First off, like Noah said, huge applause to John and
Sarah for tying the knot on Friday, and even bigger props
for John’s posting the very next day. You’d think the guy
would take a break. Anyway, next time you send a demo to
Side One, make sure you include a blender or toaster with
your press release.
I think by now you know that I’m a guy
who has an uncanny affinity for music. My daydreams are set
to the tune of a select few albums I listen to regularly. Ask me about the merits of music as an art form and I’ll
talk your ear off. Inquire about my "favorite albums of all
time", and prepare yourself for an essay on what I easily
consider one of the toughest decisions of my life. Yes, I
count myself among the unrecognized scholars of the world, a
scholar of music.
My younger brother, however, is a
sports guy. His knowledge of the NBA (his specialty) is
boundless. For every good song I can name, he can match me
with a short bio of some sports legend that I’ve never heard
of, but probably should have. My thoughts about music as an
art pale in comparison to his commentary on sports as a
changing form of cultural entertainment. Seriously, if in
ten years he were taking on an 400 year old Woody Paige on
Around The Horn, I wouldn’t be the slightest bit surprised.
No, in case you’re wondering, this post
isn’t going to be about sports (although I am planning a
comprehensive history of NFL television theme songs post and
I’m only half kidding). See, a couple of weeks ago, my
brother and I took a trip to our favorite record store, Good
Records up in Dallas, so we could purchase a few new albums
(he finally bought Boxer on CD, and I got a Shearwater
single and a Silver Jews LP) and generally shoot the shit
before I went back to school for this semester. Along the
way, we talked about something that has forever perplexed
me: what makes music art, and what draws me to it more than
any other art form? Why are there some albums I have to own
no matter how many times I’ve downloaded them illegally?
And
why are the National so goddamn good?
With a few weeks to think about those
very questions, I’d like to take a little time to try to
answer them today and next week (two part series!) using
songs from a few of my favorite bands.
First and foremost, music is art, and
legitimately good music is aware of that fact. The way I see
it, all art has two different aims (with a lot of gray area
in between): purely artistic aims and commercial aims. For
every graphic designer hard at work designing the new Levis
ad, there’s somebody moonlighting in their basement making
"art" that they’ll beg someone to hang up in an
out-of-the-way gallery for free, just as for every Quadruple
Platinum Pop Star selling millions of records and stuffing
the exec’s pockets, there’s someone making gorgeous music in
their basement selling maybe 5 CD-R’s with their name
scrawled across the top in off-brand Sharpie. I’ll let you
guess which aims the following songs represent (HINT: one
had a video made for it):
:Fembots
- Good Days:
It’s not
that I don’t like Pop Music, it’s just that I’m aware that
it’s all tailored for my aural enjoyment. It’s the
difference between a rollercoaster, where every drop, every
loop, every sharp bank is designed to give you the rush of
adrenaline, and driving through the Rocky Mountains, where
humanity has done little more than harness the natural
thrills of the landscape with a mere strip of pavement (and
a couple of badass tunnels, if I remember right).
Without trying to be too deep, that last comparison I think
perfectly captures the ultimate aims of art: to combine the
spirit of humanity (to think and analyze) with the inherent
beauty of nature in such a way that it works at the real
relationship between human and the world. After all, music
is nothing more than the coordinated change in air density
in our ear canal, which is not very exciting at all. But
arrange those physical changes in density in the right
sequence, and you get songs like the Sex Pistols’ God Save
The Queen, which hit #2 on the British charts but was
banned from radio play by the BBC. I may be over simplifying
my point, but it seems obvious that the communication of at
times highly controversial and influential human ideas via
elementary physical means is the epitome of that
human-nature interaction.
:Sex
Pistols - God Save The Queen:
Did God
Save The Queen have anything artistic to say? Not really,
but there’s plenty of music that does, and it’s not just
through lyrics.
The way I see it, there are a couple of ways to approach
art, by design or by action. What I mean by that is this:
art by design is something that’s laid out ahead of time,
and then pieced together and art by action is something
that’s created as a sort of improvisation, or something
unplanned. Of course there are examples of each, but most
art resides somewhere in the middle of the two.
Improvisation is the ultimate "action", involving only prior
knowledge of scales and notes, and drawing inspiration
entirely from the moment. Electronic music, of course, tends
to lean toward the excessive planning, the use of computer
generated sounds, and lots of overdubs, therefore it’s more
strongly “design” oriented. With that in mind, have a listen
to this "electronic" next song.
:Syclops
- Where's Jason's K:
The song doesn’t leave much to chance; everything is, for
lack of a better phrase, rather prim and proper. And quite
frankly, I don’t like it one bit. It’s like a paint by
numbers, where you get to pick the colors, or synthesizers.
Where exactly is the fun in that? And for that matter, what
makes something "fun" anyway? What makes it enjoyable and
worth having on pressed onto a vinyl record, just how I like
it?
Those questions and more I’ll be answering next week in Part
2. Specifically, I’ll be pondering the ways that feeling the
human interaction that goes into the making of music makes
it more enjoyable, and why for me, the best way to get that
human interaction is via vinyl records. To answer those
questions, I’ll be turning to one of the bands I know best. Here’s a little preview for next week:
So on
that note, I’ll leave you hanging until next week.
I’ll grant you this whole post sounds like a serious
version of Hipster Runoff, so feel free to share
your thoughts/disagree on the subject, I by no means
claim to be infallible, and I write as much to
answer my own questions as any one else’s.
Thanks for reading, more to come next week (and more
songs too)!
John Michael Cassetta keeps his own blog, Big
Diction, and writes for the local website Austin
Sound. Comments, complaints, and solicitations
may be directed
here.
- John Michael
Cassetta -
Unless
otherwise expressly stated, all text in this blog and any
related pages, including the blog's archives, is licensed by
John Laird under a
Creative Commons License.
