No Room For Squares
05. Record Party
NOTE: Every so often, I get asked to do a lecture, podcast, TED Talk, seminar, or whatever, and I always feel like I’m leaving out something important. Not that one Substack post is going to fill all that in. But I do hope that I can give you a little more clarity as to my personal low-budget form of musical Unified Field Theory.
Why am I still obsessed?
As we get older, our requirements for music change. Emotions evolve, and the layers through which art passes change. The teenage me had a lot of angst, so punk rock addressed a lot of my needs. But once intellectual curiosty took more hold of me, four chords and four-four didn’t hit all the cylinders. Post-punk held more for me, and through Gang of 4, the Slits, Delta 5, and the like, my ear heard new things. Often, it heard old things — especially reggae — in different ways than before. Being in a city like Philadelphia, where each kind of music had its life — punk rock, orchestral music, jazz — made it easy to go exploring. I felt as if music changed my entire world view every month or two. Sometimes it was just because I heard the right record, other times because of a live performance.
Because I was a younger and less experienced listener, I was easier to surprise. I was more musically literate than anyone my own age, and even more than most adults I knew. I was a teenager who didn’t care about school. I had a part time job working for a wedding band, and kept pursuing everything about music I could learn about. Every time I walked out the front door, I was going in search of more music, and I kept finding it.
Now, I’m sixty. I’ve enountered a whole lot of music, from all parts of the world, different periods of history, and all like that. It’s more difficult to surprise me. But I appreciate music in more ways than I ever did, and there are more ways by which I am impressed that ever before.
(This being said, there is very little I used to hate that I don’t hate now. The Supertramp hits — except “The Logical Song” — sound better to me now, mostly because the chord progressions are more interesting to me. While the younger version of me would have dismissed Boston outright, I’ve come to appreciate the ingenuity and craftsmanship of Tom Scholz. I just don’t like the sound. As for things I used to enjoy but no longer do, very few things. The Clash have not aged at all well for me, and that’s about the only glaring example. )
We’d all like to think we’re the arbiter of any artist’s street cred. But that’s bullshit at its most Fisher-Price. If you’re been there and done that — wherever there is and whatever that may be — you know experience is subjective. Howlin’ Wolf might not have had the only experience worth reporting. Not every tough job is rooted in agriculture, mining, or factory work. If you’ve come of age in the metropolitan northeast, Willie Dixon might not speak as accurately for you as Sondheim, no matter how many tattoos you have and how much whiskey you’ve used. Get over it.
(This performance moves me, every time.)
What affects sixty year old me, personally? Well, the feeling of musical freshness, even better if it comes of a tried and true format. What could be more formulaic that the Ramones? The pre-hardcore recipe had been done to death by 1983. Than bluegrass? By 1952, it had been perfected. Very rhetorical questions, obviously. But there’s a lot to say for mastering something, sticking by it, and mastering it some more. To transform existing material into your image, no matter who first created it.
Another thing that hits me hard is when you hear something that makes you understand that a form or style that seems either easy or disposable is neither. When the depth of a form is turned over so instead of dancability or virtuosity — often the coins of the realm for popular styles — the driving trait is a kind of contact with the ancients. Every style produces a great many very good pracitioners, but the greats are the masters who go beyond the mind and create from the bones.
Every now and then you encounter an artist who is fully profound, whose musical language and delivery are unimpeachable, whose execution is spotless, and who never fails to convince. These are the same people whose tackiest, cheesiest moments are rendered with the same care as their greatest. Remember — the same Louis Armstrong who recorded “West End Blues” and “Drop That Sack” also brought you “Hello Dolly”. And he meant both, earnestly. The Elvis who brought you “Mystery Train” did the clam, just as the same Stevie who told you not to worry about a thing just called to say he loves you. Let’s not even discuss Leonard Bernstein’s failures as a composer (Mass, anyone? Me neither.)
No level of technique can overcome a performers lack of believability. If you don’t believe that they believe, it’s just background noise. Do you think Merle Haggard would have acknowledged the greatness of Elaine Stritch? I have no doubt he would have. All the platinum this, Grammy that, and whatever is as transient as a hairstyle. But the ability for the one to one reach out from performer to listener is timeless and sacrosanct.
I left out a lot — I know — but this is really just a thumbnail guide to my sensibilities. If any of this music leads you to more music, then I am grateful for our time together.