Music and Me.
I've been thinking a lot lately about what makes me like music. My pal Ben cleaves preferences over music into: Fashion Statement or Genuine Enjoyment. I think this is a fine rough cleavage, but there are many nuances beyond this. However, I'm less interested in which category my preferences fit into, and more so in why such a wide array of music appeals to me (while another wide array makes me wince, clap my hands over my ears, and/or fly into fits of rage).
For instance, lately, I've noticed that unless I'm listening to Beethoven, Stravinsky, or electric Miles, I feel like I'm listening to radio jingles. Now, this is not to say that I cannot or do not enjoy the radio jingle music of the world, but the difference between Beethoven's 9th and Yo La Tengo, "Tears are in my Eyes" is great. But I believe the real difference (beyond mere length of composition) is plot change.
I like a good story. And some music weaves you through plot changes/changes in mood in a chronological way (Beethoven, for instance) and some explore multiple musical plots by compiling layer upon layer of instrumentation/percussion/etc simultaneously (Jack Johnson by Miles Davis, for example). And as much as I love Yo La Tengo and Afro-Cuban All-Stars, etc, they don't hit one surprising note, take one twist, or make any real plot changes. They're a bit uni-dimensional. "Tears are in My Eyes" starts sullenly, flows sullenly, and ends sullenly. Which is fine. But it just seems to flow on the radio jingle side of the musical universe rather than the Musical Manifesto's side. Lumping the two together to decide which is better is like holding up a copy of US magazine next to Lolita and asking me which is better. They just ain't the same bag of beans. Often, I just don't feel like investing much of myself in a novel--I want a bit of a diversion with nice, juicy, gossipy--perhaps tawdry?--trash.
But this leads me to a better understanding of my musical preferences. I like Mozart because of the math of it (not that I listen and think, "Ah, now that's a beautiful secant!"--it's just hyper-logical). I like the Stravinsky's Rite of Spring because it evokes a visceral reaction in its emotional upheaval (I saw/heard it at the symphony once, and could fully understand its notiously riotous effects--I quite felt like punching my neighbor, a lovely fellow I'm sure). I enjoy Yo La Tengo because they provide nice, hummable tunes, allow me to sing along, and provide sound bites of structure to my day.
Oh, and just so no one thinks, "Sure, they're manifestos, but they're also at least 60 minutes long!!!", Stevie Wonder's "As" is a manifesto to me. It builds tension, it veers back, it takes the plunge, it recedes. Okay, I have to go listen to that song a few more hundred times--thus stretching it out to at least 60 minutes of brilliance. (Does anyone know how to make your ipod just repeat something?)
For instance, lately, I've noticed that unless I'm listening to Beethoven, Stravinsky, or electric Miles, I feel like I'm listening to radio jingles. Now, this is not to say that I cannot or do not enjoy the radio jingle music of the world, but the difference between Beethoven's 9th and Yo La Tengo, "Tears are in my Eyes" is great. But I believe the real difference (beyond mere length of composition) is plot change.
I like a good story. And some music weaves you through plot changes/changes in mood in a chronological way (Beethoven, for instance) and some explore multiple musical plots by compiling layer upon layer of instrumentation/percussion/etc simultaneously (Jack Johnson by Miles Davis, for example). And as much as I love Yo La Tengo and Afro-Cuban All-Stars, etc, they don't hit one surprising note, take one twist, or make any real plot changes. They're a bit uni-dimensional. "Tears are in My Eyes" starts sullenly, flows sullenly, and ends sullenly. Which is fine. But it just seems to flow on the radio jingle side of the musical universe rather than the Musical Manifesto's side. Lumping the two together to decide which is better is like holding up a copy of US magazine next to Lolita and asking me which is better. They just ain't the same bag of beans. Often, I just don't feel like investing much of myself in a novel--I want a bit of a diversion with nice, juicy, gossipy--perhaps tawdry?--trash.
But this leads me to a better understanding of my musical preferences. I like Mozart because of the math of it (not that I listen and think, "Ah, now that's a beautiful secant!"--it's just hyper-logical). I like the Stravinsky's Rite of Spring because it evokes a visceral reaction in its emotional upheaval (I saw/heard it at the symphony once, and could fully understand its notiously riotous effects--I quite felt like punching my neighbor, a lovely fellow I'm sure). I enjoy Yo La Tengo because they provide nice, hummable tunes, allow me to sing along, and provide sound bites of structure to my day.
Oh, and just so no one thinks, "Sure, they're manifestos, but they're also at least 60 minutes long!!!", Stevie Wonder's "As" is a manifesto to me. It builds tension, it veers back, it takes the plunge, it recedes. Okay, I have to go listen to that song a few more hundred times--thus stretching it out to at least 60 minutes of brilliance. (Does anyone know how to make your ipod just repeat something?)
posted by slickaphonic at 10:13 PM
4 Comments:
Maybe it's that nobody listens to albums, but instead just listens to singles on their ipods.
Not to imply that there was a golden age of albums---a Righteous Bros album from the late 50s is a collection of singles too. But back when we listened to records all the way through, we'd go through the usual set of plot changes over a twenty-minute side, and album-makers who cared about such things would indeed make those plots matter. As you note, three out-of-context minutes of Beethoven's Ninth don't go through any plot changes either.
On another tack, the second side of Jane's Addiction's _Ritual_ was the first album that showed me that music could be more than just pop jingles. I was so amazed that every track was a story that had a plot as you describe. That was the rock and roll that saved my life.
I don't think plot changes in albums really took off until Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Heart Club's Band (or was it the White Album that kicked it off? I think the former...) anyway, No, I don't think any three non-contextualized minutes from Beethoven are unidimensional. Mozart--yes. Beethoven? no.
Anyway, Stevie Wonder is saving my life right now. One of the few artists that hit notes that are simultaneously unexpected and inordinately appropriate. In each song.
Perry is a genius. And that album rocks it like a cradle in an earthquake.
I've seen this `Sgt Pepper was the first concept album' line here and there (I'm not gonna bother searching for it), but a band pretending to be, um, a band, is not really blowing me away conceptually.
But from the dawn of the long-playing album, the guys who pressed the wax put thought into how to arrange the songs. I mean, they're not in alphabetical order, are they. The band played a bunch of unrelated tracks, and the producer arranged them in a way that had some sort of flow and structure. Get thee to allmusic.com and check out the description of any album by your fave artists of the fifties, and see how often they discuss the sequencing---there's an "opener" "immediately contrasted by" the next track that "smoothly flows into" another, et cetera. Even without the pretentions of the sixties and seventies, there's still an effort to create a larger musical whole from smaller parts.
yeah, but here's the problem: writing 11 songs, and then trying to "arrange" them so that, when played sequentially don't furrow eyebrows is vastly different from writing songs which have some overarching coherence to them. vastly different, my friend.
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