Before You Listen

It’s always a sign that I’m tired or stressed if I don’t listen to music at work.

As I’ve mentioned I spend significantly more time listening to music on headphones at work than in any other setting. Most of that time I’m doing something else, and not listening closely, but that time is still a crucial part of how I think about music. It gives my mind time to process music in the background and allow random associations to form.

The fact that I listen to music at work also explains, in part, my affection for the pleasures of pop music. Good music provided great moments that work and catch your attention even when you’re distracted.

It’s also true, and a fact I forget all to readily, that listening to music at work is good for my work. A lesson that I learned in college, but that I forget occasionally, is that I am vastly more productive when I’m sufficiently alert that my mind is agile, and can consider things from multiple perspectives. If I get too fatigued I am only capable of working in straight lines and that means that, while I may be able to get some things done, it isn’t going to be fun, it isn’t going to be quick, and the best I can hope for is to do simple work without making too many mistakes.

One of the signs that I’m reaching that level of fatigue is that I stop listening to music, because it takes attention that I don’t want to give up.

I believe the studies that say that human beings can’t actually pay attention to two different things at the same time, they can only switch attention back and forth quickly. I know that if I’m listening to music that means that I’m switching attention away from work. At the same time, that ability to switch attention quickly, and be interested and entertained by two different types of mental stimulation is a good measurement of my ability to function creatively.

I have not been listening to much music at work the last three weeks or so.

I’m sorry that I got busy just as an interesting conversation was starting. I’m very glad that Sean started commenting and hopefully he hasn’t wondered off by now.

I have been listening to some music, and have a number of topics that I would like to post about, and I’m hoping to get back to that. Talk to you all soon.

I was recently listening to this song (which I included on mix a while back). I remember liking the song for Gordon Lightfoot’s performance, and for how it plays with narrative.

It opens as if it will be a conventional narrative song, telling a story about a shipwreck. Then, as the verses go on, the narrative becomes more and more abstract, and the lyrics feel more allusive and, in the second verse, even bawdy (”Of all the men who sailed on her, in truth I sailed her best”). By the end of the song, who knows exactly what has happened, except the ship does not appear have crashed, as it sounded like it would in the first verse. It may still be a song about a shipwreck, but the wreck does not occur within the narrative of the song.

A good example of the fact that, however songs relates to literary narrative, there is still plenty of room for narrative play.

Complete lyrics after the jump.
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The discussion in the previous post has been quite interesting. Let me try to recap the major points, as I see them and hopefully we can keep the conversation going.

As I understand, Ben was making three basic arguments:

1) That the terms “narrative”, “narrator”, and, in particular, the phrase “unreliable narrator” are all terms that have originate in, and only have clear definitions within, literary criticism. That any application of those sorts of terms to music is always going to imprecise, and somewhat poorly fitting.

He also points out, specifically, that the use of the phrase “unreliable narrator” that I quoted is not accurate, even allowing for imprecision.

2) If we want to use those terms in talking about music then it’s worth figuring out what we think they should mean.

The distinction that Ben found most helpful as a way to think about possible analogies to music was that of storytelling vs. theater. A storyteller is, practically by definition, a narrator. They directly address the audience and present a story. The storyteller can, and probably will, adopt a persona for the telling of the story. Based on the note in literary criticism that the narrator of a written work exists within the fictional world of the work, Ben would take the adopted persona as the “narrator” of a story, not the real world storyteller.

In theater, the actors are not narrators. they do not address the audience directly, and they do not present the fictional world. They play a character within the fictional world and, in character, they have no awareness of the audience or of the story being told. The character is just representing themselves within their own world.

3) From this Ben takes the important point that it’s possible for an audience to watch a story, without the telling of the story involving a narrator, with theater as an example.

The question he then asks is whether, as an audience, you feel like listening to music is more like watching a play or a storyteller.

RS asks the related question of whether the performer feels more like an actor or a storyteller.

In both cases, the answer will obviously vary based on the given performance. One can easily think of examples that clearly fall closer to one end of the spectrum or the other.

But the question then becomes which end of the spectrum feels more descriptive of pop music in general. Do we believe that pop music is paradigmaticly closer to theater or storytelling?

I’m still considering this, but hopefully that is a reasonable summary of the question.

I was glancing through a not-very-interesting book on pop music, a while back, and thought that it did have a reasonably good summary description of Randy Newman.

It called him the “master of the unreliable narrator” and pointed out that essentially every Randy Newman song is in the voice of someone other than him.

Some of his songs are sympathetic (”Rednecks”, surprisingly), others are satirical (”Political Science”), but they almost always create a fictional character for the purpose of the song.

It then talked about how, when people get Randy Newman wrong it is usually by taking his songs to literally, e.g., “Short People.” Finally it gave, as another example, Old Man saying that it was a satire of prejudice, like “Short People,” about “ageism.”

That seems obviously crazy. “Old Man” is one of my favorite Randy Newman songs because it is so emotionally direct, a remarkably tender song about comforting a dying relative.

I am curious, however, if you think the voice of the song is Randy Newman’s? I have always assumed that it is, but if so it is a remarkably intimate song by a singer who is almost never revealing.

Won’t be no God to comfort you
You taught me not to believe that lie
You don’t need anybody
Nobody needs you
Don’t cry, old man, don’t cry
Everybody dies

I just picked up a copy of The Pixies at The BBC and I’ve really liked it. Most of the reviews talk about whether or not it’s essential for the Pixies fan, but I find myself thinking that it’s a very good introduction to their music.

The Pixies rank high on any list of bands that I like and admire very much, and don’t listen to that often. I think they made great music, but it’s demanding. It’s complex, loud, and slightly abrasive. I really truly think that Doolittle is one of the best produced and best sounding albums that I own but, while it isn’t exactly complicated, it doesn’t simplify easily. You either have to be ready to appreciate everything that’s going on, or it feels like a minimal concept with a bunch of extraneous stuff going on.

You can’t just sit back and find the core of a song, and groove to that because the whole arrangement is what makes the songs what the are.

But, the BBC version do a very good job of finding a core to the song and making everything else friendlier. It isn’t as theatrical and it has less frantic energy than the versions that I’ve heard before. While I think of energy and sense of theater as virtues of the Pixies, it’s kind of nice to have a version that isn’t all dressed up.

Compare the BBC version and the album version of “Monkey Gone To Heaven”. Or the BBC version of Is She Weird, a song that I hadn’t heard before, but which instantly makes sense in that performance.

Rock me Joseph Alberto Santiago

I realize that the last two posts have been earnest even by my standards.

Just in case you don’t feel like thinking that much, here’s a version of Drinkin’ Wine Spo-Dee-O by the Howling Diablos that is dumb but fun and which I enjoy without any critical reflection.

There is a bit, near the end, by Kid Rock that lowers the intelligence of the music dramatically, but ignore that.

And if you feel like commenting on either of the previous posts please do, but not everything needs to be serious.

Listening to Red Over Red, and thinking about the dynamic range in a live recording got me to pull out a live album that I got a while a got but which never made much of an impression on me. I remembered it as being kind of flat and monotonous. I found myself wondering if I just hadn’t turned the volume up enough, so I put it on, cranked the volume a little bit and, sure enough, Nancy Griffith’s voice felt lovely rather than thin and weak.

I don’t listen to much country music, it’s outside of my usual habits, but listening this time it related to a conversation that I had with Jeremiah about folk music, after the last post. He said that he doesn’t generally like to describe his music to people as “folk” because for many people the connotations of that are that it will put them to sleep. At the same time, his sense of folk music is very important to his musical aesthetic.

I mentioned my sense of traditional music being a source of great songs — since unmemorable ones don’t last. He said, by contrast that what was important to him was music that was written and performed as part of people’s lives — music that is both handmade, and that has an emotional connection to life. As he said, “folk music is wood, pop music is plastic.”

I countered that what he was talking about reflected a performance style as much as a characteristic of the songs — and that there are many contemporary songs that are more or less within the pop idiom that nerveless feel handmade. We went back and forth a bit, with me offering examples, and him saying that, while that may be true, that they are, explicitly, exceptions to the paradigm of pop music.

I’m not convinced, but what’s interesting is that I never thought about country music at any point during that conversation.
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A little while ago I mentioned that a band containing a pair of High School friends of mine had gone into the studio to record material for an album.

I subsequently commented that I had been enjoying the advance copy that I received, and that there would be more information at a later date.

That time has arrived. I have heard that CDs will be back from the duplicator next week. As soon as I find out information about how to purchase the album, I will give you the hard sell and try to convince as many of you reading this blog as possible to buy a copy. For now, however, it’s time to celebrate a project done well — the upcoming album Red Over Red by Trenchmouth.

There are two things I want to talk about, first how much I like the album, and secondly a little bit of what I know from sitting in on the recording process.
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What music formats do listen to regularly?

I’ve been writing a bit lately about my continued commitment to CDs as a medium, but I know I’m in the minority. How many people reading this exclusively listen to music through their computer?

How many people listen to LPs, or cassettes? Or do you not have a single favorite format, but listen to different music on different formats?

As I alluded to in the posts about the music industry, I’m someone who has built my music collection on CD, in the CD era. One of the things that means is that I’ve ended up with a lot of music on “greatest hits” compilations of one sort or another.

Leaving aside CD’s vs downloadable music compilations make a lot of sense compared with CD versions of albums that were originally on vinyl — they’re generally the same price for twice as much music, and a generally higher quality material. As someone how has a lot of older music, I’m feel like I’ve benefited from collections as a source of cheap music.

That said, it’s interesting when I do end up with something that has the original track order from an LP. I was just listening to the re-released version of Tell Mama by Etta James. It’s fun and making me re-think my feelings about Etta James a bit.

I’ve always wanted to like Etta James, but found that I just don’t generally get into her music that easily. I feel like she’s a little bit too much of a performer in a way that I struggle with. I feel like, for some people, spending too much time on the road can lead to many performance habits, and a difficulty approaching the material with honesty and freshness. I feel that way about Pete Seager and Utah Phillips as well, for example. I like their material, I want to like them, but I feel like the performances are trying to spoonfeed me something pre-digested. I don’t want to accuse Etta James of dishonesty or lack of commitment in her performances, but I have generally felt like her performances are layered under a cloak of something.

In addition, I realize that I may have been expecting the wrong thing from her. Given here reputation, I associate her with high energy and sass, which is probably the wrong angle from which to approach her music.

In any case, it’s really interesting to listen to the start of sequence for the original album
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