The AC/DC formula

[terminal3]

So, apparently, the success of AC/DC is inversely proportionate to the well-being of the UK economy.

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/sto...2-2902,00.html

Fantastic! Remind me not to buy Black Ice in the hopes that my lack of interest will contribute to an upswing in the state of things here!

[modz1]

Was Petridis clicking his heels that day wondering what would fill his 'per word' quota for the week...

[saxman]

Originally Posted by modz1

Was Petridis clicking his heels that day wondering what would fill his 'per word' quota for the week...

I read the Petridis article as something possibly having a small grain of truth but nothing new and an idea which is a poor imitation of the Bob Prechter Socionomics theory. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socionomics

In 1979, Prechter postulated that social mood drives financial, macroeconomic and political behavior, in contrast to the conventional notion that such events drive social mood. His description of social mood as the driver of cultural trends reached a national audience in a 1985 cover article in Barron's. Prechter coined the term "socionomics" and in 1999 published an exposition of socionomic theory, The Wave Principle of Human Social Behavior.

Since then, the counter-intuitive premise of the socionomic hypothesis -- that in contexts of uncertainty, endogenous processes (not exogenous causes) create patterns of social behavior -- has gained attention in academic journals, books, the popular press, at academic conferences and in research funded by the National Science Foundation.

The AC/DC sales story fits loosely in to the Socionomics theory but to single it out in the way the Petridis article did is in my view mostly nonsense. Taking the Prechter view we might assume that as social mood darkens so does the social taste for "dark music" ( and this indeed is something Prechter has written ). I therefore find the following to be quite amateur in the extreme;

Alexis Petridis surmises that in tough economic times people seek out culture that is uncomplicated and dependable, "and rock music has never produced a band so uncomplicated and dependable as AC/DC"