Music Notes: 'Splainin' to Do

Many of you are aware of my puzzlement over the LADY GAGA phenomenon, so it should come as no surprise that there is more where that came from.

Now that I think about it, it is something I have been pondering for years now (in one case) and for a few months (in another case), and I thought it was time to do a brain purge. Musical bookends, you might say.

CASE #1: JANIS JOPLIN

I am not a child of the '60's, in the sense that many people use it these days. I was born in the '60's, but not early enough to have anything to do with being a hippie or a draft dodger or civil rights activist or Bob Dylan. I was old enough (or young enough?) to hear and appreciate a LOT of music from the '60's*, such as lots of Jimi Hendrix, early Led Zeppelin, Beatles, Rolling Stones, even a lot of "oldies". A lot of it I liked. But I never, ever really liked Janis Joplin. I didn't hate her music, but I never really understood why so many people seemed to really dig it. I guess I always found it be...boring. I heard a Janis Joplin song on the radio today, and I listened intently...I tried...but I just wanted to turn it off and stifle a yawn.

CASE #2: VAMPIRE WEEKEND

I was introduced to this group courtesy of my beloved local ear candy provider, 89.7 WTMD (Rock on, freaky bro!) a few months back, and since I trust their judgment, I tried to pay attention when they played them on air. I tried to get into it, but each time it was like "Okay...okay...okay...um, what is it I'm supposed to be gushing over?" I gave them the benefit of the doubt for a while, but I couldn't escape the conclusion I was drawing: I just don't get what is so great about it, what makes the DJ's get so psyched about their music. In all fairness, I do really like the song "Cousins", it has really cool Dick Dale inspired guitar work in it. But their early stuff, and the new song "Horchata"? Sigh. It just makes me search for something else. Nothing personal, it just doesn't grab me.

So there it is, my big head is a little smaller now. So what is your musical mystery? What artists do you get (that others don't seem to get) or not get?

*Quite possibly, I may have been one of only three or so people in my junior high school to know of Iron Butterfly. In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, baby...

Revisiting The Vinyl Frontier

Not too long ago, my daughter was cavorting around the living room, tossing stuff around, and she threw a toy (a little bear, I think) behind the TV set. I heard her rummaging around back there, and then she said, "Daddy, what's this?" I turned around to see her holding my vinyl copy of "A Different Kind Of Tension" by the Buzzcocks. She was holding it up and waving it around like a Frisbee. I stifled a yelp and made a slow-motion grab for it before it broke. Safely in my hands I put it back in the milk crate that was holding it.

Wait. Did you catch that? No, no, not 'Buzzcocks' (heh, heh..shut up Beavis!), I said 'vinyl'. That's right: VINYL. I still have a small crate full of full size albums, cardboard sleeves and all. Okay they aren't all mine, some of them belong to my spousal companion. I won't embarrass anyone with THOSE albums. Instead, I'll embarrass myself with my albums.

Once the wee lass was safely out of range, I rifled through the remaining albums in the milk crate. I was pleased to see my copy of 'Dark Side of The Moon' still there, and I felt a little weirded out to find a Black Flag Album and ‘The Record’ by Fear. Leftover relics of my punk influenced dissolute youth. Oh, and I think I threw away my Flock of Seagulls album. Whew!

While I am not too sentimental for the sheer bulk that vinyl took up, I do miss the album covers, and the great art and the liner notes that read like a book (instead of like something inside a matchbook cover). Funny, having a turntable and having to buy needles (phonograph needles, you stoners) didn’t seem that cool when that’s about all we had. 8-tracks were a complete pain in the ass, and cassettes weren’t that much better (how many times did I accidently unspool the tape? Too many!) But I realized a few years ago that there really was something special about the needle hitting the groove. You got that little bit of scratchy sound, a few hisses and pops, and then BAM: a good fat sound. It was a Robert Johnson collection on CD that gave me that epiphany. I think it was ‘Stones in My Passway’ that I listened to first. What a weird experience to listen to vinyl recordings that had been mastered to CDs! The scratchiness of vinyl with the clarity of digital audio. Weird and how postmodern can you get?

Most of my collection is on CD now, and while it is convenient, it does lack some of the cachet of vinyl. My brother still has a lot of vinyl, with album covers hung up on the walls of his computer loft at home. Pretty cool to see that stuff hanging up. That is one thing you definitely don’t get with digital music; who cares if you are carrying an iPod or an mp3 player? You can’t really tell anything about the person, and while the gadget is cool, it seems more like a fashion accessory than anything else.

True vinyl story: One of my uncles, a Vietnam vet and a low-key hippie, had a pretty cool record collection. He gave me and my brother a copy of The Beatles ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’, a second edition (I think) when we were just old enough to start appreciating the music. I had it for a while, but between college and moving around and just generally trying to stay employed and be an adult, I LOST IT. To this day, I still don’t know where it went. My uncle is gone now, passed away about twenty years ago. I never told him about the album; I didn't get the chance.

Uncle Harry, I’m sorry, bro. We were young and stupid…

(Note: This is a longer version of a very short essay I posted to a local newspaper blog back in May 2008)