So, I have been thinking a bit about re-reruns (prompted, I must admit by a This American Lifeepisode about re-runs). This thinking has dove-tailed with some of my thoughts about the repeatability of the cover song and the tension between one ‘performance’ and another. Part of this thinking is a tortured attempt to try to justify what I am about to do today: repeat one of our posts.
Like my brother, I have found that the busyness of normal life (whatever that means) has gotten to be a bit overwhelming. The end of the semester has brought me a pile of grading, a CV-length of promised articles, and two children who are growing faster than I can imagine. This has kept me (guiltily) from having the time to write a quality post while also making me wonder whether or not this blog is doing what it should.
See, it has been suggested that the posts are too long and too discursive–and, as readership has ebbed and flowed, I have wondered what the worth is. This contemplation lasts a few minutes because, when it comes down to it, I enjoy writing this blog even if the act is entirely masturbatory.
A few weeks back I admitted (ok, reiterated) my own geekiness when I was hyperbolically excited about the fact that Night Riots has a song named “Berelain” after a character from Robert Jordan’s recently (and posthumously) completed Wheel of Time series. I must add, however, that my geek credentials are the real-thing: I get paid to teach about mythology and to write about ancient poetry.
(Well, the credentials are spotty. I mentioned earlier that I actually played a bard to the 21st or 22nd level in a role-playing game. At one point, I actually tried to write music for the fictional character to perform. I am so ever grateful that I don’t remember it and that the internet did really exist to record my follies back then.)
This week? I have been eagerly awaiting the return of HBO’s Game of Thrones. Now, as readers of this blog know, my brother and I occasionally get excited about television, but not too often. We both like The Walking Dead. He gets into things like Doomsday Preppers while I love Buffy the Vampire Slayer (which he will not watch). But Game of Thrones is something that we share. And there is an important reason.
I learned from the internet that the internet is abounding in tributes to Neil Armstrong. Other than the fact that I cannot bear not to be part of such an important trend (sarcasm, of course), I have to be honest: this might upset me more than the passing of Whitney Houston.
Does the world need another Neil Armstrong tribute? Do I have anything to say to add to or improve upon the many wonderful (and true) things that have been said?
(I need to be heard, dammit)
Now this has little to do with music, but everything to do with memory. We live in a world of increasingly fragmented realities where the man who stands respected far and wide is a rarer breed. On that count alone, Armstrong’s passing should be noted.
The local modern rock station has pretty good coverage—from the occasional New Wave hit (but only the darker ones) to current fare, its only sins are not digging deep enough (when will a mainstream station give me some early They Might Be Giants, Fugazi or Pixies?) and not playing enough outside the alt-rock mainstream (if that makes sense, Mates of State and Tegan and Sara, where are you?).
(Oh, and way too much Foo Fighters.)
The other day I heard Alice in Chains’ “Here Comes the Rooster” for the first time in a while and as I drove from daycare to home my thoughts went approximately as follows. First, I felt bad that I hadn’t really appreciated the darker band from Seattle. Say what you will about Alice in Chains, but nobody else sounds like them.
(Note: This post was composed after my brother told me about his cat)
My brother had to put down his cat today and I feel terrible for him. He never gets real emotional about things which is why I feel so bad because I know this kills him. Personally, no one liked or was liked by the cat except him which is why I feel so bad for him. It would routinely scratch me when I tried to pet it back when I was a freshmen in high school and would visit my brother at his undergraduate college. The fucking cat survived more than a lot of people I know can, including two big moves, a house fire, and multiple trips to the vet in. She was tough, just like my big brother, and we should all mourn her.
It’s just as simple as that. Well, it’s just a simple fact. When I want something, I don’t want to pay for it.
“Been Caught Stealing”, Jane’s Addiction
Earlier I wrote about the iPod—mainly its deadly allure and seductive nature. While failing to come down fully on one side or another, I also neglected to identify another unique and salient feature: the iPod’s portability. Now, it may seem too obvious to mention, but it is this one feature that essentially defines the iPod. For, if it were much larger, what would be the advantage of owning one?
Yet, portability—let’s think of it in terms of movable wealth—as easily a liability as an asset. That which may be moved may be stolen. And here’s where the iPod’s convenience (which also enslaves) most endangers. While successive versions of iTunes have warned us to back up our music regularly, many of us do not. Before we bought our music digitally, we had CDs, cassettes, and records (hard copies!) to carry around; the iPod liberated us from literal baggage.
(When will there be a device to lighten the load of our figurative burdens?)
Everybody was crying, crying Sighing, sighing Dying to see the light And when they see it, they see it’s not bright Can this be right? –Toots and the Maytals, “Pomp and Pride”
The Younger J has recently defended reggae as a genre (although perhaps not as much as about his love for pedal steel)—he will defend it against detractors and argue that it demands respect. I won’t debate this with him (because he’s right), instead I want to tell you another story. It is not a real story in that occurred in real time; it is the fabricated narrative of the mind—the tale of how I stopped worrying and learned to love reggae.
This is a story because it has a beginning middle and end; it is Aristotelian even in that the main character—me—undergoes a reversal and recognition. (There’s even a prophet in it, if we can call my brother that.) See, I used to hate reggae. I used to loathe it. It gave me psychic hives. Now I like reggae, I even love some of it. That’s the reversal. The trip to the recognition takes a bit longer.
I feel like most people who say they like reggae don’t really mean reggae, they mean Bob Marley. Now I don’t mean everyone because there are wide swaths of folks into Ts and the Maytals, Burning Spear and a slew of other reggae acts. I mean middle America, the rank and file citizenry–they know only Marley in my experience.
Marley should be credited for bringing the music to the masses. However, reggae as a form itself doesn’t get enough respect and I think that it should. It may not be developed to the level of blues or jazz, but it hasn’t had the time either; reggae as we know it hasn’t been around that long. Even jazz wasn’t even considered an art form for a long time and was eschewed by the music buying masses as “race music”. (Now it’s turned into this slightly snobby type of thing that only the intellectual elite can enjoy, but that line of thought is for another day.) Reggae, enjoyable to listen to and socially aware at times, demands respect.
“Anyway, I’ve started to make a tape, in my head, for Laura. Full of stuff she’d like. Full of stuff that’d make her happy. For the first time I can sorta see how that’s done.” High Fidelity
“Remembering you falling into my arms / crying for the death of your heart…” The Cure, “Pictures of You”
In 2000’s High Fidelity (based on Nick Hornby’s novel) John Cusack’s love-challenged, musical snob Rob Gordon is a mix tape-ologist. His advice for making mix tapes functions as a plot device for the movie—each new bit of information structures the plot by acting as transition or anticipating climactic moments. The variety and pertinence he achieves with mix tapes, however, contrasts with his paralysis in real life. Throughout the movie, Gordon makes tapes filled with songs that express who he is or represent some final judgment on music; it is only when he decides to fill the movie’s final tape with music that his estranged love actually likes that he makes the transition from stilted adolescence to adulthood.
Well, that’s one way you could put it.
This is not a post about High Fidelity. This is not about the creation of mix tapes (there are plenty of “how to” articles on Google on that topic). This post is a lament. You see, even in 2000, Rob Gordon’s obsession with the mix tape marked him as an anachronism. The movie came out a few years after burning CDs on home computers became cheap and easy; in the same year, Napster dominated online music sharing.
A year after the movie’s release, Apple began to transform the way we listen to, move, purchase and categorize music with the release of the first iPod. So, even during its release, High Fidelity’s presentation of the man who communicates through the mix tape was a nostalgic lark for the internet generation, a fateful nod to those older, and a paean to an analog dream.
This is a lament for a lost art. The very fact that the internet presents so many mix tape how-to posts indicates a dying form. And, with some certainty, it was technological change that both made the mix tape possible and brought its era to an end. The digital era has made the making of mixes so easy that no one I know takes it seriously any more. We live in the era of the Shuffle. We don’t listen to albums; we always have the song we think we want for the moment whenever we want it.
Even in the construction of “playlists” we are reckless because we are not limited. The 90 minute audio cassette gave us boundaries. Recording each song from record, tape or CD was so labor intensive and consuming as to constitute a type of worship. Even before the Shuffle and the Playlist, music streaming, digital downloads, and album uploading made making mixes easy. People don’t make good mixes anymore because mixing songs is too quick. With ease comes carelessness. The sacred becomes commonplace. The art form dies.
Note: The following was originally written in December
So I am an uncle again. My brother’s wife gave birth to my new nephew just this morning and I am filled with emotions both good and bad. Good, in that I am happy to have a new family member and am always impressed by the miracle of life. Bad, because my father is not here to see his first grandson and because my poor little nephew is being born into one of the most fucked-up times in human history. Maybe sad is the preferred adjective here, because I also wish I could have been there but he is across the country and multiple factors kept me in the northland.
My dad would be happy as shit I am sure, so for that one I feel ok. As for the current state of the world, who knows? The world is supposed to end this next year, but people have been saying that since time started so that shouldn’t be a real issue. I guess I mean specifically the way people treat each other, from backstabbing to shit-talking to just looking the either way when someone needs help. Everyone is guilty of this at some point but it’s the amount of people I’ve seen as of late who don’t seem to ever realize they’re doing it and amend their behavior.
I feel the same way about the state of the world as I do dub step music, a current craze amongst the younger generation. It sounds bad, I can’t dance to it and it confuses me. If you don’t know about it, it’s like this drum and bass thing that occasionally has vocals and what sounds to me like electronic mosquitoes buzzing around. I am sure it has its merits but I just don’t get it. Am I getting old? Will all music be weird to me by the time my new nephew is old enough to appreciate it?
“All things must pass”-George Harrison
I don’t know if my dad was ever into the solo work of the Beatles but I am sure he would have loved this song both for its music and lyrics. I think it is my favorite solo song by George and maybe even of any songs he’s written period, although “Something” is pretty damned good. I really love the first couplet which is “The sunrise doesn’t last all morning / A cloudburst doesn’t last all day”. To me, it says everything is fleeting and we have to grab at what we can when we can. It is clearly some type of Tao rephrasing but like any song, I think its content allows for multiple interpretations. You have a seemingly happy delivery of a dour realization, that shit happens and that is the way it is.
I find this song uplifting. The connotation of good or bad is something we ourselves add to whatever situation we are in. Keeping a positive outlook on all things, even death and loss, is easy to say and a bitch to actually do. However, it is very much worthwhile if you can. Check out the new documentary on Harrison on HBO, its killer.
