Men love the obscure shit???

LokoOne

This is an article published in the Sydney Morning Herald. Thought it was interesting and semi applied to the world of obscure record collectors. Is that a lump in your throat or a Lionel Richie aversion?Richard JinmanLike most men, I love pop music. Listening to it is OK, but what really floats my boat is learning a new, deeply obscure fact about the people who recorded my favourite songs.Music factoids are hard currency to the average man. We trade them like football cards and use them to trump each other at the pub/pool table/tennis court.For example: Man A observes that Ozzy Osbourne bit the head off a bat during a concert in Des Moines in 1982. "Oh yeah," says Man B, "but he thought it was a stage prop and needed a rabies shot because the bat bit him back".Man C yawns and prepares to deliver his coup de grace. "My dad was in jail with him in the late '60s," he says. "That's when he got the letters O-Z-Z-Y tattooed across his left knuckles and happy faces on both knees."It's game over. Men A and B grip their beers - they are dying inside.As a general rule, women are not as fascinated as men by the minutiae of Ozzy Osbourne's life; they are less thrilled to learn that Keith Richards routinely removes the bottom E string on his guitars. Perhaps this discrepancy is explained by remarks made this week by Lesley Douglas, the co-ordinator of popular music at the BBC."For women, there tends to be a more emotional reaction to music," she said. "Men tend to be more interested in the intellectual side: the tracks, where albums have been made, that sort of thing."The remarks prompted howls of outrage from both sexes. Men insisted that they too felt a lump in their throat when Art Garfunkel sings "When you're weary, feeling small" at the start of Bridge Over Troubled Water. Aggrieved women pointed out that they were quite capable of appreciating Jimi Hendrix's use of the minor seventh chord and a wah-wah pedal on Foxy Lady.Well, yes, of course. But as Nick Hornby and his New Lad acolytes have pointed out, the music "anoraks" - the kind that like the smell of vinyl and keep back copies of Mojo magazine under their bed - are almost always male. Many men would rather discuss their Top 5 albums, Brian Jones's mysterious death or the Hoodoo Gurus shifting line-up, than their feelings. It's a cliche, but that doesn't make it any less true.And surely, if we accept that women are generally more relaxed about discussing their feelings, doesn't it follow that they are likely to be more open to music aimed squarely at the emotions? This, after all, would explain the success of James Blunt, a phenomenon many men find as appealing as male pattern baldness.Certain women of my acquaintance love it when Blunt sings "We shared a moment that will last till the end". They wonder who he's singing about. I wonder if he shot anyone in Kosovo.If Lesley Douglas is right, men and women can hear the same song in very different ways. This is certainly true.When I hear Lionel Richie's All Night Long I hear a well-crafted, but rather soppy pop song. My female friends hear a personal invitation to join Lionel on his private jet for a night of passion spanning two time zones. Their hips start to wiggle when he sings "We're going to party" and they smile knowing smiles at "Let the music take control".Oddly, the same women struggle to understand the glory of Jimmy Page's guitar work on Kashmir. But let's not get carried away. Look at the photographs of the front row at the Big Day Out: they show men and women equally gripped by the ecstasy of loud, hard music. One nation under a groove.Richard Jinman is the Herald's Arts Editor