Saturday, March 29, 2008

Community Music

Most young people get to enjoy music when it is generally well known and widely accepted by their peers. It’s nice to hear good music, and it’s even better when you’re enjoying it along with everyone else around you.

When was the last time someone blasted music at the beach, and you enjoyed it? This is what people remember most fondly about the sixties. It was the last time when everyone agreed what the good music was, and for once, everyone was right. There we all were, listening to the current music of the day, not at all nostalgic for another time.

I have countless memories of hearing a song come on the radio while playing in the street, and knowing it was great the very first time I heard it. “Jimmy Mack”, “Dancing in the Street”, “Up Around the Bend” are just the ones I happened to think of now. It happened dozens and dozens of time. Was there ever a song that was so right for a place and time as “Summer in the City” during July in Brooklyn?

For me, the climax of this phenomenon coincided almost exactly with the end of the sixties. My brother and I got “Abbey Road” for Christmas 1969, and listened to it continuously through that winter break. It was also being played on the radio and enjoyed by everyone else we knew. It was, for us, the epitome of “community” music.


The End of Community:

But at that point, the cracks had already begun to appear in the community. Altamont had already occurred. Then the Beatles broke up. Listeners were breaking up, too - into factions – hard rock vs. singer songwriter vs. southern rock vs. glam vs. progressive vs. funk vs. soul, and later in the decade disco vs. punk vs. rap. People were beginning to narrow their tastes to the point of actively disliking anything else. Community music continued to exist, but the communities were now smaller. And Top Forty, which had been the glue holding it all together before – a key ingredient of which was great music - began to suck more and more, until there was no longer a single place where the best of everything could mingle and be enjoyed by all. The individual communities just weren’t interested. For a lot of people, a smaller community is better anyway. Like a gang or a cult, it’s more comfortable because it doesn’t challenge you to look outside of it.

These individual communities can break down even further as people age, get married and see less of their friends. On their own, people then decide if they will move on to other things or not. They eventually get to what will be their own personal music. The fact that they might have some musical favorites in common with others their age may be more a sign of good marketing than anything else. Call it the Coors Light phenomenon.

The Only Community There Is:

And then there are those lovable people who never even figure out that their taste is less than universal. One friend who we’ve invited to family gatherings was visibly appalled at the music we had on at our daughter’s communion party. For us, it was an occasion for friends and family to get together to talk, not necessarily to dance. So we chose music that was entertaining to us and some other friends, but unintrusive. It wasn’t muzak, but it could be ignored if you didn’t like it. My friend didn’t recognize the music, and felt that parties were for dancing and so must have dance music. On another occasion, he came to the house, armed with tapes that he volunteered to put on in order to “liven the party up”. A quote. No doubt there were some people there who would have appreciated it, but I wasn’t one of them.

My friend not only didn’t understand that there were people who didn’t share his taste; he didn’t think anything beyond his taste existed. It’s like that part of the Blues Brothers movie when they go into a Western bar, and the waitress says “We’ve got both kinds of music here, country and western!” Call it the community that doesn’t even know that it’s not the only community.

I’m sure you’ve had someone brag to you that they liked “all kinds of music”, and they then proceeded to play the standard pop music of the day, and absolutely nothing the slightest bit unusual or unique. How can you know what you’re missing when you don’t think you’re missing anything at all?

My Time vs Our Time:

Some lucky people arrive at their personal music by just leaving on the radio. They like what they hear and that’s the end of it. Some others, like me for instance, are so impossible to please that it’s rare indeed when I love a song that’s also very popular. Thank god for the scan button on car radios. Otherwise, I’d have crashed the car by now.

My “personal music” is what has accumulated in my head and record shelves over the years, based on whatever I happened to be interested in at any given time. This sometimes leads me so far astray from current musical developments that the fond memories I associate with my favorite music have nothing at all to do with the whatever was popular at the time. (At the risk of sounding like a snob, it’s usually that music that provides the really bad memories.) They don’t even have any relationship to the time the music I was enjoying was released. I now remember the music I love by what is happening in my life at the time I buy it, not the time it’s made.

So in 1982 I could buy an album that came out in 1968, like “The Who Sell Out”, and love it. But the emotional association is to my life and the things that happened to me in 1982, not what happened to me or the world in 1968. This is a very special, but private, joy that you usually only share with a spouse. It’s just a shame that you can’t share it with anyone else.

And as time goes on, and I go further and further astray, my chances of enjoying community music grow dimmer by the day.

So it’s quite understandable that most of the population seems intent on hearing only their own personal music, by wearing earplugs and listening to an iPod. The problem is that no matter how many songs you can fit on it, you’re still only listening to stuff you already know about. It’s the absolute opposite of community music.

Towards a Newer Community:

I truly envy those people who can still enjoy music at the community level. I think I’m talking about hip hop in its heyday. But I guess it applies to anything that’s popular and exciting to young listeners.

And who knows, maybe this has always been the case. Maybe my memory of the sixties is just another example of a baby boomer trying to make a rather common experience seem like it was invented by his generation. Maybe there always is a community music, and I’m just not part of the community anymore.

I’m not saying that we should, at our now advanced ages, be getting together to party to the latest musical fad. I’m not even saying that the iPod is a bad thing. But it would be nice if we could just unplug our ears a little more often to hear what the other guy is listening to. And when we’re that guy, let’s not disappoint everyone else them by playing them the same old crap.

When I was in college, right before the Christmas holidays, we would have a party in the cafeteria (drinking vodka at 10am, playing cards). Once I brought a tape recorder (not even a radio) with me, and played a pre-recorded tape of stuff I liked at the time. The other guys put up with this because no one else thought of bringing a radio, and I realized that I was imposing on people at least as much as I was entertaining anyone, so I tried not to play it too loudly. But there was one guy there who asked me to turn it up. I warned him that he might not like it, but he replied, “That’s okay, it’s music.”

I don’t know where that guy is now, but he’s my hero.

Sunday, March 16, 2008

Recycling

I have a confession to make. I occasionally recycle my albums. Not the good recycling, either. The pathetic recycling. The act of playing each and every one of my albums, one after the other, until I’ve gone through them all. So, day after day, week after week, month after month, I will methodically go down the list – almost to the total exclusion of other music - until I have played every last one of them.

Back in college, one friend admitted to doing this, so I confess now, assuming that this won’t make me seem completely ridiculous. Of course, it gets more ridiculous as you get more albums. And at the time, my friend probably had, what, 50? How long did that take? A few weeks? Ha! We are now closing in on 1300, so I’m talking a level of commitment not given to many marriages.

Why, you ask? Well… there are lots of reasons! Some of them rational:

  • You get to hear something great that you haven’t heard for a while.
  • You give the albums you didn’t care for the first time around another chance.
  • You get to artificially fill the gaping void in your life.

I heard a music writer being interviewed on the radio say that he occasionally recycles his albums to help him decide which ones to get rid of! This, of course, is madness. Who gets rid of albums? No, don’t say it.

Now, it might seem to you that recycling is a pretty straightforward thing to do. Most human endeavors – even the non-ridiculous ones – appear easier at first than they actually are. You probably think that it’s just a matter of starting at the top of a stack of records, and just going until you get to the bottom. Well, yes, you could do that. But silliness in no way implies a lack of seriousness. In fact, it can carry some grave responsibilities with it.

First of all, you probably have CDs, tapes, vinyl and maybe even 8-tracks. So they’re not stacked. Not together anyway. So what to do? First play all the CDs, and then the tapes, etc.? Right? Too easy! Come on, use your imagination! Nothing that is not worthwhile is easy. With that in mind, I shall explain the different varieties of recycling.

Alphabetical:

You can simply play your albums alphabetically (no, not by title, stupid) by Artist. This approach will stand or fall based on the jarring change of tone that occurs when you go from Talking Heads to James Taylor. It keeps things from getting boring, but you may not be in the mood for Sweet Baby James after hearing “Psychokiller”. But then again, maybe you will be.

Personally, I feel that this approach is beneath contempt. You could make the argument that it provides variety by its very arbitrariness. I could make the argument that you could eat your food alphabetically, too.

By Release Date:

Or you can put your records in order of when they came out. In other words, you play your Beatles before your Ramones before your Radiohead. This provides some context for your music, and can give you a greater appreciation for some of your more adventurous stuff.

I like this approach, but, you’ve got to have your music database in order. (What do you mean, you don’t have a music database?)

Is everyone still with me?

By Historically Significant Date:

This is a further refinement on the Release Date method. But instead of blindly going by when the record hit the shelves, you go chronologically by when the music was made. It sounds like the same thing as Release Date, but it’s not. “Let It Be” gets played before “Abbey Road”, for instance. It puts greatest hits albums where they belong, and gets your jazz and classical up front.

This approach is great for guys who don’t have girlfriends.


By When You Bought it:

This is my favorite because it’s the most autobiographical. To do this is to relive old times, good and bad. How do you feel about that? Do you want all those memories coming back?

This is going to happen to some extent, no matter what – it’s the same music, after all, but in a different order - but this approach really rams it down your throat. So if you’ve ever had a particularly bad patch in your life, you might find yourself spending more time on it than is wise.

This is great for those who like to wallow in shame or regret.


Why Not?

You could very reasonably argue that doing any of these things keeps you from exploring new stuff. I agree, but let’s face it, you’re not doing that anyway. Try to consider recycling as a way of tilling the soil. When you’re done, you will be primed to find out what music is being made now.

Call it a cheap thrills project to add pseudo meaning to your life. Or just to pass the time. Because we all have so much of that, don’t we?

Saturday, March 1, 2008

Cover Your Ears and Sing "La, La, La..."

We all know the routine. When someone starts telling us something we just don’t want to hear, we stick our fingers in our ears, and start to sing “La, La, La, La…” very loudly.

We’ve seen it on the Simpsons, when Homer has been confronted with the fact that he’s spent the kid’s college money.

I have a variation on this. Whenever a particularly embarrassing or painful memory springs into my mind, just as abruptly, out of nowhere, a song goes on in my head. It’s as though someone drops a phonograph needle on a record, right in the middle of a song. I guess it’s just a clumsy defense mechanism intended to drown out the memory. It’s so ingrained that it happens without any effort on my part. I don’t know if it obliterates the memory or merely pushes it back down into my unconscious only to have it arise again at the most unexpected time.

I’m not sure when I learned to do this. I’m not sure if I learned to do this. Perhaps if I were a mature adult, I could better handle bad memories. Some strategies more normal adults opt for: I could conveniently misremember it. I could rationalize my behavior. I could face it, and either forgive myself or carry the memory around with me until it fades for a while. But for now, a song kicks in like a particularly effective prescription drug. And people wonder why I like music so much.

This may seem like a bad thing, but it’s cheaper than booze or drugs, and I can assure you that there are times when it is really the very best thing. A few years ago, I was in a very difficult work situation, and at one particularly nasty meeting, I found my mind flashing back to a song by the Arcade Fire call “Lies”, from their album “Funeral”. I was fully engaged in the meeting, but at the same time, the song would just kick in suddenly and I wouldn’t be able to get it out of my head. And it would put me in what we now like to call “a happy place”. But it’s not a soothing song. If anything, it’s just the opposite. It’s almost a rallying cry, which I guess is what I needed then.

I had gotten the CD a few weeks before. I liked it well enough, but then put it aside after a few listens. I probably did this so that this very good music wouldn’t get stamped with the memory of the very bad time I was having. But at this meeting from hell, “Lies” came roaring back – not so much the lyrics as the fervent singing and rousing chorus.

And it was at that moment that I decided to quit my job. Prior to that I made all the good “professional” excuses for not doing this – pride, seeing a project through to the bitter end, toughing it out… But now I was giving myself permission to do otherwise.

My theory is that I was in a situation that required that I anesthetize my emotions, but that something from outside began tugging at them, making sure they weren’t dead altogether. I was being reminded that beauty was still out there somewhere, and I could be enjoying it instead of putting myself through this work related torture.

Something else occurred to me then, too, which I guess is less important in the scheme of things. I decided that “Lies” was a great song. Previously, I thought of it as a very good one. Good songs can simulate an emotion really well. Great songs can embody it.

In a way, you could say that the song changed my life. Would I have thought of quitting on my own? Eventually, but I think that it gave me a little push, and I’ll always remember that moment, and that the decision had a soundtrack to it.