Friday, April 24, 2015

I Don't Want To Hear It Anymore, Part Four: Drowned

‘What’s the hell is that racket?”

Mrs. Jaybee thought the computer was malfunctioning, but it was just me listening to a new CD. (This happens a lot.)

It was mid-January when a Christmas present meant for me finally came in the mail.  And again, it fit this weird, not-interested-in-music mood I was in. (Some mood. My third album and it wasn't even February.)

But those three records were near accidents. Neu! was a perfunctory buy. As You Like It a shot in the relative dark. And now an almost forgotten amazon Wish List item popped up out of nowhere.




David Toop is a, well, I’m not sure what the hell he is, exactly. But he did compile this collection of weird sounds only some of us would call music. He also wrote a book about it, but that’s for another time. Let's call him a musical anthropologist.

He's put together a wide array of recordings that differ in time, place, tone and instrumentation. Why Toop thinks they should sound good together will be something I'll discover once I read his book, but for now I'm left with only the actual experience of hearing it.

And it's quite an experience.

Toop jumps continents/decades/genres with each track. Hence we start with Jamaican dub, but then go to jazz fusion, (which, oddly, doesn’t suck) electronica, ambient, third world, fourth world, classical, shoegaze, and we’re only halfway through the first disc. 

The segue from Les Baxter to My Bloody Valentine is particularly striking. Usually you progress from chaos to beauty, this goes in the opposite direction, and still works.

The one from Paul Schutze to the Velvet Underground isn’t as successful ("I Heard Her Call My Name" doesn't fit easily anywhere except right where it is - at the beginning of side two of White Light/White Heat - right before “Sister Ray”) but I give him credit for trying.

But overall, it’s miraculous how these disparate pieces hang together so well. I think the secret is that Toop doesn't try to make them hang together too seamlessly. He wants you to notice the differences, but at the same time realize how short a leap it really was.

There’s chanting, a Buddist ceremony and various “found sounds”.  My favorites are the Howler monkeys. Not the Monkees (this time), but actual monkeys. At one point, when a ship’s horn blows. Mrs. Jaybee joked “so when’s the train coming?” And sure enough, as if on cue, along comes the train.

Otherworldly, and yet so of this world - just some parts of it I’ve never been to. This is NOT Pure Moods. Not easy listening, either. More like Music to Listen to Alone. And some of it isn't music at all. But if you’re in the right mood it is nature itself.

You can listen intently, or ignore it and it’ll still sound like life is going on around you. 

One listener gave it a so-so review on amazon, and I can’t even argue with it. The review - like the record - makes sense on paper.  But unlike the review, the record also makes sense to my ears. The music. The sounds. Often both.

And like the last time I was in such a funk, and could only listen to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot or Selected Ambient Works, Volume 2, I stuck to this record for the better part of three months.

A

When to listen to it: At night. Preferably a dark night of the soul.

When NOT to listen to it: When everything's going great.

Saturday, April 11, 2015

I Don’t Want to Hear It Anymore, Part Three: Any Old Way to Choose It

So it’s mid-January and I’ve decided I’m “not into music anymore”.  The weather is cooperating, too. The cold and snow are beating any enthusiasm I had for beauty right out of me, and you, too, I’m sure.

But I’m still in the middle of my World History Project (some day I’ll explain what this is), and I’m up to around 1600, which means I’m reading and watching lots of Shakespeare. Okay, so it’s not a day at the beach, but under the circumstances I could be doing worse.

So I take Camille Paglia’s advice and check out As You Like It. There are lots of versions of most of Shakespeare’s plays, and since I’d already seen KB’s bitchin’ Henry V and entertaining-as-hell-even-at-four-hours Hamlet, I went with his version of AYLI, which stars Bryce Dallas Howard (Ron Howard’s daughter and Gwen Stacey from Spiderman).

And with a striking change of locale to 19th century Japan, it was almost as good as those other two efforts. One element that really added to my enjoyment was a lovely violin theme that ran with several variations throughout the movie. It deftly combined classical and eastern melodic ideas. Which is a bullsh*t (and maybe racist) way of saying it sounded nice and exotic at the same time.

So, somewhere in between SAD and sad, I broke down and bought it.




Patrick Doyle: As You Like It

And immediately regret it.

Impulse buys are like that.

Now, Jaybee, you might say, it really doesn’t count as an impulse purchase if you actually, you know, HEARD it.

But I would reply, Not So, dear reader!  Any record I haven’t thoroughly researched (allmusic.com, metacritic.com, complete background check on all contributing musicians, etc. - you know, what anyone would normally do) is by definition an Impulse Buy.

The dreaded IB risks diluting the pureness of my record collection! The last time said pureness was threatened was when I got married - when now-Mrs. Jaybee and I combined our record collections. (The Ohio Players? Shalamar? What the hell have I gotten myself into, I wondered?)  But with the help of a Marriage/Music Counselor we worked through it.

And the first listen doesn’t make me feel any better. My first listens are notoriously tone deaf to begin with, and what made it worse were the awful speakers on my crappy laptop.

So now I’m thinking: So this is what it’s come to. I’m now buying soundtrack albums? How sad is that? I’m not the guy who buys soundtrack albums! I’m the guy who makes fun of the guy who buys soundtrack albums, because he does it for the same dumb reasons I just gave above! Now I’m Him!

As you can tell, I’ve never been much of a fan of original soundtrack (OST) albums. Like rock and roll song lyrics that sound profound while being sung by Jim Morrison, let’s say, but look like grammar high poems on paper, soundtracks can rarely stand on their own, and are best left where they are, in the background of the movie, and forgotten at the end of it.

But this movie was so romantic, and the violin theme so lovely, that I thought I’d found a way out of my musical dead end. Maybe I was just getting desperate, grabbing at anything that caught my attention.

But what’s wrong with it, I asked myself. Part of it was that - as should have been expected - the theme I liked so much wasn’t playing throughout the whole movie, as it turned out. If it was, I probably would have had my fill of it by the end of the movie. (For an example of a song - even a great one - being played too much during a movie, check out Muriel’s Wedding, where Dancing Queen must get played at least a dozen times. They could have fit the entire soundtrack on a single. All of which goes to show that “Dancing Queen” must be a tremendous song, because I still like it.)

So a lot of what’s left on the CD is the other stuff I didn’t really notice all that much while the movie was on. And it didn’t sound like it had much personality.

But a second listen - on better speakers - make it sound much, much better. The instrumentals are starting to grow on me, too. Yes, the actual songs with words still annoy me. But every time they do, that damned theme I love so much comes back on.

I still don’t like the soundtracky-ness of it, and what I like best is the same theme played about six different ways.  But you know, it’s real, real pretty.

But, so what? I’m not really into pretty in mid January.

And then it suddenly recedes into the background, as if swallowed up by an Ocean of Sound.

B+

“Violin Romance”

To Be Continued...

Saturday, April 4, 2015

I Don’t Want to Hear It, Part Two: Happy Neu! Year

So, like I said, 2014 sucked, and 2015 was offering a compelling reason to just take a break from music altogether.

But sometimes circumstances call out for it. And after hearing about the untimely death of an old friend, I knew I’d need something.

We’d heard he was sick around Thanksgiving and found out he’d died right after Christmas. The wake was on New Years Day.

The next day, I needed to go for a long walk and along the way bought a CD, but my heart wasn’t in it.

The funeral mass was the day after that. We came home feeling drained and numb. I was off from work that week and finally gave myself permission to do nothing. I decided to just lie down and read for a while. I could have opted to listen to nothing, but since I’d just gotten a CD the day before I figured I’d put it on.

So I lay there reading, so tired I felt glued to the bed. I’d nod off occasionally as CD played, so before I knew it, it was over. So I put it on again. And again.

So it was - and I mean this as a compliment - a good substitute for nothing. In a way, it was an expression of nothing. Again, a compliment. I certainly didn’t want to hear singing, at least not in English.


Neu!.jpg

Neu! (1972)

These guys left the pre-famous (if you’d call it that) Kraftwerk because they (the latter) weren’t weird enough. Neu! would eventually be renowned for a synthesizer sound that would later influence David Bowie’s late 70s sound (Low and Heroes, two of my faves) and Brian Eno in general.

On this, their first album, there’s more guitar than synthesizer. Still very drone-y though. And although the six songs are all rather long, and the guitar touches are pretty minimal, the drums keep you feeling like you’re getting somewhere. On paper, it all sounds pretty boring, but because they change up the beats, on the best cuts, it verges on hypnotic.

And they’re not afraid to make noise. And not just musical noise. Noise noise. Like a jackhammer. I mean it. An actual jackhammer. That one’s call “Negativland”. No sh*t.

At times quiet, for a cold cloudy day. And at others, an explosion of distortion and rage. Then it ends with a whimper. On purpose. Works for me!

But it may be music for people who don’t like music, or who are tired of it. Exactly what I needed.

I’ll have to try it again when I’m feeling better.

Neu! musik for the Neu! Year

B+

“Hallogallo”

When to play it: When you’re alone.
When NOT to play it: At a barbeque.

Friday, April 3, 2015

I Don’t Want To Hear it Anymore, Part One:

Winters suck in general, but the winter of 2014/2015 will go down as one of the suckiest of all time. You can look it up.

And the rest of 2014 wasn’t so hot, either. There were a couple of serious illnesses in the extended Jaybee family, and while everybody made it through it all okay, we did get word over the holidays that an old friend passed away.

I would typically be laying a little low (musically and otherwise) during the winter anyway. It’s a good time to sit back and listen to something more contemplative than pop music. Something that fits the cold, quiet Saturday afternoons in January. Jazz, Classical, Folk, World, Weird, but nothing too loud or raucous. 

But circumstances were dampening my enthusiasm even more than usual.

Plus, it turned out I would be studying for a professional certification - one of those things that you value less the closer you get to it. (Sort of the Groucho Marx effect: Who’d want a certification that I can get?) So I knew I’d have some studying to do, and music with vocals would be a distraction (unless it’s Leonard Cohen). 

And when I set out on such a course, it's not enough to simply study. I must do so in the most ascetic, humorless way possible. In other words, No Fun. Fun normally takes the form of music, movies, books, friends. You know, Good Times. But I was abstaining. (Somehow beer and wine make the cut, though.)

It stems from reasons both practical and nonsensical.  On the practical side, I get easily distracted. "You've got a lot on your mind." my Mrs. Jaybee says. But she’s being kind. My head is filled, but like a hoarders apartment, it’s mostly crap.

And while young peoples’ brains are like sponges that soak up whatever knowledge is around, mine is like the stained and crusty one by your kitchen sink that you’ve been meaning to throw away because it's starting to smell funny.

So I had a lot of good reasons to not listen to music in the new year. 

The weird thing this: I didn’t miss it. 

I barely wanted to hear music at all. If anything, the sound of music would just annoy me. (Let’s put aside for the moment that 95% of what I hear annoys me anyway.) 

This would go on - with some minor interruptions - for nearly three months. No iTunes at home, no radio playing while driving, no songs floating through my head during conversations with my boss. 

I began to think I'd reached a new phase of my life. As I said in a recent post, I’d made a resolution to experience a little more life and a little less music. Little did I dream how easy it would turn out to be.

So this was the state of my music obsession. Or in this case, my now non-obsession. 

In the spirit of “less is more”. I opted for silence. 


To be continued.