Old Music

It's easy to look at music as being "old" or "new."  Most radio stations undoubtedly do a good job of reinforcing this for the casual listener.  What was devouring the air waves last year is probably pretty difficult to find floating around on those same waves today.  There are dedicated stations for specific older music, a great example being the myriad of classic rock stations around the country.

Not to sound pompous, but I've been stewing over how music has developed in this country for the past century or so.  I find it incredibly interesting to look at how blues and jazz jump-started popular American music to form rock and roll, then sprouting funk and disco, and eventually pushing rap into existence, while country developed alongside as the blue collar's music, and finally making strange, vague genres we have now like "Adult Alternative."  I already unveiled my distaste for confining music into genres, so I won't go much longer on this.  But I remember reading that one of the things that revolutionized music was the directional microphone.  Performances could suddenly be readily and easily amplified, which paved the way for electric concerts.  With electric instruments, artists were able to much more easily and powerfully bend the bones of music to create a new range of forms.  In the past century, what mankind has witnessed as popular music evolved is rather amazing, I feel.

The sad part, for me at least, is that I'm overall not very fond of what music has evolved into.  For as long as I've listened to music of my choosing, I've been blowing the dust off of vaults, cracking them open, and listening to what was inside.  Guitars, banjos, harmonicas, and mandolins formed an uneasy alliance with drum sets, electric guitars and keyboards.  I heard people sing songs of lost love, dead men, dying men, a lack of justice, and occasionally, the glory we can find in this world.  I could care less about songs concerning the various parts of a woman, or getting drunk with my redneck buddies on the weekend.  While I enjoy a good bass-y quality to my music, I'm not entertained by a simple overwhelming beat that can cause my windows to shudder from a passing car.

What I'm talking about here is the discrepancy I see between "old" music and "new" music.  And here's my curveball:  I'm not proposing "old" music is only music made later than a couple years ago.  I'd like to remind the reader that this is me expressing my opinion.

I guess I'll start with the beginning, as I see it.  When looking at the history of American music, I think it's worth the time to note two main branches:  popular music, and underground music.  Popular music is of course on the top, the surface, of the American psyche.  I'm not going to do any research on this, but when I think of popular music in the beginning of the century I think of ladies in pretty dresses and men in sharp suits singing with grandiose voices on lavish set pieces.  When I think of underground music at the beginning of the century I think of blues singers, and people who sang old, old songs that no one knew who wrote.  Of course, the underground always manages to rise to the top from time to time, and a movement forms around it like the ripples surrounding a whale breaking the surface.  My go-to example for this was the folk music revival that not nearly as many people know about; the one in the '30's and '40's that formed, a lot like the much more famous one of the late '50's and early '60's, in the cities by young people seeking something not found in popular music.  The figures you find in this first revival are legends in American music, and activism to various degrees as well.  Names like Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, and Leadbelly are quick ones to spout out.

Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie, playing together.

 A lot of these people grew to be father and mother-figures to the young people seeking the same answers two decades later in the second folk music revival.  They sang old songs that were spun with traditional values, and some other hard to describe quality that separated it from most of the music being made at the time.  It gave a lot of people hope, and still does to those who listen.  It's funny because a lot of these songs tell of awful incidents, horrible stories that one would think would pull the soul down.  Woody Guthrie noticed this and commented on it.  Wherever he went, people wanted to hear the low down, hard luck songs.  Scrolling through my iTunes library, I don't think there's any song (at least one that I enjoy a little) that paints a completely positive picture.  There is always some catch.

So this is "old" music, right?  Yeah, you're right.  It is, by several definitions, old.  But I think the quality to look at the most is not its age, but its content.  The manner in which its presented.  And the effect it has on people.

This very night was the first night that I watched the Grammy Awards on television.  The main reason I watched was because Bob Dylan was scheduled to perform, and I simply couldn't pass up the opportunity.  Luckily for me, his performance was about halfway through the show, so I did not have to wait too long.  As I sat in my chair, watching and listening to people I almost never see or hear, I couldn't help but compare them to the legend I was waiting for.  I was put off by exceedingly extravagant shows, orchestrated to mechanized routines with usually over a dozen dancers.  Very skilled individuals I don't doubt, for I know I could not do what they do.  I'll respect that.

But do they need that to get their point across?  Does Lady Gaga need twenty other dancers spiraling around her for people to see her, to listen to her?  I'm pretty sure that little mic dangling next to her mouth is picking up her voice (another grievance of mine... the headset microphones.)  The Muse, I believe they were called, were a rock-ish band from England that performed.  They were surrounded by several television screens that showed a series of cascading images.  Tumbling colonial styled banks, falling television sets, flashy displays of light competed with what the actual performers were doing.  And then for the opening act of the show there were a handful of young ladies tributing their voices to Aretha Franklin through the songs we all associate with her.  I watched as these done-up ladies shouted into microphones, and all I could think about was what the musicians were doing.  When I hear "Think", I want to see "Blue" Lou Marini dancing on a crummy counter with a dirty apron as he's playing the saxophone.  I may not be able to play an instrument, but I know it's the musicians that make it possible for the pop divas to even be on the stage.  Again, I know what they do is difficult and deserves respect, but why ignore so much of the "big picture."

The timeless counter to this is of course artistic vision.  Lady Gaga wants her twenty dancers pointing our eyes to her strange costumes.  The Muse want us to think they're cool because they're tumbling the... bank system?  Whatever, I can't argue with it.  But I can reject it.

When Dylan hobbled out onto the stage, bumping into the upright bass laying on the floor, I knew I was in for a show better than anything those pop punks could come up with.  Standing mostly still, with his usual opening arm gesture after most verses, the aged man delivered one of his more iconic songs in a gravely, off-putting, and very rough voice.  I bet Justin Bieber didn't know what he was saying.  But I bet Neil Young and Tom Petty did.

Behind the revered figure were several young musicians providing the instrumentals and backing vocals.  In the center behind Dylan was his long-time bassist Tony Garnier.  I didn't catch everyone in the lineup, but I know most of them were from the two bands that played just before Dylan:  Mumford & Sons and the Avett Brothers.  I had never heard of either of these bands before the show, and while I was not wowed by the Avett Brothers, there was something about Mumford & Sons that caught my eye.  Watching them play, my mind wandered to footage in the Bob Dylan documentary "No Direction Home" of Liam Clancy of the Clancy Brothers perform.

The Clancy Brothers performing.

Pictures can of course not convey the motion of Liam Clancy strumming that guitar, but it got the gears in my mind turning.  I know nothing about either Mumford & Sons or the Clancy Brothers, but I bet some similarities could be found.  They knew how to perform, how to really perform, without dozens of near naked men and women spiraling around or expensive and complicated light shows.  It was impressive.

I believe "old" music is the embodiment of purpose in playing the actual music.  To stand up with an instrument and provide the audience with something to mull over during and after the show.  It doesn't have to be political, it doesn't even have to be progressive or "New Age."  It could be as simple as wondering why Stagger Lee killed poor Billy de Lyon.

I believe "old" music can be characterized by musicians showing off their craft for everyone to see.  I want to see Garth Hudson roll his fingers across those keys to give me the moving organ riffs.  I want to see Dylan slide his mouth along the harmonica giving me the piercing notes and long draws.  And I want to see the emotion in Richard Manuel's face as he's singing at the piano.  Music comes from musicians, not pop divas.

At the end of the day I know this means nothing.  What is new now will be old, and what is old now was new.  What you like is what you like, and that's cool.  But I'm drawing the line in the sand for where I stand.  I'll accept Dylan's vocal chords croaking out the words to "Maggie's Farm" long before I'll accept Justin Bieber as a respectable artist.  Both symbolically and literally.

"She’s sixty-eight, but she says she’s twenty-four, I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s ma no more."