Tag: Music

By on 2 Comments

When it comes to music, what catches my attention are the lyrics. One of my favorite songs, based on mostly on the lyrics, is “A Pain That I am Used to” by Depeche Mode. I prefer the Jacques Lu Cont remix to the Depeche Mode’s own version. The Lu Cont version has a bit more energy and the opening bit is much more listenable than Depeche Mode’s original version which I found grating.

But what really attracted me to the song was the line: “Give me a pain that I am used to.” This short sentence, more than any other, better expresses what modern life is all about for me. Everything we are grabbing for ultimately brings pain. All we are doing is exchanging one pain for another one so if pain is the result — just give me one that I am used to and be done with it.

By on

OK I am going to admit something about myself that I really really find embarrassing. The problem is it is what was rumbling through my head when I heard Peter Frampton’s Show Me The Way the other night. So, here goes, I can be a bit of a snob sometimes particularly about popular culture. To give you a good example of how this snobbery sometimes makes me behave, I have never seen the first three Star War movies. That is correct. I haven’t seen the Star War movies that almost everyone agrees are the best ones because someone had the audacity to recommend this popular entertainment to me. TO ME. That last vestige of advant-garde art and foreign films, depressing movies, John Cassavetes movies, that’s the movies I watch, not this nonsense that the hoi polloi watches. The nerve.

Which somehow brings me to Peter Frampton’s Show Me The Way. It is one of my guilty pleasures. I have to be in a mood before I deign listen to it but it generally does the trick for me. I particularly enjoy the live version which I linked to above. And I do not have a reasonable explanation for it. Frampton is a good guitarist who sings well and with a lot of energy but the song has pretty trite lyrics accompanied by pretty pedestrian music. So pretty much like most of the entertainment I encounter.

The lesson for me here is that is all I really should expect. A bit of pleasure. And if later I decide that it was a groundbreaking, earth shattering, inspiring piece of art all the better.

By on

“Architect” from Frighten Rabbit and Manchester Orchestra is my favorite depressing song right now. You know the song. The one you play when you are feeling blue and listening to this song connects somehow with your sadness and maybe if you play it, your sadness will quickly be purged and you get back to normal. And it usually does the trick better than a therapy session with a psychiatrist. You know the song. Well, this is my quick fix depressing song right now.

By on

I have already expressed my shock in seeing Kanye West’s wife near naked body at the Grammys. The bigger problem with Bianca Censori’s display of flesh is the attention it is grabbing from a compliant press. Since people are shocked, they are talking about it. I, writing about it now, am part of the problem. I apologize. It is just too big of a juicy target to ignore and I can’t help myself which is also part of the problem.

It is a self-replicating problem. Famous people know that they will get press if they do something shocking. The papers, because they think people will read it, publish the scandalous story. I, because it is a scandalous story, read it. Once the scandal has drained every bit of media attention, a new attention seeking celebrity enters the fray.

First, and most importantly, it is about absolutely nothing other than Kanye West’s need for publicity. He knows how to create controversy and he did it. But what now, other than a few more days of Kanye making the headlines, is this about?

This trivial event, also, reveals how sadly out of touch Hollywood and the Media is with the rest of the country. It’s both titillating and boring. Kanye has become so lame, so desperate for attention that he will ask his wife to expose herself in front of millions. The media will roll out all the really important people to talk about the controversy. Opinions will churn for days to come but nobody outside the environs of Hollywood much cares.

But West, Hollywood and the Media think we do. This has long been an explanation for the sensationalist press. It isn’t our fault. We are giving the public what they want. They want to see people behaving badly so we, wishing we could report on the serious issues of the day but also needing to make money, will report about it. We aren’t the villain here, the public is.

I am not sure what to do here. I understand. If perusing the headlines and you give me a choice about reading about the problems in the Middle East or a naked celebrity, I’m afraid I am going to choose the naked celebrity every single time. Between my need to be entertained and the media’s need to make money, I am stumped on how to proceed.

By on

The other day I posted a blog about Roger Kimball’s “What the Right Gets Wrong About Art. For some reason, I was having a difficult time finishing the post. Every time I worked on this post I found myself trying to cover too much ground and I was having trouble connecting all that I wanted to say. At the time, I decided to post what I had (see here) and return to the part I was having trouble with.

Kimball’s larger point was that because the Right abandoned culture, the Left took over and this was why Art is all crap now. You know the sad old song — things used to be better in the good old days. Within this criticism, he referred to a troubling quote about race from the Australian Philosopher David Stove. David Stove writes:

Western Europe found that its anti-academy had become its academy ‘even in the twinkling of an eye.’ The galleries were suddenly full of the art of African societies formerly the most despised. Victorian architecture was all at once the object of a universal detestation, or rather horror. Black music began its long and excruciating revenge on the white man. The Jazz Age, in short, had arrived.

Kimball is being provocative without context. What does this mean in Kimball’s larger argumen? He fails to incorporates what Stove is saying into his argument. So it lies there like a big old sore that everybody can see but everyone is too polite to talk about. There is clearly a racist wack here at African Art and Black Music.

Maybe Kimball thought his readers should be able to connect the dots without his help but I fear then that I am being dragged into an argument of my making and not Kimball’s. Ignoring it however is allowing such a comment to go unchallenged. It’s like letting old people get away with using the N Word. They are too old to change and you want to keep the old fellow calm in case you cause a heart attack. This maybe true but then Grandpa gets the idea that he can spew his racist’s thinking with impunity.

The question, I have, is does he agree with Stove? If African art was previously despised why was it despised and what is his opinion on it. Even if he is talking about primitive art, which isn’t clear at all, what does this art have to do with the Left or Right wing. If the art predates the present political divisions, how can the Right abandoning culture have anything to do with the Art these people produced. Also, if the primitive nature of the art is setting him off, how does he feel about the art of early homo sapiens drawn in the caves. It is hardly beautiful by present standards, but it is definitely art. Why is Jazz (or as Stove puts it black music) the revenge of the black man on the white man? These are volatile statements that require more explanation. Kimball just drops it in and never mentions it again. I can only, then, assume that he agrees with Stove’s racist sentiments.

The real problem here is the limits of Kimball’s definition of art — it has to have a universal agreement about beauty. Everyone, everywhere has to agree that it is beautiful. Which is an impossible standard. Why not just good (art I like) and bad (art I don’t like). Kimball admits that most art is bad art. If he would have left it at that, I could have gotten on board with him. A lot of modern is crap but then there are very few pieces of great. Which makes sense. This is the whole reason critics point out what they think is good. They are trying to differentiate it from the every day piece of art.

I am not sure why he abandons the bad art/good art distinction for art has to be beautiful. He has a political agenda here that is blinding him to this much easier standard. But he hates the art he sees as Left Wing statements that he will not even dignify it with the art designation. Then he adds barely formed racial animus to his equation that leaves me wondering — what is really upset about.

Kimball seems to harken back to the days when art was the Sistine Chapel and Shakespeare. An Art that had very limited reach until the 20th century. Confined to the elites of Europe and North America, Art was strictly defined by this class because they were the only ones who really knew anything about art. But regular people all over the globe had very little contact. The technological advances of the 20th century brought art to an enormous number of people. Unfortunately for Kimball and company, their reaction to this was different than these elites had hoped. Instead of wanting to perpetuate these old ideas of art, they used them as a stepping stone for something completely new.

It is perfectly fine not to like it but to say it doesn’t even pass the muster of art is ridiculous. Who gave you the deciding vote? The better approach would be for the Right to start creating Art that the world might want to see. No one is stopping them. Why isn’t it happening instead of whining about what gets passed off as art these days.

By on

When I listen to a song, I create a movie about the song. The song creates images when I listen to it and these images carry on through out the song. Once I have these images, my tendency is to have the same images the next time I listen to the song. Different images may evolve over the years if I listen to a song for a long time but usually fixed images based on my first listening take over and see the same images.

Recently this has become a problem as I am learning that my understanding of words can be wrong. Last year I learned that I misunderstood a line from Joni Mitchell’s song California. I thought Sunset Pig was an animal unique to California. She is actually using a term that people in the 1960’s used when referring to cops.

For almost 40 years, I took a different meaning from the song which is OK. I mean it is the audience’s song once the singer stops singing. But learning this changed the meaning of the song for me and I can’t get back my original understanding. It is a less sweet image. Thinking about Joni trying to kiss a cute little pig who is trying to wiggle free of her embrace is kind of sweet while thinking of a policeman on Sunset Boulevard that she derogatorily calls a policeman isn’t. It doesn’t amuse me any longer. It changed my experience with the song.

This brings me to Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale. “ The song is an enigma and people debate what it actually means and often are wrong. Keith Reid, the writer of the song, wasn’t referring to Chaucer when he wrote the line about the Miller telling his tale even though most critics think that is what he is referring to. So trying to understand what the song actually means is probably a losing battle. It isn’t meant to be understood in a straight forward manner in the first place. Still, one line now bothers me because I realized something about the song writer. The line is:

And would not let her be/One of sixteen vestal virgins/Who were leaving for the coast

I have assumed for years that the coast meant California until I realized that Reid was British. Does “the coast” mean something different for somebody from Britain. I could only find definitions that meant California although one person defined “the coast” as the whole American Pacific Coast. But mostly when people use the phrase “the coast,” they meant California.

As far as I could learn, British people mean California as well. But it has begun to bother me because why would a British person getting on a plane and saying they were leaving for “the coast” mean California. California is pretty far away and “the coast” is pretty vague. I would think any British person leaving for California would actually say California.

But I do think it would be important to know what Reid actually means here because it changes my understanding of the song. If a British person is taking a plane to Blackpool instead of to California “the coast” means something different. For the time being, I am sticking with California unless someone can give me a reason to think differently. Let me know.

By on

Jann Wenner, publisher of Rolling Stone, just gave a master class on why diversity is important. He is hawking his book on the Masters of Rock and Roll — all who happen to be white men. Wenner, also, happens to be a white man and claims that Blacks and women don’t “articulate” at the same level. What this means, I haven’t the foggiest. But I am betting it is that he feels comfortable talking to them, they speak a common vernacular which he easily understands and thus is able to flesh out these ideas better when he writes. He also admits that perhaps he shouldn’t have used the word master because it sounds like he is limiting the illustrious designation of master to white men which wasn’t his intention. But he did, after all, choose the title and he now rightfully is defending the absence of a more diverse group of master musicians.

This is why diversity matters. People’s opinions about the world are influenced by where they live and who surrounds them. Since Blacks and women might articulate in a different way, people, like Jann Wenner, may not be as comfortable with their experience and what they are saying. In order to understand their experience and their influence on music, it might be helpful to sit down and have a chat with them in order to understand the music world. Wenner clearly has no interest in doing this and that is a big problem.

What is more alarming is that nobody tried to persuade him that excluding women and Blacks might be a bad idea. I am wondering who he worked with on this book and am surprised that nobody brought this omission to his attention. How could this book gone all the way to production and distribution without someone bringing this up is shocking to me. Maybe if someone would have brought this to his attention sooner, he might have had a better explanation ready when questioned about it. He is welcome to his opinion, but then so am I. As it is, he sounds like a racist sexist idiot. I hope I articulated that in a way that could be understood.

By on 2 Comments

I occasionally look for new music in Google with some key phrase like “Best Songs.” A list of songs will appear which I then listen to and buy. I thought I saw the song “Marie” by the Gleeman on one of these lists. Since I decided to write about “Marie” I tried to duplicate the search but I am somehow am unable to find it on any lists, so now I can’t really explain how I encountered Marie but I believe it was on somebody’s list of best songs.

The reason that I’m so interested in finding out how I found “Marie” is that it is not a song I would usually listen to. There are a lot of elements I don’t particularly like. The sentiment of being able to do anything you want is something I distrust and think is sometimes used destructively (see this post for more of my thoughts). The lyrics are a bit too saccharine for my taste. The singer’s voice is almost too overpoweringly good. I prefer, particularly in male singers, a more roughed voice, say like Tom Waits, then the Gleeman’s beautiful and perfect vocals.

Yet I find myself, after several listens, liking “Marie” so much that I keep repeating the song several times a day. The Gleeman sings with such vigor and excitement that I found myself enjoying it despite my reservations. I believe it will be one of the songs I will listen to so many times that I will become sick of it and stop listening to it for a long time and then rediscover it years down the road and fall in love with it all over again.All I can say is, right now, it made me feel really good for just a moment and, in the end, I think that is all you can really ask from a song. I know this is a terrible explanation because I can’t tell you why I like it, but I do like it and think that maybe some of you might find yourself in the same boat.

By on

I am late to Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers. Richman, the leader of the group has been around since the late 1960’s. He followed the siren call of the Velvet Underground and moved to New York, while still in high school, to be in a band. Which seems to confirm Brian Eno’s famous quote, “The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band”

I stumbled across Richman when I went searching for new music. When I am in the mood for new music, I usually go other people’s favorite songs list. These lists remind of a song or group I liked in the past and I can add it to my collection. These lists are surprisingly diverse as everyone and their brother can create them. This how I first encountered the Modern Lovers and Jonathan Richman. I was blown away. I couldn’t understand how I missed them in the 1970’s when I was really listening to music and going to concerts on a weekly basis. Though a little stunned that I have spent 40 years unaware of Richman, I am happy to say I found him now.

Below is a video of Roadrunner

Soon after learning about Roadrunner, I came upon another Richman song while watching the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. The song was I Was Dancing in the Lesbian Bar. At first, the song seemed a little silly but I liked it enough to investigate it further and I soon discovered that this was a Jonathan Richman song. What I like about this song is it is both fun and danceable.

So if you are ever gazing up at our house on Curlew Street and see an old man dancing wildly (or as wild as I can at this age) know that there is a good chance that Roadrunner or I Was Dancing at a Lesbian Bar is playing.