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whathoIn which I ramble pointlessly and at astonishing length about various things to do with my relationship to music.
I own very little in the way of music, and listen to very little more. Many of the people I knew at school were fantastic music buffs, hugely knowledgable about the various scenes, trying out new bands all the time, the walls of their houses lined with as many albums as we have books (and they had the books as well). I didn't do that at all... I don't believe I've ever formed any attraction to a songwriter or singer my parents didn't at some point listen to.
A friend did once tell me that I ought to have more to do with music. I was a bit embarrassed by the narrowness of my musical interests. I still am a bit. If people asked me what sort of music I liked, I tended to say 'anything' when I really meant slightly more than nothing, and nowadays I tend to tell them what music I play, which has little to do with the music I listen to - lyric-less Irish and Scottish folk tunes mostly.
I didn't own a CD till I was 17 - the first album I bought (and I only have about a dozen now) was I'm Your Man, though we'd had it since it came out. I do know that when I was eight years old, my favourite song in all the world was, very inappropriately in retrospect, 'Everybody Knows'. So I'd grown up with Leonard Cohen (and Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Gordon Lightfoot, The Beatles, The Proclaimers, Carly Simon - that largely cover it), but I got properly addicted to him in a way that transcended my parents' listening patterns - I've never transcended their tastes, but I have altered the reasons for my adhering to those tastes - when I spent nine hours on a single train listening to 'I'm Your Man' over and over again. There were a few other tapes around, but it was in the walkman and I saw no real reason to switch it over. And, oddly, that didn't turn me off him. I just kept listening to it for the next five years.
That's how it goes. I can listen to the same handful of songs for several years, often several times a week, before switching to something else. With a few other things on the side. It's Simon and Garfunkel at the moment, and has been all year, though I'll also listen to whatever my parents are playing or Flanders and Swann or the odd other track that comes to mind quite happily. Before Simon and Garfunkel, it was Leonard Cohen. My commute to university included 2 hours on a train every day, and one and half hours' walking, and I listened to no more than half a dozen different albums or my version of mix tapes (a whole Leonard Cohen album plus a couple of random Proclaimers songs and something by The Beatles). And they were nearly all Cohen.
At the moment I hang on about a dozen Simon and Garfunkel tracks that I'll sometimes listen to twice a day. Sometimes I think I listen to music rather strangely, but I doubt it's really very different to other people's habits when you get down to it. I listen to 'America', probably my favourite current track, primarily for one line: 'And the moon rose over an open field'. If I get distracted during that line, I have to go back and start again. I used to listen to it primarily for Garfunkel's harmony on the words 'all come'. I don't mean that I drift off during the rest of the song, but those bits are sort of the keys. With 'Hallelujah', which I still declare my favourite song of all time in spite of the fact that I haven't listened to it all year, it used to be the way he pronounced 'roof' and then 'moonlight'. Then it was 'What's it to you?' Thinking about it now, what makes me squee most about that song is the fact that the lyrics in the first verse describe the musical progression. I used to listen to that song with my eyes shut. I still don't think I can listen to it with anyone else in the room.
When I hate music, I hate it to the extent that I have to run away and jump about and preferable bury myself temporarily in the sand. There's a song I remember listening to when I was about five that I'm not even going to name because if I do I'll have to hide under the desk. I can't listen to 'Revolution 9' either, but I don't think that really counts as music. More recently - well, the year 2001 - I recall a few stupid months during which I couldn't bear to listen to music that I personally had chosen to put on because it felt like someone was rubbing the creases in my brain with sandpaper, though something another person chose always seemed fine. That was bizarre. This year, I something feel that listening to music is the only non-sandpaperish activity available.
I don't like drowned lyrics. I don't see the point. I don't like off-key violins. I can listen to a very few lyricless tunes, but mostly they bore me. When I listen to them, I tend to imagine myself playing them, however impossible that generally is. I can read lyrics on their own, but if the setting does something phenomenal to them, that's gravy. I'll play almost anything on the guitar if it sounds more or less right, but I wouldn't always listen to the type of stuff I play.
I suppose my phenomenal lack of interest in experimenting with other music means I'm missing out on something great, but I genuinely feel very content with the music I do have and what I get out of it. And partly it's just laziness. It's the same reason I barely read - there's too much and I have no idea where to start (with reading there's also the fact that it's so physically exhausting and frankly embarrassingly difficult, but it's the same sort of principle).
There's a thing I used to do with songs I adored that I haven't done in a while. I used to write down or type up the lyrics by hand, just to feel the words in a different way - the shape of them and all - and to come at them from another angle. Last night I listened to two Kris Kristofferson tracks that I pretty much adore, and I think I want to write them out right now. They both stand up well without their tunes, especially the second because it has great internal rhymes and rhythmic doo-dahs.
The first one is 'Darby's Castle', which has a sort of fable setting and a story and everything and it's a bit great.
*
See the ruin on the hill, where the smoke is hanging still,
like an echo of an age long forgotten.
There's a story of a home crushed beneath those blackened stones
and the roof that fell before the beams were rotten.
Cecil Darby loved his wife, and he laboured all his life
to provide her with material possessions.
And he built for her a home of the finest wood and stone;
and the building soon became his sole obsession.
Oh, it took three-hundred days for the timbers to be raised,
and the silhouette was seen for miles around.
And the gables reached as high as the eagles in the sky,
but it only took one night to bring it down.
When Darby's castle tumbled to the ground.
Though they shared a common bed, there was precious little said
in the moments that were set aside for sleeping.
For his busy dreams were filled with the rooms he'd yet to build,
and he never heard young Helen Darby weeping.
Then one night he heard a sound, as he laid his pencil down,
and he traced it to her door and turned the handle.
And the pale light of the moon through the window of the room
split the shadows where two bodies lay entangled.
Oh, it took three-hundred days, for the timbers to be raised,
and the silhouette was seen for miles around.
And the gables reached as high as the eagles in the sky,
but it only took one night to bring it down.
When Darby's castle tumbled to the ground.
*
I love that it ends before it seems it ought to. Mostly it's 'split the shadows' though. And 'before the beams were rotten'. I don't like the eagles in the sky.
The second is 'Casey's Last Ride', which does benefit hugely from being heard to be honest... has this extraordinarily relentless dark descending melody. I remember hearing this for the first time and being really surprised to find out during the third verse where it was set. But OH GOD the internal rhymes. Look at them.
*
Casey joins the hollow sound of silent people walking down
the stairway to the subway in the shadows down below.
Following their footsteps through the neon-darkened corridors
of silent desperation, never speaking to a soul.
The poisoned air he's breathing has the dirty smell of dying
'cause it's never seen the sunshine and it's never felt the rain.
But Casey minds the arrows and ignores the fatal echoes
of the clicking of the turnstiles and the rattle of his chains.
'Oh,' she said. 'Casey, it's been so long since I've seen you.'
'Here,' she said. 'Just a kiss to make a body smile.'
'See,' she said. 'I've put on new stockings just to please you.'
'Lord,' she said. 'Casey, can you only stay a while?'
Casey leaves the underground and stops inside The Golden Crown
for something wet to wipe away the chill that's on his bones,
seeing his reflection in the lives of all the lonely men
who reach for anything they can to keep from going home.
Standing in the corner, Casey drinks his pint of bitter,
never glancing in the mirror at the people passing by.
Then he stumbles as he's leaving and he wonders if the reason
is the beer that's in his belly or the tear that's in his eye.
'Oh,' she said. 'I suppose you seldom think about me.'
'Now,' she said, 'now that you've a family of your own.'
'Still,' she said, 'it's so blessed good to feel your body.'
'Lord,' she said. 'Casey, it's a shame to be alone.'
*
Yeah. That's about it. I have sufficiently wasted your time now.
I own very little in the way of music, and listen to very little more. Many of the people I knew at school were fantastic music buffs, hugely knowledgable about the various scenes, trying out new bands all the time, the walls of their houses lined with as many albums as we have books (and they had the books as well). I didn't do that at all... I don't believe I've ever formed any attraction to a songwriter or singer my parents didn't at some point listen to.
A friend did once tell me that I ought to have more to do with music. I was a bit embarrassed by the narrowness of my musical interests. I still am a bit. If people asked me what sort of music I liked, I tended to say 'anything' when I really meant slightly more than nothing, and nowadays I tend to tell them what music I play, which has little to do with the music I listen to - lyric-less Irish and Scottish folk tunes mostly.
I didn't own a CD till I was 17 - the first album I bought (and I only have about a dozen now) was I'm Your Man, though we'd had it since it came out. I do know that when I was eight years old, my favourite song in all the world was, very inappropriately in retrospect, 'Everybody Knows'. So I'd grown up with Leonard Cohen (and Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Gordon Lightfoot, The Beatles, The Proclaimers, Carly Simon - that largely cover it), but I got properly addicted to him in a way that transcended my parents' listening patterns - I've never transcended their tastes, but I have altered the reasons for my adhering to those tastes - when I spent nine hours on a single train listening to 'I'm Your Man' over and over again. There were a few other tapes around, but it was in the walkman and I saw no real reason to switch it over. And, oddly, that didn't turn me off him. I just kept listening to it for the next five years.
That's how it goes. I can listen to the same handful of songs for several years, often several times a week, before switching to something else. With a few other things on the side. It's Simon and Garfunkel at the moment, and has been all year, though I'll also listen to whatever my parents are playing or Flanders and Swann or the odd other track that comes to mind quite happily. Before Simon and Garfunkel, it was Leonard Cohen. My commute to university included 2 hours on a train every day, and one and half hours' walking, and I listened to no more than half a dozen different albums or my version of mix tapes (a whole Leonard Cohen album plus a couple of random Proclaimers songs and something by The Beatles). And they were nearly all Cohen.
At the moment I hang on about a dozen Simon and Garfunkel tracks that I'll sometimes listen to twice a day. Sometimes I think I listen to music rather strangely, but I doubt it's really very different to other people's habits when you get down to it. I listen to 'America', probably my favourite current track, primarily for one line: 'And the moon rose over an open field'. If I get distracted during that line, I have to go back and start again. I used to listen to it primarily for Garfunkel's harmony on the words 'all come'. I don't mean that I drift off during the rest of the song, but those bits are sort of the keys. With 'Hallelujah', which I still declare my favourite song of all time in spite of the fact that I haven't listened to it all year, it used to be the way he pronounced 'roof' and then 'moonlight'. Then it was 'What's it to you?' Thinking about it now, what makes me squee most about that song is the fact that the lyrics in the first verse describe the musical progression. I used to listen to that song with my eyes shut. I still don't think I can listen to it with anyone else in the room.
When I hate music, I hate it to the extent that I have to run away and jump about and preferable bury myself temporarily in the sand. There's a song I remember listening to when I was about five that I'm not even going to name because if I do I'll have to hide under the desk. I can't listen to 'Revolution 9' either, but I don't think that really counts as music. More recently - well, the year 2001 - I recall a few stupid months during which I couldn't bear to listen to music that I personally had chosen to put on because it felt like someone was rubbing the creases in my brain with sandpaper, though something another person chose always seemed fine. That was bizarre. This year, I something feel that listening to music is the only non-sandpaperish activity available.
I don't like drowned lyrics. I don't see the point. I don't like off-key violins. I can listen to a very few lyricless tunes, but mostly they bore me. When I listen to them, I tend to imagine myself playing them, however impossible that generally is. I can read lyrics on their own, but if the setting does something phenomenal to them, that's gravy. I'll play almost anything on the guitar if it sounds more or less right, but I wouldn't always listen to the type of stuff I play.
I suppose my phenomenal lack of interest in experimenting with other music means I'm missing out on something great, but I genuinely feel very content with the music I do have and what I get out of it. And partly it's just laziness. It's the same reason I barely read - there's too much and I have no idea where to start (with reading there's also the fact that it's so physically exhausting and frankly embarrassingly difficult, but it's the same sort of principle).
There's a thing I used to do with songs I adored that I haven't done in a while. I used to write down or type up the lyrics by hand, just to feel the words in a different way - the shape of them and all - and to come at them from another angle. Last night I listened to two Kris Kristofferson tracks that I pretty much adore, and I think I want to write them out right now. They both stand up well without their tunes, especially the second because it has great internal rhymes and rhythmic doo-dahs.
The first one is 'Darby's Castle', which has a sort of fable setting and a story and everything and it's a bit great.
*
See the ruin on the hill, where the smoke is hanging still,
like an echo of an age long forgotten.
There's a story of a home crushed beneath those blackened stones
and the roof that fell before the beams were rotten.
Cecil Darby loved his wife, and he laboured all his life
to provide her with material possessions.
And he built for her a home of the finest wood and stone;
and the building soon became his sole obsession.
Oh, it took three-hundred days for the timbers to be raised,
and the silhouette was seen for miles around.
And the gables reached as high as the eagles in the sky,
but it only took one night to bring it down.
When Darby's castle tumbled to the ground.
Though they shared a common bed, there was precious little said
in the moments that were set aside for sleeping.
For his busy dreams were filled with the rooms he'd yet to build,
and he never heard young Helen Darby weeping.
Then one night he heard a sound, as he laid his pencil down,
and he traced it to her door and turned the handle.
And the pale light of the moon through the window of the room
split the shadows where two bodies lay entangled.
Oh, it took three-hundred days, for the timbers to be raised,
and the silhouette was seen for miles around.
And the gables reached as high as the eagles in the sky,
but it only took one night to bring it down.
When Darby's castle tumbled to the ground.
*
I love that it ends before it seems it ought to. Mostly it's 'split the shadows' though. And 'before the beams were rotten'. I don't like the eagles in the sky.
The second is 'Casey's Last Ride', which does benefit hugely from being heard to be honest... has this extraordinarily relentless dark descending melody. I remember hearing this for the first time and being really surprised to find out during the third verse where it was set. But OH GOD the internal rhymes. Look at them.
*
Casey joins the hollow sound of silent people walking down
the stairway to the subway in the shadows down below.
Following their footsteps through the neon-darkened corridors
of silent desperation, never speaking to a soul.
The poisoned air he's breathing has the dirty smell of dying
'cause it's never seen the sunshine and it's never felt the rain.
But Casey minds the arrows and ignores the fatal echoes
of the clicking of the turnstiles and the rattle of his chains.
'Oh,' she said. 'Casey, it's been so long since I've seen you.'
'Here,' she said. 'Just a kiss to make a body smile.'
'See,' she said. 'I've put on new stockings just to please you.'
'Lord,' she said. 'Casey, can you only stay a while?'
Casey leaves the underground and stops inside The Golden Crown
for something wet to wipe away the chill that's on his bones,
seeing his reflection in the lives of all the lonely men
who reach for anything they can to keep from going home.
Standing in the corner, Casey drinks his pint of bitter,
never glancing in the mirror at the people passing by.
Then he stumbles as he's leaving and he wonders if the reason
is the beer that's in his belly or the tear that's in his eye.
'Oh,' she said. 'I suppose you seldom think about me.'
'Now,' she said, 'now that you've a family of your own.'
'Still,' she said, 'it's so blessed good to feel your body.'
'Lord,' she said. 'Casey, it's a shame to be alone.'
*
Yeah. That's about it. I have sufficiently wasted your time now.
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no subject
Date: 2006-09-16 10:42 am (UTC)I'm pretty much the opposite - I find songs I like and then sort of burn through them, playing them on repeat till they don't suprise me anymore (though I still like them), then move on. Except, without the actual buying of albums, mostly. I never really had the money before. But I still feel shockingly mainstream most of the time, so I wouldn't suggest my way is better than anyone else's. People have different interests, and music's really just one of them. There's nothing wrong with only being into a couple of things, and especially not if that's how you enjoy it. And at any rate, you're enjoying it. And that's always an advantage :)
no subject
Date: 2006-09-16 02:52 pm (UTC)Hurrah for varied ways of having fun with music, that's what I say.