Miscellaneous - August 2010

  by Lisa Torem

published: 29 / 7 / 2010

intro

In 'Rock Salt Row' Lisa Torem talks to another Pennyblackmusic writer each month about a different issue in rock. In this episode she and Jon Rogers examines the effect that the theme of change has had on musicians

Two Eriters Season One Historic Moment LISA “You’ve changed. That sparkle in your eyes has gone/Your smile is just a careless yawn/You’re breaking my heart, you’ve changed.” “You’ve changed/Your kisses now are so blasé/You’re bored with me in every way/I can’t understand you’ve changed…” Written by Bill Carey and Carl Fischer, in the 40s, this soulful ballad, covered by Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan and Nat King Cole in the 40s and 50s, Marvin Gaye in the 60s, George Michael in the late 90s and Joni Mitchell and David Sanborn in the new millennium, was not only touching and bittersweet, but almost harsh in its honesty, as it chronicled a doomed pairing. Throughout rock history, change has been an important thematic element. Change can be exhilarating, but also devastating. But, besides all that, is it also inevitable? When Lennon and McCartney penned the first verse in ‘I’m Looking through You,’ – “I’m looking through you/You’re not the same/I thought I knew you/was I to blame?” - they raised some interesting points. Is someone to blame? Can we fix change? Should we fix change? Can we stop change? And, once we reach a verdict, who, then, says it best? Lennon and McCartney also, sang, “I’m fixing a hole where the rain gets in/To stop my mind from wandering/Where it will go…” Where will our mind go? Aren’t we victimized by these mixed messages? The politicians parade across the screen, screaming about the new millennium. We expect them; actually demand that they change all that is wrong with the world. Change is good, we will hand it to you if you simply vote for us. But, Carole King doesn’t see it that way: “Something inside has died and I can’t hide and I just can’t make it.” ”The dream is over,” the anguished John Lennon once discovered. Billy Joel even says, “Don’t go changing…” So, Jon, let’s go back to square one. Let’s consider the brand new job, the sparkling new relationship. We want it to stay the same, right? But, then it doesn’t. So, change is bad, right? The tony cheerleader becomes “the devil with the blue dress on.” The “leader of the pack” turns into “the nowhere man.” Of course, Donovan didn’t get too irked over any of it. In his mind, everything was and probably still remains “mellow yellow.” “For everything, there is a season, turn, turn, turn…” is what the ecclesiastic folkies say. So, change is good and natural,right? Those standards like Sinatra’s ‘When I was Seventeen’ and Peggy Lee’s recording of ‘Is That All There Is?’ suggests that too much reflection is painful; shall we then contentedly remain in our miasmic rut? Many Stones fans agreed that “I can’t get no satisfaction, though I try and I try and I try and I try…” So, Jon, are we back to: “Life sucks, so why the hell bother trying to fix it?” And, you, sunny Sir Paul, shall we forget plugging up that bloody hole of yours? George Harrison would have responded, “Let it roll across the floor” assuming a lotus position, while tuning up his sitar. Dylan’s testimony in ‘The Times They Are a Changing’ hinted strongly against the existential attitude. Of course, “the answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind,” brought us back to a state of dazed confusion. I suppose we could strum and sing, “The answer is blowing in the wind,” and just bypass the whole sticky issue. So, Jon, what does the world of lyricism demand of us? As much as we mouth off about change is great, and change is healthy, do we actually want it to happen? If you find the perfect girl who loves organic gardening and leafing through your library of Russian novels on Saturday afternoons, would you want her to turn into a credit-card junkie and fast-food fanatic before your very eyes? Could you handle “sweet Molly Malone” becoming ‘Material Girl?’ Billie sang, “You’ve changed/you’re not the angel I once knew/No need to tell me that we’re through/it’s all over now/you’ve changed.” Does she ever mention going through her own metamorphosis? Is the guy really such a bum? JON Looks like it’s me and you duking it out again (in a non physical way, that is) on these pages and you know that I’m always up for a good discussion. And I’ve been hit right between the eyes with your opening salvo there. Just where to start? You pour on the questions – and all good ones too… I might kick off with a non-musical quote, if I may, from Giuseppe di Lampedusa and taken from his 1957 classic ‘The Leopard’: “If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.” Which rather reflects Alphonse Karr’s famous phrase: “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” For all its posturing rock music is, in a general sense, rather reactionary – and pop music even more so. Visually, fashions come and go and hairstyles may have altered and technology has had its impact with things like auto tuner but we are still, essentially, listening to music with a 4/4 Chuck Berry/Bo Diddley riff. That’s the fundamental building block. Certainly artists have taken that off in interesting directions and done something a little different, but the base remains the same. And according to Led Zeppelin, after all, the song remains the same. [Although for them it often remained the same ‘cos they’d nicked a lot of stuff from some great blues singers.] And take a look at the vastly over-rated Oasis – they’ve built a whole career on recycling Beatles tunes – badly. So in short I don’t think things, musically, have changed that much in essence. Just the method of conveying that – albeit with an acoustic guitar, electric guitar, synth or whatever. But it’s a bit more complicated than that. I do think there is a Hegelian dialectic at work in popular (rock and pop) music. Genres and styles often react in a thesis creating an antithesis, producing a product which in turn becomes the thesis – and so the process starts again. The New Romantic acts like Spandau Ballet and early Duran Duran – helped by a Thatcherite economic boom – were in stark contrast to the rather introspective and dour stance of post-punk. The New Romantics wanted to dress up, go out clubbing and have a good time and be seen. It was glamorous and focused on having a good time. As great as they were, it’s hard to get that party started whilst listening to the likes of Joy Division. Those bands, certainly reflected the new found wealth and revelled in the prosperity and was the antithesis of the more existential concerns of post-punk. In a similar way, Britpop was in marked contrast to Grunge. After a blaze of cranked up guitars and self-loathing, Britpop bands came bouncing along with a fresh spirit and a love of life. Change is also tied in with time. Can’t have one without the other. It changes by single steps but progresses in leaps and bounds. In that not a lot may change on a day to day basis but looking back we can see how things have altered over time. Rather like the great minimalist composers like La Monte Young, Steve Reich and Philip Glass. By slowing having incremental changes it’s often difficult to notice the variations but by the end of a movement you can see just how far things have altered from when it started. Rather like David Bowie’s line: “Time may change me, but I can’t change time.” To some extent we are like Sisyphus rolling his rock up the hill day after day. Time though keeps rolling on. Rather like Robert Frost’s poem ‘The Black Cottage’: “Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favour.” Musical styles rise and fall and can, when good, capture the zeitgeist and then when times change no longer become relevant. Then looking back decades later, they can look rather dated. But perhaps it’s good to end on a quote from Cole Porter: “In olden days a glimpse of stocking Was looked on as something shocking Now, heaven knows Anything goes.” LISA Cole was a liberated male; a feminist of his time, but John Lennon clung tightly to this world view: In ‘Across the Universe,’ he cries, “words are flowing out like endless rain inside a paper cup/They slither wildly as they slip away across the universe/Nothing’s gonna change my world…” This marvellous, though fiercely protected environment is airy and filled with poetry, but, mess with it, Jon, and Lennon might have wailed, “Happiness is a Warm Gun.” And, speaking of tightly-wound universes, ee cummings, that vigilante poet, wrote: “pity this busy monster, manunkind, not. Progress is a comfortable disease; your victim (death and life safely beyond…” Change AKA progress is deemed horrific; expected and achievable, but horrendous when implemented. Cummings underwent horrific changes himself, especially the unexpected death of his father and his own shifting attitudes toward religion and politics. Cummings has, in the past, recognized change as a seasonal metaphor; but, essentially, we discover that change, regardless of the time in which it is experienced, is ethereal; that it can be awkward, unwelcome, destructive or transformational. Another poet, who once lived closer to your hood than mine, William Butler Yeats, exclaimed: (Before the World Was Made) “If I make the lashes dark and the eyes more bright and the lips more scarlet, or ask if all be right From mirror after mirror, No vanity displayed: I’m looking for the face I had before the world was made.” Yeat’s passive protagonist allows fate to run him ragged. Is change a predator? Glass and Reich create incrementally small musical changes in their compositions, though the final results are huge. Your point is well-taken. Minimalism is both refreshing and fascinating because those changes are neither abrupt nor unmanageable. Many people, however, find this form boring and esoteric. In contrast, Sun Ra and Frank Zappa wrote compositions that were as startling as whoopee cushions. Deviating wildly from the predictable Chuck Berry or Bo Diddley predictability, this attention-getting music required restless listeners. Sisyphus rolled that rock up the hill everyday, but why grieve? Shall we equate his steadiness with monotony when he might have created an internal heavenly state of mind, much as the chain gangs created their own musical genre? Workers performing mundane tasks often create their own unique rhythms; the resultant music provides solace whilst monotony acts as catalyst. Change is romantic, but sameness is seductive, too, requiring our active concentration. Consider Bernard Ighner’s song ‘Everything Must Change’ "Everything must change Nothing stays the same, Everyone must change Nothing stays the same The young become the old Mysteries do unfold ‘Cause that’s the way of time nothing and no one gets unchanged." You said that musical styles rise and fall and “looking back, they can look rather dated.” Heavy-handed styles run that risk. Dusty Springfield’s over-produced songs are hard to fathom now. Yet, her husky voice remains timeless and those gripping lyrics are also impermeable. But, let’s get some other expert ops. “Every generation needs a new revolution.” Thomas Jefferson “There is nothing wrong with change, if it is in the right direction.” Winston Churchill “He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery.” Harold Wilson JON Ah Lisa, we could go on for ages at this rate. Perhaps I can best illustrate this sort of cyclical nature of history and how change can repeat itself , as illustrated by the Italian philosopher Vico – and picked up by the likes of Spengler and Yeats is perhaps a quote from Lewis Mumford: “Every generation revolts against its fathers and makes friends with its grandfathers.” There’s change there, but is it really change if all you are doing is going back to an older time. Change though isn’t necessarily bedfellows with progress though. Take our current education policy as formulated by this Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition that we have in the UK. It is very early days so perhaps rather too soon to judge, but I am sceptical of the administration’s policy of encouraging schools to opt out of local government control and funding. That to me could be diversive, let alone practically difficult to do for all the most dedicated. So there we have change, but to me, at least that’s not progress and as ee cummings saw it, “progress was a comfortable disease”. Like Stanislaw Lec asked: “Is it progress if a cannibal uses knife and fork?” I take your point about the groovy Minimalist composers and other cool cats like Zappa and, especially, Sun Ra. And other hep cats too, like Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler, Miles Davis. All I think just liked to shake things up, look at things in a new way. They chose the path less trodden and I’m thankful they did. Yes, minimalism can be dull and lifeless when it’s in the wrong hands – and well just down right boring. Similarly, the free jazz of the likes of Coleman and Ayler and some of the work of Sun Ra can just sound like formless caterwauling noise without style or shape. But they are the interesting ones because they have rejected the perceived canon of what is music as passed down by the academics who proclaim from on high. They are the interesting ones. Similarly with literature it is the ones who break with convention who are interesting. Not the ones who simply follow the accepted style of the day. Sure they are venerated by the clique of the day and there will be much back-slapping every time they produce their next little opus, but give it time and they will be forgotten about. This happens, I think, in most of the Arts, Certainly in literature and music. The interesting ones are those that stir things up – even if they do embrace an older, bygone age to do so. Mozart and Beethoven might sound conventional now but in their day were rebels. What about the outrage the audience had when they attended the premiere of Stravinsky’s ‘The Rite of Spring’. Makes the Sex Pistols swearing on The Bill Grundy Show look like a vicar’s tea party. Ah, poor old Dusty, but I fully accept what you say about the production on some of her hits. That was the style of the day though with those big 1960s sweeping sounds, helped by advances in technology. Similarly I dusted off some old Cocteau Twins albums not so long ago. Now there was a band I greatly admired, but giving the likes of ‘Treasure’ a spin for old times sake was a mistake. It just sounded incredibly dated, mainly down to the production. Very trebly and rather tinny. Unfortunately, it soured my view of the band. Musically, I don’t think you can go too wrong with keeping things simple. Less is certainly more for me. LISA The Beatles said it best, in the ephemeral ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,’ lyric: ”Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes and she’s gone.” Also, witness this: “Dear Prudence, won’t you come out and play/Dear Prudence, greet the brand new day.” When change is in the air, hope lingers. Songs about ‘Revolution’ by Jefferson Starship and again, by Lennon, in the 60s, inspired and invited mass social movement. Lennon, for once, smoothed over the rough-hewn edges that bristled his predecessors Nilsson sang, “When I was young/I never needed anyone” then complains, “All by myself…” That lyrical Gordian knot tightens the tension; we feel his pain. The paradox of change, though, is how set in our ways and protective we become towards the music of our youth. Once I asked some heavy metal fans, at a party, about their favourite bands. The discussion got hotter than the jalapeno on a platter of pico de gallo. Though Slayer and Anvil might have shaken hands post discussion, not these guys. That said, each memory, during each cycle, deserves our fierce devotion. Snowflakes melt before our eyes, but each one is still beautiful as it falls. Hang on to those musical moments that freeze time; they illustrate and define our past. I agree that the sneers directed at Stravinsky, or the dated production that tainted natural pop talents, is short-lived in the evening of the day. “Only the song remains the same,” you and Led Zeppelin agreed, becomes the prototypical mantra. Now, Jon, let’s concentrate on your comment regarding, “is it progress if a cannibal uses knife and fork?” So, we pour catsup on a hot dog, but insist we are still vegetarians. Will our dinner companion view us with contempt? If a record company overproduces a mediocre artist, will albums still sell? Hmmm. We know that answer, Brittany. Let’s just get someone else to do the dirty job and hope that artistic essence can’t be overwrought with phony trappings. Many artists recorded separate versions of their tunes across the pond and in the US. But, even if the listener comes across the “better version”, it’s often true the one we heard first sticks. We like our sameness, even if it’s less exciting. It’s bloody ours. Artists who break from convention intrigue, but often their maverick images allow them to wallow in a tortoise and hare limbo. Should we celebrate Yoko Ono’s odd primal screaming just because she wailed first? Billie Holiday sang, “There’s a change in the weather/There’s a change in the sea,” and at the end of the stanza knew, “there’s a change in me.” This is another example of how we, like bloodless corpses, allow life to wash over us, without actively making things occur. Billie also sang, “Hush now/don’t explain. You’re my joy and pain/I’m glad, you’re back/Don’t explain.” There’s that way to look at it, too.