So I briefly worked alongside a guy. Let's call him Vince for the purposes of this blog post. Vince and I had several conversations about music, brief ones. One day we were listening to a Seattle radio show called Expansions, and we had the following exchange:
Vince: So I don't know about all this new stuff, but do you like old school shit?
Sam: I mean sure...what do you mean by old school shit?
Vince: You know—like real music. Ever hear of a guy named Jimmy Hendrix?
Sam: [purses lips, squints eyes, and massages temples with fingers]
Or this:
Vince: In my opinion man, music died in the nineties. Hey, you like Nirvana?
Sam: [glassy-eyed gaze into the distance, followed by flexing of jaw muscles]
I said nothing, because that's what I do when I'm truly and utterly at a loss—when someone says something so outrageously divergent from what I believe, that clearly it's not just our music tastes that are misaligned—it's our whole perception of reality. To Vince, "music" consisted of a list of about 175 songs all written between the years 1972 and 1994, all owned by the same four record companies, and all played on the same classic rock station.
If music is dead, then here's one of my favorite forms of reanimated zombified flesh: loop-pedal based magic. It's a whole art form, a stunning fusion of technology and musical vision. It's a marvelous, exciting world of musical creation out there, and I suspect this is only the beginning. Check out these guys:
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
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4 comments:
Reminds me of Zoe Keating (16 overlaid tracks of her playing the cello = most of her music).
Yo Sam. I am Patrick Pickens, an old old friend of Tony Farrar (and one year older than he in fact- so as stated, old old…), and you and I met in Tucson one early Jan. afternoon, geez it might have been in 2005 or earlier, and we did a fairly short 40 or so mile spin around the NW part of the city; you were down that way with a friend, staying with that guy's family in order to get some mid winter miles in during the holiday break from school, and you were still flagging a NM Bike n' Sport jersey, which is what caught my attention, in fact. You may recall this, but no worries one way of the other. In the meanwhile, I have kept somewhat of an eye on your racing exploits, myself begin very busy with personal affairs, work, travel, and so on, and I simply have to ask on this mid May, 2013, evening: Are you in fact still racing, or not? I find no results anywhere, and am additionally aware that your team folded least fall. It would be sad to learn that you are not supported and riding this year on a top notch squad, but I also know that you're multi faceted and have your hands in different things, so it would be no surprise to learn that you have moved to other things, likely bigger and better. I don;t know about you, but I found Cat II and above racing really hard, to put it simple. and while the rewards and related satisfaction was one of a kind, I sure felt something along the lines of relief once I accepted that I did not HAVE to get on the bike eery day, and so on. The attendant fitness, albeit residual, was still of great utility, and I continued to ride a hell of alot and do other silly stuff after I stopped racing, non-competitively recreating at t level I never had, you know. Anyway, that's it. I am in Louisiana at the moment, have an editor at Tulane U, and an ongoing research and writing commitment taking up alot of my time, but even here and now, I get out the door every afternoon for a good hard run or a good fun ride in the local woods. I will return to my home region of NM-AZ in the near future, the sooner the better, for whatever novelty and other like attraction to living here in the deep south existed in the past 10 months has worn off for the most part. I have not looked to closely at the blog, yet, bt will do so when i can. I am sure it has meritable entertainment value that poses little to no risk to my sense of sanity as it stands today. Ha! As if! Later. Pickens.
Call the school!
Popular music is generational...the music that speaks most to me is the one that I grew up with. It partly functions as a right of passage from adolescence to adulthood. I don't listen to much contemporary music because I'm not an adolescent anymore. I generalise I know but...
I have a loop pedal. It's fun but loop based music is easily created....I think this facile quality is it's weakness.It's become ubiquitous.
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