For pretty much as long as I can remember, I’ve always been hopelessly attracted to musicians, specifically of the rock & roll persuasion. While other high school girls fantasized about Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, I idolized the feathered hair, open shirt and sexy swagger of Robert Plant, lead singer of Led Zeppelin. His poster still graces my wall next to my desk, a black and white, cock-emphasizing shot from a downward angle. It may be because I lost my virginity listening to “Whole Lotta Love”, but there’s just something about the way he croons “baby, baby, baby” that gets my motor running. Yet as I’ve grown older, although my crush on Plant persists, I’m more in awe of the fast fingers of lead guitarist Jimmy Page.
It seems you can take any scruffy slacker that normally wouldn’t much get a second glance, give him a guitar, teach him a few chords and all of a sudden I want to strip him down and do dirty things to him. Drummers and pianists alike, I don’t discriminate! One of the sexiest things a guy ever said to me in bed, after a particularly satisfying fingerbang session, was “I can play your body like an instrument”. My current lover seduced me back to his place for the first time with the promise of a serenade, and his sweet poetry inevitably charmed the vintage dress right off my back.
Seems like I’m not the only one with this glitch – some women like Cynthia Plaster Caster and Pamela Des Barres have made entire careers out of being ‘groupies’, or as Cameron Crowe rebranded them in his coming-of-age tale of a journalist in the glory days of rock and roll, ‘Almost Famous’, band aids. “Groupies sleep with rockstars because they want to be near someone famous,” laments head of the Band Aids, Penny Lane, played by Kate Hudson. “We are here because of the music, we inspire the music. We are Band Aids.”
Maybe we love men that get up on stage and pour their hearts out in song form because it demonstrates vulnerability and a softer side not often seen from their gender. Maybe we love them for their rebellious leanings. Maybe we just see the guitars as extensions of their penises… which is why we tend to overlook certain of their less affiable qualities, like not showering for days on end or spending all the rent money on beer.
It turns out there may be a scientific basis for this attraction. According Geoffrey Miller, author of “The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature”, Charles Darwin was among the first to argue that human musical talent may have evolved for reproductive benefits. In 1871, Darwin wrote that, “The impassioned orator, bard, or musician, when with his varied tones and cadences he excites the strongest emotions in his hearers, little suspects that he uses the same means by which his half-human ancestors long ago aroused each other’s ardent passions, during their courtship and rivalry.” Miller points out that this evolutionary feature is evident in the animal kingdom where certain species of insects, gibbons, frogs, birds and whales woo perspective mates with song.
And with our fair city currently overrun with musicians and mustachioed hipsters posing as musicians, here are my top 3 POP Montreal artists I’d like to bang:
3 – Any of the dudes from Yukon Blonde
They’re one of my favorite indie bands on the Canadian scene, and their look is the epitome of that scruffy rocker dude that makes me swoon. If you missed their show on Wednesday night like I did, never fear, you have another chance to catch them when they open for that other band of shaggy rockstars whose look and sound I adore, The Sheepdogs, when they coast through town in mid-November.
2 – Daniel Rossen of Grizzly Bear
I imagine it would go something like this: we’d stare deeply into each other’s eyes, and brush our fingers against each other’s cheeks for an eternity. We’d link hands and spin around in circles for “Two Weeks”. For pillow talk, he’d regale me with tales of Thom Yorke from their Radiohead tour, then sneak off in the morning, leaving a love note on my pillow.
1 – David Byrne
While I’m not really physically attracted to him, I would offer him my body as a simple token of gratitude for all the fucking fantastic tunes he’s created over the years as the innovative frontman for the Talking Heads. Plus, anyone who’s ever heard Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On) , Crosseyed And Painless or Thank You For Sending Me An Angel would know that he’s got mad rhythm. Add the swagger of their cover of Take Me To The River to the romantic sentimentality of This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody) and the spastic, ridiculous dance moves from Stop Making Sense and you’ve got the recipe for a Once In A Lifetime sack session.
Robert Plant Photo: http://ohmygodot.blogspot.ca/2011/06/fielders-choice.html
Yukon Blonde Photo:http://popmontreal.com/artists/yukon-blonde/
Daniel Rossen Photo: http://jp917.tumblr.com/post/3300005736/see-five-year-old-daniel-rossen-impersonating-elvis
David Byrne Photo: whitehotmagazine.com
