The City Veins

I have been arguing with people over the subject of our last few posts for longer than I care to remember. Spencer and Adam have their individual points, and I think it is correct to say while both of them disagree with me they also certainly don’t agree with each other. Spencer exhibits a classic rejection of elitism in music, while Bayes argues that “melody” is the prime mover in musical appreciation.

To me, this debate is really about whether or not someone can attribute quantifiable value to music, and by extension, art of any sort. In my view, there is a way to argue for the value of a musical work or artist based on several factors, which I will address later. Music can be evaluated the same way we evaluate literature, paintings, performances, and photography. It is generally accepted that these modes of expression have quantifiable value. There is much debate about which elements of a work should be most important, but there is very little debate about whether or not it should be quantified. This is because appreciation of art-forms outside of music requires active participation; very few people call themselves art fans because many people accept that they don’t know or care enough about the specifics of art history or the unique craft employed. But music is very different. Many more people consider themselves critics of music than critics of art or literature. This is because music appreciation is a passive process, the scope of which is much more broad. As a result, everybody who listens to music has an opinion about what is good and what is not. But simply having a pair of ears does not qualify you to be a critic or authority on music. It is a modern phenomenon that we become relativists about almost all issues of quality, but I’m afraid that celebrating what sounds good without analyzing it as a creative work will result in an art form that becomes repetitive and one dimensional. It’s like masturbating to Victoria’s Secret when just a little exploration on the internet would yield better results: Just because it comes to your house and is slightly more convenient certainly doesn’t put it on par with un-wholesome variety, and the process of “the hunt” can actually be quite gratifying.

To create an art analogy, Bayes is appreciating Tom Keating while ignoring Rembrandt. Keating painted some pretty pictures, but they really weren’t his. In my view, there is an extreme value to creativity and originality, as well as melody, musicianship, and lyrical content. There are bands that I think write good melodies that I do not think are good bands. By Bayes’ standards, that is the primary test for quality of music. And it’s fine to like melody, even to value it most highly. However, melody only really exists in the context of these other elements of a work: you cannot isolate melody from its historical context, it’s lyrical content, it’s originality, and it’s over thematic meaning. “A Day in the Life” by The Beatles is a vastly different work outside of the context of “Sergeant Pepper’s”, and it’s made infinitely better by that context. Furthermore, you cannot rip the vocal line from a song and judge it without its background, so you should not try to do the same with a work and its historical context.

It is not the case that people should only like music that is valuable: people should like whatever the hell they want. I like music that is not valuable, even when I apply standards that I developed. But I would not argue that the band is great, I can separate preference from value. Preference should be relative, value should not. Preference does not lead to innovation, value does (when you include innovation as an element of value). Value does not lead to interest, preference does. It is the cross-section of preference and value that gives us the world’s greatest bands. It’s not that I don’t trust the masses, it’s just that I don’t do it blindly (note: I am not accusing Bayes or Spencer of this).

You may note that I’ve taken greater exception to Bayes comments than Spencer’s. This may be because Spencer agrees with me about the Clash, or maybe it’s because, as a drummer, I believe Spencer is justified in loving Zeppelin because Bonham is great. But Bayes and I should be coming from somewhat of a common perspective, which is why his view perplexes me.

As a final point, I’d like to reject the label of elitism, and call both Spencer and Adam out for a straw man. In my last post I mentioned Green Day, The Clash, Eazy-E, Led Zeppelin, and Fall Out Boy. Yet both Bayes and Spencer called me out as an elitist hipster who supports his supposed hyper-understanding of the subject through reference to bands no-one’s ever heard of. I do not think any of the bands listed above qualify as rare or obscure. (Aside: in arguing against my and Charles’ elitism, Bayes referenced Tom Langford, certainly the most obscure artist amongst the several blogs). Were I arguing in favor of the obscure to the exclusion of the popular, I would be wrong. What I am arguing is value should exist primarily in isolation from popularity, because I do not find that to be an artistically relevant context.

I suppose I do have one more point, which is simply that I don’t believe either Spencer or Bayes. I think both want to be able to claim that one band is great and another band is shitty, not that they like one band and dislike another. If you become a relativist you lose the ability to make universal claims of greatness; you become confined to the statement “I like this band” or “I think this band is good and in no way do I infringe on your opinion by trying to make a universal claim”. So I don’t believe them, because I think both want to make universal claims about value. In order to see a point of view I need an argument, not just a claim that I’m a jack-ass.

Although many might see that as a viable argument, and there is quite a bit of evidence and support for that position.

Well, it’s been a while since I blogged. After reading Aaron and Spencer’s posts I feel like I should comment. To me, and countless other music fans, there is virtually no difference between The Clash and Led Zepplin. I view The Clash as one of the pioneering bands who helped to create the punk scene, and a band who lacks melody and relied too heavily on image rather than substance. I never really got into them. Does that make me a moron? Who knows. Led Zepplin to me are the quintessential classic rock band, a category that to me, basically means they rely too heavily on the blues, annoying sexual yelling, and too little clothing. Oh, and they’re British. This is not to say that either group is not talented musicians. Though the Clash, I’m not too sure about. Zepplin could play. Neither is my style though.

I have been bashed for years about this (as well as my hatred for Stevie Wonder). How can you not like Zepplin they demanded…….? Easy, I like melody. While I can appreciate jazz for it’s free flowing style and intricate musicianship, I would never listen to it on purpose. The same thing with Phish, world music, and Yanni. Jazz, The Clash, and Zepplin fall into the same category as rap to me. No melody and heavily overrated. It’s fine if you like them, it’s better than liking Fall Out Boy, I guess. Why? I’m not too sure but I think it has something to do with how annoying Pete Wentz and his skinny jeans are.

That being said, I can honestly say I know more obscure bands than anyone I know except for Charles and Aaron, and possibly Spencer, he’s starting to rack them up. My normal friends (non-musicians) have no idea who the hell I am listening to, and they mostly hate it. Charles and Aaron would probably call these bands too mainstreamy or not interesting enough for them. I get nailed everytime I put on a Ryan Adams album because he sounds too much like Neil Young. It’s interesting because I absolutely hate everything about Neil Young. I love Ryan Adams….go figure. I can’t really stand Q and Not U and I almost killed myself at TV On the Radio’s 9:30 club show. Yet I can listen to old Richard Marx, Michael Bolton, Josh Groban, and the latest song by Daughtry and sleep fine at night. Yes, I said it. I’m a Michael Bolton fan. I have accepted that I have a wide array of musical tastes. Wider than most. What I don’t agree with is believing that you have better taste in music simply because you listen to more bands that no one appreciates or no one has heard of. (There could be a reason for this). Listening to 100 indie unsigned bands doesn’t mean you are smarter than me because I have a Gin Blossoms CD in my changer. Knowing who Q and Not U is rather than Tom Langford (who?) doesn’t impress me. I prefer Tom Langford (he’s a reasonably unknown folk-alternative rock singer/songwriter who is played occasionally on XM radio). Why do all of the unknown artists have to qualify as hip…which usually means annoying? Some dude with an acoustic guitar and a nice voice isn’t worth trashing just because Dylan did it better 30 years ago.
In sum, arguing over The Clash and Zepplin is like arguing over the first or second Bush administration. Pretty much the same idea, nothing too impressive, nothing to really get riled up about…. except for maybe the current state of the Iraq War and putting us through 27 minutes of Dazed and Confused. The Clash can escape this one without an insult for now.

In Aaron’s post yesterday, he called for a resurgence of The Clash, a point on which I couldn’t agree more. The Clash is easily one of the all-time greatest bands, true pioneers that never stopped trying (and usually succeeding) in advancing music to places it hadn’t been before. However I, and the countless millions of Led Zeppelin fans, also tell Aaron to shove his condescending hipster bullshit up his ass. Liking Led Zeppelin doesn’t mean you haven’t musically evolved.

Here are some concepts that may seem strange to Aaron and scores of other you other hipster indie-rock-elitist jerks:

1. People are allowed to like other kinds of music.
2. People can like more than one type of music; you can’t define and/or label people based on just one band that they like. (For example, while I own every Led Zeppelin album, I also own a lot of obscure jazz albums and John Coltrane is my all-time favorite musician).
3. It’s okay to like bands that people have actually heard of or that actually get played on the radio.
4. You’re not a better or smarter music fan for listening to bands that no one has ever heard of.
   

This may seem like a strong response for such a harmless comment. However, it’s not really the comment so much as it is the sentiment behind it. Living in DC, the hipster thing can get old sometimes. Please don’t get me wrong; I like a lot of indie rock and I think the DC music scene is wonderful for its diversity and focus on actually interesting music. As a transplant to the area, I am very impressed with it. However, there is this sort of indie hipster elitism that comes as a part of that. I think I may be more sensitive to it, having not grown up here (whereas Aaron and Charles, having grown up here, definitely have some of that attitude). But it’s still annoying to those of us who just fans of the music that moves us, regardless of what “scene” it comes from, who made it, or how other people label it.

* Side note: I love being in a band that is man enough to have these fights publicly. Bring it on Aaron!

Because I am a high school teacher and continuously made aware of what kids are doing and listening to, I am constantly in a state of shock and dismay at what has endured throughout the last 30 years. I know this makes me old, and I know that it means I’m losing my edge. My parents and elders said the same things about the stuff I listened to, and they were wrong for disliking Nirvana and Pearl Jam. However, they were correct for hating Def Leppard, and getting sick of Houses of the Holy. Thankfully, I evolved (Spencer, who loves Led Zeppelin, should note that I’m essentially calling him a homo erectus to my homo habilis. Take that.) And maybe that is the eightfold path for all teenagers; that it is part of human development to embrace the mainstream before rejecting it, to love what is shitty before understanding what is refined. Of course there are many who never go through this process, and reject the mainstream from the start, partially because the mainstream rejected them. The point is that those of us who are paying any attention move on from the music that we liked in Middle School/High School and ultimately appreciate something of a higher order. And yes friends, there is genuinely quantifiable aesthetic value to music. Personal preference only gets you so far.

Where was I going…so, by my ears measure, today’s “artists” of choice are Lil’ Wayne and Fall Out Boy. There are some other bands that enter the discussion, lots of kids like Green Day, and there is this odd and intense Eazy-E revival. This fascinates me, because Eazy-E wasn’t even a particularly large rap star when we were growing up, always running in Ice Cube and Dre’s shadows (though he was in jail, then dead from AIDS, which makes it tough to have a solo career). Admittedly, the kids I teach were unlikely to big indie rock fans, which is fine. But it also strikes me as the kind of place that would have had huge groups of dischord followers in the ‘80’s. It is for this reason that I feel there is a vacuum, and I think that vacuum is probably nation-wide. Punk bands and rap-stars alike are guilty these days of inviting the message of excess. Does anyone really believe that New Found Glory or Good Charlotte is genuinely anti-establishment? I think Fall Out Boy actually reframed the establishment and managed to make it even less about substance than it had been before, proving that a band could actually sell-out before there were any offers. And every rapper and hip-hop artist these days explains how many drinks they had and how many people were out at the club. But Eazy-E was not a man of excess, at least not originally. NWA created a mosaic of urban-ghetto life under Republican administrations that didn’t give a fuck about those people. Which I think is why Eazy-E, partially martyred without cause by an early death, has seen such a boom. That is the existence of my kids; a new Bush with Reaganite advisors, no health care and an intense military recruitment effort in the school that serves up $12 an hour plus benefits, which sound really good compared to what their parents make.

It is in this climate that there is room for a serious revival of The Only Band That Matters. I’ve been concerned over the last few years that the Clash (I feel the same way about the Replacements) weren’t getting the credit that they deserved, and that tracing the artistic roots of modern musicians seems to only lead to the Beatles, Johnny Cash, or Motown. Maybe it’s because the modern punk band is such a sorry shell of what the Clash were, so much so that we don’t even consider them to be in the same Aristotelian category. While the Clash were such a popular an influential band, it doesn’t seem to me that they exist in the public consciousness as a vitally important band. And maybe that’s the nature of true punk music, that it serves it’s purpose during difficult times, only to fade during those period of time in which we become too self-absorbed to pay attention. So I believe, my friends, that every time discontent swells to a necessary critical mass the Clash will rise. Another Republican administration would certainly accomplish this, but I’m not sure I’d want that even if it meant the Clash would get their due. With my finger on the pulse of that discontent, as Americas youth is for any generation, I can tell you it seems unusually high. So I’m calling it.

And to think that Eazy-E would one day prove to be a portent of a Clash resurgence.

Photo taken from Helge Overas

So, I feel like I should recap my European vacation, but it is kind of a lot to go over, so I think that I will focus on getting ready and playing Darren and Emilie’s wedding service. I might have some recordings of the pieces that I played in a week or so, so keep your eye out for that.

I have played a lot of concerts in my time as a musician. Between a hundred or so with my last band, a couple hundred in my church, and various other engagements here and there, I have a lot of experience playing live. I am at the point where I feel completely comfortable on stage, and usually can’t wait to start performing.

That said, I got pretty nervous before the wedding started. I was fine until I put my suit on. Something about that suit signaled that this was going to be a different kind of performance. For me, I get nervous when I don’t know what to expect. I know what to expect while playing a rock concert, and this is more important, I know what can go wrong and how to react to it. Really, I have had lots of things go wrong while playing a concert, broken equipment, forgetting the music, mics that shock you, etc. I realized that I have no idea what to expect at a wedding in a small church in the Flemish speaking region of Belgium

Another concern was that when I first put the suit on, I realized that I have never played in a suit before. I then started to wonder if I could actually play in a suit. This may seem like a stupid concern, but when you are used to playing in T-Shirts and Jeans, the more constricting nature of a suit was a concern. I also pictured my tie getting draped over the stings. So I immediately began practicing in my suit, just to make sure that I could do it.

I should point out that I was staying in the house/castle with the bride, groom, family of the bride and groom, wedding party, miscellaneous hangers on, and the like. So while I am practicing, about an hour before the service, it is complete chaos in the house. People are getting ready, ironing, fighting for the showers, etc. We managed to break two power converters while people were drying, or curling, their hair, leaving the lovely aroma of burning plastic drifting throughout parts of the house. Also, the reception was at the house, so add the people setting up tables and the bar, the caterers running around to the mix. So all of this nervous energy was just pulsating throughout the house, and I definitely caught a healthy dose of it.

The other problem was that there was no rehearsal. So I had never been to the church, or knew where I would be playing. Also, no one had really planned on how I was going to get from the house to the church. The wedding party was going to be driven to the church in 1920s Rolls Royces, and at one point Darren suggested that one of the Rolls could give me a ride 20 minutes before the service. It might seem insane, but I turned him down. I was still worried about playing in a suit, if I arrived in a Rolls Royce it would have put me over the edge. Also, the town and church choir were already skeptical of the American who was usurping some sections of the service. They would have hated me if I had shown up in a Rolls Royce. So I got a friend to drive me over in a nice honest Volkswagen instead.

I arrived at the church, met the choir, and figured out where I was going to sit. The choir and the music director were very nice, although I did get the sense that they were sizing me up, particularly because I had stolen some of the spots in the program where they were going to perform. Also, the choir, choir director, and priest didn’t really speak English all that well. The only message that got conveyed to me was, I was not to sit in a certain part of the church because there was a fear that part of the ceiling could fall on me.

After setting up and sound checking, I just waited for the wedding party to arrive. The church was only about a 3 minute drive from the house, so the wedding party was going to drive up and walk right in the church. This was all well and good, except that I was supposed to play some guitar preludes and etudes while the wedding party was walking in. Because there was not a rehearsal, I didn’t know when they were coming. So I just kinda paced and looked down the street. This did not help my nerves at all.

Eventually I started, and in about 5 minutes the wedding party started walking in. I should point out that a Belgian wedding party is different from an American wedding party. The wedding party is called the suite, and they are friends and family that precede the bride and groom into the church. There were not ushers, groomsmen, or bridesmaids. There was a best man and maid of honor, but according to Belgian traditions, they were the witnesses who were suppose to supervise the signing of the wedding papers at the end of the service.

So I am playing my preludes and etudes while the suite enters, trying to catch when the bride is going to enter. I was supposed to play Pachelbel’s “Canon in D” while the Bride was processing, and I was having a hard time figuring out when to start. At one point I stood up and finger picked a C chord in what I felt like was a very “classical” manner, while attempting see what was going on. Then the choir director gives me a head nod, and I start the Canon.

Here is the thing about Pachelbel’s “Canon in D.” It is really only 4 bars of music “| D . A . | Bm . F#m . | G . D . | G . A . |.” The piece gets its beauty from the parts that are added and overlaid, but basically it is those four bars repeated over and over again. I had worked on an arraignment to try to capture some of the beauty of the piece. Well, Emilie made it from the back of the church to the altar in about 20 seconds, or about 4 times through the progression. I’ll be damned if she wasn’t in a hurry to get the ceremony started.

The ceremony went well. The choir sang “Yesterday” by the Beatles in Flemish. I am hoping that they changed the lyrics. They didn’t have a music stand for me, so I did “Fandango (Dans Espagnole) (op. 73, no. 2) by Ferdinando Carulli by memory. This is the piece that really had me nervous. It is pretty much that hardest piece that I know that I am willing to attempt in front of other people. When it came time to play it, I just shut my eyes and started. I have been playing this piece for years, and know it by heart, but I like to have the music in front of me. It just makes me feel more comfortable. Anyway, I played the piece well enough. One of my gifts as a musician is the ability make mistakes in key, which makes them harder for the listener to catch. I had a few, but nothing too bad.

Honestly, my greatest contribution to the service might have been during the homily. About halfway through, the priests microphone went out. I was sitting near the pulpit, and when the sound went out, the choir director started gesturing to me, and pointing behind me. I turned and saw a cable coming from the pulpit. I got up, and picked up the chord to get some confirmation form the choir director that this was the chord I should be looking at, and all of sudden the sound comes back on. The choir director gave me a smile and the thumbs up, and I sat back down again.

So in summation, I am pretty sure that I didn’t ruin Darren and Emilie’s wedding. It was really a lovely service, and I was honored to be a part of it.