Monday, February 27, 2006

whole lotta shakin'

So I experienced my first earthquake the other night. Apparently, I'm right over the Western Quebec Seismic zone:

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20060224/ottawa_quake_060224/20060225/

Pretty intense. The quake, which was accompanied by an eerie rumbling sound, went on for about 12-15 seconds, shaking the whole house and everything in it. No damage, but it was an odd sensation to feel the earth itself moving beneath you.

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

I am a sensitive artist; no one understands me because I am so deep

Songwriting myth #2:

-->Autobiographical songs - songs that come from deep within the writer - are inherently more powerful and meaningful than "made-up" songs which have no basis in reality.

Not necessarily.

When I bring a new song to practice, the first question is usually, "who/what is this about?", as if all songs are explicitly written about a specific person or real-life situation. Undoubtedly, a good songwriter is invested in everything that he/she writes, but that doesn't mean everything he/she writes is, by proxy, non-fiction. An affecting, dynamic piece of writing may be based in real feelings without itself being real. Despite this, the myth prevails; songwriters, for whatever reason, are generally seen as characters in their own songs.

Johnny Cash never personally shot anyone, but it didn't stop millions of fans (many of whom were convicts) from lionizing the Man in Black as an inconic outlaw, even propagating a myth that he himself did time at Folsom. What makes "Folsom Prison Blues" so affecting is not its direct association with Cash, but its connection to the audience in the live version. The listener knows that this song, a song lamenting the plight of a prisoner in Folsom Prison, is actually being heard by Folsom prisoners. When Cash utters the now infamous line, "I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die," you know he was speaking to some of the only people in the world who could fully comprehend what that sentence means. My point: songs can be emotionally powerful without reflecting the direct experiences of the songwriter.

I don't need to feel specific emotions at the precise moment that I write a song about them, but most listeners probably still picture me as the protagonist in my songs. This is a unique connection people make with songwriters. No one does this to the authors of books. No one asks Salinger how Stradlater is doing. People know fiction when they see it, unless it's served up to them in a song (or by James Frey in the form of a "memoir").

I realize I'm swimming against the tide here. The prevalent viewpoint is that an artist "matures" when his/her songs become more personal. Anyone daring to go introspective, to write about himself/herself, typically is praised for his/her "unflinching intimacy."

I won't disagree that deeply personal albums can be amazing. Weezer's Pinkerton and John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band come to mind. Also, I love the Weakerthans, and J.K. Samson writes (it would seem) quite personal little vignettes. It's not as if introspection is so awful. It's just the bands who trade on it tend to come off as completely contrived. It's very difficult to do without sounding like a self-important jerkoff.

The fact is, singer-songwriters are not always singing confessionals directly from their heart (or from the dashboard, as it were). Approach artists who purport to do so with extreme skepticism. Don't kid yourself; in the end, singing is just, in the words of David Byrne, "a trick to get people to listen to music for longer than they would ordinarily." Lyrics don't need to mean anything at all, let alone reflect the emotional pseudo-angst of the songwriter.

But don't be discouraged. Because ultimately, it's not particularly important whether or not Johnny Cash was a murderer. Like Hemingway, Faulkner, or Vonnegut, the man simply tells a good story.

Thursday, February 09, 2006

the almighty tangent


This illustration, introduced by R.B. Kaplan as "contrastive rhetoric", represents typical paragraph structures used by speakers of different languages. Other cultures tend to express themselves in a less linear fashion than speakers of English (represented by a straight line).

What I find most interesting is the tendency of the Romance and Slavic groups to go off-task. In a sense, this deviation legitimizes my penchant for massive parenthetical asides. I like tangents. I go on them all the time, but I always get to my point...eventually. I used to think my frequent digressions were a shortcoming, but perhaps I was just tacitly steeped in romance language tradition. I feel validated.

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

lyrics

Not long ago, "Cowboy James" was track of the week at garageband.com. It's currently something like #6 in its category. Granted, topping the charts at garage band is more or less akin to becoming valedictorian of summer school, but it's nice to be appreciated in any capacity. The tune has been getting almost unequivocally great reviews. Here's a peculiar one:

>>I question the the message behind the lyrics a little bit (is there supposed to be one?) but in spite of that, it is a great song.<<

The message? In "Cowboy James"? Sure, that's us...Ruth's Hat, a band with a message. Yeah, right.

There are countless myths about songwriting, but none are more pervasive than this:

-->It is better that a song contain a message, that it mean something, than for an artist to sing about nothing in particular. <--

Not so. Lyrics, thought by some to be the most important aspect of songwriting, are just one piece of a larger whole, and a peripheral one at that. Lyrics can be an important part of a song, but the music will always be more important. This is not to say that lyrics are utterly inconsequential; they are significant; just not in the way that you think. Cadence - melodic and rhythmic - is the very soul of music, especially rock and roll. How something is said (or, more accurately, sung) is infinitely more important than what is said. People get too hung up on meaning. These are songs, after all; the sound ought to come first.

Case in point...Chuck Berry, if only for the first line of Johnny B. Goode:

"DeepdowninLouisianacrossfromneworleans"

It's spit out like one long word, almost as if Chuck has lept from your stereo and is screaming the lyrics directly into your face. Chuck is proof positive that lyrics need not mean a damn thing for a song to rock. Phonetics, so often ignored, are as important as semantics. Furthermore, if a song is "great," as the garageband reviewer says, "in spite of" perceived shortcomings, it is still great.

It's not as if lyrics are completely devoid of import. Some of my favorite songwriters (Rhett Miller, Dr. Frank, Tom Waits) are so because of their lyrical prowess. But what is truly affecting about great lines like "I'm gonna love you 'til the wheels come off" is that they don't, in the immortal words of Mr. Berry, lose the "beauty of the melody."

Thursday, February 02, 2006

see you at the monkey cage

All I really wanted to do was make my way to the men's room. I always wait too long to go when I'm at the bar...

RANDOM GIRL: This band is pretty good.
(celtic/pop/heartland cover band plays John Mellencamp's "Pink Houses" in the background)
ME (needing a piss more than coversation): Eh...not so much.
RANDOM GIRL: You don't like them?
ME: I don't hate them. It's just sort of pandering, and no matter what they play it reminds me of the Barenaked Ladies with crappier vocals...which kinda sucks...
RANDOM GIRL: People really seem to like them.
ME: Yes...well, they have a right to their own poor taste in music.
RANDOM GIRL (now irked): You don't have to listen to them! I mean, if you hate them so much, why don't you just go somewhere else?

And there it is. The if-you-don't-like-it-then-just-leave argument. When you're a cynic, people sometimes mistake you for an outright fatalist. They can't begin to understand why you wouldn't abandon what you perceive to be a sinking ship.

I do indeed tend to outwardly decry things I don't like. She was just suggesting I take my less-than-popular opinions elsewhere. I suppose I could have. Why not leave? I thought about it, and why I didn't. Why stick around anything - bands, people, society as a whole - that I so thoroughly despise?

In the words of my spiritual forebearer, the great H.L. Mencken, why do people go to the zoo?