thomas
What we see when we're not there
Feb 10, 2013
If am to begin a blog, one centered on music, let me begin by issuing caveats, and thereby proffer the daggers to everyone who wishes to, disagree, discredit, or disembowel my opinions or myself: I am not in the main stream of Anglophone music culture, only a person who remembers and loved it from their time in the U.S. I am to the musical mainstream as an occasionally interested caterer is on a German Porn Set: not the director, any of the actors, or anyone close enough to get hit with a stray splatter of German-Specific Porno Matter, let alone suggest a superior target for said stream, *mainstream*. I plan to talk about what I feel like, and chances are astronomically slim it will have to do with Beyonce, or her lip-synching, or most hip-hop in general, seeing as I liked some Biggie, Pac, the Chronic, and 36 chambers for what it was, and what it is. But to me these Hip Hop high-lights lack as all recorded music that lets it-self be to easily identified as looped, that real space between the noises where that eternal mystery lies that makes recorded music eternally addictive. Also, I’m an indifferent speller and punctuator, so if you’ve made it this far you’ll have to learn to roll with it.
I guess most of us, or some us, at least, hit that fork in the road where we realize that the most exhilarating, and spine-tingling flash of white light and white heat comes from a momentary perfect meeting of time, rhythm, harmony, and vocal semantics. This excitement of stealing a perfect instant from our otherwise naturally nasty, brutish and short lifetimes, has the added appeal of something that will never be repeated, and that at the same time has the sexiness added by it being something possessed in memory, impregnable, stolen, but non-returnable.
Of course this perfect sound, or phrase can be replicated through assiduous studio work, as, it was on every Stones Album, Beggars Banquet through Exile on Main Street. The Best example being the “Live” “Get Yer Ya’ Ya’s out.” If ever there was an album punker than punk, badder than bad, it was Charlie’s Cover star turn. There has to be differentiation for there to be room for a special moment in a song, and this means there needs to be room for improvisation, which brings with it her terrifying and awesome and necessary weird sisters, the opportunity to fail, the sound of failing, and the triumph over the chasm of failure. Perhaps in Hip Hop all of that is encompassed in the Vocal lines, but by limiting the quicksilver to one vein, while reigning in the chances for abysmal 16 track sonic failure, you miss the opportunity for 16 track symphonic perfection.
If anyone has any Idea what I’m talking about, shout out an example.
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