrated by the embedded “Weatherman” music video, but she’s currently one of the underdogs. Regardless of the ultimate winner, though, it’s a nice mini-celebration of beautiful hard rockin’ women!
2. For those who argue that my admiration for Pantera/Dimebag borders on obsessive, at least I can retort that I’m in good company. Arist Direct has collected reflections on the brilliant band and its legendary guitarist from metal masters like Corey Taylor, Troy Sanders (Mastodon), Robb Fynn (Machine Head), and Joe Duplantier (Gojira), along with artists from more radio friendly acts like Five Finger Death Punch and Shinedown. As usual, Phil Labonte’s (All That Remains) comments are particularly memorable and amusing: “I saw the video for “Cowboys From Hell” on Headbangers Ball. I was amazed! Cowboys From Hell came out after Nirvana had killed metal. I was like, “Whoa!” Pantera kept metal alive the entire time grunge was shitting all over it.” Ha! It’s amazing, though not surprising, to see the extent of Pantera’s influence on music, even two decades after they first appeared on the scene. Also, I love how many interviewees mentioned “Cemetery Gates” as holding particular meaning for them; although “This Love” isn’t far behind, “Cemetery Gates” blows me away like no other.
3. Fulfilling my daily craving to gaze upon gorgeous portraits of uniquely beautiful women, we have The Feminine Side – Portraits by Pavel Lepeshev, via Pondly. Check out the entire gallery featuring photos that are aptly described as showcasing femininity without relying on gratuitous bare skin. Clicking to what appears to be the Russian equivalent of facebook, I determined that he is a young one – not even 23 til the end of the month – and from there I clicked to a page showcasing much more of his work. Note that while the Pondly link is all SFW, this second link to the larger gallery does have some thumbnail images containing nudity in an artistic context. I think it’s asinine to get worked up about bare breasts, but heaven forbid someone’s boss disagrees with me…
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HRH: the only blog where pics of Duff and Slash jamming can be relevant to a neuroscience post. (via)
4. Random factoid about yours truly: I’ve had this quirky little obsession with neuroscience since high school, and I’ve even had a few scholarly articles and book chapters published relating to the subject. So any neuroscientific study involving that other little obsession of mine – I’m referring to music, of course – is certain to capture my attention. PsyPost offers a succinct, readable summary of a recently published article in Frontiers of Neuroscience, which found synchronous neural activity in musicians playing distinct but coordinate parts of a musical composition—a type of inter-brain networking between two guitar players (in this study) analogous to the own intra-brain neural coordination that occurs when one is engaged in coordinated actions individually. How cool would it be to measure the neural activity of musicians in the middle of a jam session or when they’re collaborating to create a new song? PsyPost has a lot articles addressing “popular psychology” and “popular neuroscience” topics, with content that is at least a little bit more substantive and deferential to the underlying research than some of its popular science competitor blogs, while still being comprehensible to laypersons.
5. Get ready for the most amazing 10 minutes of your YouTube life. Seriously, commit to one minute of the video. You won’t want to stop watching the most amazing xmas light display ever created. Think headbanging snowmen, guitar-playing Santa, a drumming elf, and light-up hands throwing horns. It’s a scientific fact: anything tolerable about the holiday season must somehow incorporate metal.
