Comment by myself248
Years ago, I hatched a theory, that one of the reasons my generation gravitated to rock and roll as teenagers, is that the sound of a distorted guitar closely resembles the sound of an engine, and is thus a symbol of freedom, just like getting one's driver's license.
I shared this theory with my then-little-in-both-senses sister, who asked "what, exactly, is distortion, in a musical sense?"
I trotted to my bedroom and retrieved Pink Floyd's Pulse. I popped disc 1 into the living-room CD player, cued up track 9 (Sorrow), and turned it up. We potched out onto the floor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NO9Kp_Wn_2A
"Oh. Okay. Yeah, alright. I think I get it."
That's pretty much what futurist Luigi Russolo predicted back in the 1910's:
> This musical evolution is paralleled by the multipication of machines, which collaborate with man on every front. Not only in the roaring atmosphere of major cities, but in the country too, which until yesterday was totally silent, the machine today has created such a variety and rivalry of noises that pure sound, in its exiguity and monotony, no longer arouses any feeling.
> For many years Beethoven and Wagner shook our nerves and hearts. Now we are satiated and we find far more enjoyment in the combination of the noises of trams, backfiring motors, carriages and bawling crowds than in rehearsing, for example, the “Eroica” or the “Pastoral”.
Based on this idea it should be no surprise that, for example, heavy metal riffs were invented by a factory worker[2] or that the first techno music scene started in Detroit[3].
[1] Luigi Russolo. The Art of Noises: https://www.ubu.com/papers/russolo.html
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Iommi#Factory_accident
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_techno