bled white

[dot_fennel]

I'm becoming intensely aware of how much of a drug music is for me. Like, really. Just hearing music I like regulates my mood, no matter what the mood of the music itself is (tho it helps if the two aforementioned moods are consonant). I suppose this doesn't mean that my recent lows were caused by lack of music, but that's how it feels.

Well, thank god the modern medical establishment invented iPod.

Comments

And just as there are lousy drugs...

[pseydtonne.livejournal.com]

Yes! Completely! However, I find that certain kinds of music aggravate the condition and no arguing about those sounds will make it any better. I find two basic kinds of bad music:

Music no one will admit to liking, which includes lots of pop music throughout history. How could it be sos popular if no one liked it? Chris Rock had the best answer: "Spice Girls are like heroin." People bought all of those albums, although I suspect the purchasers eventually outgrew such impulses.

Music that polarizes. It's been a while since I thought seriously about this, but an incident at work last week made the idea fresh.

One of my coworkers was playing the first Boston album. I equate Boston (the band) with crap, utter pablum, talentless wanking and wheedling. I've had more creative sneezes than "Rock 'n' Roll Band" or "Take a Look Ahead". This coworker and another started to berate me for my insinuation that this band was anything other than rock-genius. Huh?

I tried to make the following argument in my defense: the first Boston album came out the same month as the first Ramones album (July 1976). No matter what you think of the Ramones, they are the commercial urspung of punk. Punk existed before them (Richard Hell and the Voidoids, Iggy & the Stooges, Patti Smith...), but no one had the push they had. In contrast, Boston led to self-aggrandizing pop-rock and the death of creative rock music in middle America. Where I grew up, you could hear tracks from the first Boston album EVERY DAY on the most popular radio station in town; you could never hear the Ramones. The Ramones were forbidden fruit.

Then I heard Robyn Hitchcock for the first time at age 13 and I finally found a sound I liked.

Anyway, I couldn't even finish my premise. "Ramones can't get through three chords! Listen to that guitar, maaaan!" Bah.

The band Boston signed on someone from my hometown for their third album and it was in the news. This was in, like, 1992.

Take a look ahead indeed.

Perhaps the deeper component of this is that some music is contemptible for being too popular (which my coworkers told me was my problem -- "you think that anything popular has gotta suck", a point I couldn't refute when it came to music) and some music is just emblematic of tribes we dislike.

When you feel ill from lack of music, it's from lack of the music you like. You need the connection to the sounds that evoke the strongest positive responses in you. You seek that nutrient vibration. You needed your tunes at that moment because they are your Fortress o' Solitude.

There's nothing wrong with a sonic security blanket, good sir.

-stomping around the floor in my mind, ps/d

Re: And just as there are lousy drugs...

[dot_fennel]

Music that one isn't supposed to like, for whatever reason, also polarizes people, precisely because then people who like it will often accuse other people of being elitists.

I was going to say that music isn't a security blanket to me; it's a medium I like to move around in. Except maybe people have all sorts of nuances that go with their security blankets -- a way they hold it when happy, a different way when scared, etc. I don't know.