How great is Collective Soul? How fun is Jimmy Eat World? How tuneful and demented is Big Wreck? And how oddly attractive, weird yet strangely appealing is Our Lady Peace?Thank you, David Cook. Thank you American Idol. Thanks, Al, my brother-in-law, who never grew out of music. Thanks, Bob, a co-worker, who dumped 20 CD's on me as a get-back-into-music primer.
Seriously. I used to be addicted. My life had a soundtrack. Long before featherweight iPods let you take stereo with you anywhere.
My transistor radio became a part of my hand. I'm surprised surgery wasn't required to remove it.
Record players. One little speaker. 45's stacked on that fat spindle...dropping every 3 minutes...pure heaven.
Guitars. Seriously. And drums. The beat...my heartbeat.
Stereos, headphones, concerts at The Fillmore, Winterland, Avalon Ballroom. Oh my god! You couldn't hear yourself screaming.
Album oriented rock FM. Vinyl gold. Laid-back DJ's too cool to shout. Playing all sides...20 minute songs.
What the hell happened? Did the music die? Or was it something in me? Responsibility? Toil and trouble? Cynicism? Heartbreak? Experience? Age? Exhaustion?
Yes.
It's knowing too much to be moved by the purely emotional anymore. It's having see too much tragedy to still believe that miracles are possible. It's losing enough that optimism seems foolish. It's learning that "loving one another right now" works great except not on that big, mean pissed off guy who kicks your ass or fires you. It's watching people you love die. It's losing money, friends, love. It's loneliness. It's life.
And the worst part is that music is exactly what nourishes the spirit wounded by all these slings and arrows. And we abandon it...just when we need it most.
Of course, everybody doesn't. But I did. And a lot of people I know...listen instead to talk radio and the "news" at home, in their cars, at work. Is there anything more perfectly designed to ground a soaring spirit?
So we feed on the poison, and avoid the antidote.
I'll tell you what. Turn off the news. Stop listening to talk radio. Drop a quarter in the jukebox instead.
Forget plastic surgery and stupid diets. Music will take 20 years off your face...on the inside where it counts...and bopping around with your iPod is a lot more fun than eating cardboard food and torturing yourself at the gym.
Life is beautiful. "Love is gathering." "Let your soul take flight."
The Gunslinger
You know, you're right Gunslinger. I've learned a lot here, thank you all, but it really is more constructive and instructive to "be happy" and let all this political stuff sort itself out instead of getting too worked up about things one has little to no influence over...
ReplyDeleteThe music industry is really messed up. I think we are seeing their dissolution coming. They tried to strangle and choke the creativity and "rawness" of real music by pushing computer-selected lowest-common-denominator crap down our throats. It's gotten to be pre-fab pop-stars and songs so shallow and un-musical that a computer could write them - and in some cases almost does!
With iTunes, Amazon.com, etc that is all changing luckily. More power to the artists and listeners, and a return to real music by real people for real people.
Well, sorry to drop a rant on you :)
Loved the rant. I think I missed the bad...so out of touch. I'm finding a lot of music on the web...and downloads are available everywhere..by the bands that make the music. I love it.
ReplyDeleteI hate "giving up"...if that's what it is. But dayum...you can go crazy with all that's wrong. Time to notice what's right.
Everybody deserves a little happiness and joy...what?
I think the problems with the music industry can be summed up in one word:
ReplyDeleteNAPSTER
ever since the "industry" took on people's ability to share GOOD music, the conglomerization of the radio waves and our ear sockets was an excuse to compensate for the dwindling returns on crappy music shoveled from RIAA.
we've really seen the "soul" ripped out of music, and I think the last "classic" song to be released by a major label was "Sweet Child O' Mine" from Guns N Roses.
but live music . . . oh baby . . . I live on my CDs and downloads of Karl Denson, Galactic, anything Phil Lesh and Bobby Weir are doing . . .
www.archive.org is also a great place to rifle through thousands of hours of live recordings . . .