Hi skip h: I'm very moved with your feelings about the music in your childhood! I'm very identified with your points of view... Cheers Roberto
Message: 4 Date: Sat, 29 Jun 2002 10:06:49 -0700 Subject: Re: style,cliche & repetition From: skip Heller <velaires@earthlink.net> To: Herb Levy <herb@eskimo.com>, <zorn-list@mailman.xmission.com>
Herb makes a great number of interesting points.
Peronsally, I think performers are doomed to repeating themselves (ourselves). We're limited by all sorts of things -- personnel, equipment, our own technical limitations, the fact that you've basically got twelve primary notes to manipulate. And the community becomes limited by how many performers it is possible for them to hear, the conditions under which they hear music, and so forth. You go in knowing that.
The sensitivity of audiences and musicians is subject to similar problems. Made even more pronounced by the fact that audiences generally like musical comfort food and musicians like to do things they know their audience will enjoy. After awhile, the process gets kind of cynical. The performers know how to push buttons, the audience knows where to get their candy. Fair enough. I spend 16 bucks on a record, I want a certain level of quality.
But there's another imperative there, too. When an artist really does what's in his heart, without either trying break free of the stylistic limitations he has, and at the same time pushing that style someplace else, the effect is often magical. The example of this I like to trot out is Mose Allison. He's eveolved from a quirky blues singer into a guy whose piano style includes blues, Ives, and Bartok. Sadly, no record company will let him make an instrumental record. So he's found a way to take these insane solos on vocal tunes, and, at age 76 (or thereabouts), he's become a more challenging performer than he ever was at 35.
There are very few few musicians who can move through different styles and transform their playing totally in the face of each context. Those who can are generally journeymen who never had much of a personal voice.
But there is definitely such a thing as guys who crank it out for money and glory. Obviously, Cecil Taylor is not one of these. It's fair to say King Crimson have, at ceratin times, have been. And, as for the Rolling Stones, let's just say their appearance on BEVERLY HILLS 90210 spoke volumes.
In the case of bands like the Stones, who have come to embody something less than artistic, one has a right to get pissed off at $125 concert tickets.
As for the naive romance of wanting something fresh every time you open the box, I agree. It's almost childlike to wish that.
But, as long as the cause of music is to fascinate, excite, and provoke, the audience should be allowed the right to that feeling of anticipation every time he/she opens a new record and gets ready to hear it.
When I was a kid, LP's were a serious consideration. At $6 a throw, which was two wks pay in my neighborhood, you were hanging a lot on that purchase. I remember buying a record, having the shrink-wrap off it before I even got out of the shopping center, and studying the cover all the way home (props to Cal Schenkel, for cramming about three hours worth of graphics into the avg Zappa pkg). Then, after you'd read the lyric sheet, studied the personnel, checked out the clothes and haircuts, took note as to who was thanked, you finally got the thing home, and you made sure your shakedown listen was not going to be interrupted. Then the music would come on, and you'd go on that journey with Joni, Frank, Waler & Donald, or whomever. And it was a vital, magic thing. Because you knew -- of certain artists -- that yes, their style was personal to them, but you also knew they were trying to push it to the next place, and that was as germane to the $6 purchase as the songs themselves. You wanted to know where "next" was.
As I've gotten older, I've really clung to those notions. The punk rock days only deepened my feelings that records should do that (anyone else remember hearing FLOWERS OF ROMANCE the first time? Or "Christine" by Siouxsie?). In this world, I feel that way whenever Dave Douglas, Ellery Eskelin, Arto, or Don byron make new records (although Don hasn't made anything I've been crazy for in some time -- maybe he's the Dylan figure). I used to feel that way about Frisell (maybe he's Hendrix and the group with Joey was the Experience and he's at Band Of Gypsies).
This seems to be going all over the place, but I think that if an artist is really doing his job for his audience -- and the minute you take money to do a job, you have an obligation to service your clientele --he's gotta really do it because he's really got something worth selling. You can't do it just for the money, the visibility, or the "well, I've got to have a record out this year". The audience already cares about certain artists. I think if an artist really cares -- not just to the point of trying to keep them pleased, but really keeping them nourished -- he'll be compelling every time out, even if the record misses the mark, because there's some blood up in the music.
Yes, it's romantic to think that. But this is coming from the kid who saved up a whole month to buy DON JUAN'S WRECKLESS DAUGHTER, who mowed two lawns to buy MINGUS, and who spent all his brithday money on BEFORE THE FLOOD. I still haven't forgotten the power of feeling like part of the audience for those records.
skip h