I got the record collection in the divorce, more or less. Between the thousands of records, thousands of CD's and hundreds of downloaded albums stuffing my house I realize I have an easy-to-feel-overwhelmed-by compendium of music. This morning on my way to the coffee house to work on my book (which has led me to the distraction of adding a blog post) Love and Rockets "No New Tale to Tell" came up at random. I love random. On an Ipod with upwards of 10,000 songs listening at random is constantly fruitful and surprising. So, I listened to it again on my computer at the coffee house - it has a thumping staccato something in that song that is instensely attractive to me - and I pushed "Genuis Results" based on that song and wouldn't you know, shit came up. Shit that fits my morning vibe like a tailored Jacket.
I think I own Earth, Sun, Moon on vinyl but I don't know. I'll come across it soon as I sift through the vinyl which, after the fractioning of my life by divorce, is the most substantial remainder. Anyway, I think it is an easy acquisition if I don't have it because it is from the eighties when they still made a lot of vinyl. I might have to look around a bit for a copy that wasn't destroyed by a teenagers shitty needle but I like having a short list. I learned these sorts of things the last couple of years of marriage.
I see I have to look forward to this morning: The Church, Psychedelic Furs, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Cure, Oingo Boingo, The Replacements, Devo, Sugarcubes, Sinead O'Connor, R.E.M., Talking Heads, INXS, The Breeders and ETC.
Thank YOU genius.
Also, chewing on Fiona Apple's new album. Meant to get it right after it came out, but I'm broke and unemployed and downloaded it two days ago after accepting a free offer.
Ciao.
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Thursday, June 7, 2012
A lot can happen over the course of a year, and a bit. The entries are not frequent on this blog, and I realize this is an old blog. Years and years now, maybe five years old? I can't check the origination date from this screen. But let's say, life is flying by. I married that man, that music obsessed fellow audiophile, and now we are separated. I found that there are other addictions in life that can make a corroborating musical addiction irrelevant. Addictions to food, to alcohol, to helping and being helped. I didn't know that trying to rescue someone from life's unpleasant situations was an addiction until I found myself stuck in the hell of rescuing someone who claimed to need rescuing. None of us really need rescuing, not unless we are stuck fifty feet down a literal well and would actually die without being rescued. And even then, if it is our time to go, rescue might not be the thing. To rescue someone from unpleasant life realities caused by their own actions and behaviors, even when aided by addictions that aren't really their fault, well that is a terrible imprisoning addiction on it's own to have. I am a rescuer. I hid for many years so I didn't know how deep my addiction to "saving" others at the expense of my own well-being went. Now I know, and now we are separated.
During this relationship, however, the world of Jazz was opened up to me. I had just started to sniff around the edges of jazz when he came into my life. I had picked up Brilliant Corners by Thelonious Monk, and On the Corner by Miles Davis. These two albums continue to define my tastes in jazz - and astonishingly jazz fusion. I found them during my own musical explorations but then with Dan, the entire category of jazz really opened up for me. It was not a taste I was capable of having in my twenties. But now, I seek it out. Wes Montgomery was one I found, and Eric Dolphy. I never knew of these men before. Free jazz can be so exciting and moving, primal in the depths it goes to draw out a listening emotion. Ornette Coleman I had previously made a slight acquaintance with due to an interesting stint in my early twenties working at the Barnes and Noble music department. An Ornette Coleman live album was on the listening booths and for some reason I was so taken by the crazy discordant beauty of that album, and listened through it several times. But I never pursued what drew me to that, I just remembered it, and continued to assume Jazz was not for me. Isn't amazing how we can live in delusion despite mounting evidence to the contrary?
I am a jazz lover now. I would listen to On the Corner at any moment of any given day and just be enraptured. Kind of Blue, and some of the melodies therein, now feel as essential as any Beatles album - more essential, for me. I think of the vibraphone as a real musical force, a veritable ambiance generator, and far more than an instrument used with pretentious kitsch in the credits to "Frasier".
This is enough for me today. I'm unemployed though, so maybe I'll pick up the thread of album discovery more frequently during my abundance of free time....
During this relationship, however, the world of Jazz was opened up to me. I had just started to sniff around the edges of jazz when he came into my life. I had picked up Brilliant Corners by Thelonious Monk, and On the Corner by Miles Davis. These two albums continue to define my tastes in jazz - and astonishingly jazz fusion. I found them during my own musical explorations but then with Dan, the entire category of jazz really opened up for me. It was not a taste I was capable of having in my twenties. But now, I seek it out. Wes Montgomery was one I found, and Eric Dolphy. I never knew of these men before. Free jazz can be so exciting and moving, primal in the depths it goes to draw out a listening emotion. Ornette Coleman I had previously made a slight acquaintance with due to an interesting stint in my early twenties working at the Barnes and Noble music department. An Ornette Coleman live album was on the listening booths and for some reason I was so taken by the crazy discordant beauty of that album, and listened through it several times. But I never pursued what drew me to that, I just remembered it, and continued to assume Jazz was not for me. Isn't amazing how we can live in delusion despite mounting evidence to the contrary?
I am a jazz lover now. I would listen to On the Corner at any moment of any given day and just be enraptured. Kind of Blue, and some of the melodies therein, now feel as essential as any Beatles album - more essential, for me. I think of the vibraphone as a real musical force, a veritable ambiance generator, and far more than an instrument used with pretentious kitsch in the credits to "Frasier".
This is enough for me today. I'm unemployed though, so maybe I'll pick up the thread of album discovery more frequently during my abundance of free time....
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