Bells!

Nothing sounds like Ebenezer Scrooge in full post-ghost attitude but church bells. Some sound like crystalline rippling, others like bellowing farm animals. I vaguely recall a Dorothy Sayers mystery ("The Nine Tailors") where a good portion of the plot revolved around bell-ringing. I was surprised to learn that there's a mathematical precision to bell-ringing patterns, or 'changes' -- almost like 12-tone serialism, where a note cannot be played twice until all other 12 notes have been played. Serialism never worked for me, but I sure do love the bells.

That Whole Music Writing Thing

Writing about music is harder than I thought, as I discovered when I started this blog. I want to keep working at it and get better, and some recent books of music writing that have inspired me are pictured here. I enjoyed "The Rest Is Noise" by Alex Ross (and his most recent book, "Listen to This") because of his catholic tastes (no, not the church) -- he can write about Mozart or Bjork or Radiohead or Schubert without being stuffy or condescending (or lost!)

The late Robert Palmer (no, not the "Addicted to Love" guy, the other late Robert Palmer) was a great champion for the blues as he got older (you MUST see the film "Deep Blues"), and he helped get backwater geniuses like RL Burnside discovered in a big way. There's a piece in his book about Led Zeppelin, and I was curious how he would handle some of the misappropriations that were attributed to some of their early work. He doesn't defend it, but he does point out that in the history of the blues, claiming something 'borrowed' as your own is all too common.

When I want to get the pure, unadulterated stuff, I go back to Lester Bangs (sadly, even later that the 2 Robert Palmers). Lester was played as the gruff mentor in "Almost Famous", Cameron Crowe's love letter to the rock music he grew up with, and when I read him now, I still picture him the way Philip Seymour Hoffman played him (sorry, Lester, I can hear you spinning right now.) Lester brought so much passion to his writing, and he gave critical nods early on to performers like Iggy Pop that less visionary critics dismissed as dumb. There's a Chuck Klosterman book where he mentions the rock musician who derided the Village Voice reviewer for "just writing about his mail" -- meaning the promotional CDs music critics are deluged with. Even if Lester was sometimes guilty of writing about his mail, he always brought a fierce intelligence to his work that I've always admired.

Another icy blast, and the end of music?

When the weather is icy-cold, the Cocteau Twins also make frequent appearances in the CD player, because this music is as far removed from "the blues" as you get (okay, maybe Sibelius is just a bit farther...). There's a glacial sheen to the sound, and the vocals are in some invented gibberish (no, really. She just sings nonsense syllables). The tunes are certainly memorable, but it's that icy remove that makes it such vital winter listening for me.

My Bloody Valentine takes part of the Cocteau Twins sound and exaggerates it even more. Vocals are buried in the mix, the guitars are frequently distorted beyond recognition, and there are often noises that sound like the recording equipment is malfunctioning. I let someone borrow my copy once and they returned it saying "It's the end of music as we know it" --- and he meant that in a bad way! I enjoy it because it sounds to me like pop music turned inside-out; the stuff we expect to be in the foreground isn't. Some people have called this the ultimate guitar album, but I think that's a little misleading, because anyone looking to hear "guitar" is going to be very confused. But it really is a pop album, not some industrial noise; dare I say, it's even beautiful.