Impossible

I wanted my first post to be about what has been the most influential album in my life, Are You Experienced? However, as I started looking at other albums from 1967 to have something to compare to, I quickly became aware that it is impossible to talk about just that one album. I've always thought that the music I listen to now (and I'm not talking about what is on the radio, more on that in a later post) could be traced back to Hendrix, or The Beatles, or Bob Dylan. I have not changed my mind about that. What I have changed my mind about is that you can't talk about any one of these artists without the others.

Looking through my collection of 60's music I find The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, The Beach Boys and Cream, to name a few. What is not included is The Velvet Underground. So I took a quick listen. What I found was that  I probably didn't even need to listen to this band to talk about them. Their sound is already so in everything else I listen to. Lou Reed sounds like Bob Dylan to me on tracks like "Heroin" and "There She Goes Again". The feedback and distortion sounds are staples of Hendrix's playing.

Usually when I am asked the question "what does that band sound like?" I usually respond by comparing the band in question to another band. But perhaps a better, albeit more vague response, is "They sound like music." Musicians today have an entire catalog of musical history to pull from. Everyone sounds like someone else because they are all inspired by what is going on around them and what went on years before them. Its impossible to talk about one artist if they all draw from each other. It is impossible to talk about a single artist without also talking about the context in which their art was created.

The Beginning

My friend Daniel Singer and I met on a baseball team in the seventh grade. Sitting on the bench waiting our turn to bat, we would talk about our favorite Green Day songs, since that was what our middle school selves were into. Now we're both in college.

We've come a long way, but nothing has really changed. Nearly every weekend I take a ten minute walk to south campus, rain or shine (or snow on one particular October night), and we spend a good portion of our time talking about music. Our tastes have changed, but we never shy away from a good talk about the high points of the latest Fun. single or the influence of the Beach Boys on a band like Tally Hall.

I'm starting this blog because it has occurred to me that I spend most of my free time now listening to new music. I've become quite the Spotify addict and have an active "to listen to" list. I've started shying away from just listening to catchy pop tunes and wonky rock to dabble in some hip hop. The point is, I need a place where I can organize all of these thoughts about new and old music into one place, and "Led Zeppelin IV is really good #rockstars" is not enough. As far as reviews go, I've never been and don't really plan on becoming a frequent Pitchfork or Rolling Stone reader or anything like that. Thumbs up and thumbs down is too simple. Even a ten point scale doesn't seem to do a piece of art justice. More useful questions are "how much is this influenced by past musicians?" or for an older work, "how is this album/song still relevant?" In addition to "reviewing" some albums, I'd like to answer some deeper questions like "as performers and consumers of music in 2011, are we responsible for knowing what is popular, even if what is popular is not 'good' music?" Maybe once in a while I'll come up with a "top five" list in true High Fidelity fashion.

Although I'm studying Electrical Engineering here at UMD and Dan is off learning about Twitter and iPads, music has in no way left us. He has his radio show (Pastiche Quiche on 88.1 WMUC Wed. @ 3pm) and I'm in the marching and jazz band here. Neither of us are ever going to be professional musicians. Dan will probably write comedy articles for some newspaper or start the next Cracked.com. I'll graduate and get a job behind a desk in some cubicle. But we'll always be listening. And with that, let the blogging begin...

plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose