Category: music

I must make an admission.

Even though I’m a writer, even though I work in film and television, even though I take pretty photos with pretty cameras, there is nothing that seeps faster through my skin, as someone who feels for art, as wholly as music. For me it is the ethyl alcohol of expression.

All it takes is a well-played scale in the right key, on the right day, in the right mood, and I’m sold. Here I am, cash in hand! What band is that? Who is that? Some songs attack me unawares with their brilliance, ignobly leaking out of someone’s cheap computer speaker from some streaming internet radio station. It’s like one of Homer’s Sirens, and me without wax to plug my ears or spare hands on the ship’s deck to strap me down.

I remember music with succinct precision and stalk it down, if only for information to complete the missing pieces of the what/who/when puzzle I carry with me. I remember being sixteen and regularly hounding the employees at a large record store in Edmonton, asking if they knew of the existence to the soundtrack for the film Brazil (and each time my enthusiasm was met with a resounding “no”. It wasn’t released until over a decade later, by which time – while thankful for its eventual existence, for sake of people to experience – I was over it, like a scorned lover).

Sometimes there’s nothing worse than falling in love only to be separated without details of who or what it was that caught your passion. In the case of music, it’s doubly hard because you don’t even have the luxury of a face etched in your memory; you are left with something frustratingly abstract: what it sounds like, which by comparison makes paleontology seem straightforward. It’s the rootsy, gypsy-sounding piece with the theremin!

A recent example is the not-so-recent film Kafka, by Steven Soderbergh. As a film, it’s vivid and engaging, though it suffers from Soderbergh’s serial emotionlessness. It was the soundtrack, however, which caught me off-guard. A beautiful piece of work by Cliff Martinez which incorporated Eastern European (or perhaps it would be more accurate to say Western-interpreted flavours of Eastern European) motifs performed on a hammered dulcimer. As soon as I heard that instrument, in that evocative score, my attention was rapped. Done. Thank you. Unfortunately, and not unusually, there was no soundtrack issued (when you consider the type of film it was, released by a major Hollywood studio, and how miserably it must’ve performed in theatres, one can only imagine how the question of “Should we release a soundtrack?” was greeted). On this note, I feel bad for a lot of film and TV composers, or at least the ones whose work transcends the need to only be experienced whilst married to picture and sound effects. If you see a composer on the street, hug him or her. Then ask why the hell they’re not in their studios, holding up the mix, working as they should. I digress…

Yesterday I chanced to search for the Kafka soundtrack again, and to my surprise, on Cliff Martinez’ website, he has released his music cues for various soundtracks which were never commercially available before (for free, albeit with the proviso that they not be used professionally). I couldn’t believe it. I found myself downloading his cues for Kafka in a single Zip file (just under 60 megabytes), and within no time, I’d transferred them to my “portable digital music player”.

I ask what more fulfillment you need when you have a hammered dulcimer, its soft yet briskly percussive tones, reminiscent of a harp, in your headphones on the streetcar.

Bliss.

I was walking to the bank today, toting my “portable digital music player” [note: I’m not putting that in quotes to be trite, it’s just that I neither want to use the ubiquitous i-word, nor do I want to suggest that the mp3 format is the best as regards quality], listening to the song “Shoot Out The Lights” from Richard and Linda Thompson’s same-titled album. Critically hailed when it came out in ’82, it has since faded into obscurity, not helped by the fact that they divorced shortly after its release. I remember seeing it listed in a Rolling Stone magazine (again with the magazines, Cahill, you hypocrite), in a Best Albums of All Time issue in the mid-to-late-80’s. I’d never heard of them, but for some reason, when I see something I’ve never heard of before listed so plainly amongst the likes of The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix, I just have to take notice.

When I got around to picking it up on a whim – about 20 years later – I liked it, though the production on it is terribly dated [note: I can’t hold this against them or their producer since it was done on a shoe-string budget in a decade of much more heinously, shittily produced albums. And yes, “shittily” is a word I’m making up on the spot. I’m prepared to stand my ground on its use.]. The stand-out of the album is the previously mentioned title-track. It has a pair of guitar solos that remind me of what guitar solos were meant to do: attach themselves to the spirit of the song as an extension of the musician’s soul. The song and the solo are one; the solo extends the reach of the song, articulating something akin to a dialogue with the larger body of the piece.

When I listen to the likes of Link Wray, Tom Verlaine, and other great guitarists, I’m reminded that – as opposed to what took root in the 80’s, which was the Top40-EZ-Radio-Softcore-Metal wankfest we still have today – guitar solos weren’t necessarily about razzle dazzle. Yes, since the Classical period when soloing took root, one of the reasons for a solo was to display the technical proficiency of the player – this cannot be denied. However, technical proficiency and artistic discipline are not mutually inclusive – one does not necessarily carry both traits by developing one.

I suppose I’m writing this because North American mass media is only interested in easily-digestible razzle dazzle. This is why a band such as Green Day was successful; they’re entirely about “lite punk” attitude, the inoffensive appearance of rebellion. Soul is neither required nor condoned. Neither is subtlety. This is why even the “classic rock” radio stations clip off the best parts of songs such as Television’s “Marquee Moon” – it’s simply too long for them. They’ll take shitty and short, thank you very much.

This is not to say that, musically speaking, I’m living in the 70’s, or that I’m some sort of acetic. I honestly don’t have a favourite genre of music – picking one has always seemed futile. I just like what I like. But one thing is clear: with few exceptions, my playlist contains musicians, groups, and styles that will never see the light of day on current FM radio. I was raised in rural areas where, waaaay pre-internet, the radio was the only escape for a confused kid. All I know is that I feel sorry for kids exposed to most of the crap currently out there, and I only hope that the proliferation of independently controlled internet radio stations succeed. For sake of variety. For sake of exposure.

Right. I was just tipped-off to a concert happening this Thursday (April 10) @ The Drake Hotel. It’s a band called Pas Chic Chic. What excites me, other than listening to clips of their songs on Facebook, is that it’s a collaboration of members from Montreal’s Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Fly Pan Am, Et Sans, Silver Mt. Zion, and Cobra Noir.

In other words, I’m going.

I’m not going to go into a whole “fan” thing, but…well…I’m prepared to be a big fan of this band. Just saying.

By the clips I listened to, I’m hoping for a revival of the sound that Fly Pan Am abruptly left us with before breaking up (on their seminal album N’Ecoutez Pas) – a sort of sonic, 60’s psychedelic, prog synth, rock-out sorta thing.

More info here