Endangered Seal sandwiches

I realise that recently I have been listening to a lot of music that is , well, difficult to listen to. It is harder to get into than perhaps your everyday run of the mill type of stuff. But then, even writing that reads back to me like a statement of the absolute bloody obvious.
If you have read many of the posts you would have realised that there is nothing particularly easy about much of my music taste. That is not to say that some of it is not easy on the ears. There are some truly beautiful songs out there. But I do find that even if the song is beautiful , the sentiment behind it is perhaps a little more complex.

I come back to this, Wouldn't It Be Nice by the Beach Boys

Lovely song. But it is about the song writer lusting after the his mate's wife. Not an easy topic. That is a simple illustration, but it gets much more difficult than that.

Take the excellent Ftanng

The music gets more complex when you start to explore Prog, Punk, Metal, and the various genres within that. Opeth, difficult, King Crimson, Dead Kennedys, Placebo, difficult difficult, Tool, well you get the idea.

As I said this is pretty obvious.

The question is why?

Now you could obviously very easily at this point jump into personal tastes and influences and well, take the easy path. But it is more difficult than that isn't it? It is not a pleasant stroll through a park on a sunny day. It is battling through a crowd in Tokyo at peak rush hour. It is the cold, it is the rain, it is the snow driving you back inside because it is so cold. . . . OK, well it might not be that dramatic.

The point I am labouring to get to is that whilst I am attracted to this music I am clearly not alone. Why clearly? Well someone made the music didn't they? It is out there for me to find. And you, you found it as well didn't you? Why, why did we even look for it?

Seriously, life would be easier, more pleasant if all you wanted out of music was Take That, or James Blunt or, I honestly am struggling, some other middle of the road, philosophy in a fortune cookie type of music. Life wouldn't be better . . let's make that very clear now. It would be a lot worse because you would only experience a narrow range of corporate fed emotions through the music. But, as they say, ignorance is a very nice place to be.

Personally, I have always held the following to be true:

the reason that things are complicated and that all art should also be  is because unless you take the time to understand the complexity you are just not trying to understand the whole, only a part of it.


The fulcrum to this point is that it is art. If it is not art then it is just some money-making organisation. Which puts the boy bands, the X factor artists and U2 into a very clear category really doesn't it?

Some music for you

I said in my last post that I had heard the quote from Geddy Lee in Rush, "we just wanted something that had some calories in it". I like that quote. It is a simplistic idea that it would be good to have some of the bad stuff. The stuff that isn't celery, or carrots. Have the six layer foie gras sandwich with a roast endangered seal. Not because it is more tasty (it really , really is) but because it may give you more than you thought it might when you put it into your system. Or you could have McDonald's . . .

Because if you do not pay attention to this sort of stuff you are missing out. It takes time and it is , well , difficult, but when you get there, and you understand a little bit of it, then you knew more than you did before. You have experienced a different emotion, even vicariously.

If I am honest I do not get why everyone doesn't want this. Why would you not want to use a very accessible medium such as music to help you to understand things more ?  It is funny, every now and again I ask my friends questions like that. I am always told the same thing. No it is just you.

But that isn't true is it . . because you are here now too . . . .aren't you?