Sunday, 17 December 2006 by marstinson.

I recently decided to pick up the guitar again. I played for a while in high school, but pretty much dropped it about 30 years ago. So my Christmas present to myself this year was an electric guitar and I’m diligently trying to relearn the instrument. One thing that I’m doing differently this time is that I’m paying attention to what others have to say about playing (yep, when you’re 16, you know everything - it’s only later that you find out that you don’t know squat or are at least you’re willing to admit it). I came across a thread in the forums at ultimate-guitar.com where the poster was complaining about how learning to play had destroyed his appreciation of music.

This is not the first time that I have heard this. One of my girlfriends (yes, we had girlfriends back in the dark ages) was a bassoonist who went on to study music in college. As I recall, she had finished two or three semesters of her music studies before she changed her major to business. I think the question that came to me at the time was something along the lines of “how can understanding music ruin your appreciation of it?” After all, I had been listening to music for as far back as I could remember, had learned several instruments, starting with piano in something like the 3rd grade, and my appreciation of music hadn’t changed. In fact, the only noticable change was that my taste in music had become more eclectic. I kind of shrugged off the question as one of those “mysteries of the universe” or “things that man was not meant to know” and went on with my life. Now that I have a few more years and a bit more experience under my belt, I think that I understand her point.

I think that most people who pick up an instrument, especially one like the guitar, start with the idea that they want to be able to play like so-and-so (Hendrix, Page, Santana, Van Halen, Billy Gibbons, Slash, etc. - obviously my brain has been fried by too much exposure to rock/R&B as I can’t think of any other styles of guitarist by name). Or perhaps they want to learn how to play certain songs or styles of music. But the common thread running through all of these is “how”. How does he/she do that?

So they set out to learn how to do that. Some find a teacher; others pick up any of a number of “how-to” books. Some do it the old-fashioned way: they listen to records (sorry - CDs) over and over again and then try to mimic on their own instrument. Those with the talent or sheer persistence eventually learn how to do that. Those without the talent or determination get frustrated and move on to other things. In my case, it was lack of determination more than anything else. My modicum of talent was enough to let me get started, but talent alone won’t do it for more than a handful of people and I wasn’t in that handful by any long stretch of the imagination.

At any rate, once the student has learned the “how” of a particular instrument, song or style, the problem comes. In many ways it is like a magician’s trick. Once you know how they trick is done and can do it yourself, the trick loses a lot of its wonder. The “wow” factor just isn’t there anymore. And I think that this is the point where people hit the crisis point. Now that they know what they set out to learn, what comes next?

Many musicians never hit this crisis point. They continue doing what they have been doing and are quite satisfied to play what they know. They may even put down their instruments and only occasionally pick it up again. This last group are the folks who rush home to pick up their acoustic instruments when there is a power failure at the local watering hole and stage an impromptu sing-along.

I think the potentially great musicians change their question, however. Now that they know how it was done, they want to know why it was done that way and why it wasn’t done some other way. And those questions lead them into the theory and structure of music rather than just the performance of someone else’s music.

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Thursday, 24 August 2006 by marstinson.

I mentioned Tchaikovsky’s Festival Overture: 1812 in my other post today. I feel that I should point out for the record that the piece, even though played on the 4th of July, has nothing whatsoever to do with American history. It celebrates the defeat/retreat of the Napoleon’s Grand Armee at Moscow, which was (arguably) the turning point of the Napoleonic Wars.

I should also note that Tchaikovsky indulged in a bit of artistic license with the piece. Napoleon was not defeated by the Russian military at Moscow. It was the arrival of the Russian winter, not a hail of Russian bullets that defeated Napoleon. Also, neither La Marsailles nor God Save the Tsar would have been in use in 1812. Nevertheless, as a festival piece, composed on commission, Tchaikovsky would have been obligated to put the best face on the event and would have undoubtedly drawn upon themes with which his audience would have been familiar. Historical nit-picking aside, it is an undeniably powerful and enduring piece.

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Thursday, 24 August 2006 by marstinson.

The 100 Greatest Songs list got me to thinking and doing a little looking around. Rolling Stone, for example, recently compiled its list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. So what, exactly, makes a great song? I think there are a few approaches that you could take, but I don’t think there is any criteria that everyone would agree on.

Before I go any farther, I should point out that I’m very eclectic in my musical tastes. You don’t have to dig very far into my library to run into baroque, classical, romantic, modern, rock, jazz, punk, funk, metal, opera, impressionist, country, pop, folk, gospel, New Age, etc. About the only things I’d almost guarantee that you wouldn’t find are rap and hip-hop. To my mind, it’s arguable whether those would even qualify as “music.” It might be because I’m just an old fogey or don’t understand the genres, but those styles just don’t do anything for me and generally turn me off. Doesn’t mean that they’re bad, though. It simply means that I don’t care for ‘em. So, that being said, let’s get on with it.

I guess one of the first criteria you could use to identify a “great” song is longevity. Is the song still being played? The idea behind this criteria is fairly simple: Mozart was a great composer because his music is still being played more than 300 years after he died. While the idea has some merit, it does have a few drawbacks. On the exclusionary side of the problem (songs that would not make the cut), what about a really great song that first appeared last week? That hardly qualifies as long-lived. On the inclusionary side of the idea (songs that make the list), does the song get played because it’s great or for some other reason?

Having worked in the radio business for a few years, I can tell you that it works pretty much like any other business. Whether you know it or not, radio’s business is actually selling airtime to advertisers. A station can charge x-dollars for a 30-second spot because a ratings service (Arbitron, for example) tells an advertiser that a 30-second spot aired during a particular time on a particular station will most likely be heard by a certain number of listeners. The more listeners that a station can deliver, the more they can charge the advertisers. By being able to charge more for the airtime, the station has more money available to attract more listeners through promotions, better air-talent (”air-talent”? I always tell people that I used to work as a “disc jockey”). But because the public is fickle, stations have to continue to deliver what the public wants to hear if they want to stay in the game.

For example, the “oldies” station out this way used to play stuff running from the mid-50’s to about the mid-70’s. They have recently changed their format somewhat and an “oldie” is now running from the late 60’s into the mid- to late-80’s (which makes me a real “oldie,” I guess, because I used to play some of that stuff when it was still on the charts). There is almost nothing earlier than about ‘66 or ‘67 that gets any airtime and most of what they play is in the ‘75 to ‘85 timeframe. Also, the music is now more on the “edgy” side. Not necessarily metal, but no Manilow, for example. Why? Because that’s what the listeners want to hear and if they don’t hear it, they change the channel.

So that kind of shoots a big hole in longevity as a major criterion. Half or more of the first 25 of Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest are pre-1970. While people of my generation would remember them, lack of air-play kind of defeats the idea of a long-lived song. Now, granted, I don’t live in a major market and I wouldn’t even begin to speculate on what gets airtime in places like New York, Chicago, Washington, Houston, etc. But on the other hand, this isn’t Podunkville, Iowa, where both stations are mom-and-pop operations, either. But still, doesn’t that change the criteria from “still getting airtime” to something like “still getting airtime in the top radio markets”? Or, more to the point, does longevity have more to do with popularity than anything else?

And what, exactly, is popularity? I’m one of those folks that really liked Frank Zappa’s music (’course Al Gore said that he’s a Zappa fan, too, so take that for what it’s worth). But Zappa only cracked the Top 40 once (”Valley Girl” peaked at #32 in 1982). Does that mean that his music wasn’t great? This is a guy that should be ranked right up there with Hendrix, Page, Santana and Van Halen for the sounds that he could get from a guitar and his compositions run the gammut of musical styles. Or how about the Grateful Dead? (To my knowledge) One decent hit - “Touch of Grey,” which topped out at #6 in 1987. Very dedicated fan following, although not huge like the Beatles or Rolling Stones. But eighteen of their 55 albums went Gold or better. To be fair, 16 or so of those 55 were released after Jerry Garcia’s death and the band released a lot of compilations and retrospectives, so it’s not 55 albums of completely original content, but it’s still a very prolific showing. I think the work of Zappa and The Dead would definitely qualify in the “popularity” department, but nothing in Rolling Stone’s top 500 and I’d still argue in favor of calling them “great” even though I’m nowhere close to being a Dead Head.

So if we can’t judge “great” by longevity or popularity, then what else? I suppose we could always “follow the money” and look at profits (which might also be a “popularity” factor). After all, there’s a tidy chunk of change tied up in Elvis’ estate or in the Beatles’ Apple catalog. But only 6 of Elvis’ more than 125 Top 40 hits (US - I didn’t include UK hits) made the cut for the 500 Greatest (something like 20 or 25 of The Beatles’ songs made the cut). But, honestly, how much did Chuck Berry actually make off of “Johnny B. Goode” (number 7 of the top 500) or did the Isley Brothers make off of “Shout”? I’m not disputing their being included, but considering the treatment of Black artists at the time, I’d be very surprised if they were paid more than a pittance for their work. And is a profitability criterion adjusted for inflation? A million-seller in 1955 must have certainly been something much bigger than a million-seller in 1995.

OK, if not profitability, how about musical impact? What I mean by that is influence upon other composers and musicians. All musicians and composers draw upon what others have done. While not necessarily copying, they are nevertheless drawing inspiration from or trying a different take on an earlier theme. But if that’s the case, aren’t all of these songs influenced by the “classical” composers (by “classical,” I mean “symphonic” - “Classical” has a very definite meaning, referring to compositions of late-18th and early-19th century composers) and in that sense, all of the top 500 are derivative works of other composers. Shouldn’t those other composers receive their due as well?

No, I think “greatness” is more subjective than objective. What is great to one person may very well be noise to someone else. Music is, perhaps, the most pervasive and consequently the most subjective of the arts. That and the desire to visually express oneself permeate the human experience from the dawn of time. Music touches something inside of each of us. What it touches and how it touches are going to vary from person to person.

I’m not a terribly emotional person (overtly, anyway). But Tchaikovsky’s Festival Overture: 1812, Op. 49, can usually pull a tear from my eye, especially when a chorus is used for the chants and folk dances rather than being played by the strings, as Tchaikovsky wrote it. But most people find that the piece evokes a sense of excitement when they hear it (I mean, really, tears on the 4th of July?). Are they wrong? Of course not. It’s just that the piece touches something different in them, and that’s perfectly cool.

My list of the top 500 songs of all time would not have included Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone, which came in at #1 (wonder why? Consider the source), but would have included Mozart, Beethoven, Dizzy Gillespe, Louis Armstrong, both Gershwins and a host of others that the average reader of Rolling Stone would probably never consider (or maybe even have heard of). ‘Course I’d also have to go back and look at what a “song” is before making that list, but that’s another issue entirely.

So I guess that the short version of all of this is that if you think a song is “great,” if it somehow touches something in you (for better or worse), then it’s a great song and you should revel in it and to hell with what Rolling Stone or John Sandford or I may think about it. Rock on!

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Sunday, 20 August 2006 by marstinson.

My father passed along a book, “Broken Prey,” by John Sandford (available from amazon.com or bn.com - no, I’m not plugging their sites). The book itself was nothing special - a police-hunt-down-the-serial-killer kind of thing. All in all, a decent read, but nothing to get terribly excited over. Except for one item - the protagonist is compiling a list of the 100 greatest songs of the rock era. The creation of his list is a kind of subplot running through the whole book and the end result was kind of interesting, especially for the conspicuous absence of anything by the Beatles. So, for what it’s worth, here’s John Sandford’s take on the best songs of the rock era:

1. Sharp-Dressed Man (ZZ Top)
2. Legs (ZZ Top)
3. Mustang Sally (Wilson Pickett)
4. Superman’s Song (Crash Test Dummies)
5. Rock On (David Essex)
6. Radar Love (Golden Earring)
7. Heart of Glass (Blondie)
8. White Rabbit (Jefferson Airplane)
9. Somebody to Love (Jefferson Airplane)
10. Layla (Derek and the Dominoes)
11. Roadhouse Blues (The Doors)
12. House of the Rising Sun (The Animals)
13. Sweet Emotion (Aerosmith)
14. Dude (Looks Like a Lady) (Aerosmith)
15. Dancing in the Dark (Bruce Springsteen)
16. Born To Run (Bruce Springsteen)
17. Thunder Road (Bruce Springsteen)
18. Every Breath You Take (The Police)
19. Heart of Saturday Night (Tom Waits)
20. Hot For Teacher (Van Halen)
21. Won’t Get Fooled Again (The Who)
22. Hotel California (Gipsy Kings)
23. Give Me One Reason (Tracy Chapman)
24. Down On The Corner (Creedence Clearwater Revival)
25. Lyin’ Eyes (The Eagles)
26. Life In The Fast Lane (The Eagles)
27. Skateaway (Roller Girl) (Dire Straits)
28. Mary Jane’s Last Dance (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers)
29. Me and Bobby McGee (Janis Joplin)
30. Black Water (The Doobie Brothers)
31. I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll (Joan Jett and the Blackhearts)
32. Jack and Diane (John Mellencamp)
33. Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2) (Pink Floyd)
34. Money (Pink Floyd)
35. Piano Man (Billy Joel)
36. After Midnight (Eric Clapton)
37. Lay Down Sally (Eric Clapton)
38. You Shook Me All Night Long (AC/DC)
39. Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap (AC/DC)
40. Long Cool Woman (in a Black Dress) (The Hollies)
41. Like a Rolling Stone (Bob Dylan)
42. Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door (Bob Dylan)
43. Subterranean Homesick Blues (Bob Dylan)
44. (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction (The Rolling Stones)
45. Brown Sugar (The Rolling Stones)
46. Sympathy for the Devil (The Rolling Stones)
47. Anarchy in the UK (Sex Pistols)
48. Sugar Magnolia (Grateful Dead)
49. Slow Hand (Pointer Sisters)
50. Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) (Eurythmics)
51. Jailhouse Rock (Elvis Presley)
52. Ziggy Stardust (David Bowie)
53. Night Moves (Bob Seger)
54. Bye Bye Love (The Everly Brothers)
55. Purple Haze (Jimi Hendrix)
56. Lola (The Kinks)
57. Tender Is The Night (Jackson Browne)
58. Louie, Louie (The Kingsmen)
59. Bad to the Bone (George Thorogood and the Destroyers)
60. Turn the Page (Metallica)
61. Sweet Home Alabama (Lynryd Skynryd)
62. We Will Rock You (Queen)
63. Ramblin’ Man (The Allman Brothers Band)
64. Rock and Roll (Led Zepplin)
65. What’s Love Got to Do with It (Tina Turner)
66. Born to be Wild (Steppenwolf)
67. With or Without You (U2)
68. Paranoid (Black Sabbath)
69. Blue Morning, Blue Day (Foeigner)
70. White Wedding (Billy Idol)
71. Sweet Child o’ Mind (Guns N’ Roses)
72. Paradise City (Guns N’ Roses)
73. Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door (Guns N’ Roses)
74. Walk on the Wild Side (Lou Reed)
75. Feel Like Makin’ Love (Bad Company)
76. Rock of Ages (Def Leppard)
77. Brown Eyed Girl (Van Morrison)
78. Devil with a Blue Dress On (Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels)
79. Respect (Aretha Franklin)
80. I’m In the Mood (John Lee Hooker and Bonnie Raitt)
81. I Got You (I Feel Good) (James Brown)
82. Unchained Melody (The Righteous Brothers)
83. Little Red Corvette (Prince)
84. Roll Over Beethoven (Chuck Berry)
85. Mr. Tambourine Man (The Byrds)
86. Ohio (Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young)
87. Peggy Sue (Buddy Holly)
88. Great Balls of Fire (Jerry Lee Lewis)
89. Oh, Pretty Woman (Roy Orbison)
90. Runaway (Del Shannon)
91. Walk This Way (Run-DMC)
92. (Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay (Otis Redding)
93. Smells Like Teen Spirit (Nirvana)
94. Still Crazy After All These Years (Paul Simon)
95. Who Do You Love? (Bo Diddley)
96. One Toke Over the Line (Brewer and Shipley)
97. I Wanna Be Sedated (The Ramones)
98. Should I Stay or Should I Go (The Clash)
99. Burning Down the House (Talking Heads)
100. Jazz Suite No. 2: Waltz 2 (Dmitri Shostakovich)

While most of the songs would definitely qualify as rock, the list is not songs of a particular genre, but of the time period from about the mid-50’s to the mid-80s. I was surprised to find that I have about a third to half of them either on CD, cassette or vinyl. There are a few that I haven’t heard (the Gipsy Kings cover of “Hotel California,” for example). But I was surprised to find that almost all of them are available through one or more of the various online music services. One that does not seem to be is Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll”, which appears to only be available on CD. Why? I have no idea - just about everything else she’s done is available, but not that album. Royalty or copyright issues, maybe?

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