For years, I've always considered my brother to be the ultimate person for evaluating music for a number of reason. He's never played a music instrument in his life so he has no bias towards the self gratification that musicians get from hearing other musicians. Instead, his love (or hatred) for music stems totally from non-cerebral places. He listens to music constantly and has extremely broad tastes. I take pride on my ability to fit in a Testament concert or a New Order show, but my brother takes that a step further than I do.

Since this dude, my brother, is totally into music, doesn't care about over played musicians jerking off crap, and likes a wide range of styles, I figured he's be the perfect choice for a person to evaluate music. In the past, when I wanted another perspective, I've had problems with ?I hate this kind of music? or ?why do they play metal? Why don't they sound like Matchbox 20??. My brother seams, once again, to be the perfect person to evaluate music.

So the other night we were goofing around and listening to music. I played him a song that I had recently recorded. Immediately, I noticed a change in him. His head turned to the side before I even hit play. You need to imagine that you are looking at a computer screen (which you probably are) and have a speaker on each side of your monitor (which you probably do). It was as if his nose was now pointing directly at the right speaker. His left eyebrow smashed down a tad.

In other words, his brain kicked in. Instead of listening to what the song had to offer, he immediately turned into negative mode and started to rambling about all the stuff that was wrong with the song. When his brain kicked in, it was all over.

What interested me the most, one of the things he said was ?the song just keeps going and going?. Okay, that's fine. However, we has just listened to a few 12 minute songs. The argument that the song keeps going and going in a 3:30 pop song that has quite a few changes in it tells me that he's using a different standard to judge the music I'm playing him verses the music we were listening to previously. When he started using his brain, he found flaw after flaw after flaw. The same could be done for just about every song. Luckily, when we listen to our favorite songs, we don't use our brain. We just have fun.

Needless to say, I'm not going to be using my brother anymore to evaluate songs that I've recorded. I'm guessing that he wouldn't like even one song that I've recorded. They will always be too this or too that. Even though we had a blast listening to Green Jelly's ?Three Little Pigs? (which cracked the Billboard Top 100 pop charts in 1993 by the way), I'm sure that he'd say a song that I recorded was stupid. This is obviously some sort of double standard.

So whether you are trying to get feedback from a friend, relative, or stranger about your music, be very careful how you present it to them. Friends will automatically like your music more than others. Strangers will not. Who knows about brothers. Either way, you must be careful so that they do not use their brain. Hopefully, a recording guy or producer can pull their brain out of the equation when evaluating music. Most band guys can not.

This leads me to my last point. When you are in the studio, do not use your brain. If you are making all sorts of decisions about your ?direction? as a band, then you will have problems. Jump in and play your songs. Whatever happens...happens. If you keep your brain out of the equation, you will reduce the chance of second guessing yourself. Also, you'll like your songs for the write reasons. If you like a song because it's a fun challenge to play, then you've missed the point of the song, in my opinion. You are saying that a song is a fun finger exercise. Well, so is Richard Simmons. I want a song that will do something for my ears ,my mood, and (if you want to be a hippy wuess) my heart...not for your fingers.

Brandon