Jenny Tatone
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So I went back to school to get way from music. Well, not so much to get away from it as to expand my horizons. I wanted to force myself to write things that didn't include words like: "genre", "riff", "indie", "influence", "reverb", "vocal", "lo-fi" or "album", especially since most folk don't actually listen to music in album form anymore.
For my thesis, I thought about writing a memoir and then cringed at the idea. I thought about personal essay and then decided my ideas weren't big enough. And then I thought about music. And it stuck. Damn. No matter how hard we try, we just can't get away from what we love most.
I'm not going to write about a band or a genre or a decade of music, or anything like that. I want to write about what's happening with music now. We're amid big (big!) transition. Technology is not only changing the way we live our lives day to day, it's changing they way we think and feel and relate as a culture. It's as if we're moving into a new dimension (and I don't mean the virtual one) and there's no turning back.
Needless to say, the shift from the CD to the MP3 is changing everything and impacting everyone, well, almost everyone. I'm not so concerned with documenting the downfall of the record industry--it's a byproduct and it's short term and no one will really care in ten years. Instead, I'm most interested in studying how digital music changes (with permanence) the way we discover, hear and experience music.
The internet blew the door open to a seemingly endless stream of music by artists all over the world. Many kids today have music libraries that make the CD collections of yesterday blush over their total inadequacy--much of which they didn't have to pay for. I wonder how this changes the way we value music? How does it change our relationship with the artist? How does it change what we consider "art"?
I'm also interested in looking at consumption versus experience. With instant access to massive amounts of music, are we really listening? Or are we on a never-ending hunt to binge and purge? How much of our satisfaction is derived from consumption? And how much from true absorption? Are we moving too fast to experience music with depth and passion and thought?
And because music, for many of us, exists as files on our computer rather than a beloved piece of plastic or creative sleeve, it seems music becomes a disposable product. Sure, it's a bummer when the computer crashes but MP3s seem more readily replaceable than the worn grooves of a vinyl album. If kids grow up in a world where songs are disposable computer codes, will they value music less? And, in turn, experience it with less depth?
Or maybe the new intangible nature of music is a good thing. Maybe we're heading in a direction wherein discovering and hearing are more important than owning. And shouldn't the act of listening to music be more important than the act of owning it? Than the act of bragging?
And then there's the idea of democratization, the declining importance of pop stars, the dissolving of genre lines, the increasing odds of success for "indie" musicians, the eliminating of gatekeeps (major labels, radio, MTV, etc.), the closing of the gap between fan and musician, etc. How does a hierarchy-less music industry (community?) influence our experience with and relationship to music?
Yeah, I think I need to narrow my scope, too. But it's hard. All these things swirl through my head as I fret and procrastinate the actual writing of the thesis--you mean I have to formulate real opinions? I can't just ask a bunch of questions? It scares me because that's all I have right now--a load of curiosities and no sturdy guesses. Our culture is changing forever, without a doubt. My kids (if I happen to have any) may devour music and relate to musicians in a way I never imagined possible. I'd love for the thesis to make a solid guess, a reasonable prediction, as to which way that is.
So as I was reading a bunch of books about understanding music from a cultural, social or philosophical stodgy old perspective, I thought I really ought to ask the folks living through this change right now, not the ones who passed on before the computer was even born. After all, they surely understand best their own experiences of transition.
I'd love to hear from you lovely Moggers. Any thoughts on the subject would be invaluable, for real. I promise to be more interactive with this than with past posts (I apologize for my laziness ... it's summer!) as I'm trying to experience more online, too--it seems only right, right?
I was sitting outside Portland, Ore.’s Someday Lounge two nights ago following an incredible live performance by London’s The Real Tuesday Weld when Stephen Coates—main man behind the band—told me he wasn’t afraid of death. "My experience of death has been really positive," he told me. "When my father died he wasn’t scared—he was completely fortunate about the time he had here."
Clearly Coates—an exceptionally talented musician, artist and filmmaker—is making the most of his time here. Following art school and, later, a four-month stint living in a Buddhist monastery (a brief fling with enlightenment), Coates began penning songs that combined the lounge-y old time-y jazz sounds of his youth with the electronic, pop and experimental noise modernity brought him. The result is undeniably engaging and beautifully mystifying—listening to The Real Tuesday Weld feels like living in an old movie where you’re constantly falling in and out of love, reaching new heights and stumbling to new lows. Coates’ songs simultaneously break your heart and mend it. "My experience of life is always between comic and tragic," Coates explained. "I’m interested in capturing the balance between the two."
Something that is evident in Real Tuesday’s stellar live performance, which is, true to the definition of the word, indeed a performance. Backed by an enormous screen showing black and white clips from ‘40s era films carefully edited to coincide with each song, Coates radiates an electric stage presence that adds, like the jittery films, an enticing layer to the set, whose warmth and thickness is made possible by Coates’ mates, a drummer, bassist, guitarist and clarinetist (all of whom wear dress shirts and slacks, providing a slick and shaded sort of backdrop). Donning a retro navy blue, large-collared sports jacket, black slacks and shined-on dress shoes, Coates stumbles, slouches, crouches and stomps about the stage with desperate crazed eyes like a man so tired of falling in and out of love he’s on the verge of giving up. Yet his performance, which involves a microphone and an Apple Power Book, doesn’t come without a good dose of humor and playful interaction with the crowd. Frequently throughout the show, Coates picks a girl from the sparsely populated audience to focus on as if the song were meant for her. He looks deep into her eyes and then suddenly turns on her: "I don’t get my kicks out of you, I don’t feel the way I used to," Coates croons and hisses like a ‘50s lounge singer on the song "Kix" with its swinging rhythms and piping clarinet. "I know it’s bad after what we’ve had, but I’m just not the angel you knew."
The Real Tuesday Weld have released five albums in the ten years since Coates began writing songs out of a love for the hushed and crackling sound of old jazz records and the modern capacities of laptop manipulations and Euro-pop. Most of his songs, particularly those on 2004’s I, Lucifer and last year’s London Book Of The Dead, are about love—cynical love, the problems with love, the dark side of love. "One minute it’s like everybody’s dancing and the next they’re weeping," Coates told me, describing the true-to-life contrasts in his songs. "It’s totally ridiculous," he added with a laugh, "I never set out to create music. I had no plan. I guess it was more for therapy in the beginning."
Coates never says how his father died and he doesn’t go into much detail about his time in the monastery. Still, he reveals an interest in transcendence, dream interpretation (Carl Jung) and embracing death without fear. "I want to make a whole album about death—a album full of positive songs about death," he said. "I don’t believe in God but I feel really fortunate to have been around."
"Life is good when you’re filled with blood, life is good when you’re filled with love," is how Coates opens and closes London Book Of The Dead. And I want to add that life is good when you have music like Coates’ around.
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Makes me wanna see them, Jenny - the true mark of a well-written (favorable) review.
Dear Fellow Hold Steady Fan:
Have you heard The Hold Steady’s new album? Yeah? Yeah, it’s pretty good. I mean, it’s no Separation Sunday, that’s for sure. But it still rocks—it’s a good summer record. They’ve lightened up, don’t you think? Yeah, I guess the Stay Positive album title implies that. It just seems like Craig Finn got it out of his system a few years ago and now he and his mates are just having a good time. Did you hear the new lighthearted kind of sounds they worked in—the harpsichord and the mandolin and the different keyboard style? It makes it feel a little like a ‘60s rock record. I like the subtle change—they really are great musicians, they can pull it off. But, yeah, it’ll never hit me like Separation Sunday. No, no, I didn’t expect it to (I didn’t expect last year’s Boys & Girls In America to either). I know, such awesomeness can’t be repeated. Did I ever tell you about how addicted I was to that album? Man, I could not get enough. I listened to it so many times—I listened to it like it was Thriller and it was 1982. I listened to it so much it kept me awake at night. Finn’s killer lines would lodge themselves inside some deep crevice in my brain and then just as I was trying to get to sleep, they would start playing over and over and over again without relent. It was torture, seriously. It wasn’t like: I can’t get that stupid song out of me head. It was like: Make it stop, make it stop, please dear God make it stop. Oh Jesus, is that the sun? It was terrible. But, in a way, I also think it was a sign of some sort of greatness. I think truly great music knows how to tuck itself inside you and, in a way, become a part of you. In some ways, I think those songs from Separation Sunday will always be with me. And because of that, I will always hear The Hold Steady—no matter which album or which song—with a lot of fondness and respect. It’s as if we’ve some sort of special bond; some special unspoken relationship—that’s what great music gives you, don’t you think? This special inexplicable kind of connection? It doesn’t come along too often. I can’t listen to Stay Positive without feeling it. But then again I can’t listen to Stay Positive without thinking about Separation Sunday ‘cause that’s where they hooked me. I mean, I think Finn did some pretty deep and genuine exploration back when he was writing for Separation Sunday. There was a lot of fervency and intensity and revelation in the way he made sense of his past and, in a way, made sense of our past. He made a lot of powerful connections and spit them back at us with massive energy and wit, like nothing I’ve ever heard. Their first album, Almost Killed Me, seemed to get him there and the albums that came after seemed to just sort of bask in its glow as if they were descending from some sort of grand climax (and becoming a bit more pop and polished on the descent). I mean, the new album’s title song is even a kind of reflection on what’s come before: "There’s gonna come a time when the scene will become less sunny, it’ll probably get druggy and the kids will get too skinny. There’s gonna come a time when she’s gonna have to go with whoever’s gonna get her the highest." You can just feel the crowd going wild at this song—and mainly because of what it reminds of them of. And I think it’s great that Finn and company are acknowledging where they’ve been and how they arrived to where they are, don’t you? You see this with a lot of great rock bands--this sort of burning intensity and revelation that cools into good times and nostalgia. I have to say though, Stay Positive is a Hold Steady album, know what I mean? It’s a solid rock 'n' roll album built on totally original, smartly crafted rock 'n' roll songs that could only be made and played by The Hold Steady. I mean, the new songs aren’t going to keep me awake at night. But I know they, like the band itself, will be with me, in some ways, forever. The Hold Steady may have peaked on a Sunday but they’re not going out without a positive jam. God bless this band.
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Yeah, you've nailed it. Just the way I feel about Separation Sunday. It's the album they'll likely never top. Total classic album. I was addicted to that album. This one is fine. But it's not the album you'd put in your Top 100 albums list. Separation Sunday would be on that list.
Agreed. 'Boys and Girls in America' was my first exposure to the Hold Steady and I fell in love completely with that album. When I heard 'Seperation Sunday' a few weeks later I knew I'd found a band to obsess over. You've really made me want to hear this one - although I'm still determined to wait another two weeks to get a CD I can hold. I'm Apple's b!tch in many ways, but I still love actual 'things'.
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Very interesting post. I will say since almost everything is available for download and because I have an iPod, I do get most of my music via computer/downloading. I usually only buy the CD when it's a band that I love (Radiohead, Tegan & Sara, Rilo Kiley, etch) or I'm in a mood to own the CD.
I still love music as much as I did when I was in high school, lying on my bed and reading liner notes. But I think the quality of music being put out is rubbish. I've been listening to more classic rock now than I ever did my entire life. Maybe it's because I'm getting older.
Thanks for sharing this sommer! Do you feel less love for the downloaded music then? Because of the sound quality? Do you prefer listening to your favorites on CD?
Classic rock never gets old even if we do, ha
Jenny, being one the old guys, the internet hasn't changed me way of listening much. I have over 4,ooo vinyl records, a portion of which is not available for download and many songs I couldn't possibly live without. I am attempting to put these songs in itunes but I don't have a lot of time to do this so I at least try for one song a day. The one thing that has bothered me about the change to this format is that a lot of tracks on vinyl bleed into each other so that now when people listen to one track they don't realize that the next track was meant to be heard also. I have a three tier listening system. I listen to records at home. Have an ipod for on the go . And have a hundred or so CD's in the car that I kind of circulate. I have also changed the CD tracks of some albums so that when 2 or more continuous tracks play I hear no break as you would on the digital version of the music. My preferance is still to listen on vinyl, old vinyl that is and am still undecided about the merits of the new vinyl.Thanks for this post