I’m picking up my the robes for my Master’s graduation ceremony and I’m thinking of going in a different direction.
I wonder if the school will play ball.
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Steve Reich - Music for 18 Musicians
This album is uselessly cool. Presented to me as “something you should listen to” by my piano-virtuoso roommate, it engendered an instantaneous and awestruck love that was without context in my music-listening life. The blue water on the cover of the Nonesuch version that I had helped it fit right alongside Beaucoup Fish and Polydistortion and Tidal and In Sides and Pre-Millennium Tension and all the other cool blue music I was listening to at the time, but if I were ever to so much as namedrop this composer or this composition, a simple “Oh yeah? What else do you like by him?” would undo me. Truth be told, my experience with the minimalist tradition begins and ends here. I love it too much to try to move beyond it.Which is liberating. So much of the construction of my persona as done through music has been a process of addition and accretion. I like this thing, so I’ll also like this thing, and I’ll like more and more of each thing, and onward and outward like a spiderweb growing from the center. But this? This just is what it is. I can lose myself in the shimmering pulses that make my eyes itch, I can nod my head to the insistent rhythm, I can move my hand around like I’m calling out the sung or struck high notes by tapping them out of the air, I can listen to the album on repeat for a day and transform my cubicle into a sonic hotbox dreamworld, and that’s all there is to it, that’s all there will ever be to it. No knowledge to acquire, no audience to impress. A tree falls and falls and falls and falls and falls and falls and falls and falls and falls and falls and falls and falls and falls and falls in the forest and I’m the only one there to hear the sound.
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Soundtrack: Tuesday, May 14 2013
Radio
Extra time in the car this morning meant an extended run of listening to KCSN, which really didn’t steer wrong for a long time: Radiohead, Phosphorescent, Massive Attack, and R.E.M., followed by a couple of 80s cuts that haven’t been played to death in the last 30 years: Dire Straits’ “Sultans of Swing” and Midnight Oil’s “The Dead Heart.”A few notes related to those songs.
- I’ve said before that “Song for Zula” reminded me of Willie Nelson. Jill this morning realized it’s been reminding her of Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of Philadelphia.” She’s way more on the money than I was.
- I will never not let a Dire Straits song play all the way through. I will never not think of my dad when I hear Dire Straits.
- Whenever I hear Midnight Oil I kinda love them and I kinda think they’re the most hilarious band ever. I mean, they are so fucking serious.
If you’re wondering what ended the streak: it was Cake, “I Want a Girl with a Short Skirt and a Long Jacket.” I changed it to KCRW and heard MGMT’s “Time to Pretend” before I got to work.
Labradford: Fixed:Content (2001)
Labradford: E Luxo So (1999)
Labradford: Mi Media Naranja (1997)
Still working on the same project from the day before, and what do you know but the same three Labradford albums soundtracked it.
My Bloody Valentine: m b v (2013)
I listened to the new My Bloody Valentine album for the first time in a couple of months. It’s not surprising to me that the album hit me hard on release and then faded from rotation. Loveless is the same for me and always has been—a record I play only occasionally but feel deeply if/when I play it. Funny feeling while hearing m b v after so much time away: it doesn’t even feel like a record from 2013. I feel like I’ve had it for years. It doesn’t feel remotely of the moment. The notion that twenty-two years separates this from Loveless seems silly.Daily Playlist (expires in 24 hours):
- Labradford: And Jonathan Morken. Photo Provided By
- Phosphorescent: Song for Zula
- Bruce Springsteen: Streets of Philadelphia
- Dire Straits: Sultands of Swing
- Midnight Oil: The Dead Heart
- R.E.M.: We All Go Back to Where We Belong
- Labradford: G
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I’d like to make a public apology about all the negativity going around the dash this evening. I was mistaken for not talking about why I disliked those critics in my initial post.
There’s just a lot of negativity going around, which is fine sometimes, but it’d be nice if we were having more of a conversation about why we dislike those writers. And maybe talk about the ones you do like.
I’m sorry if I’ve ruined anyone’s day, I take full responsibility.
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MST3K - The Marriage of Crow T Robot & Tom Servo (by HNK222)
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Because Minnesota finally made its most famous wedding legal.
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Soundtrack: Sunday, May 11 2013
Mikal Cronin: MCII (2013)
Mother’s Day breakfast in bed: Cooper and I collaborated on scrambled eggs, toast, strawberries, and a cookie. Guess which part of the menu was devised by Cooper. After breakfast Jill had a short work-related phone call so I took advantage and played MCII, despite her new rule—”don’t play new music in the morning, it’s irritating.”Tame Impala: Lonerism(2012)
Feelin’ kinda rockin’ so I played Lonerism in the car as we drove to Malibu.Random Music
At Malibu Country Kitchen (the best, btw) we heard a little Bobby Darin and Astrud Gilberto while we ate our excellent muffins. Then we went across the way to the newer shopping development in Malibu and heard, somewhat to my surprise, Adam Green & Binki Shapiro over the sound system.Later we went to Surfrider Beach. It was covered in seaweed, I counted three dead seagulls and three large fish washed on the sand—one still slightly alive I think—and by the end I noticed that the bottom of my feet we stuck with spots of tar. So, yeah, not going back to Surfrider Beach ever again. The grossest beach experience I’ve ever had in California. We used to go to that beach more often, pre-Cooper, and I don’t ever remember it like that. Music: the family next to us had a little iPod/speaker setup and were playing a bunch of 80s hits—Pat Benatar’s “Hit Me With Your Best Shot,” Whitesnake’s “Here I Go Again,” the Police’s “King of Pain” (you don’t really hear “King of Pain” much anymore!), and a few others.
When we were done we cruised back south and had lunch at Duke’s. The place was noisy and I never once noticed the music—until “Tiny Dancer” came on. That song cuts like a knife straight through any activity you are doing, anywhere ever. Since I now track my daily listening habits I can also say it’s the third time this song has randomly come on in my vicinity in the last month or so.
Adam Green & Binki Shapiro: s/t (2013)
Beachwood Sparks: The Tarnished Gold (2012)
We drove from Malibu all the way downtown, wining up at The Pie Hole for some dessert action. Ice cream, chocolate pie. Yay.Jim James: Regions of Light and Sound of God (2013)
Radio Dept.: Clinging to a Scheme(2010)
Radio Dept.: Lesser Matters(2003)
We used our little outdoor fireplace for the first time this year, with the intention of cooking hot dogs campfire-style, with sticks. We had some trouble really getting the fire to catch—I burned through the entire arts section of the Los Angeles Times before I got a chance to read any of it. In fact we gave up. But we promised Coop we’d make hot dogs on sticks so we went into the kitchen, gathered around the stove, and held our hot dogs over the gas burners. Then Jill noticed through the window that the fire had finally caught! We jumped out of the kitchen and finished cooking over the fire. Cooper ate two bites of his hot dog but gorged on carrot sticks.We listened to Jim James. Some of this album is really not that great. I was thinking that to myself and then Jill voiced it—that’s a thing married people do. We agreed that really it’s all about “A New Life” and the rest of the album can take a hike. We finished off the evening with the Radio Dept., possibly our favorite band.
Happy Mother’s Day.
Daily Spotify Playlist (expires in 24 hours):
- Elton John: Tiny Dancer
- Beachwood Sparks: Forget the Song
- Adam Green & Binki Shapiro: Just to Make Me Feel Good
- The Police: King of Pain
- The Radio Dept.: Never Follow Suit
- Mikal Cronin: Weight
- Tame Impala: Elephant
- Jim James: A New Life
- Bobby Darin: Beyond the Sea
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A Stray Thought About Music Writing That Probably Shouldn't Be Taken Too Seriously
I was thinking today that one of the reasons I’m still interested in writing about music is that I think it’s very difficult to do well. Music writing, whether it’s more artist profile-oriented or more critically oriented, is a pretty formal thing and has a few generally accepted structural approaches. So learning what those are and figuring out how to adhere to them is part of the craft, so it’s possible to get pretty good just by mastering that part of it.
But there is another level to it that is hard to do and that involves a combination of knowledge, observation, and introspection. Knowledge because understanding the history and context of music in a serious way is something that doesn’t really have any shortcuts. Observation because observing and listening and understanding what is actually going on in a deeper way is something that is very hard to do well (she never really wrote about music, but Joan Didon is an excellent example of a non-fiction writer who could observe and see things under the surface and make connections that others could not). And introspection because the interface between how the music works and how the music feels is difficult to articulate. My favorite music writers have mastered all three of these areas to varying degrees. Typically, they are a bit stronger in one or two of the three, and their personal style and approach kind of builds from that.
I was also thinking that a lot of music writing is unsatisfying to me because so much of it leans so heavily on the first of these three things, knowledge. A lot of people writing seem to think that trainspotting, being able to identify sample sources and lyrical allusions, is the essence of criticism, and to me that kind of identification in and of itself is not very interesting unless it goes into these other realms, of thinking more deeply how the music works and (especially) articulating how it feels from the perspective of the listener. And, sort of related, so much writing about celebrity-driven pop music tends to focus on who these people are and how the music fits into their career arc (i.e. context) rather than how it actually works for the people who are experiencing the music. Because there is one massively popular pop singer with his or her story, but many millions of pop listeners with all of their stories. And for me, a large part of the ultimate meaning is created by these people, and I’d like to see more rigorous writing about that part of it, though again, it’s the sort of thing that is easy to do but very hard to do well.
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