"so many nouns to verb..."

The Rest is Noise, the first book from New Yorker music critic Alex Ross, is an absolute masterpiece of music nerdom. Noise details the directions and deviations taken by classical composers since the turn of the last century, but Ross’ debut could be mistaken as a bizarre form of fiction with how personal and desperate the players stood between themselves and society. Ross makes the case that classical music born in the twentieth century is inherently tied to what was happening politically and culturally; true of any era, any genre, but Ross lays out his chapters like a casual history lesson, each topic, composer and controversy flowing unblemished. Noise is nothing if not the who/what/where/when/why/(how) of every significant movement and notion of what’s called “contemporary classical,” an impeccably detailed narrative for anyone who salivates at the thought of Stravinsky and Schoenberg trading blows over the future of music.

In short, I love this book.

Even if the Germans are a bit particular.

For the uninitiated, Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg played a major role in maiming tonality in the twentieth century. Schoenberg developed a method of writing that involved ordering pitches of music in a codified form which determined the course of the composition. He impaled tonality on his 12-tone spike and quickly became the headmaster of the Second Viennese school, leading Berg, Webern and, eventually, countless German and Austrian composers towards the notion of finding schematics (key word) outside of tonal centers to write music. This became a trend - chaotic music for the chaotic times of post-WWII Germany - and advanced to a point where composers across the world indulged in a new idea: notes and phrases that don’t make sense actually couldn’t be any other way.

From there, countless young composers, mostly German, accepted this idea as the new gospel. It was kind of a hipper than thou vibe – you’re not acceptable unless your stuff is edgy. Literally. Festivals and collectives developed solely to push music to its limits, then break them. Looking back was shameful.

Again, particular.

Music as an intellectual exercise. Music as a battlefield. It’s fascinating, really. Everything progresses, everything changes, and an art form that can span from charming folk tales to aural murder is destined for infinite variations. Still, I think there’s a fine line between “music” and a “neat idea.” John Cage wrote 4’33” to expose silence as music itself. Pierre Boulez developed total serialism and confined melody, harmony and rhythm to preset grids – music as math.

Neat ideas, really. Ground breaking stuff. Maybe a little/quite a bit masturbatory, but enough to make you go “huh” in a good way. Maybe it doesn’t always work. Maybe it never really works in that sense. But interesting ideas nonetheless.

Exactly – ideas. There’s a difference between “that’s cool” and “I’d listen to that.” Building entire repertoires based on vigorously denouncing Mozart and formal structure and key centers seems like Lenny Bruce after the obscenity trials: hammering out the same theme that wasn’t strong enough to sustain in the first place.

On a complete 180, I went to see John Mayer Saturday night. His new album is his love/relationship album, no question. He’s a heartthrob, pursued by legions of fairer sex fans. I didn’t know what mode he’d be in that night: John the rock star, John the modern-day troubadour, John the “Body is a Wonderland” singer (we all make mistakes).

Honestly, he was, and he’ll always be, the nerd who loves playing guitar that did right.

Everything about the show fit. Mayer was charming between songs. He opened things up to show how killer his band is. And, most importantly, he made the guitar his bitch.

The show felt good. Crowd, venue, everything else that comes with the show didn’t matter. Mayer did exactly what he’s supposed to do. He made the music work.

It fit. It felt good. It worked.

Schoenberg, Webern, Boulez, etc. – they all deserve their praise for pulling out revolutionary cards and forcing modern music to face progress for what it is, curious or ugly. Still, sometimes it just needs to work.

However, a brilliant guitar solo can trump everything else once in a while. Sorry, that’s just how the world works.

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Seriously though, everyone should buy The Rest is Noise. It defines “brilliant.” Alex Ross deserves sainthood for this.

etc. etc. etc.

I've been reading the blogs of this guy-Bob Lefsetz. He writes about music...inevitably. He'll start off writing about television, politics, business, the iPad-anything, really-but he'll always end up circling back around to making some point about music. Sometimes he'll use specific examples, sometimes he'll just drop vague implications, but there's always something there.

Lefsetz writes like a fan who grew up with (rock) stars in his eyes, but then grew up with a cynical lump in his throat. He's as apt to call out Ticketmaster on their "convenience" charge injustice and bemoan the pitiful state of rock concerts today as he is to champion a real-life Bad Blake and debate the upside to alcoholism and drug addiction to an artist's creative impulses. Occasionally he'll dive deep into something relevant only to those in the great northern yonder (Canadian, he is), but on the whole I can make it through without wikipedia's help.

He's good people.

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need to listen: new Jamie Cullum
need to read: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
need to watch: House

always House

again...again...

I’ve always been interested in the way things begin. The first words an author starts a novel with. The first sounds you hear when you listen to a new album. The image that appears after the darkness fades away when a movie begins. When I was little I thought that everything had to meet my approval; the first few moments of any bit of media had to satisfy my need to know exactly what was going to unfold. Everything had to flow along smoothly until the logical conclusion was reached. Anything that I could consider a deviation was a flaw and, however small, soured the experience just a little bit.
That was then. That was when I thought things should glide in a smooth circle, everything fitting gently in the right place. Now, I relish curveballs. There’s still something to be said for following protocol, but I prefer it if the narrative line bends into a curve like a Formula 1, making it but doing so with a collective gasp from the audience, a near-catastrophe sharply averted. Even more so, I love it when I don’t know what the hell’s going on, when I blindly stumble into a new movie or book with only a vague notion after the poster of the cover.
Personally, I think I just like being surprised. Maybe it’s a reaction to my media-saturated brain having grown far too accustomed to perfect authentic cadences and the boy getting the girl. Even if the ending is tried and true I at least want a complete harmonic meltdown at some point in the middle.
I once read a quote that the second time you see something is really the first. First impressions are to introduce and second ones are to clarify. I like that idea. Reading a book the second time around makes it your favorite. A week’s worth of listening to a record tells you what it’s really about. Looking at the things you don’t always look at make the difference between “good” and “brilliant,” “enticing” and “safe.”
I think a bit of confusion is a good thing.

didn't even make my coffee yet

My back hurts like a complete bastard right now. It hurts because I was trying to bribe Sophie and Emma (my dogs) with hot dogs and dog cookies to stay in place while fashioned baseball hats on their head for a "photo shoot."

Good morning.

i like cleveland

Objective: do/see/eat something interesting in each of the cities I'm auditioning for grad school in, regardless of how the auditions go.

nothing at all to do with this, but i once met pete best and shook his hand

I first heard of J.D. Salinger much like I first got into guitar—all because of Green Day. On their second album the band wrote a song, “Who Wrote Holden Caulfield?” Their singer, Billie Joe Armstrong, said he wrote the song after reading Catcher in the Rye, a book he read only after dropping out of high school. Naturally, in an effort to do everything I possibly could to emulate my hero, I read Catcher, slowly wading my way through a well-torn copy from the library. I still remember book, how the laminated dust jacket and bulletproof hardcover was almost too much protection for the yellowed and tattered pages it ironically failed to protect from disrespectful readers. I checked that damn thing out twice before I finally finished it, falling down both times because my prepubescent self couldn’t relate to 1950’s teenage angst.
The irony of having to read Catcher again in high school was not lost on me. The state-mandated curriculum required students to read a book about a protagonist, not unlike the students themselves, railing against the phonies who didn’t care or want to understand. I used to pretend that schools assigned the book because it’s a classic and that’s what you do with the classics in high school—you read them. Because they’re classics. Personally, I thought Catcher was thrown in the curriculum blindly because it was successful and stood the test of time rather than for its content. No matter how many papers about symbolism I was forced to write, to me Catcher was about figuring out the world on your own terms, seeing and accepting the ugly but still wanting to hold on to something you still thought true.
Of course, high school is the perfect time to read Catcher in the Rye. The themes of innocence lost and growing up are paramount to high school students as they face reality/college/the last years of mandated school. I always associated Catcher with Green Day and the notion of facing reality on your own terms, of taking on whatever may come with that strip of innocence or whatever you wanted to call it bolted firm over your heart. That idea of holding on to innocence was apparently something Salinger never let go. Being literature’s most famous recluse (held up in a secluded rural cabin in the middle of nowhere) gets people talking. Salinger denied interviews, damned any and all press and sued family members’ who wrote autobiographies about their childhood. It’s one thing to be an enigma, but Salinger’s extent made it obvious he had something he didn’t want to give up, that he didn’t want to give anything more of himself away than he already had with his fiction.
I just read an article that hinted at Salinger’s obsession with young girls, but it clearly stated that it wasn’t sexual but actually more about the innocence they had. Less Lolita and more Marsha (Marsha Marsha!) Brady. The thing is you reach a point where you can’t afford to be innocent anymore. Salinger was, I think it’s safe to say, loony tunes style, bat shit crazy (but that’s ok). Still, I can’t help but think that his nature was part of his desire for innocence. He wanted what was his to be his alone, never to be tainted by leering public eyes. It’s almost as if he fell victim to one of his greatest ideas.
When I was in Los Angeles last week I saw an exhibition of a photographer’s portraits of famous people. He did a photo of Hemmingway, looking far more like a rugged, world-weary seaman than an author. This, the same man who put a gun in his mouth because he couldn’t take the critics.
I don’t know…I guess we’ve all got our secrets.

another idea

Part of reading travel books—the essays and stories type, not the guidebook type—means that I’m often confronted with the theme of “leaving.” Not necessarily escaping; unless you’ve literally coated your black and white striped garb with dirt during a daring venture, I feel as if the word escape has been co-opted by cruise line companies and vacation adds, encouraging middle America to “escape” their jobs and lives back home for a short period of time. False—it’s not escaping if you eventually come back. Escaping is a tricky proposition.
Leaving, on the other hand, is more attractive. Leaving takes you away under your own terms but leaves the option of coming back open. You leave school, but you can go back to visit. You leave things for safekeeping precisely so you can come back to get them later. With escaping the implication is once you come back you do so to the same grind, the same routine, your “escape” essentially amounting to a prolonged diversion. With leaving, as well-worn saying imply, things are different, having moved along one way or another while you were away. Even if things haven’t inherently changed since you’ve left you come back with new eyes, understanding things—for better or worse—differently. Leaving isn’t as dramatic as escaping—it’s more casual. Escaping is drastic; leaving is calm.
I just finished reading a book about an Aussie leaving London for Paris for a new job, itself the result of blind, dumb luck and chance. I’m reading a book right now about a twentysometing ditching a Manhattan law firm for Brazil. Both deal with the quarter-life crisis dilemma (just like a midlife crisis but swapping male-pattern baldness for hip clothes), both document the authors absolutely clueless as to what the hell they’re doing, and both have that brilliant epiphany where both authors ruminate that they’d rather wake up near destitute and hung over in their new adopted homeland (which they often do) than suffer another day in the former life they’ve left.
Ladies and gentlemen: the new American Dream.
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My generation is entering what could quite possibly be the worst time imaginable for work. The economy and the job market are in shambles. CEO’s, the glorified position we once aspired to work ourselves up to be, make headlines in controversy and jail sentences. Business school and MBA graduates are applying for entry-level positions alongside recent lay-offs in their mid-50’s, almost mirrors of the future. Today it’s entirely plausible be asked that time-honored query, “When will you get a job?” and respond with blank eyes, “what jobs?” While not utterly hopeless, times, unquestionable, suck.
Maybe the thing to do is the exact opposite of what we’re expected to do. Maybe we need to leave for a while, leave in our own way then return when the world around us is ready. When, eventually, we’re ready.