In 2015, Scientists at the University of Helsinki discovered that listening to music can alter how your genes function. Scientists took blood samples from study participants before and after listening to Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3 in G major, K.216. They found that the music directly affected human RNA. Link to research <here>.
Growing up, I listened religiously to 2 pop music radio shows:
Dave Fanning’s Rock Show on RTÉ Radio 2; and
The John Peel Show on BBC Radio 1.
Initially, Dave Fanning’s show ran from midnight to near 2am. When I should have been asleep, I listened, using a cheap plastic ear-bud headphone. Dave was unwittingly responsible for some bleary-eyed starts as I caught the 7.30am school bus past our rural laneway. Later, as his show increased in popularity, his new slot was 8pm to 10pm. This dovetailed nicely with Peel’s show, which ran from 10pm to midnight:
Of course, given that there was so much music to listen to between the hours of 8pm to midnight, it often meant that my homework was shot entirely to hell – or subject to frequent home-taping interruptions. It’s a minor miracle that I ever passed any exams lol.
Fanning’s intro theme tune initially was (up to) the first 48 seconds of “Another Girl, Another Planet“, the 1978 New Wave classic by The Only Ones. Later, he used (up to) the first 43 seconds of “Oh Well“, by Fleetwood Mac. Peely, by contrast, always used the same tune – (up to) the first minute of “Pickin’ the Blues“, by Grinderswitch. (Peel discovered the band in the early ’60s, when he was a DJ in Dallas, Texas.)
If ever music altered anyone’s DNA, my DNA has been forever shaped by each of those intro tracks. Here they are – theme tunes do not get any better than these:
Disjecta 