Does listening to The Grateful Dead make you yearn to meet your maker, or do you acknowledge the seminality of their music? Is the term ‘influential’ overused nowadays?

Things mentioned in this podcast

• Article analysing influence in pop music
• Stanford School of Business on social media influencers
• Article analysing survey data about why people follow influencers
• Federal Trade Commission reminding ‘influencers’ to disclose sponsorship

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Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by me, Fraser McGruer for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm here with Nick Hare and Peter Coghill of Aleph Insights and this week we're discussing The Grateful Dead. Nick, in my humble opinion, one of the greatest bands of all time. The Grateful Dead, why are we talking about them?

Who are they? No, I consider myself something of a sort of music fan. I'm not particularly diligent and my music tastes are very eclectic. They span pretty evenly across the last, you know, few hundred years. But I've inherited quite a lot of things that I'm interested in from my parents and that includes, you know, a lot of the singer songwriters and bands from the late 60s and early 70s and, you know, which I probably listen to more, I think, than anything more recent. And yet, I've always been aware, at the back of my mind, this niggling doubt that I should be really much more into The Grateful Dead because they're a band that everyone's always mentioning The Grateful Dead as like, you know, hugely influential band, you know, the first electric jam band, the, you know, huge kind of tour, massive kind of following The Dead Heads and so on. And I just thought it was weird that I didn't know more about them for a band who is allegedly very sort of influential. And, you know, so I thought, you know, it would be interesting to talk about that issue of whether or not, why it is that, you know, you often get influential things that are not the same as popular things when, you know, you might consider that they're actually closely related. It ought to be the case that someone who's listened to by lots of people is more influential. And that's it, really, that I just, you know, kick off there. And yeah, as I said, as part of my research, I listened to The Grateful Dead a bit and I thought, well, that's quite good. But I didn't really get what all the fuss was about, to be

honest. But can you enlighten me a bit? Well, no, I think it's an interesting point. Because certainly within music, you tend to get a lot of bands or they will refer to someone like The Grateful Dead, who are not as, it's almost like a proto. It's like John the Baptist and Jesus, right? I mean, that you have one has to be careful with music, there might be an element of kind of snobbery and niche. What's the word I'm looking for? Gatekeeping? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. There could be that. I mean, I can't, even though I said, I think Grateful Dead is one of the greatest bands ever. I can't remember one song by them at the moment. They're never on the radio.

No one I know listens to them. I mean, nobody ever has The Grateful Dead on, you know, it's just it seems weird that the the amount of exposure they have, and yet and the amount of dedication and devotion they have are just so vastly different. But let's talk about this.

Okay. Yeah, Peter. Well, I mean, I realised I wasn't very familiar with The Grateful Dead when we brought this topic up. So I had a little lesson. And I have to say, I wasn't massively impressed. But that might be because, because they are sort of artistically challenging. And it requires you to do a bit more work, more thinking and that and sort of listen to things two or three times to kind of get where they're going with things. So I think this this this brought up in my mind, a potentially useful distinction between artistic influence, i.e. amazing and challenging artists who have defined a new genre or created new ism and the spark of new ism and caused great following in within other artists that borrow from and maybe in a dumbed down version of their work, versus popular influence, which is basically the sheer number of people who are who who sing the songs or recognise the music or can spot the art or whatever. So I

think there's, there is a distinction there. And I think actually, that inspires me to have a new thought, which is about the problem of understanding when something has been artistically revolutionary. Because often what will happen is those things that they did will become so commonplace that you won't see what the fuss was all about. A classic example of that is Citizen Kane, of course, which, you know, non pluses most modern viewers, and yet it's still regarded as probably the most significant film of the 20th century. And the reason it's, you know, hard to see why that is, is because we just don't notice all the incredibly revolutionary techniques that it used all the different the kind of use of, you know, the cinematography, the the angles, the use of lighting, the sort of slightly nonstandard narrative, all of these things that I've really, you know, just used all the time now. It was the first film to do that. And I and I'm guessing it could be something similar with the Grateful Dead here. Were they the first? I mean, are they I think I get the impression that one of those bands who has, you know, has been in lots of different genres and probably been very pioneering in every genre, and probably paved the way for other people to come in and perhaps do that thing in a more popular way. I don't know.

No, I mean, if we want to specifically talk about Grateful Dead, I don't know.

Well, we don't because I've got a load of data about in general, popularity and influence.

No, I mean, I just I think it's that you might have something to do with that is something that's innovative, but it's it's that it's almost like another generation doing something very similar, but with a slight twist to it that that transforms into widespread adulation and popularity. And also, I think I'd also like to keep when we say popular, I'd also like to keep that to meaning good as well and good quality. Well, it doesn't I mean, okay, there is a difference. But I mean,

anyway, Nick. Yeah, no, just I mean, so I was, you know, intrigued by this question in general. So I got I tried to find some data on influence, you might think that's a difficult thing to measure. But actually here, luckily, all music have have got lots of data on basically biographical data where bands, you know, talk about other bands that they were influenced by. And a someone on the internet has analysed that and come up with sort of based on network measurements, who which bands are most pointed to. And I must say, I have to say the Grateful Dead are not there. They're not in the top 25. But there are just looking at sales and influence. There are only five bands you can in a minute. Yeah, but there are only five music acts, artists and bands who are in both the top 25 for record sales and influence. Interesting. So you don't get any points for getting number one. Yes. Okay. Now you if you want to guess the other four, it's interesting, actually, because they are, I'd say there's a certain similarity between them. The other the other the other the well, one is a bit unique, actually, but you should be able to get them. Led Zeppelin. They're there. Yeah. So what so basically, yes, I will go on to my what I think is the common factor. But there's also an artist, a solo artist who Elvis Presley, Elvis Presley, he's actually and it's 23rd biggest influence, most influential. But that leaves two more bands. You said Led Zeppelin, the two others, they're really they're not obscure at all. You should be able to get them.

Okay. Sorry, Peter, any Queen? No. You'd think they possibly should be, but they're not. I'm going to say arguably it could be.

Oh, something a bit like Fleetwood Mac.

No. Okay. One of them is more experimental and one of them is more.

Okay. So if one was more experimental, that's going to be someone like, sorry, I'm just getting total mind blank with everything. Frank Zappa.

No, no, he's not. He's not high on popularity. Who invented heavy metal?

They invented a whole genre themselves from Aston. I don't want to say it in case it's the one you're supposed to. With Ozzy Osbourne. Oh, Metallica. No, not Metallica. It's probably not there. But when you said experimental, that makes me think of like Prog Rockies type stuff. When you say it, I'll know it. But yeah, okay, go for it.

and popularity are different. I mean, so just one thing, just think wondering if being influential and being popular are completely different things. Well, they're not necessarily totally different.

I think the characteristics of the of the ones that are both are probably longevity, moving between multiple genres, certainly true of people like Pink Floyd and and the Beatles. And and I would say, I think musicianship. I think that's ultimately the these are the people who are really good. I mean, you know, that certainly will get you into the influential category. But yeah, but I mean, you know, you can't get to the top of the sales category either without being basically really good. It helps if you're British as well. Turns out that makes me proud. Yeah.

Peter. So well, when I was doing my research, I was trying to come up with some sort of rationalization why there might not be a very strong correlation between popularity, a number of sales, let's let's make it give it a measure and influence like the number of artists who say that I was influenced directly by this other artist. And I thought, well, maybe it's to do with maybe to do with the sort of cognitive demand required to listen to something challenging and therefore influencing. It's maybe you just want when you listen to pop music, when you buy pop music, you just want something that everyone else is sort of listening to because it's easy and it sort of fill the time and it's got catchy tune. But actually, it's fairly kind of throwaway like junk food versus a good steak. It's sort of it's satisfies you, but it's not challenging. But then I then then further research indicated that actually, there's quite a lot of studies that suggest that people have a natural tendency to seek out ever more complex forms of art, media and entertainment. So this is borne out by a trend in recent years where a big explosion in the amount of box sets and long running series with very complicated plots. The plots in things like the Game of Thrones, the number of characters that people have to keep track of in order to follow it are vastly more complicated than anything that was 10 or 20 years ago. And this has been a trend in the last few decades of ever more complicated plots, ever more complicated narratives, ever more complicated casts. So they don't, I couldn't quite get these to to wash with each other. But there is a there is a sort of distinction. Don't forget how many people watch Mrs. Brown's Boys. Yeah, well, there's also yeah, there is a sort of popular. There is a sort of popular thing, which actually is bucks that trend. So the popular music has become ever more. According to some studies, I saw ever more homogeneous and similar than it used to be. So there used to be a more diversity and popular in the charts. But now that all the songs sound the same, but that might just be grumpy old men writing the story, writing papers that they to come have.

But again, that's probably reflective of what's happened to the charts and not what's happened to music. Because if you look on YouTube, you know, as usual, you know, it's sort of quite a common phenomenon with any genre recently is that there is basically vastly more crap. The average quality of things out there has gone down. But the quantity is more than compensated. Yeah. So I think, you know, you can find good, really, really good examples of anything you want now on YouTube that you certainly wouldn't have been able to do 20 years ago. And I think that the charts have almost become a kind of ghetto for one very specific form of music. And I think that's it.

I think that I think one of the driving factors for the charts becoming this very samey is that it's they've, they've, the production houses and me making the music and the artists making the music have optimized for a particular kind of itch that they can scratch through this through that medium, rather than good, good, good visual pun there. Yeah. Let's just say what Nick was doing. Otherwise, Nick pulled out the exact point I said itch, scratch, he pulled out a backscratcher and I think he's just probably highly suggestible is what it is. Yeah. Yeah. So they've optimized for a particular market. That will probably probably changes and evolves and the songs five years hence will sound quite different, but they all the songs within that epoch sound the same. So that's quite interesting that there are two sort of conflicting psychological requirements

there. I think just to widen it. Well, since we're on the topic of influence, obviously, and again, it's not unrelated to this, you know, it's kind of numbers of people watching versus, versus, you know, the way in which people are engaging and the extent to which people are liked versus heard and seen are, of course, social media influencers, which are a fairly new thing that because I'm now over the age of 35, don't know anything about. So, you know, I was interested in it and I looked into it and actually there is, there is a similar thing going on there, you know, a debate in the marketing community. So just for people like Fraser, who looks baffled. So social media influencers are people with lots of followers. I work with them a lot. Of course you do. So you've got people who are very popular on things like Instagram and YouTube who are essentially used as marketing vehicles by companies seeking to, you know, get lots of people to buy their things. And it's a whole world that I don't know anything about. And the idea is slightly repellent, if I'm honest, because the idea of being an influencer as though, as though it's the influencing that's important and not the thing you're doing. But even more repellent is the idea of wanting to be an influencer. Yeah. And a lot of people do seem to want, it's like a job. Yeah. Well, whereas, whereas actually, you know, well, if you look at, if you look at who influencers are, I mean, there's, there's sort of various categorisations, but there's, there's, you've got celebrities who are known for being celebrities. Celebrities, where they come from and what they do is kind of fairly baffling anyway. But celebrities are, you know, they've existed since before influencers. Industry experts and thought leaders, well, they, they, they're doing something, you know, they know about stuff, presumably. And so they're slightly more credible. And then you've got bloggers and what's repulsively described as content creators, i.e. people who actually make things and do things and add value, unlike marketing people. And then you've got these weird micro-influencers kind of, sorry, micro-influencers who are kind of, there's, I was reading about one guy who's like basically the world expert on mattresses and all the mattress companies send him mattresses and, you know, so, so in terms of the kind of fields that they're in, it is a lot of it is fashion, beauty, fitness, right? And I, I, I wonder if that is, explains quite a lot about the apparent, let's say, vapidity of, I mean, they're things that are intrinsically quite vapid. They're to do with what you look like,

what you're wearing, you know, what to do with you, me. I don't want to explain your revulsion to it,

but these are big industries. Oh yeah. They're not, they're not unimportant in terms of the amount of

never watch them again. Well, that's kind of that along that line, I saw an interesting marketing review paper. It wasn't, it wasn't academic paper, but it was a sort of white paper by a, by a marketing company. And they, they were making the case that actually, yes, there isn't, it's not as simple as influence equals a number of followers. They were making the case that actually, if your, if your, if your brand is about, if you're, if you're trying to build a community around your brand, so you want people to be actively sort of talking about your brand and refer, you know, talk about, to each other about it, then you actually want the smaller influencers on it. You want the people with a few hundred thousand viewers rather than millions of viewers, because there's a good, there's a good sort of, if you plot the number of comments and likes and shares by, by the number of viewers they have, there's a bump around that point rather than at the top where. So it's about the activity they can generate. Yeah. It's about the sort of activity around, around their videos and things that they generate. So the people with, but as a proportion of the number of viewers, there are more likes and shares at the lower end than there are at the upper end. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense.

And look really quickly, because there's something fun I want to come on to, but go on.

Okay. No, it's just in terms of sort of like who follows what and why and stuff. Apparently about three quarters of people who follow any influencers follow lifestyle influencers. I wouldn't even know what that was, but, but 50% of them have considered buying something because an influencer has mentioned it, which in my mind is very sad. But according to surveys, what people look for is relevance to them, why it makes sense, but also authenticity. And so this, this, this means that there's all these ghastly articles about five tips for staying authentic as a social media influencer, four way brands, four ways brands can be more authentic on social media. And you just imagine these marketing people sitting around and going, how can we tap into the authenticity market? You know? So, yeah, I mean, those things obviously do not go hand in hand. You know, you cannot be paid to endorse something and be authentic at the same time, which is not possible.

Yeah. I was also slightly surprised that I couldn't really get, there didn't seem to be many proper academic studies on what the return on investment is for influencers versus more traditional marketing. I think there's a big gap in the market. So there's lots of PhDs, rich, rich seam of PhDs to be had there, but examining like, well, you know, how per pound, what's the value I'm getting back for my brand of a different type of different types for influencers versus other channels. And yeah, there was lots of them. There were lots of lots of surveys saying, oh, this, we surveyed a hundred marketing companies and 10 of them, most of them said that they think influencers are really good, but then there were all surveys saying the opposite.

Yeah. Well, I mean, I think it's a bit of a commonplace that no one really knows if marketing works or which forms it's just, everyone does it. And if everyone else is doing it, you don't want to be the guy who isn't doing it, which is weird.

But in theory, one of the elements of a good marketing plan is that it should be measurable as well. Your results should be measurable. But anyway, that's just all too depressing that stuff. Okay. I want to bring it onto something to make us feel positive. I actually want to talk about something negative. Good. Great. And I want to bring it back to music. One of the things we're talking about was not just being popular, but just being a credible artist or valued. Okay. And I was thinking actually of some of the bands or individuals who are widely considered to be, what's the word I'm looking for? A sort of good quality or proper artists in music who I personally don't get, or just, I just don't understand. And I've got four straight off the bat. Okay. And I wanted to ask you who yours might be. Okay. So my top one who people rave about and are obsessed with, but I just don't understand the whole thing. Kate Bush. Okay. Who effectively generated her whole genre of her own really. And I'm not having a moan about her. I'm sure she's great and a wonderful, you know, but I just do not get the whole thing. I quite like some of

Kate Bush stuff. It is peculiar. Yeah. Like Pi, where she just sings the figures of Pi. Okay. But it's sort of, it's fun. I found it accessible because it made me kind of chuckle. Okay. But

then I started to appreciate it musically. Okay. Shall I give you my other three? Go ahead. Okay. So number two, people rave about this person and I kind of like them sometimes. Prince. Okay. Prince. I just don't get what all the fuss is about. A band that we mentioned earlier on who I just do not like them at all. The Smiths. Okay. It's just so fucking miserable. Okay. And if you're from a very small part of Manchester, yeah, you might be really into them or in Salford, I guess. But I just know it just all, every bloody song sounds the same. Same with Morrissey himself. It's just all sounds the same. It's just, you know, one or two songs fine. And then probably the fourth one, Barbara Streisand, who I think you also mentioned. Yeah. Yeah. Like I was saying to my wife, what is it about Barbara Streisand? Why has she acknowledged this as musical genius? And you know, and her voice, I just know. It baffles me. Yeah.

Barbara Streisand, I don't, I mean, yeah, because I'm not criticising her because she's a good singer. I mean, she's great. She's a very good musician. I don't get the devotion. It's the disparity between the apparent, like we're supposed to regard her as some kind of goddess. She's just an okay singer. Like, yeah, calm down guys. So those are my four.

What was the first one I said? Kate Bush. She's probably by far and away out of all of them. I just do not get it. Yeah. Guys, what about you? Sorry, Peter. Well, I, Beatles. Oh God. What?

One or two good songs. No. I think the fact that Peter isn't, I'm not a musician. No. So you do play the clarinet, but I, but anyway, I'll defend them in a minute. Yeah. Morrissey.

Right. Yeah. So you mentioned Morris, but lighten up. Right. And yeah. And Elvis Presley. So again, one or two good songs, but don't get it as a thing. I certainly don't get all the tribute acts and the kind of mass pseudo religious following that he has. I nearly cried at his grave yard, at his grave side. Grave side. Thank you. Yeah. Right. I'm struggling to find a fourth. Oh no, no. I was just looking for one to be honest. Yeah. So those, those, those sort of three there and there. Yeah. Everyone raves about them, but just. Yeah. They leave you cold. I mean, I, I'm not a huge music listener really. I wanted to be when I was a teenager because everybody else also wanted to be, but never really got it. Okay.

Like music, but yeah. Okay. Good. Yeah. Nick. I'll just put in a word for the Beatles because I think in some way that they're, they're slightly obviously cursed by their, by their popularity and by their, by how good they were at producing really, really listenable to songs, which could make the casual listener think that they were just a good pop act. Right. And it masks the fact that they were completely revolutionary in terms of what they did, like from a musical point of view, the structure of their song, this is the indicator, right? There's almost any pop act. I can play by ear on the piano, the Beatles. You can't, right. You get, they just so easy to listen to that. You might think, well, this is, this is going to be easy to just sort of improvise along to this. And it's impossible with the beats. You have to stop and work out where all the chords are going because it's, you know, they're so well they're, they're just really, really interesting, you know, in terms of the kinds of things that you don't even notice. So like the shift in, there's a one tone shift in between the verse and the chorus on Penny Lane, for example, which is completely invisible until you're playing along to it and suddenly you're out of key that they are absolutely brilliant and they absolutely deserve to be considered the most important pop band of all time. But yeah, I mean, in terms of people I don't really get are, there's a whole swathe of people from the sort of late eighties, early nineties, and actually sort of mid to early eighties, who are certainly my generation are supposed to be the things that you're really into. Top of them, Stone Roses. I just don't get it at all. They do nothing for me at all. It's just like listening to a dreary drone. There's one amazing song they did apart from that. And then we've got Blue Monday and then we've also got Jeff Buckley. I don't, I love Tim Buckley. I love his dad, but he was the guy who did, I think Jeff Buckley did. He was with the, was it the, the Bad Seat? No. I can't remember. Okay. I don't know enough about it, but then there's Joy Division as well. Now I love that one song Love Will Tear Us Apart, but I've got, I've got a box set of Joy Division and, and I discovered having listened to nearly all of it, just didn't like nearly any of it, but I could do recognize why people love them. And the other major genre, and a lot of people I have a lot of respect for, told me how to get into it is hip hop. I mean, I, and you know, I've been given seminal hip hop albums by people who are, I know are, you know, have musically respectable opinions and I've tried, I've really tried and I just cannot get, it just does nothing for me whatsoever. I don't understand it at all. So yeah, that,

there you go. Okay. I think, yeah, I think hip hop lost its way. I like, I mean, I, I kind of like

old school hip hop back in the day. So Jurassic Five, The Furious Five, DJ Melly Mel, African Mambata and Tribe Called Queso were the early nineties. Yeah. That's sort of NWA kind of era.

Yeah. And Jurassic Five would be a seminal album for me. So, but yeah, I just, yeah, kind of the more serious end stuff. Yeah. Not, I don't like it. Interesting. Our polls to any hip hop fans out

there. Yeah. Okay. Educators, let us know. Yeah. Okay. We'll, we'll finish there. Thank you as always for listening to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast. I'm Fraser McGruer and we've been here with Nick Hare and Peter Coghill of Aleph Insights. Until next time. Goodbye.