Stu dropped me an email that really got me thinking. Interestingly enough, it’s about my resent-and-bile filled review of the last Sasha album. I get alot of mail about that, sometimes more than all the other content on the site. Anyhow, on to Stu’s letter:
“While my subject line may tip you off concerning my intentions of this
email, may I say that while I don’t agree with your review of
Airdrawndagger, I still feel it is an excellent review. Your breadth of
knowledge concerning Electronica’s roots are very apparent. You mentioned
the transgendered Wendy Carlos and the decidedly non-techno Mouse on Mars.
Most of the ‘fans’ of electronic music view it as a fad, and are guilty
of not knowing electronica’s roots. People in the Punk scene know their
roots. People in the hip hop vein know their roots. Why can’t more fans
do their homework like you? (don’t answer that)”
Okay, Rule #1:Never ask me a question and append “don’t answer that.” That just makes is so much more tantalizing.
Rule #2: Flattery works.
Rule #3: if you can name-check Wendy Carlos and Mouse on Mars in the same paragraph, you’ve got my attention.
The way I see it, there are two types of people who enjoy music: those who listen to it, and those who simply consume it. I’m in the first group. Most of the readership for this site are in the first group, and Stu, welcome to the dysfunctional family, you’re one of us, too. We love music. Many of us are musicians to some extent. We all live some part of our life through music, and it’s something very dear to us.
The second group consists of people like Ashleigh. You know Ashleigh. She’s in that 18-35-year-old demographic. She drives a white VW Jetta, owns an iPod, shops at Abercrombie & Fitch, and really wishes that Radiohead hadn’t gotten “so weird.” The last book she read was on Oprah’s book list, and she buys all her music off the “New & Hot” rack by the register at Tower.
She probably seems pretty harmless at first. After all, she’s been raised by our commodity culture to be dumb as a stump and to make knee-jerk decisions based on what the media and (by extension) her friends think is good. Ashleigh has been presented with sanitized and abridged versions of everything for her whole life, and she doesn’t even know it. Chances are, if you pointed this fact out to her, you’d get nothing but a blank stare.
The problem is, people like Ashleigh vote. They have kids who they pass this glassy-eyed vacancy on to. And they spend money, which keeps the whole system trundling along.
As long as people like Ashleigh exist, there will be a market for Yanni.
When I ran a record store, I had a friend named Wes. Wes was like a more charming version of Dick from High Fidelity. He was a walking encyclopedia of music. When he loved something, he was emphatic about it. Even if I played something he didn’t like, he’d find some redeeming quality in it, and vice-versa. It was Wes who introduced me to Leo Kottke and Bruce Cockburn and who taught me that it wasn’t wrong to like Genesis before Peter Gabriel left.
He and I once actually tried to sit through that infernal Yanni concert video, and after three minutes, he hit on why it was so repugnant. It’s music for people who don’t listen to music. Stuff like that suffers under any kind of scrutiny or close attention, but it’s bland enough to be functional. Essentially, it’s something you “put on the stereo” rather than something you become immersed in.
The music that people like Wes and I enjoy is a hard thing to make. It takes talent and a lot of work. It’s not always warmly received. And these days, it’s nothing to build a career on.
Ever since record labels have existed and peddled recorded music, they’ve known the value of people like Ashleigh. Ashleigh unwittingly provides them with a template for sure-fire success: take the same old reatread drivel, dress it up with polished bits of stuff from the fringes so it sounds “fresh,” and push it to market as the next big thing. There’s very little effort involved and little chance of failure. This is just the way large corporations like it.
It’s sad for Ashleigh, really, though she doesn’t know it. Her beloved Linkin Park is nothing but a hollow imitation of Killing Joke. When she cruises through the mall parking-lot blasting Daft Punk, she’s got no idea that they’re ripping Kraftwerk on a legally culpable level. When she sings along with the Ataris or Blink-182, she’s oblivious to the fact that Husker Du and and the Descendents were doing this so much better (and with more emotion) 15 years ago. She lives, in a sense, detached from history, and in the music business, those who do not learn from history are bound to buy it over and over again in different packaging.
Over the last few years, the Big Push into our living rooms has involved Electronica. You know what it is; you’ve heard it blasting away in the background of those sport-drink commercials with the beautiful people. It sounds powerful, primal and maybe just a bit edgy and naughty. David Bowie even used it to make a record, so it must be good, right?
Problem is, I couldn’t tell you exactly what it is, even with a gun pointed to my head.
I think it involves guys like the Prodigy and Fluke. Throw in a little bit of trance, some House, and it sells–especially if it’s got that vocoder thing going on the vocals. Paul Oakenfield has certainly gotten rich, if not marginalized, on it. Problem is, it’s the same old stuff as last year, except with different orchestration. At $20 a pop, I’m not wasting my money or my time on subtle variations of the same formula.
So where does that leave people like Wes and I? Well, we’re sort of a niche market unto ourselves that the majors just don’t cater to very often. Like people in the Punk scene or the Hip-Hop vein Stu mentioned above. In most cities, we have our own record shops filled with other weirdos like us. We know our roots and won’t buy it twice. For something to impress us, it has to stand on its own merits.
When it does, it’s something profound and near-life-altering. Lots of people can name the records they liked the most last year, but I can think of ones that knocked me sideways, that I bonded with, that I’ll still be listening to five years down the road when every last copy of Swordfish in existence has been abandoned to gather dust in the 99-cent bin of the used-record (sorry, used-cd) store.
That’s why the Sasha record bothered me so much. It doesn’t tell me anything I don’t already know. Stu goes on to point out,
“as far as sounds and timbre are concerned, I think
that airdrawndagger is a little bit more complex than you let on. I’ve
been working with synths for a while (a google search led me to your
review), and I still can’t come close to the timbres in airdrawndagger.”
Fair enough, but I don’t listen to music based on its technical merits. I went to high-school in a rural area, and if you were a musician, you had to be into Rush. Why? Because they were great musicians. That’s all well and good, but their music was so mind-numbingly boring and heavy-handed in its sense of self-importance that it was hard to stomach. Add Geddy Lee’s insectile screech to the equation, and I run the other way as quickly as possible. I can respect a record to an extent from a technical standpoint, but I just don’t care about it anymore after the second listen through if there’s not an emotional attachment there. Now I know that’s a highly subjective thing, but I don’t think I’ve met anyone who feels that Rush “speaks” to them on any level. Respect and enjoyment are sometimes two very different things.
I suppose that’s part of my grudge against the Sasha record. The man’s got so much talent that he could have made something really incredible, but it just falls flat. While it may have some technique, it simply lacks soul on a base level, and that kills it for me.