Had a talk with J the other week, subject matter included separation, divorce, health issues, anxieties over children; career struggles. Not a conversation we would have had at 25, even a pair trending to melancholy and depression like theappalled. Ignoring the aging rockers that remain in the marketplace for a moment, you would think there would be a lot of heavy music out there being made by folks hitting a similar point in their lives, right? I am confronted with the opposite on a daily basis, and occasionally in complete immersion a la 14 hours in the car on the way to our east coast family vacation. "The opposite", that is to say, the top 40 radio fare in current rotation. I would like to think I am fairly objective in concluding a lot of this stuff is pretty awful, without becoming an "I'm turning into my parents" cliche. Note: my parents had no connection to popular music of any era, so the cliche doesn't apply anyway. My disdain stems partly from a tired cynicism and impatience similar to that hilariously represented by Steve Albini's foreword to the Tape OP volume 2 compilation - the first few paragraphs are here. If you don't know who Steve Albini is then this post is going to be even more obscure than usual for you:
http://tonevendor.com/item/28924
Yeah, yeah: dance, party, drunk, driving around, boy meets girl and all that ensues, yadda yadda. With all that cynicism poisoning me I honestly did not realize how disconnected I was from all the "good" music that of course is being created all around, all the time, and got a rather abrupt awakening of sorts recently when I subscribed to the Decatur, Georgia based pop culture eMag "Paste" (paste.com). Paste offers a downloadable "playlist" of around 7 songs per issue, and with over 100 issues online that's nearly 1000 songs - from bands that I had mostly NEVER HEARD OF. Ok, maybe 5 or 6 of them. I downloaded all of it, and filled a 20Gb Nano including nothing from my archives. It's been interesting to shuffle that long list of material with no emotional connection or reference points. It's like being teleported to another planet. Planet "Hip", I suppose. To the original point of this entry however, a lot of this stuff is still very young music made by young people, albeit ones that actually care who might be on the bill at this years' SXSW. I was gifted the album "Silent Movies" by good friend HP last year, and after being all torn up over it I realized that I had been a fan of Marc Ribot for most of my adult life, since he played guitar on Tom Waits "Downtown Train"; which I consider to be one of the greatest tracks of all time, almost singlehandedly redeeming the '80s. Making the connection was coincident with release of Marc's second effort with the band he calls 'Ceramic Dog" ("Your Turn"), which for me became one of those increasingly rare (see "cynicism", above) resonant "OK, like THAT'S what I'm talkin' about!!!" moments. A blaze of NYC avant garde art-punk-jazz delivered in a torrent of virtuostic Anger - and not that faux "anger" exhibited by 18 yr old punk posers, but a real middle-age professional Anger. As Marc himself puts it, speaking to the gap between 2008's debut "Party Intellectuals" and the current album:
“If you listen closely, you can hear the rage, hope, disappointment, ritual excess, love and anarchy that were in our personal and collective airspace during those years,”
Not without humor, but what's there is of the blackest variety. I was on the floor over the twisted pseudo-parody of a 1940s swing number "The Kid is Back!" -
I'm fat again
I'm drinkin'....again
And I'm puttin' out over town without thinking....again
I'm back again....etc
Anyway, truly inspiring and my kind of thing - if it's yours let me know as we should probably be getting a band together and making some very angry old people music. Clock is ticking...
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