I don’t personally know another non-musician who’s affected by music quite the way I am. Each piece – not just each symphony or song, but sometimes each word or note, can have a specific inherent context for me; playing it at the wrong time or in the wrong context can be ruinous. Yet accidentally tripping over the perfect time and setting brings on something close to ecstasy.
It wasn’t always this way. Growing up, after hating big bands and most ’40s pop, I disliked much of ’50s rock, preferring simpy ballads like Debbie Reynolds’ “Tammy.” I had no interest in classical music.
If there was a signal moment that changed my approach to and understanding of music, it was sitting in a friend’s apartment during my sophomore year at Penn and being introduced to Bach’s Brandenburg Concerti. What, this is classical music? – this bubbling, rampage coming straight from the soul?
Within days I was scouring record bins and picking up armloads of cheap classical albums, of which there were, then, plenty: Vox boxes, Nonesuch, Mace, Westminster, Richmond (the bottom-feeder pressings of Angel or Columbia, not sure which) and the Connoisseur Society. They put out classical and pre-classical albums for a buck, tucked into the back bins at a slim Chestnut St. record shop.
I also took a course at Penn on the history of Western music that introduced me to a sonic background I’d known nothing about. I loved it all – medieval, Renaissance, Baroque. I started my buying with the Baroque and spread out in both directions, up and down the centuries.
When I had enough cash to splurge, I’d get Heifetz playing Beethoven’s violin concerto on RCA (I left my first copy on my amp and it melted over the edge like a Dali watch; my housemates and I may have been the first people alive to play frisbee with Beethoven’s violin concerto) or Pablo Casals bowing Bach’s solo cello works.
Later, I’ve wondered why I dislike opera and most romantic classical. I think it’s because this music is designed to provoke images, and I almost never put pictures to music. For me, music, even vocal, is pure sound – 90% of music videos piss me off.
Through lack of physical rhythm and small-muscle control, I’ve never been able to play an instrument. After college I bought a guitar, a banjo, a recorder, a harmonica, an African drum – and could make no sound remotely musical arise from any of them. I can sing after a fashion but don’t bother anyone with it; it’s not good enough to satisfy me.
I can’t read music, can’t grasp the idea of keys, of minors and majors, have never read or considered music theory. I can’t play even the simplest of instruments, like the recorder, because the impetus won’t translate from my mind to my fingers. Instead, while listening, each succession of notes, each word in a song’s lyrics, each interaction of instrument and voice elicits a specific welling of recognition – or a sharp rebuke aimed at the poorly conjoined.
I seldom use music as “background” because I can’t ignore it. When I put on something I love, I listen to every note. I can seldom read a book with music going (except “ambient” nonsense like Brian Eno’s early “ambient wallpaper”) because the music overwhelms the print. Sound that I dislike strike me like a personal offense – it should not be.
I sang in the choir in Catholic grade school – a rare pleasant escape there. I came to love Gregorian Chant, the purest melody ever constructed. Singing the midnight Christmas mass was magnificent. I loved the music, the pageantry, the smell of the incense, the sense of resonating place. I didn’t care what the Mass itself meant.
I watched nearly every folk act of the early ’60s. I saw Bob Dylan perform for about 200 people at the Ethical Society in Philadelphia before he’d recorded – a skinny 18-year-old with a mass of curls, looking as unfinished as an unlaced shoe.
The Second Fret, a coffee house off Rittenhouse Square, run by Manny Rubin, was part of the East Coast folk circuit. There I heard Rev. Gary Davis, the Greenbriar Boys, Sonny Terry, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott (blind drunk as usual), Mark Spoelstra, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Jean Redpath, John Hurt, Judy Roderick, Jim Kweskin, Geoff Muldaur, and a couple dozen others.
Elsewhere, I saw Doc Watson, the New Lost City Ramblers, Martin Carthy, Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, Odetta, etc., etc. Never did see Joan Baez in person, just wept over her albums (these days I find her early work forced).
At a record shop in New York you could pick up seconds of Folkways albums for 94 cents. Each disc had a little hole punched through the label and came with only a paper liner, no dust jacket. One international sampler included a cut of Eskimo water drums, the funniest sound ever produced by human effort. I’d lie on the floor, convulsed in gasps. That album’s long gone and I can’t find even a reference to that particular cut’s existence, even among the Smithsonian’s supposed complete Folkways collection.
Along with my aversion to opera (except Monteverdi) and most romantic (except Brahms’ first symphony, Mahler’s second, St. Saens’ third, and Franck’s only), I generally can’t listen to rap, Broadway, most ’70s rock and, for reasons that mystify me, Latin (except extreme samba school). Pop from almost every era interests me about as much as a melted Creamsicle. As for jazz, most diverts for a few minutes, though I get a charge from pianists like Mose Allison, Ramsay Lewis and, particularly, my (deceased) high school classmate “Father” John D’Amico.
I like specific pieces from almost every other musical tradition, especially those nearest the wavering edge: classical and poplar Indian; east, west and south African; Japanese; punk; the minimalists; Middle Eastern; Scandinavian; Inuit; Tuvan; satire (oh yes); Australian; early rock; gospel; and outfits like the Cocteau Twins that can’t be classified.
Jim Knipfel introduced me to a range of ’70s-’80s cult or under-the-radar outfits like the Residents and Killdozer – the one band that always makes me bellow with laughter, no matter how sour my mood.
My major vacancy is the inability to share my response, the personal meaning that music has for me. If I put on a CD with a guest at hand and they start talking…
If you like it, shut up and listen.
If you don’t, ask me to turn it off.
lickhaven 