We Sing The Same Songs. And Some Different Ones, Too.
mostlyfoo asked me about music. Specifically, the kinds of music I like.
This is... tricky.
Let's start with my upbringing. I grew up in the 80s. My brother was heavily into rap, and so I heard, early on, and was deliberately taught an appreciation for, rap. Matt taught me how to listen for a rapper's flow, and it's one of the things I still listen for today; I can tell you, for example, that Professor Elemental and Dizzee Rascal are probably the two newest rappers I consider to have good flow. I'm not much of a Dizzee fan, but Professor Elemental raps about tea and fighting trousers. This is points, frankly.
My sister was into... a lot of artists she'd never forgive me for remembering enough to splash over the internet. As I recall, Salt N Pepa was the least of her excesses. En Vogue was pretty good, admittedly, but by and large I didn't dig her stuff. But most of the music I heard played as a wee nipper was played by my parents.
My dad was, is, and will always be big into 20s-40s Chicago jazz. He's also fond of 60s-era folk, with Bob Dylan and Welsh duo Miki & Griff being his most played.
Mum likes balladeers with beautiful voices and soft guitar, and anything by Stephen Sondheim. Aside from round-robins of Row Your Boat and hymn choruses (chori?) of The Lord of the Dance, a song guaranteed to make the word 'dance' become meaningless letters by the end of reading the lyrics, the first song I remember singing along to is the relentlessly chirpy Officer Krupke.
This is not a bad way to start. Also prevalent were singers and bands of the 60s, mostly the Kinks and the Stones. (Mum grew up in Liverpool. She saw the Beatles before they got famous, in the Cavern. "Wow," I said. "That must have kicked arse." "No," she replied, endlessly matter of fact. "They were a bit crap.")
What I GOT out of all this was a deep and abiding respect for the varied crafts of the vocalist, at all of which I am equally shite, and a love for...
Put it this way. I believe rock stars should ACT like rock stars. If I listen to Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Dr Dre, the Kinks, Aretha Franklin, Iron Maiden, many others... You can hear the joy in creating music. You can hear the love of what they do. And you can usually hear the awareness that their talent gives them great pleasure while allowing them to make more money than they need - so why the fuck angst over it?
And many of these folks go bluesy in one way or another in some songs, but they're still loving their role, their creation. More than anything else, rock/pop music should see the joy and passion and talent of the creator get inside you, sweep you along.
That's why concerts are awesome. That's why listening along with friends is awesome. It's why I love the Hardchorus' version of Truly Madly Deeply and anything I Fight Giants do, and it's why mashups tend to be great fun. It's why Eigencats events are - were - joy. And simple lyrics, ones you can get swept along with, are therefore not bad things.
Here, let William Burroughs sum up the joy of concerts.
These days, for me, music is about... imagination. I'm somewhat kinaesthetic, and I have an iPod, and I get a lot of my ideas for writing when walking, and when this music kicks in, the scene shifts, and thickens in my mind's eye, and becomes something real, and the energy comes in. What music I need for that varies. So I have a fairly eclectic music selection.
To illustrate this, let me put it on shuffle and note down a few transitions:
Space, The Man
Johnny Cash, I Walk The Line
Freddie Mercury & Montserrat Caballe, Barcelona
Cyclefly, Weary
Iron Maiden, Total Eclipse
Dropkick Murphys, Johnny I Hardly Knew Ya
Puscifer, Cuntry Boner [Dirty Robot Mix]
Billy Joel, It's Still Rock And Roll To Me
Alabama 3, Bullet Proof
Garbage, Shut Your Mouth
James Brown, The Payback
Eazy E vs. Johnny Cash, Folsom Prison Gangstaz
Annie Lennox, A Whiter Shade Of Pale
Disturbed, Shout 2000
Bo Diddley, Bo Diddley
James, Just Like Fred Astaire
Babylon Zoo, Is Your Soul For Sale
Chicago Cast, Cell Block Tango
Ennio Morricone, The Result
Bernard Herrman, North By Northwest
Tom Lehrer, The Masochism Tango
...Yeah, that should do it. Queue those up via YouTube and they're a damn weird list, right? And I love that. I love getting an abrupt and total mental shift as the music changes. I love drifting through styles via playlists, too. But in the right frame of mind, in that order, that's the emotional beats of a novel. (And the Masochism Tango, at the end. That would be a weird epilogue.)
So, yeah. Give me the joy of creation. Give me imagination. Give me emotion. Do all that, and I'll likely at least listen to you. I don't rate some genres, but even among those there are a few examples I have to applaud.
This is... tricky.
Let's start with my upbringing. I grew up in the 80s. My brother was heavily into rap, and so I heard, early on, and was deliberately taught an appreciation for, rap. Matt taught me how to listen for a rapper's flow, and it's one of the things I still listen for today; I can tell you, for example, that Professor Elemental and Dizzee Rascal are probably the two newest rappers I consider to have good flow. I'm not much of a Dizzee fan, but Professor Elemental raps about tea and fighting trousers. This is points, frankly.
My sister was into... a lot of artists she'd never forgive me for remembering enough to splash over the internet. As I recall, Salt N Pepa was the least of her excesses. En Vogue was pretty good, admittedly, but by and large I didn't dig her stuff. But most of the music I heard played as a wee nipper was played by my parents.
My dad was, is, and will always be big into 20s-40s Chicago jazz. He's also fond of 60s-era folk, with Bob Dylan and Welsh duo Miki & Griff being his most played.
Mum likes balladeers with beautiful voices and soft guitar, and anything by Stephen Sondheim. Aside from round-robins of Row Your Boat and hymn choruses (chori?) of The Lord of the Dance, a song guaranteed to make the word 'dance' become meaningless letters by the end of reading the lyrics, the first song I remember singing along to is the relentlessly chirpy Officer Krupke.
This is not a bad way to start. Also prevalent were singers and bands of the 60s, mostly the Kinks and the Stones. (Mum grew up in Liverpool. She saw the Beatles before they got famous, in the Cavern. "Wow," I said. "That must have kicked arse." "No," she replied, endlessly matter of fact. "They were a bit crap.")
What I GOT out of all this was a deep and abiding respect for the varied crafts of the vocalist, at all of which I am equally shite, and a love for...
Put it this way. I believe rock stars should ACT like rock stars. If I listen to Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Dr Dre, the Kinks, Aretha Franklin, Iron Maiden, many others... You can hear the joy in creating music. You can hear the love of what they do. And you can usually hear the awareness that their talent gives them great pleasure while allowing them to make more money than they need - so why the fuck angst over it?
And many of these folks go bluesy in one way or another in some songs, but they're still loving their role, their creation. More than anything else, rock/pop music should see the joy and passion and talent of the creator get inside you, sweep you along.
That's why concerts are awesome. That's why listening along with friends is awesome. It's why I love the Hardchorus' version of Truly Madly Deeply and anything I Fight Giants do, and it's why mashups tend to be great fun. It's why Eigencats events are - were - joy. And simple lyrics, ones you can get swept along with, are therefore not bad things.
Here, let William Burroughs sum up the joy of concerts.
These days, for me, music is about... imagination. I'm somewhat kinaesthetic, and I have an iPod, and I get a lot of my ideas for writing when walking, and when this music kicks in, the scene shifts, and thickens in my mind's eye, and becomes something real, and the energy comes in. What music I need for that varies. So I have a fairly eclectic music selection.
To illustrate this, let me put it on shuffle and note down a few transitions:
Space, The Man
Johnny Cash, I Walk The Line
Freddie Mercury & Montserrat Caballe, Barcelona
Cyclefly, Weary
Iron Maiden, Total Eclipse
Dropkick Murphys, Johnny I Hardly Knew Ya
Puscifer, Cuntry Boner [Dirty Robot Mix]
Billy Joel, It's Still Rock And Roll To Me
Alabama 3, Bullet Proof
Garbage, Shut Your Mouth
James Brown, The Payback
Eazy E vs. Johnny Cash, Folsom Prison Gangstaz
Annie Lennox, A Whiter Shade Of Pale
Disturbed, Shout 2000
Bo Diddley, Bo Diddley
James, Just Like Fred Astaire
Babylon Zoo, Is Your Soul For Sale
Chicago Cast, Cell Block Tango
Ennio Morricone, The Result
Bernard Herrman, North By Northwest
Tom Lehrer, The Masochism Tango
...Yeah, that should do it. Queue those up via YouTube and they're a damn weird list, right? And I love that. I love getting an abrupt and total mental shift as the music changes. I love drifting through styles via playlists, too. But in the right frame of mind, in that order, that's the emotional beats of a novel. (And the Masochism Tango, at the end. That would be a weird epilogue.)
So, yeah. Give me the joy of creation. Give me imagination. Give me emotion. Do all that, and I'll likely at least listen to you. I don't rate some genres, but even among those there are a few examples I have to applaud.