Where’s the new, exciting, challenging sounds?
November 16th, 2008 by keefycubA few days ago I had an offer of collaboration. I set everything up technically with the required person involved, as it was only about 20 minutes to do so, and went back to my normal everyday rent-paying work because I was busy with it.
Then I had the absolute horror of listening to those that I would have been collaborating with. I listened to 15 tracks, about an hour and a half, and all I heard was mimicry. I politely refused the collaboration, and apparently this was insulting to the person offering. I explained as gently as I could that I was not interested in rearranging pre-existing sounds. While I didn’t elaborate, I’m far more interested in sound transformation into pieces and building music from the ground up rather from a borrowed structure downward. And I am definitely not interested in deciding what stock lick fits perfectly in song X.
I’m posting this article in the Jamendo forum and on both of my blogs because I want to see if there are many other people who have had it with so called pop music as much as I have, and I want to see how many people are actually on my wavelength. Give me a shout if you’re down with me.
When I hear new pop music, the stuff that I hear from my friends who know that I’m an <ahem> avant-garde sort of guy <koff, koff, snort snort> always has some sort of new flavour to it, one that I’d not considered previously. One recent (in the last two years) discovery was the Blood Brothers. Fantastic, powerful stuff, interesting musically, and the sound world was one that I’d not quite heard before. I’ve heard quite a few deathgrunt loud metal bands that had interesting sonic pictures to their mixes, all highs and lows, no mids at all. Another fun discovery was the music at the blog Clinical Archives. New stuff comes in faster than I can listen to it, and right now my listening list played constantly around the clock would be 18 days just to cover the current year.
My bitch is this: I’m so very sick of hearing people mimicking musicians from the so-called “Classic Rock” era. There was one Beatles. That stuff was 40 years ago. That was enough. There was one Led Zeppelin. That was 40 years ago as well. Guns & Roses are supposed to have their old album “Chinese Democracy” out in a couple of weeks. 17 years in the making? Are you kidding? What sort of relevance is this thing going to have to me?
My guess is that it doesn’t have any relevance to me. It’s a consumable product, timed to coincide with current trends, and it just took 17 years for tired Rolling Stones-like rock music to come back into vogue again. That record took longer to make than some people actually live. I have to ask what is so important or intriguing about Axl Rose in the first place. He sounds to me like Ethel Merman on crack, and he dances as though he forgot (or didn’t want) to take the buttplug out. That sort of music seems rather polite to me even though it’s supposed to be rebellious. Now, subjecting your significant other to Merzbow – there’s some rebellion!
When I was a kid back in the early 80’s, it was very unhip to like music pre-Beatles. I can only imagine what it was like in the 60’s when bands started plugging in and getting louder. It must have been social suicide to be into say, the popular music of the 40’s. So where are the hip people out on Jamendo? Right now, I have about a 20 or 30% hit rate at something that tickles my personal creative bone and makes me say “wow.” The rest of it falls into the “boring mimic” “polly want a cracker” classic rock category. When I listen to something I don’t want to be able to tell what that person’s record collection is like (for the record mine is heavy on free jazz, the more outre electronica of the past 10 years, drone stuff, and cassette culture from the 80’s).
I remember one time I went into a chat room, back in the earlier days of the web, and asked what was new. Who had something so new that they couldn’t give it to me before for lack of space – something that would take me a moment to comprehend it? What was very sad was that it was a bunch of people talking about Jimi Hendrix as if he were some sort of god, all not even born when he was alive, and not a single one of them could name a single piece of music that had even been written in the last five years, never mind the previous week or something that sounded that new. Eventually, when I asked what’s the worst thing you’ve ever heard … someone said the Homosexuals. So I checked them out. Sure it’s 35 years old, but it’s great and it sounded very fresh. I had to laugh at the name, great punk name, wish I’d thought of something better than “Subversive Vulture.”
Someone suggested hip-hop eventually. I listened to it, gave it a chance. There were some pleasantries in it, some things I could identify with. Mystikal’s song “Shake Ya Ass” made me laugh (speaking of old songs – that’s one that stood out). But ultimately, I basically heard Kurtis Blow, Fab Five Freddy, Grandmaster Flash, Sugarhill Gang, and so on. Stuff that I liked when the whole idea was new to me.
The only music that has really stuck with me in my lifetime is the soundscape stuff, and boy can I tell you there’s a LOT of it. This is encouraging. One of my soundscape albums actually got a 1 star review from some wag who said it wasn’t music – perhaps I should wear it as a badge of pride.
It amazes me that someone will say that my album of soundscapes is not music, yet ask them for favourite Pink Floyd albums and they’ll cite Dark Side Of The Moon, which has two soundscapes on it. Ask them their favourite Beatles album and they may cite the White Album, but then counter them with “Revolution 9” and they’ll say that’s not music. I think “Revolution 9” is a wonderful piece of music and it says more to me in 8 minutes than Led Zeppelin’s entire catalog has done in the 40 years it has existed. I do like Pink Floyd still, but it’s rather hard to listen to it with any regularity due to its age.
I’m still only about halfway through Merzbow’s Merzbox. 50 CD’s of his stuff is very daunting, but I’m listening to each disc until I know it and then I’m making up my mind whether I like it. So far I like it all. I was very surprised to find that not all of it is pegged VU’s and equipment frying. Some of it is, but the more I listen the more I discover a method to the madness, and it’s far more rewarding than any classic rock album I can think of …. I feel like it’s a challenge to comprehend it. The only record from the classic rock era that ever made me feel this way, one which probably doesn’t count but it does have a Beatle on it – is Yoko Ono’s Plastic Ono Band. That one sounded like it was from outer space when I first heard it about 1980 or so, but once I had gotten that Yoko was drawing on real world sounds like free jazzers, it became a good housework record, one to crank when you gotta do the dishes.
So I ask you who have made it this far … what’s challenging to you? Chances are it’s already in my list of favourites if it’s rather well known – have you got anything that turns up nil when you google it, something that isn’t listed in that bastian of music, the All-Music Guide (maybe I should call it the bastard of music)? Let me know. I’d love to chat about it.
