Healthy Creativity

A common myth in the rock world is that drugs, alcohol and other forms of dangerous living all inspire creativity. The examples being mostly from the classic rock era: Beatles, Dylan, the Doors, Bowie (he forgot recording entire albums - and they were great!). Some may have some element of truth to them but many times are pure myth. For example, the members of Pink Floyd (except Syd of course) all deny any drug influence on their work. Recently, I've come across references to the counter effect: healthy living being a boon to creativity: Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips apparently got much healthier just as they were getting into their boom-box and parking lot experiments that resulted in their string of critically acclaimed albums including the multiple CD experiment shown above. Jeff Tweedy of Wilco cleaned up and got into running before A Ghost is Born (my favourite of theirs). And just look at the run of creative, experimental, productive work of Trent Reznor since he cleaned up - and then he won an Oscar!

Sounds versus songs

I received a very generous donation of several (more like 200) CDs recently. It seems for some, CDs are a total waste of space when you can digitize everything - one man's trash and all that. So, I've been working my way through them to see what I'll save and what I'll pass on to others - the remainder to trade I suppose. My listening and choosing helps emphasize something I've known about myself for quite awhile: I'm totally into sound over song. The production on those classic INXS albums is ridiculous. It also helps explain why I never really got into Dylan yet think little synth blips pinging around in surround sound is a reason to get Depeche Mode's Violator  on SACD. And maybe why I will defend the 80s as a decade anytime anyone writes it off.

Explorartion

I have referenced "The List" before - listing, of course, all of the CDs I want to buy at the moment. I used to not keep such a list but wing it, based on what looked interesting, was cheap or had just been released. The List was a way of making sure I always picked up only the most treasured CDs and not feel the pang of regret when you realize that there is something you want more but forgot to look for it when you were at the store. I'm almost at the point with the current list where I can wing it yet again - there are still important items on the list but through some good spending habits, good purchases, gifts and judicious pruning, it is down to just a few new releases and some reissues that will just replace some current faves. Now I can be more experimental and risky in my picks, which can result in some great purchases. Like today, I traded in a few at Recordland and ended up with several, not on the list, but great finds nonetheless.

Fandom

My most recent excursion into the 33 1/3 series of books is the Nine Inch Nails Pretty Hate Machine entry. This one takes a slightly different take by telling the story of the album by relating the story of ten fans of the album and band. These are real fans, not generally music fans, but people who are obsessed with NIN and Pretty Hate Machine - they go on message boards, join NIN inspired bands, speak of Trent Reznor (the man that is the band) as "Trent," like they know him personally. All of this has been reminding me of reading Nick Hornby's Juliet, Naked, which is all about a guy who is obsessed with one singer/songwriter and one of his  albums. It's made me feel like a bit of a dilettante, missing the days of my Cure super-fandom. When I read Juliet, Naked I even tried going through my collection in my head to try to pick an artist I could get into with the same fervour but couldn't come up with anything. I get the same longing when I read about Jandek - the intensity, the mystery! But I crave too much diversity in my music. I also think that sort of super-fandom requires a focus on lyrics that I'm rarely capable of anymore. Although I used to state there was a Cure song for every situation and mood - and I knew most of the lyrics.

Let's Talk About Love

Yup, that's Celine there. As you may have figured out, I've been reading a bunch of the 33 1/3 series of books. One of the more critically acclaimed of those books centres on her album Let's Talk About Love. And I read it. And I enjoyed it. It's probably the best of the series I've read so far (and I've read at least 7 of them now). Thing is, it's not really about the album; it is about taste, and class, and the reasons we listen to what we listen to. It actually centres on Celine because of what she represents. The thing that sits a little uncomfortably with me though, aside from the apparent sexual innuendos in the lyrics to "The Reason" ("In the middle of the night / I'm going down 'cause I adore you"), is the argument that much of our taste serves the purpose of signifying our class. That is, using taste telling others who we are, and are not, who we are above in terms of sophistication. Basically emphasizing the whole music snobbery thing that we are supposedly over now that we all so openly embrace our guilty pleasures.

Rationing listening pleasure

I listened to A Ghost is Born by Wilco on my commute today. I love this album. This album is so good it gives me goosebumps and my heart aches just a little at how amazingly beautiful it is - even the 11 minutes of drone and random noises are good. But I listen to it only occasionally and usually just once before shelving it away for awhile again. Why? Precisely because it is so good. I'm afraid that by listening too much, I will dilute it's special properties and I will grow tired of it. So I leave it there, waiting to be listened to again so that I can again marvel at it's excellence and (quietly) ask myself why I don't listen to it more. And it is just one of many albums that I do this with.

Bon Iver

Awhile back, I wrote about the new Bon Iver album and the track "Calgary." Soon after, that track was posted as the lead track from the album and I posted it to Facebook. I did it with the expectation that it might be of interest to my music loving friends and I kind of figured everyone else would ignore it as "Jeff and his weird music" interests. Then, both my mother and mother-in-law commented to me that they enjoyed the track, which I was pleased, although a little surprised. Now the whole album is streaming over at NPR. At work today I listened but again, I did not expect others to like Bon Iver, so I listened with the door mostly closed, lest my coworkers hear it and think it (or me) weird. Maybe I'm selling everyone a little short? Maybe Bon Iver would be more popular if more of us shared his music? And maybe there's something to the whole music geek criticism that we protect our little treasures and pretend that they are too good for the masses.

Slow & Boring

I stumbled across this piece from the new York Times the other day. Basically, the writers are arguing for slow & boring films, which I'm all for, especially when they contrast the slow & boring with the frantic but empty action and comedy films that Hollywood makes so easily these days. It got me thinking about the same thing in music. If we are praising slow & boring music what would be some examples? Usually the praise heaped on great music is for exciting, challenging, energizing music but slow, long, boring? What would be the examplars of this? I guess for popular examples I'd have to go with Kid A by Radiohead, maybe something like In A Silent Way by Miles Davis, and the ambient half of Brian Eno's catalogue.

Feist

I was listening to the James Blake album today and decided to look at the liner notes, His voice sounds so different on different tracks that I figured he had to have guest vocalists. I even misremembered that maybe Antony Hegarty guested. He actually does handle all the vocals himself - another sign of his brilliance. What I found out is that he didn't write "Limit to Your Love" - it is of course written by Feist but again, brilliant James Blake makes it sound like he wrote it. Or maybe I haven't listened to that Feist album in awhile.

Long vs Short Past

I had a conversation with a friend recently in which I tried to make a point about the age of artists we see now versus the ages of artists we would have seen when we were younger. I failed miserably - she didn't "get it" and maybe neither did I. This started with Bright Eyes' remark at the show last week that some of the songs he was performing were older than some people in the audience (only certain songs and only the youngest members of the audience, but still). This struck me as odd because artists like Bright Eyes, and much of the artists I listen to seem like they are of a different class, type, or order of artists than those whom I could have seen at age 16. I saw the Who at 16 for example and certainly many of the songs in that set are older than me. I thought that maybe the difference is that artists like Bright Eyes are still a going concern - they haven't broken up, reunited or otherwise taken long absences unlike say, the Who or Pink Floyd (another oldie I saw when still "young"). I also thought maybe I'm classifying bands pre and post punk? So any artist that started releasing records prior to 1977 is old, and after are "young". Maybe it is just my own age - the Who are old because they are older than me and Bright Eyes are younger because they are younger than me? A thought that hit me today was that maybe the Who and their ilk are part of my "long past" and Bright Eyes are part of my "short past" - an idea I stole from Tom Ewing over at Pitchfork. Basically the long past is the time period before I got into music and the short past is the period since. It is more recently and vividly experienced so feels "recent" whereas the long past feels like history even if the actual dates might be very close together. I think some of this carries over too though because an artist can get classified into these groupings and it can carry forward into the short past. For example, even though the Rolling Stones still release records and have had a longer career since I got into music than before I did, they will always seem part of the long past to me.