For whatever reason, I am finding it harder and harder to write something for this blog.
Maybe it’s the summer. I have been traveling again - Europe, various parts of America, and unusually for me, Newfoundland. That always gets me thinking. I have also been writing about music for other projects, and talking an awful lot about traditional music. Not playing that much of it, unfortunately, but that’s another matter. Some of this writing is in the process into being transformed into a series of articles and real books. As the impetous to start this blog was the purchase of a 1st generation iPod shuffle, (immediately lost, too, godammit), perhaps the waning days of summer are a good chance to take stock.
It might be me turning into a geezer, but, *** me, I am finding it really hard to find anything new that’s interesting to listen to. The other day I seriously thought about ditching my entire collection of CDs. I never listen to them anymore anyway, and except for a handful of songs, I have all the stuff I like on the iPods I keep accumulating. If I could find one with the patience, I’d pay some kid to transfer everything to the digital realm. There is no way I’ll ever get round to it. To take a random example, there will never be an afternoon where I will have the time or inclination to listen to, say ‘Kiss Alive II’ again. On the other hand, if ‘Shock Me’ were to pop up on my headphones in between a set of concertina jigs by Jock Tamson’s Bairns and ‘Real Child of Hell’ by X, it might be a fine thing indeed. ‘But, Bob, you ungracious twat’, you might say, ‘don’t you make CDs for a living? How can you expect us to keep buying yours when you are busy tossing your own collection out the door?’
A fair question. It is not the music I wish to divest myself of, but the rather the luggage that comes with it. It is the cases the CDs came in, and the cases need to keep those cases in. The more you travel, the more you realize how little stuff you actually need. More than once I have come home with an empty suitcase, while all around me everyone else was struggling to fit it all in. When it comes to music, sometimes I just want to start to hear it all over again, from the beginning, and see if I can find some beauty, some excitement, some energy, some new links to the blurry past - in essence, everything that keeps me listening to and playing music at all. Travel is one way to get this frustration out of your system. There are others.
That’s where these iPods and their cheaper cousins get so handy. I love everything on mine - otherwise I would have not bothered in the first place. And therefore I do not have to dig too deep to have a bit of faith restored. For example, I have no idea what sort of hippie weirdness Yes’s ‘Your Move is on about, but it contains something wonderful. Jon Anderson’s voice has been described as worthy of a castratto, and the arrangement of this song is sheer perfection. When the band comes in with the descant harmonizing behind the final ‘give peace a chance’ movement, you have to stop and wonder, ‘why didn’t we ever try that?”. And the answer is obvious. It has already been done. And it’s already perfect.
A few titles below on the menu sits my one song from U2. A few people have asked me why I never write about U2, a band I loved when I was a kid, and am still rather fond of. I always felt like so much had written about the band that there wasn’t a heck of a lot left worth saying. The only song of theirs I have on current iPod is the ‘Three Sunrises’, which is pretty much just an outlandish and soaring chorus, with a bit of pulsing guitar riff to hold it all together. Bono sings it well, the sort of trumpet blasts of passion he handled brilliantly when he was young, so full of hope the notes literally come bursting out of him. It’s a delight to hear. And it isn’t even on any of their albums. It comes from their ‘Unforgettable Fire’ period, when they had so many good songs, they could afford to cast one this good aside.
Just below that on the menu sits The Undertones ‘It’s Gonna Happen’. I will not ever get tired listening to, writing about or just inhaling this song. This piece of musical brilliance perfectly captures the sense of relief, anticipation, and adventure awaiting that I felt when I opened my eyes on the day I turned 19. And perhaps that is one piece of baggage worth holding onto.