every smith
  • MS: Max Smith's blog
  • History to the Defeated
  • every smith: independent creative consultants
  • Words: Max - a brief bio
  • Sites to see

Leamington Letters #65: Is there too much music?

14/1/2014

13 Comments

 
I listen to a great deal of music. 

I have music playing pretty much the whole working day and, often, not in the background. I have a specially constructed – by the estimable James Johnston – 240 gig iPod which I carry with me at all times in case I should suddenly get the urge to listen to some obscure set of noodling by Garcia and Cippolina, or a forgotten single by Mouse and the Traps, or that Dylan show in Avignon in 1981.  Last night I sat in Wilde’s and listened to a remarkable set of cool and clever jazz played by the Interplay Duo - Richard Baker (trombone) and Adrian Litvinoff (bass). I have moments ago booked my seat for the Atrium String Quartet, four young Russians who are as good as it gets in this genre, and will be playing Haydn, Prokofiev and the extraordinary Beethoven Opus 132 at the Pump Rooms in 10 days or so.

At the same time, we are scheduling more Mondays Unplugged, an eclectic Mayday extravaganza featuring The Rosenberg Appeal and the Swaps, and choosing between a plethora of gigs at assorted bars, pubs and clubs in Leamington and Warwick.

Is it all too much? Is the surfeit of sound making it impossible to make any kind of judgement about the quality of what we are hearing? Does it all merge into a single soundtrack with fewer and fewer distinguishing elements?
Picture
Interplay at Wilde's
One of the ways in which I avoid this danger is by focusing for long periods of intense concentration on a single band or a single album. (Recently, it’s been the Pixies but I think I’m over that for the moment.) And another way is to open one’s ears to new stuff which one absorbs from the children or from the staff at Wilde’s, where several of the part-time staff are musicians “between gigs”. And another way is to be responsive to the fear that one is missing or has missed something remarkable.

This last has been facilitated by Wolfgang’s Vault. I have been a subscriber to Bill Graham’s archive since it started, primarily because it offered some soundboards of the Dead in the great days when they were still raw, before they got so fucking good. Recently, members have been inundated with shows and fragments of shows from a remarkably diverse assemblage of bands.

Much of the stuff I want I already have. But I listen to each at some point, even U2. And occasionally, down from the ether comes something of which I have never heard.

This happened over the weekend just gone with a show from The Dream Syndicate. From the first song, which took me back to the first time I heard the Velvet’s Live at Max’s Kansas City, I was hooked. And when they launched into a version of Neil Young’s Mr Soul, I was riveted.

Who were these guys? It turns out they were part of what was known as the Paisley Underground, a phrase I had heard but never bothered to investigate. Something to do with Scotland maybe? According to one profile, they were “critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful”. Just my kind of band! How come I missed out on all this stuff in the 80s?

Picture
Who are these guys?
Of course, I was listening to old GD tapes and Dylan for most of the decade, wallowing in what had been and might have been. But boy, did I miss something vital and vibrant and alive.

And that is why, despite the fact that quantity is dominating quality, I will continue to play and listen to too much music. It’s for those moments – a sublime Jerry exploration, an unreleased Bob song, an exquisite Shostakovich riff played by the Atrium, a Flo melody under Pip’s hard rocking guitar at a Rosenbergs show, Tommo’s blues harmonica at a Swaps gig, or a thousand other spots of time in basement bars and on headphones.

Is there too much music? Yes. Is it a problem? If it is, I can live with it.

Today from the everysmith cellars: Marquis Anselme Mathieu 2010, a Chateauneuf du Pape which was a gift from my Red Sox Nation brother Myers. 90% Grenache but with all 13 allowed grape varieties. Exemplary. Thanks, bro.



13 Comments
CJ
14/1/2014 08:47:37

The answer is no. The problem is that life is too short. In my darkened room, I still have several hundred Dead shows unlistened. Saw Dream Syndicate. Not as good as you seem to think but they gave a great show.

Reply
Allan
14/1/2014 10:31:40

You're right about not wanting to miss out. We all want to be in on the next new thing and not just in music. But not sure that Dream Syndicate were ever the new thing; more a mishmash of old things! Maybe the next new thing is your trombone and double bass duo. Far out!

Reply
Adrian link
15/1/2014 12:56:35

'next new thing' …. nice thought! But open ears are all it takes, and Leamington seems to have a higher quotient than lots of other places, making for one of the better towns in which to make music. Thanks for listening.

Reply
Dan
14/1/2014 14:09:59

There isn't too much music. But there is an option to turn off the sounds. It's called silence. John Cage's is pretty good.

Reply
Matt
14/1/2014 23:12:53

But sometimes, as Dylan said of the country music station, there's nothing, nothing, to turn off.

Reply
Adam
15/1/2014 01:31:40

Some Dream Syndicate shows on the archive.

Reply
Rod
15/1/2014 09:49:03

Been pondering this. Like you I have music playing throughout my working day. Unlike you, by the sound of it, it is primarily background - even when it is my stuff playing. I think there is way too much music and most of it terrible. Rely on friends, pundits, critics to give us a steer. Thanks for Dream Syndicate, by the way - great stuff!

Reply
Ellie
15/1/2014 10:09:24

Too much of everything. Can't keep up. Will die trying.

Reply
Charlie
15/1/2014 10:25:06

... but you'll die happy. Keep listening, keep reading, keep drinking, keep on keeping on.

Reply
Charlotte Ford
15/1/2014 11:38:04

Music is a great adventure, for me, so the vastness of what is in part exciting, but also daunting as I know there is an awful lot to sift in order to find the gems. It almost frightens me to think what I may have missed. As someone said recently ' one mans music is another mans noise', and, in that case I cannot think of anything to beat sharing the pleasure of listening to a great piece of music with others . And then introducing each-other to something new.

Reply
Charlotte Ford
15/1/2014 11:53:42

Please excuse my typo, and read 'but also daunting...' as 'is also daunting...' , and blame it on the wine......

Reply
Rick Hough
16/1/2014 01:19:27

Dream Syndicate were a big deal back in ‘82 when we were doing video work here in Boston. There were sorta the next big hot ticket out of Slash records in the wake of X’s success. I remember a guy named Steve Wynn was the primary engine of the outfit. He's still kind of a big deal record producer. When they played Boston for the first time it was supposed to be de rigueur to be there, an idea which usually made me not want to go. The show was at the Rat, one of Boston's legendary nightclubs and the place was packed. It was probably just my jaundiced predisposition but I remember thinking them way too Velvety. Later on I listened to their record a few more times and came to like them.

Anyway, no, there can never be too much music, only, as they say, not enough time. I’m only pleased that after all these years it remains the realm of unslakable thirst.

Reply
Tom
16/1/2014 09:08:43

Amazed at how many of your correspondents saw the syndicate. I saw them at the hard rock in Stockholm. Jazz! But syndicate jazz. Great band.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    Max Smith

    European writer, radical, restaurateur and Red Sox fan. 70-something husband, father, step-father, grandfather and son. Resident in Warwick, England.

    Picture
    Picture
    Picture

    RSS Feed

    Categories

    All
    Art
    Baseball
    Books
    Film
    Food + Drink
    French Letters
    Leamington Letters
    Media
    Music
    People
    Personal
    Politics
    Sport