{"id":23101,"date":"2013-11-04T16:15:16","date_gmt":"2013-11-04T21:15:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wendybrandes.com\/blog\/?p=23101"},"modified":"2016-10-27T12:31:21","modified_gmt":"2016-10-27T16:31:21","slug":"what-wendy-wore-devo-energy-dome-for-halloween","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wendybrandes.com\/blog\/2013\/11\/what-wendy-wore-devo-energy-dome-for-halloween\/","title":{"rendered":"What Wendy Wore: Devo “Energy Dome” for Halloween"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a 2011 New York Times op-ed article marking Bob Dylan’s 70th birthday,<\/a> David Hajdu wrote that 14 is a “formative age” when it comes to musical taste: “You\u2019re in the ninth grade, confronting the tyrannies of sex and adulthood, struggling to figure out what kind of adult you\u2019d like to be, and you turn to the cultural products most important in your day as sources of cool \u2014 the capital of young life.” He spoke to Daniel J. Levitin, a professor of psychology and the director of the Laboratory for Music Perception, Cognition and Expertise at McGill University, who explained the physiological element of the phenomenon:<\/p>\n

“Pubertal growth hormones make everything we\u2019re experiencing, including music, seem very important. We\u2019re just reaching a point in our cognitive development when we\u2019re developing our own tastes. And musical tastes become a badge of identity.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I was actually 13 at the start of 9th grade — my December birthday meant I turned 14 right in the middle of the school year — so maybe I was running six months ahead of schedule age-wise, but I feel like Hajdu’s theory definitely applies to me. The year was 1981, and it was a momentous one for music: Just weeks before school started, MTV launched with a space shuttle countdown, a rocket blast-off, a moon landing and the Buggles doing “Video Killed the Radio Star.”<\/a> <\/p>\n