Unfortunately, all the YooEffOh enthusiasts are wrong. No way would aliens smart enough to fly here actually make the trip, and here's why: FM radio. All those thousands of radio stations are blasting a wall of sound into space, a kind of Force Field of FM. NEW 105, ROCK94.4, YOURBESTOFTHEEIGHTIES 101.5 have been sending an electromagnetic shock wave into the rest of the universe for decades.
If we can barely stand it, what do you think the Little Green Women in flying saucers will think?
One horrific consequence of spending a lot of time driving is exposure to the idiocy of FM music stations. Hells Teeth, listening should come with a Government Health Warning, like cigarettes:
Caution: More than three hours per week exposure to FM music stations will cause your brain to mushify and leak out of your ears.
In my considered analysis, a big part of the problem is that the music on FM is all AT ONE VOLUME - LOUD. The reason is that most people are listening, like me, in the car, with all the associated noise competition. Radio stations know this. Then the ads play, and they're at VOLUME 11 so the message gets through. Ah, no. I don't want to lease a new Chevy Malibu at an all-time low price, thank-you. For the fifty-seventh time.
So one naturally hungers for music more in tune with one's soul. Music is meant to speak to the emotions, and emotion implies ups and downs - in strictly musical terms, piano through forte, soft through loud. Classical music (by which I mean everything from Baroque through mid-century Big-Bands) fits the bill. The nuance of volume changes opens a door to somewhere in our heads that standard FM music cannot.
If I were an alien, I'd be repulsed by mono-volume music and intrigued by vari-volume music. Life (and relationships) can't be lived at full-throttle all the time, so finding a tune (or a person) fitting the spectrum of emotions that fit mine is the thing.
Bottoms Up, Turn it up to Eleveners.
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