Jan
30
Mixed Results
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My friend in Texas makes the best mixes. Mixes full of eclectic, evocative songs. His latest tells the story of the birth of his son as a rock opera. This is good stuff. I don’t speak to my friend very often, but when one of these CDs mysteriously lands on my doorstep, it’s a reunion of sorts. I get a peek at his thoughts, his moods, his life.
A true mix, a good mix, is something other than a collection of favorite songs. A mix tells a story, communicates a message to the listener. A mix is something for other people.
Making mixes is easier than ever, so I’m surprised I don’t see more of these around. (Maybe the fact that I am long out of high school has something to do with it, but I’m not convinced.) In the glam days of the 80s, you had to cue up two tape decks, hit record at the proper moment, pause between tracks, add up minutes (45 per side!), check counters, and on and on. Even after CDs, creating a mix involved several evenings of drinking heavily while listening to random CDs and scratching out notes before inevitably calling an ex-girlfriend. Here’s the point when I praise technology. Since I digitized all my music for my iPod, everything is ready to go. All I need to do is create a new playlist and burn it.
Sure, the quality isn’t great, but I’m no audiophile. This isn’t about distributing music anyway; it’s about telling someone a story. What would be great is if I could create a playlist, upload it to the iTunes music store, and buy copies of the whole mix for my friends to download. Hey, other people could buy it, too.
I doubt artists (or record companies) would go for this. People go to a lot of trouble to make albums. Who am I to cut up their story arc because I think a White Stripes song segues well into a Johnny Cash classic? But there’s also the argument that we are becoming a commodity culture–we already buy songs a la carte. Maybe it’s time to allow new formats like this. Maybe it’ll increase sales by providing a benefit for buying electronic music. It could make some money.
My last mix was entitled Dirty Girls: Songs about mean, troubled, and generally uncivilized women. I think it took me six months of tinkering before I gave up and called it done, but it was fun. At best, I entertained a few friends. At a minimum, I rediscovered a few tracks in my archive without drunk dialing anyone. I have a couple of more ideas on deck:
- Waking up in a Hotel in the Desert Next to Liz Phair
- But Dad, I Don’t Want to be an Astronaut!
- Camaros and Monte Carlos: A Tribute
I’ll let you know how it goes in about eighteen months.
Jan
16
Shredded
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I’ve crossed over. When I was younger, I couldn’t understand how my parents were not interested in new music. Everyone seemed to musically give up around thirty. I appreciated older music, but that was no reason to ignore new sounds. I swore that I would not go quietly into that darkness. I would not become my father still rocking out to The Best of Mountain. And I held on for a long time.
But we all become our parents, don’t we? I woke up one day and realized that I just don’t buy much music anymore. In fact, I haven’t been buying music for a long time. My wife and I still buy a CD or three a year, but this is nothing like when I was twenty-four. I don’t anticipate new music, long for it. What’s surprising is how I feel about it. I didn’t give up–the music did.
I remember music in the pre-digital age, but only just. My son will never know it. In college, I spent hours pouring through stacks in used CD shops, looking for elusive imports from my favorite artists or cut-priced studio albums. I wanted to complete my collection. There wasn’t an Internet like there is today. No way to seek out lists to complete. It was all hunting for unknown prey. In those days, the guys in the record stores and well-versed friends were the sources for new music. Like this? You’ll love that. Now we can use Wikipedia to trace artist inspirations, Last.fm to find like-minded aficionados. It’s much easier now.
There is less mystery around music. Everything is laid out there in front of us, commoditized. Looking for an import? No need to go downtown and flip through stacks in dingy basement shops. Just look on eBay or download the tracks from an MP3 blog. Because the prey is so much easier now, there is less joy in the hunt. It’s like hunting deer in Ohio: there are so many around you can just hit them with your car.
Killing the hunt is part of it. Music has lost its nerve, too.
The Song Remains the Same was on TV the other day and I was reminded how much Jimmy Page could just shred. Thirty-five years after that concert in Madison Square Garden, I am standing in my living room, mouth agape. And I think of Pink Floyd. And I think of the Rolling Stones. And I think of everything else. I wasn’t around in 1970, but I can’t imagine how anyone hearing this music for the first time just didn’t go nuts. It was new and different and could tear out your guts. We’ve lost that.
It’s not that I dislike new music. It’s just that a lot of it feels bland, vanilla. It’d be one thing if I could not stand new bands, but most of what I hear on the radio just fades into the background, as if it’s already been turned into muzak. It’s not all dead. Wilco can still melt my face. Ryan Adams can break my heart. I want to give Neko Case a hug on a weekly basis. But these are the outliers. Most of the musical landscape is now dominated by faceless bands with interchangeable songs and similar uniforms. Each band is its own AC/DC–they have one hit and then replicate that exact sound in every subsequent song forever.
Is this smoothing out of the musical landscape a product of the proliferation of information? Did putting everything at our fingertips shed a better commercial light on everything, forcing musicians to embrace a proven mold instead of searching for a new sound? Is this where the payoff is now? Or is this just the typical lifecycle of an art form?
Or is this another harbinger of the end of civilization? That which was once exciting becomes profitable. I can buy a Sex Pistols T-shirt at the mall.
This is bigger than album sales. The musical audience has become complacent in other ways. Those people whose minds were being blown on the radio dial in 1970 were the same people protesting Vietnam. Now, we have a a faceless Top 40 and no one willing to raise a sign against a government that fights unjust wars and refuses to provide healthcare for all children. There is no coincidence here. There is only the strong correlation between a lack of face-melting guitar solos and political apathy.
My twenty-four year old self dies a little more every day. But at least Neil Young is still pissed off.
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