Rock Me Epidermis!

As magnificent as it is, our body deceives us all the time.

But we also ignore it when we should listen to it.

And even taking a brief look into how our bodies are designed can make this strange psycho-physiological relationship we have with our bodies even more confusing.

And when you factor live music into the whole equation it can be downright disorienting.

I’ll admit I’ve had concert burnout several times, but I’ve been wondering: what is concert burnout and why does it happen?

We don’t have the time or space to tackle the depth of these questions all at once, so I’ll keep it simple (and surface) for now, and question how our skin can take a beating and contribute to concert burnout.

As the largest organ of the body our skin keeps out germs, regulates temperature and makes sure we can communicate pleasure when we need to.

When I asked Andrew about his 20 shows in 20 days experience and whether or not he experienced burnout during his adventure, he said he did.

Ever since my conversation with Andrew I’ve been thinking about how our bodies deal with live music, then I remembered a very important fact about our skin’s recovery process and discovered some current experiments scientists are doing with our skin.

Our skin reproduces itself every 30 days or so, and in 2006, Sony filed a patent headphones to use our skin’s resonating and electronic surging ability to make cool new wireless headphones.

Knowing that it makes sense why Andrew and other fan’s I’ve spoken might have experienced burnout when they’re loading up on shows in a short amount of time.

Live concerts are dichotomies of pain and pleasure. We pine after the ear splitting fuzz of amplified guitars and chest-thumping bass not caring about what the negative effects of those experiences might have on our bodies.

I know, I’ve been there many times, and I’ll do it many times again…

The pleasure of the moment supersedes the possibility of painful consequences or even loss of those joyful sensations in the future.

So if our skin needs a full 30 days to recover and we see, say, 5-10 shows a month, then our skin (and all the pleasure beating it ensues) doesn’t have the time to absorb or shed the beating we give it.

I’m not saying we should cut back on our concertgoing and see the nearest dermatologist. All I’m saying is that when it comes to concert burnout, we really have a lot to learn about our bodies.

And that’s just the music side of it. Most fans subject their bodies to other substances during concerts which weaken the skin’s recovery and defense. We might have tons of pleasure but, oh boy, will we pay for it.

I know earplugs are important but do we need to also start wearing full-body sheathes to concerts to protect our bodies from the pleasure of good vibrations and thundering bliss? And according to this MSNBC article we should be due to create new human skin for those us that need to recover from concert burnout faster.

And what about artists who are on the road for months at time? Are they just rocking their skin to a bloody pulp and speeding up the ageing process just for the sake of our entertainment?