I’ve been picking up CDs of music I had on LPs and have recently been buying some classic Rolling Stones.
(For those of you who were conceived during the Reagan delusion or after, an LP is a long play record, a circular vinyl disc that stored music in analog form and played it when scratched by a precision needle while spinning at 33 rpm. Primitive, twentieth-century technology. Pity us, we were still knuckle-walking when tired. There were only three or four TV stations with no digitally blurred breasts. Phones had dials. Men had chest hair – women had pubic hair.)
I was listening to Let it Bleed in the car, and was struck by two things. (And side note – I have to disagree with most rock critics and vote for Let It Bleed over Exile on Main St. as the best Stones album – for reasons that I won’t get into now. Listen to them both back to back and let me know what you think. Check out the acoustic version of Honky Tonk.)
One, is that most of the great popular music that I enjoy is pre-eighties. From Duke Ellington through Spike Jones to Zappa, most of the great groups or artists started before the decade of corporate cokeheads, synth supergroups and big damned hair.
The second, is that by still being in swaddling clothes when the Stones were recording Let it Bleed, and vibrating in my chair with boredom in grade school while the 70’s passed, I missed out on hearing an epiphany album when it was released.
By epiphany albums, I mean the albums that change the way you look at the world. I’ve seen epiphany movies at first release: Gilliam’s Brazil is one example. I felt like I’d been hit between the eyes with a ball-peen hammer after that one – in a good way.
I’ve even heard epiphany records but long after their release, Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters for example. But there has to be something extraordinary about listening to a seminal work for the first time just as it has been released – when it’s new and actually different.
Imagine – what it must have been like – hearing The Hot Fives and Sevens for the first time. (Yes, I know that some of those cuts were released as singles – but imagine just hearing one of those numbers for the first time.)
I’ve had two occasions where it’s been close – not quite epiphanies, but slightly mind altering.
One was listening to Tom Wait’s Bone Machine. What kept it from being absolutely startling is that I’d heard Tom building up to this one on the previous three CDs. But the mix of primitivism and sophisticated composition, with his raw and beautiful lyrics was a turning point for me in the way I thought about poetry.
The other occasion was a friend playing the Pogues’ Fairytale of New York for me during college. I was not a fan of Punk, as music, though I was with them in spirit. Up to that point I would have argued that the only good thing to come out of the Punk era was a push to get back to bands rather than “recording artists.” I’d still argue that Shane McGowan’s Fairytale is: a) one of the great singles b) one of the great ballads c) the best Christmas Song ever d) the song that should have killed off love songs forevermore.
So what happened? Can anyone transcend the noise in popular music these days? Is there anything new and amazing out there in the world or recording? Am I just a jaded old crank? (That last is rhetorical – I am a jaded old crank.)
On the positive side -- there's still lots of goodies I'm sure I haven't heard -- better a late epiphany than none at all...
