There will be more on this as more time passes, but I have been working through a list of albums I compiled from various end of the decade lists. I intended to just use it as a guide to the last year or so of music that I had missed because I have been focused on school music, but I’ve been surprised by the number of early in the decade albums that I missed or never listened to all the way through.
One of these albums is The Postal Service’s Give Up. It’s amazing to me how ubiquitous their style has become. I can hear not only the freshness of the music, but the different threads that other artists picked up and ran with. No track is particularly “deep,” but each is in its way a masterpiece.
I hadn’t seen the Muppet’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” until I read this article in the New York Times about it. I wasn’t disappointed. I especially appreciated the meta-humor of the (now) vintage characters, some of which are references to just-past-their-sell-by-date popular culture trends (Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem referencing psychedelic rock), performing a song that is almost exactly contemporaneous with the original run of the show (The Muppet Show premiered 1976, “Bohemian Rhapsody” 1975); not to mention the sly wink at the end to contemporary technology.
I was even more pleased, however, to see another confirmation of one of my closest held beliefs: quality is not dependent on audience, medium or style. Since everybody’s in the mood for sweeping generalizations about this decade, I’ll throw one out there: this decade has been terrible for children’s movies. I understand that Pixar has put out a run of films this decade that stand up with the greatest family films of all time, but they are the exceptions that prove the rule.
Children’s entertainment is subject to the same economic forces as all other facets of the industry, but they also have to live with executives’ belief that children will like anything (and they’re not entirely wrong). That’s why cheap production values, bad writing, and alternative distribution schemes are so much more prevalent in this sector. Another idea that studio executives can’t seem to let go of is that children are more attracted to media over content. The commercial success of the Pixar films, as well as the surprising popularity of Shrek in 2001, ensured that any project that wasn’t computer animated got axed or had its budget cut. When you consider how new computer animation was to the Disney machine (Toy Story opened in 1995), their 2004 decision to close their traditional animation department is astounding.
So it’s nice to see 30 year old characters being put to good use with high quality production value. I don’t know if there was any commercial purpose to that video, but I imagine its place as the most watched video of the week with over 7 million views in its first week has to send some kind of message to the suits. Another good example is the Goofy short How to Hook Up Your Home Theater, released in theaters with National Treasure: Book of Secrets. It’s a conscious effort (check out Steamboat Willie in the logo) to tie current entertainment with the institutional legacy of Disney Studios, and it’s a form and medium that’s been a part of the company since the 1920’s. Popular culture has moved on from the days when Disney theatrical shorts were the only mass form of children’s cinema, but if you execute the formula well enough, children will choose it anyway.
In high school, I started and maintained a playlist called “Music to Slit Your Wrists To.” I wasn’t considering suicide, or even begging for attention (actually, the name came from a throwaway line from Uptown Girls), I just felt like it was the best way to describe the way that I heard the music. There wasn’t any rhyme, reason, or style associated with these choices. They ranged from the sacred, Bach’s “Sheep May Safely Graze” from BWV 208 (The “Hunting” Cantata, to the profane, Geto Boy’s “Damn, it Feels Good to be a Gangsta;” from the intense, Xiu Xiu’s “I Luv the Valley OH!” to the chill, Weekend Player’s “Jericho.” The only commonality between these songs were the emotional and physiological arousal they caused in me, and the fact that it was plausible that these songs could be the last thing played before somebody killed themselves.
This is a not-so-very-good clip of Music for 18 Musicians. The section I am talking about below starts at about 1:22.
I’ve been thinking a lot about that arousal. It’s been coming back with my recent obsession with Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians. Although I love the whole work, sections I and VI have a repeating figure in the strings that almost make me catatonic. To me, it feels like an arrival into a state of being or place. It’s different from the adrenaline rush I get when I perform, or when I hear live music or high energy pump up music. I think that this is why most of the songs on my playlist have fairly moderate tempi and dynamic range. It’s not a head rush. It’s more like sinking into a place that’s both vast and weirdly sacred. This isn’t making a whole lot of sense because I’m describing a subjective experience, but these are the words that are coming to mind.
I know this video has been up here before, but I shit you not, this song makes me question my own existence.
hammer & jack 