It's the End of the Year As We Know It
Well, my friends, tomorrow’s the last day of the year and I think I would be remiss in not musing on something more important than “here’s some cool music.” For some reason, the last few days of the year are always pregnant with thoughts of a grander nature. We can talk about beginnings and endings or expectations, hopes, predictions…We can revisit memories of the past 365 or so days.
But you know, I’m always a little intrigued by how we all become philosophers around this time of year. Our walking-around lives are supplemented with
thoughts for a week or so. There is actually a ghost in the machine. Some of us go so far as to make a pact with ourselves to do or not do things for the next 365 days. I’m intrigued with all of this because when you
really get down to it, January 1 is just a day on the calendar. Of course, it’s the first day of a cycle. Duh, Mike. But what makes it any more special than, say, June 16? Why don’t people become pensive about their life circumstances and the world’s situation and decide to make changes in the middle of May?
Maybe we have this need for “tidiness.” You don’t start keeping score in the middle of a soccer game, or start reading a book in chapter 3, so why should our lives be any different? For some reason, we seem to like numerical wholeness and orderliness.
This concept of time is a funny thing. Look back on that post about Augustine if you don’t believe me. And how we measure it into days and weeks and months of past, present, and future is a complicated structure built on shaky ground. But I think we have a real need-deep, deep down in our collective unconscious, maybe, for that kind of mathematical symmetry. It only makes sense-“There’s a new number at the end of the year, better take advantage.” Something about that idea seems so right, but I obviously can’t quantify
why. And around New Years’ that deep-seated longing shakes hands with our more visible, knowable desires: to be prettier, healthier, friendlier, have it all together.
That’s a lot for a soul to deal with. Pretty heavy time of year, man.
For a long time I hated New Years Eve and I hated the whole concept of making resolutions and all this talk of beginnings and endings. “There’s too much pressure to make it an ‘unforgettable night,’” I would say, “and it never is an ‘unforgettable night.” “An Unforgettable Night” sounds like the tile of a Celine Dion live duets album. For a pessimist, stoic like myself, all of that is just a nightmare. I always liked the lyric “Nothing changes on New Year’s Day” by U2.
But I must say, since the new tradition of Sweater Party on New Year’s Eve has come along, I’m a little bit friendlier to the idea of observing the New Year. There is something about simply sharing the warmth of friendship with people just as goofy if not goofier, just as nerdy if not nerdier than you that…helps. And in this life, we need help.
And
why not on the exact instant that our days get a new number?
Dots and Loops
Now, my friends, I will tell you about another strange little band and album that I happened to discover while employed as a retail music jerk---the album
Dots and Loops by Stereolab. There was another manager I worked with at the time, named Matt. We got along fairly well, primarily because I tend to keep my mouth shut. Matt was a little bit of a “doom and gloom” kind of guy, going to school to teach history, and as far as I could tell, he didn’t really care for music a whole lot, (at least not as much as music-geek me.) Anyway, our store had received a promo copy of this Stereolab album, and for some reason, it was Manager Matt’s go-to disc for in-store play.
Well, I was hooked on their aesthetic from the very first time I heard it. The sound of this album was an anachronism. Here it was the late 90s and they sounded kind of like something Austin Powers might listen to. The first thing you notice is the female singers’ voices. A lot of times, they would sing in French and had a real smooth, laid-back sound of sixties bossa nova jazz singers like Astrud Gilberto. But that was just the beginning. The songs themselves sounded like 60’s pop creations, with lots of organs and horns and tambourine. But the coup of it all, for me, was the analog, moog-ish synth sounds creating blips and bloops that might be heard in some kinds of dance music. All of these novelties with catchy melodies…I was sold.
I think the cool thing about Stereolab’s music is that it is hipster music for two different eras: the indie rock literati of today and I think that if you sent this music in a time machine back to the early sixties, they would “dig that crazy sound,” too, (if only they could play Cds. But Stereolab strikes me as the kind of band that releases stuff on vinyl, though. So it’s possible, if NASA would get off their asses with the time machine technology.)
I still find a weird kind of comfort in knowing that I never paid for this great album. Since it was a promo, it was mine for the taking. So often, the promos you get at a music store are just awful, bland, middle-of-the-road bands that you’ve never heard of for good reason, with no discernable creative impulse. But this promo was a rare gem.
So, take this as a hot tip-if you haven’t heard Stereolab’s
Dots and Loops, I think you should. And I’m sure Jay can weigh-in with what his favorite Stereolab albums are, but I also like
Sound-Dust and their box set of b-sides called
Oscillons from the Anti-Sun.
Merry Christmas B-yotches!
God bless us, every one. (Even Mr. Scrooge.)
Time Out of Mind
The continuing saga of Retail Music Hell. In today’s installment, Bob Dylan nurses a broken heart.
I’ll let you in on a little secret. The two or so years I worked at Blockbuster/Wherehouse were the darkest, most lonely period in my life thus far. It wasn’t too long after I started there that my girlfriend of two years gave me the boot. She was my first girlfriend. But my life as I knew it was in upheaval in other ways. I had just quit music school, quit OU and was starting at a new school with the awful prospect of having to make new friends, (or make friends-period.) I had even lost contact with my best friend when I moved to Norman in the first place. And all that my new job provided was a new, unceasing stream of uncaring strangers every day. These were some pretty bleak, unhappy times.
There was no better time for Bob Dylan to create
Time Out of Mind. And I don’t think there was a better listener than myself. It was like it was made for me and me alone. It sounds like Dylan and a band of close friends in a dark room playing plugged-in, but at a low level. It’s an unpolished, organic sound: largely blues-based and his voice is perfect for the material. Make no mistake; I loved this album for the sparseness of the music itself. But looking back at the lyrics, I can pinpoint the lyrical ideas that were probably swirling around in my subconscious and providing such comfort. No album that I first heard back in those days takes me back like this one. You are about to see me quote a lot of lyrics here. Don’t get used to it. Like I’m always saying, words aren’t usually my bag, but here are some snippets to give you a feel for the kind of stuff that was nursing my psyche at the time:
Love Sick
“I’m walking through streets that are dead
Walking, walking with you in my head
My feet are so tired, my brain is so wired
And the clouds are weeping”
-and-
“I’m sick of love; I wish I’d never met you
I’m sick of love; I’m trying to forget you”
Standing In the Doorway Crying“Don't know if I saw you, if I would kiss you or kill you
It probably wouldn't matter to you anyhow
You left me standing in the doorway, crying
I got nothing to go back to now”
Million Miles“You took a part of me that I really miss
I keep asking myself how long can it go on like this”
Til I Fell in Love With You“Well my nerves are exploding and my body's tense
I feel like the whole world got me pinned up against the fence
I've been hit too hard; I've seen too much
Nothing can heal me now, but your touch
I don't know what I'm gonna do
I was all right 'til I fell in love with you
Well my house is on fire; burning to the sky
I thought it would rain but the clouds passed by
Now I feel like I'm coming to the end of my way
But I know God is my shield and he won't lead me astray
Still I don't know what I'm gonna do
I was all right 'til I fell in love with you”
Not Dark YetShadows are falling and I've been here all day
It's too hot to sleep time is running away
Feel like my soul has turned into steel
I've still got the scars that the sun didn't heal There's not even room enough to be anywhere
It's not dark yet, but it's getting there
Well my sense of humanity has gone down the drain
Behind every beautiful thing there's been some kind of pain
She wrote me a letter and she wrote it so kind
She put down in writing what was in her mind
I just don't see why I should even care
It's not dark yet, but it's getting there
Well, I've been to London and I've been to gay Paree
I've followed the river and I got to the sea
I've been down on the bottom of a world full of lies
I ain't looking for nothing in anyone's eyes
Sometimes my burden seems more than I can bear
It's not dark yet, but it's getting there
I was born here and I'll die here against my will
I know it looks like I'm moving, but I'm standing still
Every nerve in my body is so vacant and numb
I can't even remember what it was I came here to get away from
Don't even hear a murmur of a prayer
It's not dark yet, but it's getting there.
Can’t WaitSkies are grey, I'm looking for anything that will bring a happy glow
Night or day, it doesn't matter where I go anymore; I just go
If I ever saw you coming I don't know what I would do
I'd like to think I could control myself, but it isn't true
That's how it is when things disintegrate
And I don't know how much longer I can wait
Looking back, this was not art. This was therapy. All of that relationsip sorrow expressed with Dylan's raspy voice. To know that someone out there felt the same way, (or could at least sing like someone who felt the same way,) that was just so comforting. I still listen to this CD in the bad times and I highly recommend that you keep a copy of
Time Out of Mind on the shelf, like a bottle of pills.
Radiohead and the Escape from Retail Music Hell
All right, back to the talk of my musical development. I’ve already told you about the figureheads of my aesthetics-Zappa, Beatles, Reich, etc. I wanted to continue on and talk about my days as a working stiff in retail hell. You would think, working at a music store, you would constantly be inundated with interesting new music, kind of like in
High Fidelity. Well, somehow that never happened. Oh, I learned about a handful of artists from Manager Jay and some fellow employees, but the large majority of your time is spent looking for “that song on the radio,” the same old thing, for customers in a hurry. As you may have gathered, I kind of like discussing music and artists. Your average customer, not so much. And you also tend to get a very special insight into just how much consumer-driven anti-art is produced by corporate committee and shipped in box after box. (And yes, I realize that even the most “artistic,” challenging product is still a commodity.)
Be that as it may, there was an occasional cool musical development during my time in the retail music trenches and I still link those albums to the time I spent there in that store. One big album was Radiohead’s
OK Computer. I first heard this album while driving on a Spring Break road trip to Savannah, GA with my good friend Steve. I still remember quite distinctly the gray, cloudy weather as I first heard the moaning descending harmony lines as Thom Yorke sang “Rain down from a great height,” whatever the name of that song is. Numb from staring at the road in front of me for too long, this music was the perfect soundtrack.
There was always some new, interesting timbre coming to the foreground, a wobbly guitar sound or an echoey delay or an analog synth sound. And the harmonies were lush, never quite going where you expected. I think this music strikes a wonderful balance between epic aspirations, (songs with multiple contrasting parts) and rock n’ roll nastiness, (there are some killer distorted guitar parts all throughout the album.)
Some claim that this is some kind of futuristic concept album. I don’t know if I’d go that far, primarily because of the difficulty in interpreting Yorke’s ambiguous lyrics,) but I will say that it does take you on a ride. If you devote the forty-five minutes to an hour that it would take to listen to this album all the way through, (preferably with headphones like the real music geeks do,) you would feel like you had
gone somewhere. From the cutting guitar sound and distorted off-kilter drums that open “Airbag,” (still one of my favorite Radiohead songs,) to the sleepy, sunset song “The Tourist,” which ends the whole album with the unexpected sound of decaying tiny bells, (the first time the timbre is heard in the song,) this album is a diverse artistic statement and is definitely my favorite Radiohead album, (
The Bends would be a close second.) The production by Nigel Godrich, (who also engineered Beck’s
Sea Change), is wonderfully detailed, with all kinds of sweeteners and sounds you don’t typically hear in rock music, and certainly didn’t hear very often during that time: bells and pianos and spacey alien sounds.
It seemed that right after the release of this album, Radiohead were on the cover of every magazine that we sold in the store. And rightly so, if you ask me.
On Dogs, Robert Frost, and My Paternal Instinct
Speaking of dogs, today I have a special edition for you. What follows is a classic poem by Robert Frost, "Mending Wall,” and part of a dog-related response I wrote way back when I was in college living in my parents’ house.
Mending Wallby Robert Frost
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."
Like Frost, I too noticed that my back fence was disintegrating. However, the “something there is,” on which Frost blamed the disrepair of his fence is in my case the neighbor’s giant, poop-brown chow.
I suppose the dog had grown tired of regular store-bought dog food and decided to take it upon himself to supplement his diet with huge chunks of my wooden fence. However, this was not enough to provoke me to take “neighborly” action and repair the fence, (I found it sort of cute when he squeezed his whole head through the hole in the fence and looked around.) No, the final straw was when I looked out my back window to the sight of the big, dumb-looking thing running around my backyard, sniffing the butt of my pure and innocent yellow lab Molly. The initial shock of this horrific image soon gave way to a feeling of utter betrayal as I saw how happy my once-pure and angelic Molly seemed while cavorting around blissfully with this piece of trash outsider.
That, kind reader, was the last straw.
After chasing the transient canine across the tracks back to the bad side of town, his native turf, I became a character more appropriate for an Edgar Allan Poe story, rather than for a Frost poem. With frenzied, yet deliberate, movements and the occasional barely-audible, slightly-primal grunt, all the while muttering epithets such as “What’s the matter with you? Didn’t we raise you better than this,” I began to not only repair the fence, but to furiously build an impenetrable, fortress-like barrier out of some loose bricks that happened to be stacked on the side of the house. And as the battlement finally rose to a height I deemed absolutely unscalable by my Molly, who sat and calmly watched each brick go into place with a cocked-head and questioning expression, I thought back to Robert Frost and realized the dreams of “neighborliness” and “brotherhood” were gone.
Babies and Dogs
It seems that all of you, my friends, are out to destroy any manliness left within me. First of all, congratulations are in order for Anne and James Deaton, (OG Grandpa Griffith fans), on the birth of their baby boy, Philip Powell. Philip has already shown promise as a man of taste as he chose December 5th as his birthday. You might recognize that as the day of my own birth. Clearly, he is destined to do great things. Christmas came a little early for them.
Also, the world has gone dog crazy since last I wrote-Christina and Aaron and Jenn are all due congratulations on the acquisition of their new puppies. I have seen both Baxter and Riley, have judged their relative merits, and I can vouch for their cuteness and pronounce a tie as to which is the better breed.
However, you shall not break me. I will retain my concrete heart and abstain from bringing a four-legged, furry freeloader into my domain. I do enough shedding of my own, thank you very much.
The Second "Rejoice!"
Jason beat me to the punch in the comments box, but I promise I’m not copying him when I say that “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” is the other Christmas, (or technically “Advent,”) song that really grabs my ear and manly heart of concrete every year around this time. Here it is:
O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear.
Refrain
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.
O come, Thou Wisdom from on high,
Who orderest all things mightily;
To us the path of knowledge show,
And teach us in her ways to go.
O come, Thou Rod of Jesse,
freeThine own from Satan’s tyranny;
From depths of hell Thy people save,
And give them victory over the grave.
O come, Thou Day-spring, come and cheer
Our spirits by Thine advent here;
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
And death’s dark shadows put to flight.
O come, Thou Key of David, come,
And open wide our heavenly home;
Make safe the way that leads on high,
And close the path to misery.
O come, O come, great Lord of might,
Who to Thy tribes on Sinai’s height
In ancient times once gave the law
In cloud and majesty and awe.
O come, Thou Root of Jesse’s tree,
An ensign of Thy people be;
Before Thee rulers silent fall;
All peoples on Thy mercy call.
O come, Desire of nations, bind
In one the hearts of all mankind;
Bid Thou our sad divisions cease,
And be Thyself our King of Peace.
Like I was talking about with “O Holy Night,” I really dig the relationship between text and music in this song, particularly the first verse.
But let me start by saying that this song is a real underdog success story, musically speaking. If there were a Billboard chart for all-time Christmas music, this song should be right at the bottom if even on the chart at all. It’s just a simple song in two parts: a short verse and a short refrain. And have you ever noticed how “foreign” or “sad” the melody of this song sounds? That’s because it’s largely in a minor key, a rarity amongst “happy” Christmas music, but the tune of this song predates our system of major and minor.
I did some research and the tune is from the 15th century. (It had formerly been set as a funeral tune.) That would put it into the time when monks were singing chant in what have become known as the “church modes,” most of which are related to our minor scale of today. This is over 200 years before Bach and the beginning of the Common Practice Period. This music is positively ancient compared to the harmonic complexity of, I don’t know,
The Christmas Song? (“Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…”) and it sounds that way. How many other songs from the 15th century do you find yourself merrily whistling in the middle of the day?
But that’s a strange comfort to me, the idea that this little collection of notes has been floating around in the consciousness of the church for six hundred years now.
Ok, so now for the lyrics and their relationship with the music. Overall, this song creates the image of a suffering, expectant people yearning for deliverance. And once again, being the music guy that I am, and not so much a words guy, today it’s like I’m reading the second through eighth verses for the first time. But look at that first verse, it pretty much says everything that needs to be said. There is no better setting for this thought-“Come on God, we’re not doing so well down here,” than the simple, ritualistic-sounding minor-mode melody.
But oh, man! Then comes “Rejoice” and a major chord. The minor key moodiness is broken by something new. Nothing more appropriate than that.
But I’ve always thought that what followed that moment was kind of profound and perverse at the same time. The second “Rejoice!” falls back onto a minor chord and the melody falls back down to a lower note. Something is amiss there, but I’ll come back to it. But “Emmanuel” is back into major. (It’s interesting to me that the word “Emmanuel” is sung
melismatically, i.e. with more than one note per syllable, in both the verse and in the refrain.) And then, strangely, “Shall come to you, O Israel” is back in the original minor mode.
All of this stuff is interesting to me, but the second “Rejoice!” gets my mind and heart working every year as I wonder “why?” Why must the second “Rejoice!” break down? And why does the refrain have to return to the original minor mode? Of course, I’m speaking figuratively here. And you know, I haven’t got a good answer other than this musical moment really communicates the life of faith, as I know it. There are moments of hope and certainty of redemption and all that. But there are also moments where I am keenly aware of the drudgery of life and the presence of suffering in the lives of the people around me and across the globe and a real
need for salvation.
Hopefully, someone will some day re-set this text in a way that our “Rejoice!”es will be only followed by more major key “Rejoice!”es and thus “close the path to misery.”
O Holy Night
So, I was thinking about a post of the best lyric ever penned to try to appease you lyric-lovers out there and I’ll get to that discussion, but instead, I got to thinking about my favorite Christmas songs. Here’s one that’s right up there at the top:
O holy night!The stars are brightly shiningIt is the night of the dear Savior's birth!Long lay the world in sin and error piningTill he appear'd and the soul felt its worth.A thrill of hope the weary world rejoicesFor yonder breaks a new and glorious morn!Fall on your kneesOh hear the angel voicesOh night divineOh night when Christ was bornOh night divineOh night divineLed by the light of Faith serenely beamingWith glowing hearts by His cradle we standSo led by light of a star sweetly gleamingHere come the wise men from Orient landThe King of Kings lay thus in lowly mangerIn all our trials born to be our friend.Truly He taught us to love one anotherHis law is love and His gospel is peaceChains shall He break for the slave is our brotherAnd in His name all oppression shall ceaseSweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we,Let all within us praise His holy name.I don’t really care for most of the Christmas musical fare, (probably leftovers from my retail days), but let me try to elucidate what exactly I love so much about this song.
First of all, I like the dramatic word painting that’s going on in the first verse. Sing the melody to yourself and notice that the melody to the fourth line sounds like it’s just going to repeat the melody you’ve just heard in the first three lines, but BAM! Right there on the fifth line we get this minor chord we haven’t heard before. And I don’t think it’s an accident that the composer is setting the phrase “Till he APPEARED” with this new musical motion. And this “appearance” moves us forward from a world of sin and error, musically, as well as what the words are literally saying. And just the phrase “the soul felt its worth,” has kind of haunted me for years. I like that idea of a newly awakened soul---this mysterious, “no-one-knows-what-it-really-is-kind-of-amorphous-thing-that-we-kind-of-think-might-be-inside-of-us” feeling it’s own worth.
And then the “thrill of hope” is set to a new major-key melodic phrase we haven’t heard yet that brings with it even more motion and the perception of moving forward. It really is as if a weary world of minor chords is now rejoicing!
I can’t say anything about the “Fall on your knees” section other than that it’s obviously quite dramatic, musically going back to a minor chord. And it’s appropriate that the statements here are commands set to unresolved musical phrases until we get some resolution on the word “night.” And of course, everyone loves to hear the high notes that are really nicely built up by the end of this section.
Today, I’m reading the second and third verses for the first time and I think there’s some awesome stuff going on there too. First of all the author is comparing the star that the wise men saw to the “light of Faith,” and puts us right there where the poor shepherds would have been that night. And there is the mystery of all mysteries—a baby born in a barn, supposedly no better off than the bleary-eyed shepherds hanging out there, yet the story has it that this was none other than God drawing near “in all our trials born to be our friend.”
The third verse, I like the words themselves, (“Chains shall he break for the slave is our brother,” “Let all within us praise His holy name” this is good stuff!), but I can’t hear the great word painting relationship that’s going on in the first verse, (although I suppose a case could be made for the minor-chord emphasis that would happen on the word “name.”) But I can relate. It’s always harder to write second or third verses as good as your first verse!
Merry Christmas, b-yotches!
NOT the Saddest Thing I've Ever Seen
All right, I know yesterday’s post was a bummer. So, before I get called out as Mr. Doom and Gloom, let me say that I realize that life isn’t all sad. There are good moments too. In fact, it seems to me that life is constantly in flux between moments of hope, moments of despair, and moments of “normalcy,” for lack of a better term. (It’s kind of like how the church calendar has “ordinary” time.) And whether or not our time on the planet is measured out exactly in thirds amongst these categories is beyond me and probably largely subject to each person’s perspective, I guess. All that to say that I’ll balance yesterday’s bummer with something a little sweeter today.
There are times when you really feel “connected” with your fellow man/woah!man. Every now and then, there are moments when you really do feel like “no man is an island entire of itself,” as John Donne said, and strangers become fellow travelers. One time I was shopping at Mars Music on another rainy day and I noticed that big groups of store employees were heading out the front door. And so I couldn’t help but get caught up in the mass filing out and as I walked closer to the exit, I noticed a little huddle of customers and employees standing right outside the front door, looking up, eyes trained on the same thing in the sky: a double rainbow. If I remember right, it looked like a giant M. I guess God was saying that he doubly-promised not to flood the world again, if what my mom always told me about rainbows was true. Maybe God was saying, “No, seriously guys, I promise.”
But the natural phenomenon in the sky wasn’t half as interesting as what was all around me- a good nine or ten total strangers silently looking at the sky in wonder, totally quiet because the irregularity of it all was a given. No one dared ruin the moment with a sarcastic comment or a “well, how ‘bout that?” To me, it was a sacrosanct moment; a moment in which all strangers gathered there had the same fascination. Those moments are rare, my friends.
Would anyone else care to share a “saddest/happiest thing I’ve ever seen?”
The Saddest Thing I've Ever Seen
You may or may not know this. I used to work in a music store. During my time there, it changed from Blockbuster Music to Wherehouse Music. This was back in the days before MP3 meant anything. “MP3” might as well have been some kind of robot hieroglyphics. So, back in those days, people still left their homes to get new music. In my two or three years working retail, I came across all kinds of people: from thug-looking rap listeners who smelled like pot, to pedigreed guys in suits who smelled like deadly aftershave. And everything in between.
One time, one of the pedigreed richies came into the store in a big rush looking for
Mozart for Babies or something like that, so as to put a kid to sleep so he could make it with his old lady. I remember him because he offered to give me a $20 tip just for finding it. I didn’t think I was allowed to take tips, so I refused. “Just knowing that someone’s getting laid with my help is payment enough,” I would have said if I were quicker on my feet. Turns out, I
was allowed to take tips.
It may sound kind of
High Fidelity, but the customers who talked the most music were usually the ones with the most pedestrian tastes. “The new Celine Dion? Check the endcap with her giant face on it. The new Kenny G? Oh, so you’re a jazz fan?” Most of the real music fans just came in and didn’t want to be bothered.
Anyway, this post is about the saddest thing I’ve ever seen. It was a rainy Saturday night and Saturday nights were usually slow, as all of the people with friends were out having fun and all of the friendless people who weren’t too embarrassed of being friendless, would slowly trickle in and keep to themselves throughout the evening. Manager Jay, (the coolest boss I ever had), and I would always wind up working these quiet shifts together, playing CDs with no commercial potential for anyone but people like us.
I came back from rummaging around in the storage room to see Jay sort of staring off out the window as the one customer in the store flipped through CDs in the religious section, which was neither my nor Jay’s specialty. Looking at this customer was like looking at a ghost or skeleton or some hybrid of the two. He was skin and bones, more bones than skin, looked about 70 or so, with gray hair in patches on his head. He wore a plain white T-shirt and gray sweat-pants and he moved at approximately the pace of a glacier. “Just another Saturday night weirdo,” I probably thought to myself and began to go about my business, but Jay nodded his head and widened his eyes as if to say, “come here.”
I’ll never forget what he whispered at that moment-“That guy’s looking for music for his funeral.” Somehow, at that point, our time with this guy became holy. Oh, we didn’t really do anything different, but the time that passed as he was in the store seemed to be
heavier time. It’s kind of hard to describe.
I think I’ll forever be haunted by the image of that guy. He is an archetype of loneliness in my head: all alone except for two clerk-strangers in a quiet music store, the strange sound of rock n’ roll played at low volume, searching through wedding albums, old-time gospel music, and classical music for the soundtrack to his own funeral.
I hope that guy went to heaven.
The Last Word on Reich
Like I said yesterday, I’ve heard (and have a copy of) just about every Steve Reich piece that has been recorded. Here are some highlights for me.
Music for 18 Musicians is a good introduction to his extended works. There is so much going on in this piece on a technical level that I’ve kind of forgotten how to talk about it. But I do know that this piece was moving on from his “phasing” technique that I talked about yesterday with
Violin Phase, to a “note-for-rest substitution” technique, where he would gradually build up great little repeating motifs starting with one note, a technique he also employed in
Drumming, probably my favorite Reich work.
There’s a similar “building something out of nothing” approach to his piece
Four Organs. Just like its name implies, the instrumentation is four farfisa organs, (and a shaker), and there is only one harmony-one chord. And it all starts with small note values and by the end of the piece, all four organists are sustaining the chord for probably a minute or so. Obviously, this is music that requires a certain kind of patience and curiosity of the listener. (At its premier, I have read a story of one of the audience members running down to the front of the stage and yelling, “All right! I confess!”) But I just love the compositional idea behind it. And in his book, Reich says that he was very interested in an aesthetic in which the listener could hear the methods used in composition. Thus the term “process music” to describe this stuff. This idea would be pretty much directly contrasted with serialism, which is also composition with a mathematical process, such as taking a row of notes and playing it backwards against itself, but the listener is very rarely aware of the games that the composer is playing with the material.
Another cool “something out of nothing” piece of Reich’s is
Proverb, a choral work employing one line of text: “How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life,” an aphorism of Ludwig Wittgenstein. And indeed, the whole piece is filled with one small, minor-key melody stretched out and then sung in harmony with itself in all kinds of ways. Again, this is masterful genius in my book! The construction methods of the piece match the text that is being set!
One final compositional technique of Reich’s that I love is “speech-melody,” in which he would transcribe recording of people’s ordinary speech patterns into musical notes. And by interviewing people about a topic of interest or importance to him, he would have a wealth of potentially poignant statements to play against the resultant little interesting musical motifs. Two pieces that employ this technique beautifully are
Different Trains, (about the Holocaust) and
The Cave, (about Jewish-Muslim relations, as well as faith in general.)
There are a whole bunch of interesting pieces by Reich and these are just my personal highlights of what I’ve heard. I highly suggest you seek out some of this Reich stuff, my babies, but only if you want your minds to be blown.
If the Fates Allow
I was thinking of the word “perhaps” today while in the bathroom. While I was in there, I developed a theory about why “perhaps” is a dismissive, crude word that reveals an ugly world view and should not be used in polite conversation.
Here’s what I’ve got. My hunch is that “perhaps” is actually a shortened form of the phrase “per happenstance.” Over time, phrases get shortened when our lazy tongues assimilate them into something more……….palatable (?) Hmmmhah! For instance, back in Bill Shakespeare’s day, you would see the word “ ‘zounds” appear as a kind of expletive. This was a shortened version of the phrase “By His wounds,” referring to the wounds of Christ from the cross.
So, if “perhaps” really is a shortened form of “per happenstance,” like I think it might be, it’s not very polite. I did a little research today and “per” is directly from the Latin, meaning “through, by means of, or by.” As in “as per your request,” or “by means of your request, I have emailed this document to you.” And we all know that “happenstance” means “chance” or “luck,” or maybe even “fate.”
But to use this word implies a pretty annoying worldview in which we have very little control. (While it may be true that we have very little control over the events and circumstances of our lives, must we be constantly reminded of it? That’s kind of bleak and surely leads to a downward spiral of depression.) Let me give you some examples.
You: “Will you do me a favor and take out the trash?”
Me: “Oh,
perhaps.” (Literally, “Oh, maybe, if fate is on your side.”) What insolence!
You: “Do you want to go see
Walk the Line with me at the motion picture theater?
Me: “Oh,
perhaps.” (Literally, “Oh, if you’re lucky.”) How conceited!
You: “Would you like to spend the day with me?”
Me: “Oh,
perhaps.” (Literally, “if chance smiles upon you.”) How genuinely
evil and misanthropic to relinquish an act of love or friendship to the blind control of chance!
So, don’t be surprised if you hear me use the word “perhaps” less and less. It is a remnant of barbaric, undignified language and I will have none of it. I will be a man of certainty. I will let my yes be yes and my no be no.
On Steve Reich, My Most Recent Musical Love
All right, today I will discuss the last world-shattering musical artist I discovered-Steve Reich. I first got an earful of Reich’s music when I was in college on a CD set that accompanied the textbook for my music history class. The piece was called “Violin Phase,” and it was one of the most interesting things I’ve ever heard in my twenty-nine years. It was the sound of a single violin playing a two-bar phrase over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and, well, you get the idea. But over the course of the hundreds of repetitions, a second violin, (either recorded or live, couldn’t tell), played the same repeating phrase, but gradually became ever so slightly out of time. The second violin kept tweaking the time-relationship between the two parts until it was “locked-in” to the tempo of the first line, except now it was an eighth note behind. (I’m pretty sure this was the inspiration behind King Crimson’s “interlocking” guitar parts.) So, this process continued over hundreds of repetitions, the two parts clicking in and out of phase with each other. The result was the original line being harmonized with itself and then another violin would enter to reinforce the “resulting patterns” that developed as the second line clicked into being two notes behind, and then three, and then four, etc.
For some reason, I was stupefied at the sound of it all. “This is what genius
sounds like,” I thought to myself. Just when the line of music history after Schoenberg had looked like nothing new could possibly be done; this strange, beautiful music arrived. Reich’s music was an out and out reaction against Schoenbergian serialism-the process by which academic music became mathematical, cold, atonalism. Reich was part of an aesthetic called “minimalism,” or “process music,” and it was the
new avant-garde that appeared to supplant Schoenberg’s cronies.
I liked this music for several reasons: 1) It was tonal. I had heard all kinds of modern music that became increasingly hard on the ears. The dissolution of modern music in the early 1900’s made conservatory music less of a belle arte and more of a puzzle. But Reich’s music was a wonderful bridge. He was modern, (requiring lots of patience from his audience), yet his music also sounded pleasant, usually working in the major and minor modes. 2) This was music you could either
listen to and try to figure out what was going on, or you could ignore it like audio wallpaper. 3) I went on to hear just about everything he wrote and I learned that his music was often times very rhythmic, unlike the music of the total serialists, who left the determination of note values to mathematical processes. Reich’s primary instrument was percussion and he wrote for all kinds of drums and mallets, as well as the other usuals, like strings and brass and vocalists. 4) I also came to learn from reading that Reich was a very spiritual, philosophical guy, rediscovering his Jewish heritage well into his adulthood, after traveling the world and studying Indian drumming. And his Jewishness is easily found in the texts that he chose to score and his philosophical bent is also apparent in his works. There’s something I like about the idea of a cutting-edge, avant-garde artist also being a person of faith.
Anyway, like I said, Reich’s music was mind-blowing even on the first exposure, so I’m going to give this some more thought and recommend some individual pieces if you’ve never heard this stuff and are the kind that wants to have your mind…………blown.
King Crimson
I’ve only got two HUGE perspective-shifting musical influences left to discuss in my musical biography. If I remember correctly, last week I was up to Frank Zappa and his guiding me through my senior year of high school.
After high school, I went to the University of Oklahoma for a couple of years, and in between disappointing trumpet teachers, dodging frat boys and trying not to notice sorority girls my sophomore year, I made a pretty clean break with academic, classical music. Only rock n’ roll could affect my soul at that particular point. However, I fell under the influence of a very academic, technique-minded band: King Crimson.
Few, I mean
few, people probably draw much pleasure from listening to a “weird” band like King Crimson. But at most points, they furthered the lessons I learned from Zappa and the prog-rockers. There’s the same emphasis on “unnaturalness” and difficulty of musical execution as far as technique is concerned. Crimson has had several line-ups over its 30-plus year history, the only constant member over that whole span of time being Robert Fripp. And all of those line-ups have played pretty “out-there” music. “So, what do they sound like? Get to the point, Mike.”
Briefly, there are three main streams to their output. The first period of the late 60s was the closest they ever were to “prog-rock” a la Genesis, or Yes, or Emerson, Lake & Palmer, etc. Just like all of those bands, they liked epic statements of electronic oceans of mellotron sound and they had mysterious lyrics, similar to Yes, but a lot more easily comprehensible. They also had a propensity for gritty, medium-tempo, horn-led funk at the same time, which kind of set them apart from their pasty-white English brothers.
The second period, and probably my favorite that was represented on the album
The Concise King Crimson, was the line-up from the early 80s. This was music that, to me, had no reference points, something totally distinct. I learned later that they made three classic albums with this group:
Discipline, (which I consider to be the ultra-rare “perfect album”),
Beat, and
Three of a Perfect Pair. This was some of the most difficult “rock” music I ever heard. There were two guitarists who often played in an “interlocking” style with ultra-clean guitar sounds. It’s hard to describe in non-technical terms, but just imagine one guy playing a repeating figure of fast notes while the other guy plays the same figure but starting at a different point. The resulting sound is once again, “controlled chaos,” an idea I was fond of with Zappa. And add catchy vocal melodies on top of that? Man! I was totally sold. Unlike Zappa, though, this music was humorless and academic. This was serious art music. (Which is probably why it never really gained much popularity apart from geeky music-guys like me.)
And there were other things that I loved about this sound. Robert Fripp and Adrian Belew, the two guitarists, were very much experimental with the new technology of the time--namely, the guitar synthesizer, which allowed them to play otherworldly weedlies and skronking squeeches never before coaxed from a guitar and an amp. And then there was Adrian Belew’s distinctive, pleasantly nasal voice. Sometimes he sounded kind of like David Byrne from the Talking Heads, (with whom he played, as well as David Bowie and Zappa, the man himself.) But Belew had a way of committing to a beautiful, long melody in ways you rarely heard Byrne do.
Anyway, the 80s music was pretty far removed from “prog-rock.” This was “art-rock.” I see it as a matter of difference in structural inspiration. The prog-rock from the 60s and 70s was influenced by orchestral music of the Romantic period, (and sometimes, the Classical period.) But this music’s structural inspiration was from the 60s and 70s avant-garde minimalist movement, (which I plan to dive into soon, my friends.) Of course, I didn’t really know all of that at the time. I just thought that this was music unlike any I had ever heard.
The third stream of their music is similar to that of the 80s and, I think, stretches into the current line-up. They had a brief stint as a double-trio (2 drummers, 2 basses, 2 guitarists) in the 90s and still have the insanely complicated “interlocking” guitars and odd meters, but with more power and distorted guitars, a la Tool.
Since they are such phenomenal musicians, King Crimson’s members have played on a lot of other people’s projects and would be great for playing a musical Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game. For instance, just off the top of my head, Belew has been a session musician for the likes of Nine Inch Nails, Paul Simon, Tori Amos and produced the Jars of Clay song “Flood.” Robert Fripp played with David Bowie and Brian Eno. Bass player Tony Levin has played consistently with Peter Gabriel and I just found out he played some on the great Dire Straits album
Brothers in Arms. And drummer Bill Bruford was the original drummer for Yes.
All of this to say that King Crimson looms very large in the music appreciation class in my head. They are one of my top two or three favorite bands.
Only in Dreams
So, the more I think about it, the more I wonder. What exactly are dreams? My gut tells me that it’s just your mind re-shuffling all of the memory-containing brain-juice, kind of like those little water-filled plastic games that you used to push the buttons on and make fish swim and then shake up to start over. In my mind’s eye, your brain is kind of “reset” every night like a snow globe, but sometimes one of the little guys up there forgets to tie off the line of communication that connects all of those reshuffling images to your awareness. And so, what should be a behind-the-scenes process becomes a strange Dadaist play performed in the theater of your skull.
But what business does my brain have with images like I discussed in that last post? I’ve been in a grand total of two actual plays in my life and neither was within the last fifteen years. And never was I scrambling around backstage, looking desperately for a script. So, where is my brain getting all of these ideas? They’re not memories of anything existing in reality or anything that once existed. Maybe my unconscious is a lot more creative than I ever knew.
And how did “wishes” and “hopes” ever get mixed up with “dreams?” Some person might say, “my dream is to be an architect,” or “my dream is to get paid to lay on the beach.” Did these scenarios ever actually play themselves out while they slumbered? Man, I know that my “hopes” and “wishes” are usually the exact opposite of my dreams. I really would
never hope to live in the surrealistic, Picasso-world of my dreams: overflowing urinals because I can’t stop peeing, or trying to fight somebody but my punches move in slow-motion as if I was underwater, or running away from giant rabbits on a military-fortified island. No, I’ll take my waking, walking-around world any day, thank you very much.
Somebody once said, “All men are great in their dreams.” My response to that? “Enh. Not so much.”
