Why am I such a sap about music? How do certain bands/songs captivate me so completely? It's not even that I "connect" with them, because that suggests both a degree of intellecutalism and mutuality, neither of which are present.
Frightened Rabbit, a drum-guitar duo from Glasgow, have no idea that they are profoundly influencing the emotional state of a 27 year-old grad student on the Upper West side. Sure, they're in the business of writing and selling music, so they understand that it's in their interest to write/play music that a wide scope of potential audience can believe is "speaking to them," that's the industry: smoke, mirrors and crushing C-chords of hollow adolescent melodrama.
I get that.
I understand the mechanism in play, the incredible similarity of all pop music as it strives for the latest iteration of the well-worn formula of success. There is very, very little creativity or originality in even the more adventurous "indie" rock, and while the fans of indie, of which I count myself, "ooh" and "ahh" over what novelties do arise (sincere thank you to
the Flaming Lips(go Okies), Devo, Crystal Castles, all the other dozens of pseudo-originals), the hard truth is that the distance from the most traditional, 4/4, 3-chord, verse-chorus-verse pop tune, and the craziest, polyphonic, electro-spasm, aural odysses is nothing more than can be bridged by a one, or at most, a 2-song segue: Of Montreal-Unicorns-Modest Mouse-Vampire Weekend.
But this isn't a blog bemoaning the lack of diversity in "modern" pop music, it's about my complete befuddlement as to how/why it remains so potent despite its lack of substance.
As an antithesis, take jazz music (because it's the only other type of music I know enough about to discuss). Jazz has its own well-worn patterns, some of which it embraces (standards) and others of which it is less self-aware (how many more piano trios does this world need?). I'm not trying to say that jazz music is "better" than indie, because I think they both proceed toward their own goals. (good) Jazz music demonstrates creativity through composition and improvisation, as well as technical mastery of an instrument, advanced music theory, and the communication of emotion without the shortcut of lyrics. It's hard to do well, and in a field that has seen so many Masters, it's even harder to do well enough to really get noticed.
So when a jazz tune grabs my attention, I understand the way in which it has "earned" it.
But pop tunes aren't very creative in composition, have no improvisation, variable and potentially laughable technical ability, rudimentary music theory, and seem to need lyrics incessantly, which causes a great problem of trying to say the same thing 8 million different ways.
Judged by the standards of Jazz, indie music is quite weak. Well, duh. And likewise, judged by the criteria of Indie, jazz music is boring, cerebral, etc. Or so it can be misconstrued.
Whatever.
The point is that I understand why I like jazz; even my emotional reactions to it are comprehendable to me.
But I don't know why I like pop music except that it's just so... likeable? I cannot explain it, and all attempts to do so only reveal the abyss of my own self-awareness.
13 year-old girls in training bras screaming at the sight of Hanson. I get that.
I understand the over-whelming marketing force, coupled with the awesome power of peer pressure and emerging need to establish personal identitiy bearing down on these poor, but willing, pubescent naives. They (being everyone born since 1973) just spend too damn much money for a capitalist system not to figure out how to exploit them. Not a great mark of our civilization that we get rich off our children (so quit chiding the forefathers that put them to work in the fields), but that's how opportunist we are; just have to accept it.
But it's been a long time since I was 13, and a damn long time since i wore a training bra
(No comment). So how do certain songs make me so... Affected? Addicted? Vulnerable?
I did the fanboy thing when I was younger. As I've written about before, the band was Bleach, my first live concert, and I was hooked. I bought all the albums, went to a dozen concerts, and remained totally infatuated all the way through college until they finally broke up (which necessitated a cross-country road trip to see the final show, which is on DVD, which I own and re-watch occasionally).
So yes, I get the youth-affinity bit.
I'm older now, and while I maintain my connection with the music of my past, that's just nostalgia. Yet every once in awhile, as the years go whizzing by, some nugget of presumably youth-culture will get stuck in my ear, work its way in deeper, and before I know it bypass my brain entirely and get lodged under my rib cage. It aches. It swoons. It grabs me with its infectious melody and unpresuming lyrics. It lifts me up. Then it shoots up my spinal chord with an icy self-reflective contemplation that leaves me shocked, shivvering and naked. It activates concepts and concerns, which in the Post-Freud age we would say were floating around my subconscious.
I never thought of that before.
What am I doing with my life?
Who am I, and am I still the person I want to be?
I recognize the after taste. This is melodrama, the same bitter metalic lick at the back of the throat as seething teenage self-doubt, but what's it doing in my 20-something esophagus?
I am Jack's Vestigial Insecurity Bile Duct?
The only grace is that, so far, most of these core-shaking revelations have been precipitated by what my 27-year-old ego consider to be "cool" sources. When
LCD Soundsystem or
the Mountain Goats are what put my life into nano-crises, I can convince myself that there's at least a shred of cred to it all. I'm deluding myself, of course, but I do live in abject fear of the day when I accidentally catch the last bars of a soul-crusher only to discover it's the latest Jessica Simpson, Avril Lavigne, or Maroon 5 multi-platinum schlock.
::shudder::
No solutions here - if you're looking for solutions you've come to the wrong blog.
Just thoughts.
mostly (lame)
Weber
::(lame) Texpatriot
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