I remember the Pastor. He used to tell us the craziest stuff in church. He said that if we didn’t get into the highest kingdom of Heaven, we’d be resurrected without genitalia. He told us that at some point Satan would be given control of all the water on Earth, and anyone in the water at that precise instant would be pulled under and drowned. He told us that Jesus would ‘probably’ come again in 1986. (Well, at least that one was falsifiable.) And we just slurped it all up because he was so entertaining and he read so many church books.

The other one he told us was that when we played records, there was a certain ‘spirit’ who was assigned to that particular record, and the spirit could ‘come into the room’ when that record was played. How does that work?

Interviewer: So you’re the spirit assigned to the new Britney Spears record.
Spirit: Yeah, that’s right.
Interviewer: The whole record?
Spirit: Nah, guv, just the single.
Interviewer: What were you doing for eons of time before the release of the Spears disc?
Spirit: Well, you know, causing disease and insanity, infesting herds of swine — can’t be bad — and I was also assigned to the original ‘Hotel California’ vinyl release. Which still gets a lot of play, so it keeps me busy, you know!
Interviewer: So how does the infiltration work?
Spirit: Well, when they play the record, I have permission to enter the room and tempt, entice, and ensnare without let or hindrance. Great stuff.
Interviewer: Did you have trouble with the move to CD’s?
Spirit: There was some legal stuff to do with multi-format, but it all got sorted out in the end. Piece of cake, mate.

So you can understand how I was getting Pastor flashbacks when I saw this article: Raunchy music influences teens’ sexual habits

TEENAGERS whose music players are full of music with raunchy, sexual lyrics start having sex sooner than those who prefer other songs, a study has found.

‘Raunchy’ sounds kind of loaded. I thought I’d get it from the source, so I found this month’s copy of Pediatrics. They don’t use the term ‘raunchy’. Instead they settled on ‘degrading’. That’s a lot less opinionated.

I wondered who was behind this study, and it turned out to be some people from the Rand Corporation.

The RAND Corporation is a global policy think tank first formed to offer research and analysis to the United States armed forces. The organization has since expanded to working with other governments and commercial organizations.

Notable RAND participants:
Lewis “Scooter” Libby, V.P. Dick Cheney’s former Chief of Staff
Donald Rumsfeld — Chairman of RAND Corporation from 1981-1986 and current Secretary of Defense for the United States (as of May 2006)
Condoleezza Rice — former trustee 1991-1997 and current Secretary of State for the United States (as of May 2006), former intern
Francis Fukuyama — academic and author of The End of History and the Last Man

Could you hang on a minute? That was my warning signal going off again. Sorry. Have to get it checked.

The devil’s in the definitions on these things. How did they tell ‘degrading’ sexual lyrics from ‘non-degrading’ sexual lyrics?

Two raters independently coded the lyrics, obtained from Internet Web sites, of all songs (n = 193) from each of the 16 albums. The unit of analysis was the song. Raters first judged whether a song contained 1 or more references to sexual behavior (implicit or explicit references to intercourse, oral sex, or other sexual acts). For each song deemed to contain more than 1 sexual reference, raters then judged whether the song contained only nondegrading references to sex or contained more than 1 degrading sexual reference.

Two raters, eh? How well did they agree?

To establish interrater reliability for classifying the type of content in a song, raters double-coded one third (n = 63) of all of the songs. These songs were selected via stratified random sampling, with artists as strata. Inter-rater reliability was satisfactory (Cohen’s kappa ranged from 0.74 to 0.92).

I dunno, that kappa seems a little low for a two-class categorisation, especially when they didn’t even bother to check all the songs.

And what kinds of songs turn out to be ‘degrading’? Check the table.

What a surprise. Rap and R&B. Everything else is perfectly fine and non-degrading.

Oops, there goes the signal again. It’s been so sensitive lately.

Could it be that the coders just didn’t like that kind of music? And that sexual activity correlates with other factors, both socio-economic and educational, as shown by their own data? And it may be more helpful to address these trends instead of printing stickers that say “Listening to Ja Rule will get you pregnant.”

Pardon me for saying, but phony, biased, politically-motivated research pisses me off, and I think this one’s at least two out of three.

Personality tests are a bit suss because you can see yourself in any personality description. It’s why people think astrology works, though it fails scientific tests.

But I’ve always liked the idea of a Winnie-the-Pooh personality test. The characters are loveable, but flawed. Pooh, gluttonous and dim, but possessed of a quiet wisdom. Piglet, timorous yet loyal. And what about that thang between Kanga and Tigger? I think they’re a natural couple. They both love bouncing, and Tigger gets on with her kid so well.

Well, I took the WtP test, and I suppose it was inevitable.

Take the 100 Acre Personality Quiz!

I don’t mind being Owl, except I think of Owl as sort of like Gore Vidal, all East Coast dry wit, and nary a woman in sight. I think when I’m happiest, my Tigger side forms a nice complement to Owl.

What do you come out as, and are you satisfied with that assessment? Comments, comments.

This week’s Random Five are so good, you’ll think I’m hand-picking them just so you’ll think I’m cool. But I assure you I am not. Hand-picking them, that is.

Universal Traveler by Air Album: Talkie Walkie
I liked this album so much, I bought it twice. The second copy came with a DVD, and wasn’t Copy-Controlled, so of course. (I may be able to score you a copy if you email me and ask nicely.) The song sounds as eclectic as its title would suggest. African-sounding percussion, nimble guitar, and restrained synthwork, all set to make the song crisp and uncluttered. And you must sing along to the refrain: So far away…

Morning Night and Day by New Order Album: Waiting for the Siren’s Call
I liked individual New Order songs before Get Ready, but that was the first album that worked all the way through for me. This song is cut from the same cloth. It’s muscular and rockish, with electronic touches to keep it interesting. And it’s good to hear New Order sounding so fresh.

I.O.U. by Roman Holliday Album: Cookin’ on the Roof
Hands up, everyone who remembers Roman Holliday from 1983. (Not too many of you, are there.) They brought swing into pop music, predating the Squirrel Nut Zippers by over a decade. Ira Robbins of Trouser Press described them thus:

Typical of the ability of English pop to absorb virtually any musical style so long as the band dresses colorfully, the seven-man Roman Holliday succeeded for a minute by playing fired-up jumpin’ jive in sailor caps.

I’ll ignore the five or so implied slights in that paragraph and say this: It was jumpin’. For one amazing summer, this was the music of youth, and my friends and I danced to it till we were sweaty.

This isn’t just a case of liking the music that was popular when you felt happiest. Even listening now, the musicianship of the band comes out as well as the sense of fun.

But the fun didn’t last. Their second album tanked, they got dropped from Jive Records (yes, that Jive Records), and their producer Jeff ‘Mutt’ Lange went on to make millions from Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys and to marry Shania Twain. Oh, the infamy!

Oh, the Swiss! by Prefab Sprout Album: Appetite (Single)
Paddy McAloon is probably a genius. And by that, I mean, he is absolutely nuts. People won’t understand his work for another 50 years. As proof, I offer “Farmyard Cat”. Go to iTunes and click on the snippet. What you hear will have you either laughing or saying “WTF?” But listen closer. He’s combining the Broadway musical genre with Copeland! In a way that bespeaks mental illness, it is true. But when the Prefab Sprout stage production is written, as ‘We Will Rock You’ was for Queen, it will be called ‘Farmyard Cat’. Of that I am sure.

Another manifestation of McAloon’s brilliance is offered here. “Oh, the Swiss!” is a heavenly string of pearls in the form of a piano solo. It wanders up the keyboard in different keys, it soars, and just as it reaches its peak of power, it evaporates as beautifully as a mouthful of divinity.

Heartfelt by Davol Album: Mystic Waters
Davol (last name: Tedder) is a MIDI nerd. Let’s face it. His music fits into that New Age/inspirational niche. You’d expect to hate it for that alone. But something about his music runs quite a bit deeper than you’d expect. It isn’t just pleasant; it’s also thoughtful. It’s buffed to a synthesised sheen without feeling overworked. And it is very beautiful to listen to. Though I haven’t checked out his new stuff, I don’t mind when one of his songs comes up.

And a bonus sixth because I couldn’t resist:
Triste by Ryuichi Sakamoto Album: Heartbeat
You may remember Sakamoto from YMO (if you have good musical taste, and you’re old), or from the David Bowie film Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence (if you’re just old). Even though the guy is a legend, I have to say this particular album isn’t his best. Too much jazz and sampling. But this track Triste works very well. A funky beat with muted horns and strings, combined with French rap years before it was popular. Night-time sophistication in spades. I can’t stop playing it.