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Monday, September 24th, 2001
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11:39a - All Over the World
...Or did you mean absinthe?
(And as it happens, you can find me if '[you're] feeling lucky', too.)
Happy Birthday to the King of Prussia!!
Sorry for the comparative infrequency of recent posts; I've been on the move, and I'm only in town for a day and a half before I'm off again. I'm resolving to get up the review of the last disc of the Ciphered Mix 5 set before I leave for Boulder on Thursday - where, as it turns out, I will be embarking on a "random road trip with potential strangers" bound for, of all places: Hot Springs, South Dakota. I haven't been in SD since '96, and I haven't been in CO since a year and a half prior to that; and that trip doesn't really count, anyway. The SD leg of this upcoming trip is pure leisure; the CO end of it is for the sake of checking out my current top choice for a grad school degree and investigating the local and regional music scenes in and around Boulder and Denver. And so the search for a quality band and meaningful ongoing musical collabouration continues.
For the drive north, I rented a swank sedan with a good stereo. And for the drive north, as I forgot the tape adapter for my CD player and quickly exhausted my comparatively meagre stock of tapes, I listened to quite a bit of radio, which wasn't a bad thing. I know a fair bit about what's going on in indie music these days, and can talk about folk traditions, jazz, or favourite composers of classical music. I'm reasonably hip to a lot of the music that tends to get called 'world music' these days. Hip-hop, too. But I'll freely admit, I have startlingly little knowledge about a lot of 'popular' music; since I hardly ever at all listen to the radio (which is due to the fact that in recent years I've found it uninteresting more often than not, and often tasteless or depressing to boot), I recognize very little of what's getting airplay if it isn't at least a year or two old. On the occasions when I do end up tuning in to a radio station for a moment, the results are often comical; I'll ask a friend who so-and-so is, and it turns out to be the current #1, or the Big Hit Single of the Summer or some such dubious distinction. Or, I'll think I'm hearing one type of music and suddenly realise it's actually something completely different. A crunchy Marshall stack sound will make me think I'm listening to the latest hard-rock AC/DC rip, and then when the vocals come in, the voice is a drawl, and soon accompanied by a fiddle, and I realise, Ah, no, this is 'country music,' I see... Or I'll hear a drum loop and a solid beat when I happen to be surfing the stations - Ah ha, I think to myself. Rap. But no, it turns out to be that appalling new-metal garbage. I'm sorry, but the metal I grew up listening to either involved men in spandex and lipstick or invocations to the very divil himself, and it was easier for me to take either manifestation seriously than it is for me to even feign any interest in Limp Bizkit. When I do pay any attention to the radio these days, I notice an unsettling level of musical homogenization - it's all starting to sound alike. I've talked about creatively taking a characteristic element of a particular style of music and transposing it to another - and quite often I enjoy that. But as I said before, that's no simple thing to do, and you never want to see an infant in a fat man's sweater. To me, the very point of that is to create something unique, something distinct, something which is a truer representation of the music you're trying to bring into the world and fully realise. This musical greyscaling also undermines the divisions that some people establish within the music; evidenced by, for example, the people that only like country music, but none of the vaguely rootsy rock music, even when the singer perhaps has a bit of a country accent. Or vice versa. Or, the people that devoutly separate hip-hop and true MCing from R & B, but by hip-hop mean what's playing on the radio and in the clubs - a lot of which has begun to sound like R & B. And vice versa.
But, to be fair, sometimes the radio is fun. There's music that is at the absolute bottom of my list of things to buy, music that even if I found an unopened CD in the used bin for $1, I'd still think of how many times in the future I may have to put it in a box and move it, but that makes me grin and sing along when I hear it on the radio. Sometimes, it's even mildly enlightening, and educational. Case in point: For the drive north, I rented a swank sedan with a good stereo. And for the drive north, as I forgot the tape adapter for my CD player and quickly exhausted my comparatively meagre stock of tapes, I listened to quite a bit of radio, which wasn't a bad thing. For a span of several hours, I listened to a style of music about which I know very little (and even less in terms of its more recent releases) and hardly ever listen to at all: R & B. I listened to slow jams. I even caught a Top 8 at 8 countdown. I heard a lot of music that I'd never heard before. Every once in a while I like doing that. I'm not a big fan of R & B; I don't own a single R & B record. And although I didn't hear anything on the drive that made me think Damn, I've gotta pull off at that exit and find a record store, I heard some catchy hooks and some smooth melodies. I heard a few good voices. I heard a song called "Feelin' on Your Booty". I recommend the experience, precisely for those reasons. It might not be your style, or your cup o' tea, but it's often worth your time. It's like reading the headlines of another country's newspapers. It's like going up into a restaurant that serves a type of cuisine you've never heard of, or perhaps have only heard of.
I didn't get to see Sigur Rós this past Saturday night, which is even more of a tragedy as The Album Leaf were opening up for them. Their show at the TLA was sold out. But, I bought tickets in advance for their show in Washington, DC, which is tomorrow evening and which also features The Album Leaf. I'm looking forward to it; it should be a fantastic show.
I missed my pal Jer's band, too; their show was canceled. But, they're going to be in town tonight, and although the guy who books the shows at the club I contacted never returned my calls despite being very cordial and seemingly interested when I first spoke to him about booking the band, at least I'll get to see my friend. For everyone reading, here is a word of advice, and a formal request inspired by the guy who books the bands: never, ever be two-faced. Furthermore, never be lazy if that's going to cause a hindrance for someone else and make him / her have to bother with issues that are more rightly your own to deal with.
On a friendlier note, a band I did get to see this past weekend was The American Analog Set. Perfect timing, too - I walked into the Khyber just as they began their first song. It was a comparatively short set - it was the only show of this tour that they did not headline, deferring instead to local faves Bardo Pond - but it was a good one, and the best I've seen since they played at Bennington. And the vibes were a stellar addition to the band - they add a lot to the recordings, but live, it's a different experience altogether. The sound suffered a bit from balance problems, and there was a lot of hiss coming through the speakers, but the vibes sounded at the same time crisp and ebullient, with a brilliant, lush sustain. Andrew gave a brief question and answer session, which entertained me quite a bit. Well, it was a good idea, I thought, a good device. A question and answer session! How novel! And the questions varied widely, and made for some fun banter: "What's it like in Austin?" "Where's the girl?" "Why did you elect Bush - twice?" "Come to blows with me!" I think that's a great bit to incorporate into your live act. As a musician and a performer, it's good to be astute, and attuned to things of that nature; it's alright to take notes. There's a commensalistic relationship there: if the audience likes your music, they may begin to form an opinion of the band that casts everyone as a swell guy or a swell gal. And if you cultivate that opinion, and let them relate to you on a person-to-person level, your music can become more accessible and in turn will often give you a leg up in getting your music out there, and garnering new fans via favourable word-of-mouth.
current music: Optiganally Yours: "Hugs" (1 louche | share your thoughts)
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4:41p - The Weekend's Most Random Occurrence
That, of course, is supposing that you believe in things being random -
I was in the midst of the North Wildwood Irish Fall Festival, just barely off the main drag, and about seven or eight blocks from the sea. I was sitting down, eating dinner outside, having a beer and digging the crowd, digging the mood of the festival. A girl I'd never seen before came up from behind, turned, and squatted down just in front of me. I'd never seen her, and I didn't know her, per se, but we both gave one another a big grin, and my words to her, a glad "Hullo, luv!," which I said without thought, were very familiar, something I'd say to an old friend. "I love your peaceful spirit," she said to me, and rose, and walked into the crowd.
current music: Spherey & the King of Prussia: "Mahavichy France" (2 louches | share your thoughts)
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absintheur's journal