Author: colter

Writing About Music Is Like Two-Stepping About Flying Buttresses

Since I started writing about music for Arkansas Times, people have told me I should more actively pursue it as a vocation. Apparently it’s something I do well.

I’m not sure what the answer is, but I think it has something to do with the fact that I take my writing ability for granted. It’s not a skill I recall spending a lot of time developing (as I’m sure this blog’s more meandering and malformed entries will attest), at least not after high school. I remember turning in my first essay to Mrs. Lewis in 10th grade and her comments about how horribly lame my writing was; I took it to heart and became determined to write effectively from then on, which lasted until senior year. After that it was the only real marketable skill I had, which led me to become an English major.

Music has always been the thing I’ve spent the most time developing, yet I’ve never wanted it to become my career. To do that, music would have to become work, and I don’t think I could stomach that. Plus the music I love most has proven time and again to be the least commercially successful.

My tastes in music tend to revolve almost exclusively around pure music and not lyrics. I think I distrust words as interlopers into music. I don’t need words in music; I’d be just fine without them, for the most part[1]. All they really do for me is give me something to sing, a way to participate. Music has the power to make crummy words sound great (just as truly great words have the power to improve crummy music). Rhythm and harmony are so powerful that songs of complete gibberish can become classics (“Wooly Bully,” “Tutti Frutti,” “Louie Louie,” “Smells Like Teen Spirit”). SO many songwriters compose tunes with decent lyrics but boring chords and arrangements; my perspective is: if you’re not going to step up to the plate musically, then go be a poet and see how well your words do by themselves. Don’t sail by with music to pick up the slack. Anyway, all of this ties into the fact that I approach music from my own little peculiar musician-oriented vantage point, so I’m probably not qualified to write about music for regular folk.

So I had lunch with Ted Ludwig on Friday and he told me that I’m probably more qualified to write about music because my background as a musician helps me to understand music on a deeper level. Maybe he’s right. Maybe it’s a great idea, since I don’t mind writing becoming work. It hardly seems like work, actually. Of course, the downside is that if I were to devote more time to writing about music, I’d probably get assigned to write about some trendy band that everyone’s excited about but me. And these bands are legion. I can’t begin to count the number of times the entire world goes ga-ga over some band that just strikes me as horribly bland. Even most indie rock strikes me as irritatingly boring.

So I doubt I’d be of much use to the world of rock journalism. I have a hard time writing about things that don’t excite me. Maybe my niche is writing about the stuff no one else wants to. So far at the Times I’ve covered old school hip-hop, jazz, and eccentric indie rock. Maybe there’s enough on the fringes for me to stay occupied.

1.) And I would also be just fine without musicals, which allow for the possibility of combining crummy music, insipid lyrics, poor acting and lame dancing into one reasonably nifty package that impresses only those people who don’t particularly care about those four constituent art forms. Don’t get me wrong, though, when it’s done right it’s transcendent (West Side Story, Oliver!). But I’m rarely impressed by musicals in general.

Good Advice

Still reading through The Believer‘s Music Issue, I came across this great bit of advice in Gina Gionfriddo’s epic essay on the literary and psychological merit of Nine Inch Nails:

“In his controversial primer on fiction writing, John Gardner advises the miserable, misanthropic writer thus: If you see the world as a pit full of baby skulls, that’s fine; in fact, you may be seeing it clearly. But you do yourself no favors by taking up residence at the edge of the pit and writing – however accurately and beautifully – tome after tome about what a pit full of baby skulls looks like. Gardner advises that we address our writing to what can be done: how is a person to stay alive in a world where there are pits full of baby skulls?”

I’d like to paste that statement on the walls of America’s high schools. It’s not just for writers; it’s for everyone who sees the world clearly and is saddened. It encapsulates my own general take on the Universe: Yeah it’s crappy. Did you expect something better? Quit complaining and do something to improve it. Gionfriddo continues:

“[Reznor’s void] is, like Gardner’s pit of baby skulls and the Gothics’ torture dungeons, a room in our psychic house – let’s say the psychic basement – that we aspire to live with, but not in. Put a lock on it and you’re dishonest and naive; move your bed and stereo down there and you’re lost.”

I’ve seen a lot of people who have put locks on it (most Americans prior to the 1960’s, the Catholic Church), others who live in it (Goths, metalheads, drug users), and very few who successfully live with their psychic basement.

Sharing a Dream

I was watching the bonus features on Tideland, and Terry Gilliam hit me with this:

The dream that used to stick with me was my ability to fly. But it was never like in Brazil, flying through the clouds. It was only about 3 or 4 feet above the ground. I zipped along at about that height, but i wasn’t touching the ground. And years ago after having dreamt this for so many years I actually had a sense memory of the whole thing. My whole body felt that I had flown.

That is my most frequently occurring dream, and it is so vivid that, when I wake, I remember the experience so well that I feel as though I’ve actually done it. I was really just levitating a few feet above the ground, though. Nothing grandiose. No flying high above the trees. Anybody else have this?

Take My Job…Please

My job is an oasis. The primary impediment to me moving anywhere else has always been that I have a great job that I enjoy. More and more people have pointed out to me, though, that I should not let my job dictate the course of my life. There are any number of jobs I could potentially enjoy. So if y’all know anyone who can do good HTML with some CSS, and who is diplomatic enough to communicate with a wide variety of clients, let us know. Epoch Online is a small but thriving company, with a fantastic president and a laid-back atmosphere. Compared to a larger company, I’d say there’s less slacking off, but there’s also less pressure from above. Not to say that we don’t spend time goofing around, but the majority of our days consist of billable hours. Oh and we are a cubicle-free environment. It’s a great place to work.

Be Your Husband

Last Friday I was humming this tune, the first cut from the Legacy Edition of Jeff Buckley’s Live at Sin-é (if you don’t own this, you Must get it, it’s phenomenal), and I wondered if there were any videos for it on YouTube. Alas there were not. No live cuts, no covers, no fan-made videos. So I took it upon myself, since I needed to learn how to use Adobe Premiere Elements (thanks, Brian). I dug up some marital instruction footage at the Prelinger Archives and sliced and diced them over the song. Here is the result:

Oklahoma City Resident Designated As “Da Man”

Be it known on this day, the 25th of August, 2007, that Heath Harrelson is Da Man. Not only has he masterminded my improved navigation bar (now on the right), he actually wrote the collapsible archive plugin at lower right. We’ve been using WordPress apparently longer than most people, and so our archives dating back to 2003 were getting absurdly lengthy. My repeated complaints spurred Heath’s innovation and now all our lives are improved as a result. It is for this reason that we must bestow the title of “Da Man” onto Heath Harrelson of Oklahoma City.

Radio Meditation and My Absorbent Mind

I’ve recently come to realize that my brain absorbs a great many things. This is distinct from learning things, or retaining facts. My brain takes on the characteristics of various sets of stimuli. I’ve always been a sympathetic person, taking on something of others’ experiences, putting myself in others’ shoes. Lately I’ve come to wonder if that tendency is related to my ability to mimic vocal accents after just a few minutes of exposure. Or the fact that, after reading an engaging book, I start to narrate my own thoughts and become obsessed with describing everything around me in the voice of the book’s narrator. This is why I have to limit my exposure to Hunter S. Thompson.

My absorbent mind also tries to comprehend everything when I travel. Traveling means all-new stimuli at all times, and the effect is alternately thrilling and anxiety-inducing. I can turn myself into a nervous wreck trying to comprehend the depth and breadth of New York City, for example. So many people, so many stories, so many understood details and assumptions to absorb.

I’ve been listening to NY news radio station 1010 WINS online in an effort to acclimate myself to the region. It’s particularly helpful and comforting to listen to because of my familiarity with news radio (I spent my first year in Little Rock working as call screener for Pat Lynch’s talk radio show on KARN), and the fact that WINS shares its primary voiceover talent, Jim Cutler, with Little Rock’s KARN (who’s also the voice of our local Fox TV affiliate). Even the AccuWeather meteorologists are occasionally people I’ve worked with at KARN[1]. So score one for the homogeneity of radio.

A pleasant characteristic of the WINS broadcast is its constant bed of fake teletype machines in the background. I like to lay down and listen to it meditatively; the unfamiliarity of another city’s news lulls me into a uniquely dream-like state. I’m taken back to listening to WINS last February at Arika’s place in Brooklyn. I feel vaguely refreshed when I’m done.

1.) Via ISDN line. Yes, America’s local radio weather people are all located at AccuWeather in Pennsylvania.

Teach Your Children Death Metal

Glenn McDonald is a guy from Boston who happens to be one of the most brilliant music critics I’ve ever read. He has an infant daughter now, and has been posting occasional blog entries addressed to her, presumably for her future reference.

This recent blog entry I found particularly amusing.

Some things to point out: “B” is Glenn’s wife and “we” refers to the two of them. It’s almost as if the fact that this blog is public is an afterthought to Glenn.