The Music or the Misery

"What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?"
-High Fidelity

I had a shitty day at work yesterday. Not the first and not the last, I'm sure. It was on a par with the kind of day that makes you feel really lost and angry and violent and hopeless all at once and nothing helped really to distract me for more than a few moments or hours, not yoga, not food. So when I got home I did what I did when I was a teenager, what I've done all my life. I holed up in my room and put on some music. In this case, my Pearl Jam Radio Station on Pandora. It turns out that all that dark, emo, Seattle based white boy rock was just what I needed. One song in particular by Soundgarden: "Black Days," really caught my attention the way it has hundreds of times before when I used to listen to the album as a younger person. But this time I was acutely aware of the fact that I not only felt exactly what Chris Cornell was saying but I finally knew why he was saying it. That's a difference in age. Age. I'm starting to feel my age more lately than I ever have. I'm 36, but just recently, I'm finally starting to feel like 30. Chris Cornell knew what the fuck was up when I was a teenager. And he knows what the fuck is up now. That's a very reassuring thing. Makes you feel like you have a friend who understands you, not matter how much you change.

It also got me thinking though about the effects of music on our developmental young minds, and the about how the music of our particular generations and our parents' generations shape us. I don't care for the movie "High Fidelity" based on the book by Nick Hornby but the quote I posted above was the only thing in that story that hit the mark for me. How different would my relationship to music have been had I been born in the hey day of bee bop, listening to Sarah Vaughn, Billie Holiday or Glen Miller. What's it like now for those youth coming of age listening to Nicki Minaj, Lady Gaga, or Justin Beiber? How will what is expressed there shape their own emotional lives when juxtaposed with their own daily realities given their race, class, sexual preference and economic status? How much does music do to spur on pre-existing feelings of joy, anger, depression, desire, elation, violence or and how much of it actually brings those feelings to the surface for the first time long before we really understand what they even mean?

Personally, by the time I'd listened to any piece of music that carried my imagination to a foreign but familiar emotional space for the first time I can remember, I was so wrapped up in owning that space or rather being able to identify with a new and interesting part of myself, I was so excited to see what came next that I never gave a thought to whether I would have ever felt that feeling without exposure to this medium.

I was raised with music, all kinds of music playing in my house all the time. If the "Beach Boys" asked me to go surfing, it was my understanding that this song expressed all the best things about what surfing was like. And if Michael Jackson said "You wanna be starting something, got to be starting something." I knew that "something" was a narrative involving a physical altercation that would end up making me want to dance. When Barbra Streisand sang that love was soft as an easy chair, I saw that easy chair and sank as deeply into it as her voice sank into my mind. I was a sponge. And yet I had never been surfing, never started anything with anyone and certainly had not ever been in love yet, not really. Did I think I had been in love because my feeling matched the description of falling in love that music had described for me? Or did I just want to fall in love because of music?

Dark Globe

Once upon a time before the internet I used to listen to the radio and I lived inside all these corny pathos filled, R&B Pop songs on top ten count downs and call in dedications and I cherished them all. And once upon a time there was once a magazine called Sassy, a magazine that spoke to the adolescent in me about things I was really concerned about, like visiting the gynecologist for the first time, birth control, candid interviews with artists I respected or had never heard of and fashion spreads with females who did not look like they had eating disorders.

In one particular issue there was a weird floppy pullout thing, which I discovered was a vinyl album which was somehow inside the pages. The album was a single by a band called REM, which I had never heard of. I figured out a way to play it on my father’s record player and heard this strange high sweet voice, which I think thought belonged to a man. It was a very short song and it left me with an odd feeling I had never experienced from hearing a song before. What was it about? Who was that singing? I played it several times never really sure if I liked. I knew somehow that this type of music was beyond my rock/RB/Pop aesthetic at the time but the sad sweetness of that feeling; I never forgot it and I never forgot the floppy record it was delivered on.
Years later I became a REM fan but could never recall that song or recover that album. But tonight, on the Sassy Facebook Fanpage, someone who has that exact album posted a live performance of Michael Stipe and REM singing that song: Dark Globe which is actually the cover of a the original song by Syd Barret.

Will my mind ever be so un-muddled again as it was when I sat as a new teenager and listened to that odd song? I still remembered the lyrics. How can something you haven’t heard in almost 18 years still be inside you, like something waiting to be found again, never leaving?

“Oh where are you now
Pussy willow that smiled on this leaf?
When I was alone you promised the stone from your heart
My head kissed the ground
I was half the way down, treading the sand
Please, please, lift a hand
I'm only a person whose armbands beat
On his hands, hang tall
Won't you miss me?
Wouldn't you miss me at all?

The poppy birds way
Swing twigs coffee brands around
Brandish her wand with a feathery tongue
My head kissed the ground
I was half the way down, treading the sand
Please, please, please lift the hand
I'm only a person with Eskimo chain
I tattooed my brain all the way...
Won't you miss me?
Wouldn't you miss me at all?”

Dear Tim

Tim Westergren
Creator of Pandora Radio


Hi Tim,
I attended the Pandora Radio conference yesterday evening with my fiancee. We really enjoyed it. You have a very laid back and informal approach and it was fascinating hearing you talk about the history of Pandora. I listen to it just about every morning at work and sometimes at home on my laptop. It's essential for me because I stopped listening to broadcast radio years ago. I like all kinds of music and commercial radio is just not broad enough for me, plus I hate commercials. If it wasn't for Pandora I would never be turned on to new artists. "Flaming Lips" "The Postal Service" and "The Clientele" are among only a few artists I've come to love because of Pandora. I have about eight stations on my account so far. They vary from jazz, to rap, to electronica to alternative and so on. Pandora is the only station I know of where you can so seamlessly realize the connection between all forms of music which is something I've always believed it. Thanks for a great creation. I look forward to seeing it grow bigger and better and to quote you "Eat satellite and broadcast for breakfast."

: )

Hey, you said you'd reveal the name of your band if we asked you in an email. What is it? Are you solo? I'd love to hear your stuff.

Garage Band High

Once, years ago when I was a girl, I got so excited with anticipation on Christmas Eve that I got sick and had to lie down for a bit. That was my earliest experience with the kind of overwhelming excitement that can lead to anxiety. The second time was yesterday after I wrapped my six piece loop arrangement on Garage Band. I’ve named it “Ethereal 1” for now. I have listened to it over and over again and I still plan to do some more small edits but all in all, I’m in love. Now, I’m not deluded enough to think that what I’ve done couldn’t be done by anyone. I mean that’s what Garage Band is for. This is exactly the same kind of technology used in the recording studios to create albums today. The more advanced programs like Logic and Final Cut Pro are all about making editing and arranging music and films on computer. Doing this has made me aware of so many possibilities that it’s like that Christmas all over again. Except this time, it’s not for anticipation of what I could be getting but of what I can create. I decided where the drums come in and fall out again, where the swelling electric guitar comes in and where it ends.

Obviously the real artists are the people who recorded the instruments for these amazing loops available on the Garage Band software. Guitars, strings, piano, electric, drums, tambourines etc. and all the variations in between and I mean all the variations. I’m amazed that I was able to narrow my arrangement down to the first three pieces so quickly. It was the bass that gave me the most trouble.

This kind of mind blowing excitement comes STANDARD with every Macbook or Mac Computer on the market! I mean what a waste for some who isn’t even into music! It is such an amazing tool! I’m still really excited. I can feel it in my heart. Maybe I should go lie down for a bit. : )