Thursday 3 July 2014

You Are What You Listen To? / After The Gold Rush With Stevie Wonder and Mark Fisher



I was...
...actually, it's none of your business what I was doing...

Suppose blogs in which people posted what they've been doing in their personal lives, what their baby's been doing, what their dog's been doing etc didn't exist. Suppose there was a gradual decline in these blogs, they were all deleted and eventually not one existed. Suppose there was a return to privacy which included no tweets or Facebook posts about what anyone was doing which would previously have been considered personal and not for the public realm. No outpourings of emotion, no recounting of personal tragedies, nothing to do with close relationships. People only posted the music they loved. Could we tell what they were like as people by their taste in music?

Could we make assumptions about someone who posted Free Jazz and Noise, Pop and Country & Western, or classic Rock 'n' Roll and Blues? What does musical taste signify other than generalised assumptions such as the Pop addict being shallow, the avant-gardist being 'intelligent' etc? Do you know someone who listens to Pierre Boulez but doesn't understand Post-structuralism? Do you know someone who loves Paloma Faith and does understand Post-structuralism? Does anyone understand Post-structuralism? Does loving Katy Perry automatically mean you're an idiot? 'YES!' you shout, being someone with Good Taste and certainly not an idiot, otherwise you wouldn't be reading this blog. Or would you? Who are you, anyway? And how do we define idiocy? Liking Katy Perry might be a start, but it would be an assumption about everyone who likes her whilst there is somebody with a Katy Perry CD who also possesses a degree in ------------ (insert something that idiots couldn't study). How can this be? Well, to this imaginary clever person music is not so important that it need provide anything other than simple Pop tunes. They don't want complexity, depth or profound lyrics. That's not a crime, is it?

By the way, how hard is it to get a degree? I've never tried, but I have a theory that people who are stupid in every other way can still get one. It's only a theory, based on the need to reassure myself that without a degree I am not inherently stupid. Some people might look at my educational record and without knowing me assume that I must be an idiot. Imagine that! How dare they? I listen to Sun Ra...I can't be an idiot! To which they might reply: 'Well, that proves nothing. That music's awful.' Still, I do look at footage on the news of teenagers whooping with joy at their exam results and think: 'Look at those idiots!'. I can't help it. Why? Because I know that not one of them listens to Sun Ra now, or ever will.

*****

I almost wept at Work yesterday. It's Stevie Wonder's fault. He made this track in 1976...


In Ghosts Of My Life, Mark Fisher writes, in relation to music, 'The feeling of belatedness, of living after the gold rush, is as omnipresent as it is disavowed.' Yes, that's a fact of being a certain age, but as he also points out, it is not merely a matter of nostalgia. It doesn't take a great music critic to realise that today there is nothing new in the way that all musicquakes, from Rock'n'Roll to Jungle, were new. New is over. 

At Work yesterday I almost shed tears for my youth being over, for time, cruel time, carrying me to this point where I groan bending over and exhale when sitting down - bah! More to the point, Stevie Wonder's album and this track in particular has, for at least two decades, made me feel a mixture of elation and sorrow, nostalgia and joy. Who could not feel elated as it gathers momentum from low-key Pop Soul to storming gospel via Herbie Hancock's funky keyboard-playing? Yesterday, my spine tingled, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up...I felt...perhaps something like church-goers do when they're possessed by that old-time religion being delivered by a testifying preacher. I don't know. I'm not religious. Was I also mourning the death of Great Music? I'm not one to harp on about that. We know it's a subjective term relating to age. That fact doesn't prevent me thinking that, yes, the gold rush is well and truly over.

Meanwhile, if music is a religion, here is another great example from the git down gospel book...


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