Friday 11 February 2011

EVENSONG. TOO MUCH OF NOTHING.


"  After that, it's simply a matter of taste for the listener."  mr anonymous on the Slim Whitman post.

The fact that Never Have We Been So Sung-At By So Many is a perpetual irritation to me, mr anonymous. I know that when I re-enter The Great Unconsciousness, the distant music of the spheres, the Universal Heartbeat will be counterpointed  arythmically by the discord of Earthly popular song, it spreads out from the planet to Infinity, discrediting us.

I guess it was the creation of the economic entity of teenage that engaged the drive on this unstoppable production line of ditty and complaint, rockabilly's early charm long since forcibly metamorphised into marketable drivel - I will, before I die, write my poste de resistance, How the Beatles destroyed Rock'n'Roll, I have promised it to Mr dtp - into an overblown prolongation of adolescent angst, from Nick Drake to that whining git from Coldplay, and layered it with a faux nobility, the wretched Ray Davies, for instance, hailed as a Betjamin of our times, grunting his teen anthems, flailing rudimentarily at his guitar, surrounded, these days by a choir, more a Max Bygraves of our time than a Betjamin, SingalongaRay, lissen, I wannatellyouyastory. The teenager-as-shopper phenomenon extends, now, to the grave, and bald and bearded loons bless themselves that in their sixties the Kink or the Manfred or the Fab Mopster or most of the undead Stones have come, croaking and wheezing, riffing and jigging, honky-tonk bluesing amongst them. And as though that was not infamy enough, weekly, new pouting, posturing, talentless egomaniacs are manufactured,  their bleatings and warblings expressed through who-knows-what Devil-media. Each rapid generation of consumer-idiots laying claim to a music of its own. Shite, most of it.

So I am not entirely at one with you, mr anonymous, in that all forms of music are equally meritorious. I know that is not entirely what you are saying but it is contained within your observations - and it is implicit in mr mongoose's rejection of studied formality, elsewhere.

I am as moved, I hasten to say, by the unschooled artistry of Blind Willie McTell or Big Joe Williams as I am by the impossibly chilly precision of Johannes Sebastian Bach or the insane lyricism of poor, mad, deaf and angry Ludwig van Beethoven. It is just that there is an increasing amount of stuff in-between which adds nothing to either canon and which only sees the light of day as a result of market forces - it is not the song of the street, the prairie, the plantation;  the lament of the battlefield, the moor, the glen or the broken heart; it is not the clever diversion of the salon nor the expression of  glorious obedience to God; it is neither shanty nor march, neither history nor satire; it is just product, its beneficiaries not its performers or its dragooned audience-purchasers but instead the likes of the Godless heathen bastard fuckpig, Simon Cowell, Cruelty TeeVee's smirking impresario of shite.


I think, in short - and it is a truncation - that we need to be more and not less elitist about these things, that Whatever Turns You On is not necessarily a constructive approbation, Teach Your Children Well, teach them Moneteverdi,  before Crosby Stills and Nash.  If we laud the confectionery as being equal to the meat, as we do, fewer and fewer will migrate themselves, eventually, to the simple musical truths of, just for instance, Slim Whitman or, in this case, the Copper Family. All, then, will be lost in discord.



13 comments:

Dick the Prick said...

Cheers. Personally, I think salt can fuck up taste

call me ishmael said...

And the heart.

PT Barnum said...

Having watched 20 successive years' worth of 18 year-olds pass through my classroom with their back-to-the-future fashions, and having had many of them attempt to educate me in the latest greatest life-changing product (perfect word), I was struck by the increasing speed of change. A trend that once lasted a decade or 5 years was now sucked dry in six months, leaving them gagging for the next.

That, coupled with the adolescent faith that they invented everything, from sex to punk rock, wore me down. I thought I had left it behind me when I retired sick, but I have been granted an ebulliant foster daughter with a passion for educating her elders. Help!

mrs narcolept said...

Smile and ignore her, mr PTB, it is the only way to remain sane. It's not exactly a picnic even if they do catch themselves on early; one of the young narcolepts decided to learn the saxophone, the other the violin, so you can imagine what we went through.

Loved the Copper family, and merry Frank, and the not entirely accurately-named Slim. And the ones ms lilith (was it?) found, the Be Good Tanyas, and the woman whose name I forget who sang of Mendocino. And Monteverdi and Bach and Tallis and Byrd. How can there ever be too much, as long as a space is cleared often enough to listen to what we love best?

call me ishmael said...

And on top of that, mrs n, you Live-The-Dream of Zen In the Art of MotorCycle Maintainance.

i think there is too much of nothing, though; too much film, too many "bands", too many books, too much television and far too many bloggers, an orgy of self-expression, unmoderated and immoderate. How are the young, wading through dross, to find what is truly loveable?

It was the late Kate McGarrigle's Talk to me of Mendocino; never had the blues from whence I came but in New York State, I caught 'em. Being parent, with Loudon Wainwright, of gorgeous, pouting Rufus Wainwright, would be enough of the blues for me.

PT Barnum said...

"Smile and ignore her" quoth Mrs Narcolept. Ah, if only. A young woman, at least as twice as intelligent as I am, whose only meaningful parenting had, until two years ago, was to be taught explicitly and repeatedly that lying and manipulation would get you whatever you wanted. I think you could say she has a lot of 'boundary testing' to make up for. Her current campaign concerns my lack of sock fashionableness.

PT Barnum said...

"[T]here is too much of nothing, though; too much film, too many "bands", too many books, too much television and far too many bloggers."

I am of the persuasion that there cannot be too many bloggers since it requires a self-discipline and self-motivation, not a momentary flash of ire or gut-spilling. And surplus blogs may easily be avoided with no effort whatever.

But the "57 channels and nothing on" world, which will render my portable TV obsolete when the benefits of digital switchover are forced upon me in August, that I do find unpalatable. I would much rather see incontinent self-expression than slack-jawed worship of the magic lantern in the corner. Even flailing, self-indulgent activity is preferable to utter passivity in "receive" mode only.

There's always i-Player, I suppose.

call me ishmael said...

Have you read McLuhan, Understanding Media?

Deputy Attorney-General Agatha said...

I am reminded of the 60-something couple from the former East Berlin, who mourned the removal of the Wall as it increased consumer choice to the point beyond which a rational and educated intelligence, reared in a simpler world, could actually make a choice.
Less is more, as the saying goes. More leads to discontent and perpetual striving, perpetually condemned to disappointment with what one has. The bird in the hand is never worth two in the bush, the grass is forever greener elsewhere.....

mongoose said...

I don't reject the formality, Mr Ishmael, but I don't think that it is necessary. Perhaps it's a Catholic thing, a west of Ireland rejection of rules and boundaries. Or perhaps that too is a rationalisation. What does "good" mean? And what does "better" mean? Music is currently all sounding brass to me. But then I am rapidly going deaf and perhaps that is what happens to deaf people. Well, it was a good ride as far as it went. Thanks for the fish. But film has taken its place, I hope, for only the moment. And back to books. And numbers too, now that the kids are doing proper maths. Watch "The Book of Eli" - hokum nonsense but beautifully shot. Watch the new "True Grit". What prat is going to try and out-John-Wayne John Wayne? And does he? You bet your life he does.

Is any of this better? Superior? Or do I just like it? That much is vapid trash is probably true, and probably always has been, but I am not convinced that effort and difficulty and formality are required for quality to be in attendance. I'd rather watch Viv Richards' effortless, technically wrong swiping across the line than Tendulkar's fantastically correct, awesomely accomplished, but somehow dreary correctitude. Mark Waugh rather than Steve; fire rather than ice. But in the end it all comes down to whether one likes it - book, film, song, cricket shot. Though it is true that effort and learning and experience and understanding can uncover for one more of what is within. In the fury of the moment one can see the master's hand. Sir Viv walking across the stumps and flipping a fast bowler to the midwicket boundary is something I understand but I'll never be able to do it. St Joni warbling away and playing like that likewise. Compare and contrast this ragged prose with that of my long dead journo mate who would cross all this out and write what I have written in three lines. That we must take what we can from all these things is maybe the lesson.

Except for rap. To hell with that nonsense.

call me ishmael said...

But your dead journalist friend would have written copy, whereas you write writing.

call me ishmael said...

Dissatisfaction, along with planned obsolescence, ms agatha, these are the spells of GlobaCorp's wizards. Large parts of the world's population lusting after bits of clever plastic, each redundant before it leaves the warehouse; large parts of the world dying for want of an aspirin, an exquisite pornography of wants.

Dr K. said...

Aye, rituals established, observed, and repeated.Money to be made from manipulating emotions will always trump honor of a honest toil.