This prompted by recent posts on emotions and on library music.
The music that opened my ears was punk. After that? Beck period Yardbirds. Hendrix. Miles. Coltrane. Dolphy. AEC. Cecil. And so on. Looking back I can see that for me much of that music was to do with impact. Here comes Jeff/Jimi/John with the big statement! Some of it, especially the more chin-stroking end of the jazz spectrum, was to do with me pandering to a particular sense I had of myself.
Nowadays I rarely listen to rock. Too much noise and not enough rhythmic variety. Lyrics are silly or trite. And I listen to big statements in the same way that I listen to big statements in any context.
Nowadays, as I have said before, it is about the lounge. Music that can be on in the background, but that has enough going on in it to hold my attention if I choose to focus on it. Nice easy grooves, for the most part. Nothing too frenetic. Nothing to ‘angry up the blood’ (© The Simpsons). Traces of Satie’s musique d’ameulblement?
Library releases have proved to be a good source of such music. The reason being, I imagine, that it was always meant to complement something else. Often enough that ‘something else’ might be a fairly complex set of circumstances on the cinema or TV screen. I am reminded of a remark about Morricone’s use of bossa’s exoticism to frame the hedonistic ‘new lifestyles’ depicted in some early 70’s Italian cinema. Not, I should say, that my lifestyle is anything like those. Anyway, library music called for creativity and skill, but they weren’t being brandished about. I have no reason to doubt what seems to be the conventional narrative of how library music re-emerged (DJ’s looking for breaks etc.). But I think that it can have a different appeal. I wonder if comments about it being dull miss the point in that respect.
What is it, then, with me and library? Is my taste maturing? Is it just that I am turning into a tired old dude? Or both?
The music that opened my ears was punk. After that? Beck period Yardbirds. Hendrix. Miles. Coltrane. Dolphy. AEC. Cecil. And so on. Looking back I can see that for me much of that music was to do with impact. Here comes Jeff/Jimi/John with the big statement! Some of it, especially the more chin-stroking end of the jazz spectrum, was to do with me pandering to a particular sense I had of myself.
Nowadays I rarely listen to rock. Too much noise and not enough rhythmic variety. Lyrics are silly or trite. And I listen to big statements in the same way that I listen to big statements in any context.
Nowadays, as I have said before, it is about the lounge. Music that can be on in the background, but that has enough going on in it to hold my attention if I choose to focus on it. Nice easy grooves, for the most part. Nothing too frenetic. Nothing to ‘angry up the blood’ (© The Simpsons). Traces of Satie’s musique d’ameulblement?
Library releases have proved to be a good source of such music. The reason being, I imagine, that it was always meant to complement something else. Often enough that ‘something else’ might be a fairly complex set of circumstances on the cinema or TV screen. I am reminded of a remark about Morricone’s use of bossa’s exoticism to frame the hedonistic ‘new lifestyles’ depicted in some early 70’s Italian cinema. Not, I should say, that my lifestyle is anything like those. Anyway, library music called for creativity and skill, but they weren’t being brandished about. I have no reason to doubt what seems to be the conventional narrative of how library music re-emerged (DJ’s looking for breaks etc.). But I think that it can have a different appeal. I wonder if comments about it being dull miss the point in that respect.
What is it, then, with me and library? Is my taste maturing? Is it just that I am turning into a tired old dude? Or both?
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