Whatcha' Listenin' To?
Lots and lots of new things entering my ears, being digested by my noggin and defecated with pen as of late.
Rolling Stones
Beggars BanquetThis is one of those “Best of All Time” albums. It’s got two hits on it: “Sympathy for the Devil” and “Street Fighting Man” and an awful lot of sloppy acoustic-ness. I’ve talked about the “Beatles vs. Rolling Stones” thing to death so I’m not going there.
I can understand why this album has such a high reputation. Some albums seem to just capture a “vibe.” You hear a group of songs and they all just seem to “fit.” This would be that kind of collection. Now I’m not saying I’m crazy about this music. But I think I at least “get it.”
***Something is happening to me, dear readers. I’m feeling a need to use quotation marks a lot these days to hide vague language. This is a most unwelcome trend. Or “is it?”***Michael Jackson
ThrillerThis one also shows up on “Best of All Time” lists, and for good reason. It is as if these songs were the audio equivalent to Ivan Drago in Rocky IV, but instead of being a fighting machine they are genetically-engineered to either make you want to dance, make love to that special someone or at least have songs stuck in your head. This is music for the masses but I am totally in awe of the sheen of the production values. It’s obvious that these songs didn’t start out as much, maybe a melody and an idea of a drumbeat, but it’s what Michael, and probably more importantly, what Quincy Jones did with those fundamental elements that make for intriguing listening.
I will admit it right now. “The Girl is Mine,” with Paul McCartney makes me feel warm all over. I’m the one. I’m the one guy who will dare to say that. It’s all right for the SUV-driving, radio-listening soccer-moms who don’t really obsess over music to say that, but surely not me--Mr. Music Head analyst? But oh, well. It’s out there.
And for the record, listen to the details of “Human Nature,” the delay on the guitar, that cascading vocal line on the choruses and tell me that is not the example of 80’s production gone right.
I have gone all these almost thirty-one years without realizing what the song “Billie Jean” is about. Turns out it’s the story of a guy accused of being a father. Duh! I always thought it was just overplayed commercial tripe. But then I listened to it. Once you do that it’s all over. It’s infectious. Now I hear what the big deal is. Sexy, sexy song.
Funny that I didn’t get as excited about my hero Eddie Van Halen playing the solo to “Beat It” when I was a kid. Of course, it wasn’t until several years later that I found out that the most awesome guitar player in the world took time out from playing in the most awesome rock band in the world to play on some weird rap guys’ song. Awesome!
Randy Newman
Best OfHe’s known most recently for expressing the theme of animated films, (listen to “You’ve Got a Friend in Me”), but this guy has been pretty caustic in the past. Listen to “Rednecks,” “Political Science” or “It’s Money That I Love.” I’ve also got a theory that the intro to “I Love L.A.” is a response to Billy Joel’s “New York State of Mind.”
I’ve heard a few other songs of his and I gotta say--something about the way this guy strings words together makes my ears perk up.
Sugarloaf
Best OfThere is one really outstanding reason to listen to this record. It is the album version of “Green-Eyed Lady,” which is about twice the length of the radio single and has all manner of weird instrumental sounds that complement an already psychedelic song. The rest of the songs pale in comparison, being largely unremarkable but I will say there is some fine Hammond organ work scattered throughout this collection.
I think that should suffice for now. I’m reading a challenging book that I’ll write about in a little bit…
A Befuddling Book
I have not done this in a long time: I’m giving up on a book!
I am on page 412 of Douglas Hofstadter’s
Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, a little over halfway through, and it has been the most maddeningly scattershot yet pedantic thing I’ve ever tried to read.
I surrender.
A man’s gotta know his limitations, right?
I’ve never liked math. This guy talks about math like it’s the secret language of the universe, when we all know that the love languages are the secret language of the universe. Of course I’m kidding about that last remark, but I understand most of what he’s saying about “strange loops.” I was intrigued my metatext when I was in college, (such as when a story has a “story within a story” or when the hand of the author is present, speaking directly to the reader.) I just explained in twenty-five words what Hofstadter takes chapter upon chapter of mathematical proofs, symbolic language, computer programming code and goofy “dialogues” to NOT say.
This book is just too ambitious for its own good. It’s way too easy to get lost in the details and lose sight of the overall purpose, (which, alas, I’ll never know.) It would have been fine at half the length and his stunt music theory and discussions of Bach’s music would have been better served in a separate book. Bach and theory are both usually interesting to me, however, Hofstadter somehow managed to make me hate both by removing the passion, the human-ness of Bach’s music by exploiting the more mathematical elements of a few works. While fugues and canons are fun and interesting to look at on paper and usually provide an enjoyable
listening experience, (the concept of which Hofstadter seems oblivious at least in the half of the book I read), I don’t think I would label them as meta- or recursive as Hofstadter does. The truly mathematical composers like Schoenberg with his tone rows would have been much better served by this kind of analysis.
The most inadvertently humorous assertion of the book? The music of J.S. Bach would be better understood by an alien race than that of John Cage.
So I now move to re-read Kerouac’s
On the Road.
It Was For Yoga
You know how there are moments in your life when “it all hits you?” I know that’s vague. How about “moments of sublime transcendence?” Whatever you want to call it, I had one yesterday morning.
I’ve been trying out
fitpod podcasts on a friends’ recommendation. It’s basically music to accompany your workout. I’ve been jogging at the park for quite a while now and I thought the tune called “Whispers of the Dharma” sounded intriguing. It turned out to be music for yoga--new-agey and sparse. Not the kind of thing you typically associate with a good jog. I decided to go with it anyway. I’m not the kind who typically associates.
As some of you might recall, yesterday was a pretty cold morning, in the low 30s and as this minimal music played I looked out across a vast white field of virgin snow, the sun slowly coming behind the trees on the other end of the park, casting shadows…no one else crazy enough to be up and at the park that early on a cold morning, except for a handful of geese standing around waiting for something to happen.
That was one of those rare moments, when you think “Wow,
this is my life!”
Indian Music at the Library
One of the things I was committed to discussing from the outset of this blog was the shift in perspective that occurs whenever you engage a new aesthetic. It turns out that I want to be the kind of person who doesn’t mind a little bit of flux in life. I want to be unbothered by the presence of change in beliefs, attitudes, passions, etc. Whether or not I’ve kept to that original writing goal over the last couple years is questionable. But today I’m definitely writing on message…
It’s been a while since Dr. Stephenson’s introductory music theory classes, so I’m not exactly sure, but I think it was Aaron Copland who talked about comparing totally new music to our ears to the collection of music already in our head. Regardless, last night I experienced music that was about 98% new to me.
I went to hear a lecture/ concert at the library by two Indian classical musicians- Brij Narayan on an instrument called the sarod and Abhijit Banerjee on the tabla. They played and talked for an hour and I was amazed that the whole time, Mr. Copland was right. I was totally aware of my thoughts racing, trying to find analogues to the types of music with which I am already familiar. What a thrill is for me to hear something so foreign, for lack of a better word.
Folks, I’ve listened to a lot of music in my life. But it’s humbling when I come across this new world that has been hidden up until now for a variety of reasons. Mr. Narayan just skimmed over the basics of ragas, (which I believe is close to a combination of “song” and "key" for us Westerners), and how they are typically performed and I quickly came to realize that there is a whole system to how this music is performed, the bulk of which I can’t hear. Yet.
But the really intriguing thing to me is that these principles and even the tunes themselves are all transmitted in a mentorship method. That’s right- a completely oral tradition, since they never developed a notational method. It’s funny that the Indian classical music has so much in common with Westerners’ popular music.
Mr. Narayan made a point to distinguish between improvisation and “elaboration,” which I didn’t totally understand unless he was making the same distinction that exists between “jazz” and “free jazz.”
I was also interested in his answer to my question about whether they make this music in larger groups, (the idea of which fascinates me for two reasons: 1) the sound of the sarod and tabla together sounds “complete,” probably because once the tabla enters, it is very busy, not just providing a backbeat as we Westerners tend to think of the role of percussion in a small group and 2) there are a lot of droning strings that accompany the “elaborated melodies,” both on the sarod itself and the tanpura, the droning instrument that sounded like it was playing itself. I imagine the sound of more than one gets muddy fairly quickly.) Which Mr. Narayan answered exactly as I expected him to and betrayed the commonality between why our two cultures make music, philosophically speaking…harmony. He kind of jokingly equated adding more musicians to being a fight-- finding how to support other musicians, not overpower, but participate in a give and take to create something better than just the sum of its parts.
Playing with other people is a whole other musical art in itself and is why I’ve always felt sorry for performers who, for instance, play live with back-up tracks or a drum machine, etc. For whatever reason, they can’t or won’t rely on other people. Instead of getting mixed up in the messiness of working and playing with other people they go it alone. That’s always made me feel uncomfortable to see that kind of sad situation in public.
I said earlier that this music was about 98% new to me. I had heard George Harrison’s experiments with the sitar and Ravi Shankar, as well as some of John McLaughlin’s music with Shakti, but that was the full extent of my exposure to the Indian musical aesthetic. Not much.
Melodically, I heard what amounted to “Major and Minor Plus.” The sarod was uniquely developed so as to provide access to microtonal playing by sliding between notes, allowing the player to play all of the pitches between our Western half steps, which contributes to the “weirdness” to our ears. But every now and then I would hear a gesture or two that sounded pentatonic, as if that was Robert Johnson noodling around up there and not Brij Narayan.
It was a wonderfully interesting evening of music and ideas, unfortunately too short. Bit I am sure this is not the end of my exposure to Indian music.
Months of Johannes Braums, I mean Brahms
I am still in the throes of a library-induced musical overload and don’t really see any end in sight. But that’s how I like it. Let me tell you about one hurdle cleared in my musical education.
This week I’ve listened to the last of the music that the
MLS had by Johannes Brahms. He’s one of the major composers so there were quite a few CDs, 16 to be exact. Over the last two or three months, I’ve been on a steady diet of his chamber and vocal works. And I gotta say that overall I am underwhelmed by this supposed titan of classical music. Granted, I’ve become bored with a lot of this kind of common practice music anyway since my introduction to more modern ideas of tonality and compositional methods, but I don’t really hear what exactly places him in the company of your other famous Germans like Bach and Beethoven, (other than the initial B of his last name.) What a shame Mozart had to be born into the family he was, rather than the Bozart family down the street. But he’s done pretty well for himself on the fame front too.
With Brahms, you get the most conservative sounding guy writing in the Romantic era. He still likes his formal precedents, as well as the idea of “music-for-music’s-sake,” unlike his program-obsessed descendents. (However, I must say that I was surprised by the odd four movement concerto every now and then.) So, of all of the Brahms I’ve heard, what has stuck with me? The recordings of the Violin Concerto, performed by Jascha Heifetz and Itzhak Perlman were both pretty impressive in a “gee-whiz-how-do-they-play-that?” kind of way. And I remember liking the Double Concerto for violin and cello, performed by Isaac Stern and YoYo Ma. But that’s about the extent of the Brahms that triggered any brain activity.
Alas, I didn’t hear any recordings of his symphonies, which were largely regarded as the medium for a masterwork by a composer. But judging by how easy it was to get lost in the larger works with chorus, I’m assuming I didn’t miss too much.
Any Brahms scholars are welcome to correct me and tell me what to listen to and for. As it stands right now…I’m moving on to Beethoven.
The Lyrics for a Lost Grandpa Griffith Song
I don't think this song will ever be completely finished, so I feel ok about sharing.
This was going to be an extended musical theater-type piece a la "The Bully vs. Nerd" with a lot of spoken sections. I've always been kinda proud of what I came up with for this song, (for a change.) Here are the words I wrote:
EL MATADOR
I will tell you a story.
In a small town in Spain, there lived a young boy. His name was Carlo. The boy had no friends, save one—a young bull named El Toro. El Toro and the boy shared many sunny days together, watching clouds and playing stickball. The boy loved the bull and the bull loved him.
But time loves no one and the day came when Carlo had to leave the bull. He traveled to Madrid and many years later, became the most famous matador in all of Spain. One day, El Toro was whisked away from his pen and shipped to Madrid, where he now found himself in a grand stadium, face to face with his old amigo. Carlo!
Cursed by spectators, El Toro ran up to see his old friend; but Carlo did not recognize him and danced around him, waving a red flag.
(Bullfight!)
Over and over, the bull tried to get close to Carlo. But he was unsuccessful and too tired to go on. Seeing the bull weakened, Carlo ceremoniously showed the cheering crowd the sword with which he would kill the beast. He swiftly plunged the blade into the strong back of the bull. And then, he recognized the eyes of his long lost friend.
“Oh, what have I done?” Carlo gasped and fell to his knees. El Toro released his last breath and closed his eyes.
As the spectators roared, Carlo pulled the instrument of death out of the flesh of the bull. Seeing the awful blood of his friend, he turned the blade and thrust himself upon it.
As the crowd grew quiet with disbelief, the matador died.
Copyright 2004 Michael Stutzman
