Write About Music

Braiden Harvey loves music

This entry is about suicide, and it could be disturbing, so please don’t read it if it might be painful for you.

I was listening to this song today, and it was breaking my heart like it always does, and I started remembering being eight years old sitting in the back of a car outside of a dry cleaner’s. My aunt and my mother were in the front and they had something in a bag on the seat between them. They were talking low but disagreeing about whatever it was. My aunt was crying and my mother looked . . . like she’d seen something both pitiful and repulsive.

“She wants to keep it,” my aunt was saying.

My mother: “We should just throw it away. Get rid of it! She’s out of her mind.”

“I can’t, Sis. He died in it. She wants to have it.”

“They’re never gonna clean that. They can’t. I’m not taking that in there. It’s got his . . .”

And then she said what it had on it. I can’t even write it. It seems obscene to lay it out in words. But I began to understand it was what my uncle was wearing when he shot himself in the head.

This song, to me and probably many others, is about the devastation of someone you love taking himself away from you, absolutely, abruptly and forever. It begins with a father and the empty, aching place he has for his boy who is gone.

Daddy please hear this song that I sing
In your heart there’s a spark that just screams
For a lover to bring
A child to your chest
That could lay as you sleep
And love all you have left
Like your boy used to be
Long ago wrapped in sheets warm and wet

And later it’s a brother speaking:

Brother see we are one and the same
And you left with your head filled with flames
And you watched as your brains
fell out through your teeth
Push the pieces in place
Make your smile sweet to see
Don’t you take this away
I’m still wanting my face on your cheek

And that’s the part where my heart breaks. Not just for the ones who left. But for the ones who loved them. For Steffi, who I know not to take over the Sunshine Skyway bridge when we’re out driving together. For Susan, whose grief hangs on her face like the weight of her boy at the end of a rope. For Lisa, who had a husband and then just had pieces of him on a robe in a plastic bag.

But Jeff Mangum/Neutral Milk Hotel doesn’t leave you all alone with that:

And when we break
we’ll wait for our miracle
God is a place . . .

I’m not even going to number this one because it is just so deeply unacceptable. It silently resets my library folder preference off of the NAS and on to a local HDD where then I have to painfully figure out what I imported to where and reimport it. It then wants to rebuild the library which takes freakin’ 3-5 hours (mostly I cancel that and by some miracle it actually honors the cancel button). Why? What makes it think it can reset my preferences without telling me? Usually this happens if for some reason the NAS was unavailable. But not always. Sometimes, it does this JUST TO MAKE ME ANGRY. And it works. It makes me angry.

1. It sucks CPU even when you aren’t asking it to do anything but sit quietly in the background. In this shot, it isn’t even PLAYING MUSIC.

2. It is slow as christmas.

3. Programs that go comatose and give you the computer finger (hourglass on Windows; rainbow pinwheel on Mac) without telling you what they’re doing really annoy me. Ok. It is beyond annoyance. Why can’t they stick up a dialog that says, “I’m taking this opportunity to erase some of your preferences… please wait.” iTunes is the king of comatose. I see the rainbow frickin’ constantly. “You want me to PLAY SOMETHING??? Here’s the rainbow while I hope you change your mind and go do something else…”

Ok. Why, maybe? Well, because I have a large music library and I keep it on a software RAID5 NAS. Which brings me to:

4. iTunes can’t handle large music libraries. Splitting them into multiple libraries is not a satisfactory solution.

5. iTunes sucks over a network storage device. This is the modern computing era, seriously, why can’t we have a decent library indexing scheme and some local caching?

6. It is a monopoly. I would dearly love to chuck iTunes for something that doesn’t make me so angry, but there isn’t anything else that doesn’t make me just as angry for OS X. There are literally hundreds of players for windows. Where are the choices for OS X?

And honestly, I’m fine with the crap ripping, the crap transcoding, the crap file naming, and the crap support for OGG. All I’m asking it to do is import, organize/tag, and playback music.

If Apple really wants to be the multimedia device of the future, they’d best stop adding useless cruft to iTunes like the album art flippin’ waste of CPU and do some basics right. Like have a decent library storage format that doesn’t take 5 hours to rebuild and can manage a modern sized library without sucking.

This is one of those songs that makes me want to . . . yeah. But I used to wonder how in hell they got Frank Black to agree to a love song. The Pixies ROCK, and they’d be with me on that deserted island, but they are not known for whispering sweet nothings in your ear. And then I realized. It must have been that he would only agree to it if they let him yell “Chicken butt!” in the beginning, thereby ruining the otherwise sexy, romantic groove of this song. Listen, it’s right there in the beginning after the drums kick in: “Chicken butt! Chicken butt!”

But now, damn near twenty years later, I finally looked up the lyrics, and they say “Shake your butt!” So, back to wondering how they got Frank Black on board with this surfin’ love song with no whores, no slicing up eye balls, no debasing or breaking bones, no screaming, just crooning all I’m saying, pretty baby, la la love you, don’t mean maybe. How? (Probably because he’s not the one doing the crooning. I think the drummer sings it. So in the end, he just couldn’t bring himself to do it.)

Oh, and by the way, the term for a misheard word or phrase like this is mondegreen.

I sometimes think about film and music critics and why some of their tastes seem to be so off of what us normal folk like (or sometimes can stand) to watch or listen to. I often hear the remark that critics see or hear hundreds or thousands of films and CDs so what interests them is what is different, what stands out.

As I’ve said here before, I listen to a lot of music. I spend a lot of time researching new music. I’ve listened to countless hours of all kinds of music. Nonetheless, I don’t usually mind hearing very similar things to what I already like and I don’t spend time trying to find the “new sound.”

That said, TV On The Radio is utterly original. I’ve never heard anything like this. Sure, I can pick out bits and pieces and say, “that sounds a little like so and so” (Bowie, T-Rex, Soul Wax…) but to do that you have to ignore all the other stuff going on at the same time. It’s like looking at a tapestry in a museum and seeing a little swatch of red that’s the same color as your grandmother’s sweater. It doesn’t really mean the tapestry looks like your grandmother’s sweater at all.

As such, TV On The Radio is somewhat of a critics’ darling. After thousands of hours of (insert popular artist name here), I can see why something unlike any other music would be a refreshing break. Frequently, I see their point but can’t stand listening to the actual music. I say, “yes, this is totally different and yet, completely unlistenable for me.”

I thought TV On The Radio would be another one of those, and frankly, it has taken a number of listens. But the song Hours brought me back to this album, Return To Cookie Mountain over and over and each time I liked more and more of it. Dirtywhirl is my new standout song. I started waking up with their music in my head, which is a sure sign that I’m hooked.

Yet, I can completely see the perspective of my very talented and knowledgeable musician friend who said, “TVOTR is just weird.”

Syncopated, jazzy, sometimes (overly?) attention drawing drums. Group singing, but don’t think CSR. It isn’t like group singing I’ve heard except for at a Greek play I saw and the chorus would come out and talk. It’s sort of surreal and addictive. Sonic textures, deep and thick – guitar walls of sound intermixed with some amazingly tender playing. The odd timing, unusual mix of styles, the sort of freaky vocals, it all works in a way that the underground, college experimental sounds don’t work for me. It is all very professional sounding. Polished. Listenable. At times, Pop styling seems to nuzzle into a wall of sound looking very at home in a context where you’d think Pop would die. Pop beckons you in, smiles and waves you closer, and then you find, well, what?

My mind has changed/my bodys frame but god i like it/my hearts aflame/my bodys strained but god i like it

Weird, yes, but I like it. And I’m starting to crave more.

I ordered CDs from Amazon, among them Norah Jones’ new one, Not Too Late. I get my CDs and happily start ripping them as I listen to music 99% of the time either on my computer or thru my iPod. I yoink the CDs and the booklets out of the craplastic (which I toss), rip my CDs and put them away in a folder never to be seen again unless I hate it and delete the mp3s and trade it on lala. The point here is that the computer and the iPod are my chosen listening devices.

All the CDs go well except Norah. My Mac ignores that I’ve put in a CD. It is invisible. I do a little research and I discover that EMI has introduced some new DRM. This means that this disc is basically useless to me. My stereo is a piece of crap—I really don’t use it. I’m not going to use it just for Norah. I mean, she’s got talent, but really.

So, I go to Amazon and see that they return only 50% of the cost of an opened CD. I’m now to be honest pretty steamed at EMI for this and not thrilled with Amazon for not having advertised the experimental DRM on the product page. But really, my beef is with the record company.

Nonetheless, I go to the customer service page on Amazon to write them an email. None of the subject lines, which I have to pick from a drop-down, describe my exact situation. One of them reads: “Received Damaged, Defective, or Wrong Item” and I decide that, in fact, this CD is defective. I pick that subject and I write:

I’m going to call this defective because the DRM is so severe that my mac won’t see it as a CD. I listen to all my music while working, on the computer. This product page should say in big letters CONTAINS VICIOUS DRM THAT MAY RENDER IT USELESS IN YOUR PREFERRED LISTENING DEVICE. Why can’t I listen to this on a computer? That is just wrong. It is taking this stupid war against music consumers to the next level. If your return policy on opened CDs weren’t so Draconian, I’d return this in an instant. As it is, I now realize that I have to be VERY careful as to what CDs I can buy now. I have to research their computer compatibility. How sad. I am sad now.

I am not asking you to do anything for me, but if you have any influence over the record companies who think DRM like this is a good idea, tell them they’re being moronic. They are just pissing people off.

Thanks. I love amazon. The record companies are making me hate them.

About 15 min later I get an email that reads:

I am sorry to hear about the problem you experienced with your shipment. I have placed a new order for the item. There is no charge for this replacement.

Here are the details of the new order:

Order Number: 104-XXXXXXXXXShipping Speed: One-Day ShippingEstimated Delivery Date: February 22, 2007.

We must receive the item from your original shipment within 30 days from the date of this e-mail. If the item being replaced was part of a set, please return the entire set.

NOTE: If we do not receive the item by then, we will charge the credit card or bank account associated with this order for the cost of the item.

Oh no, I think. Now I am going to exchange my stupid “defective” CD for another stupid defective CD because as far as I’m concerned they are all defective. Did a human read this, I wonder? I say, “don’t do anything”—I was just being a petulant crybaby abusing Amazon’s customer service to bitch. And now this.

I am at this point laughing.

I used the very handy “have customer service call you on the phone” feature at Amazon and a VERY smart and nice person helped me work out what to do. I apologized a lot for the confusion and Amazon apologized for not actually reading my initial email (yes a human “read” it, but he didn’t actually READ it).

It’s a crazy chicken world.

So, anybody heard this CD? How’s it compare to her others? I guess I won’t be listening to it.

A coworker told me that she caught the Black Horse video on TV when her daughter was watching and found KT riveting. She asked me if I had heard of KT.

Now, I spend a lot of time exploring music, but one major hole for me is that I have no idea what is popular at this moment. To me, the world’s music library is largely without history. I like what I like when I like it without respect to when the music was created. The only time I listen to the radio is when forced to do so or when it’s Morning Becomes Eclectic on KCRW. To me, the radio is either a bunch of crap I don’t like or am not in the mood for or frustrating because when I do like something, they don’t tell me what it is.

In short, I had never heard of KT Tunstall. I first bought the official video of Blackhorse on iTunes Music Store, since that was what my coworker had seen. Then, I checked her out on youtube where there are a number of videos of her. A couple of them KNOCKED MY SOCKS OFF. Once of them was the Blackhorse song, but just her – alone using a digital loop pedal. It gives me shivers and goosebumps to watch.

She’s got mad talent.

I bought the CD immediately and listen to it all the time. I recently got her first album, too and it offers many amazing songs, among them Gone To The Dogs which is haunting and extremely addictive.

Last night, sanvea and I went and saw her live at the Key Club.

I’m first going to tell you the bad part. I had called yesterday to see if there was an opening band and was told there was and that KT would go on at 9 p.m. We got there at about 8:30 to find that there was no opening band and she was on her third song. Ok, we missed 2 songs, I can live with that. At 9:11, after 5 songs, they left the stage saying, “good night.” sanvea and I were like, “is this an intermission?” The crowd, a very very big crowd was going wild. Eventually, the bassist (I think) came out and said that they wanted to do an encore but were told they could not. He apologized and left. Lights came up, we were shuffled out.

An hour to drive there, $6 to park, $70.25 for two tickets, $6 per beer, no opening band, 8 songs. $10.28 per song. $1.37 per minute.

She was awesome. I’m a sucker for the Scottish accent, to start with, so anything she says between songs tickles me enormously. Poise, talent, fabulous lyrics, amazing voice. The band is wildly talented as well. If they had played 5 more songs, I would be raving about the whole experience. I’m not knocking the band at all. They were unbelievably good. They deserved much better.

The Key Club, in my opinion, oversold tickets. It was freakin’ packed. People could not fit in the doors. They have a restaurant that charges $50 per person to sit there for a concert. If I had been one of those, I would be so pissed! The sound there is pretty good, and visibility from most of the club is decent and they have TV screens, but going to watch somebody on TV seems stupid to me. But really, an hour show for $35? You’re freakin’ kidding me. 9:11 p.m. in HOLLYWOOD? What the hell were they thinking?

In summary:

KT? Way amazing. Buy her CDs, watch her youtube stuff, see her live show someplace that doesn’t suck.

Key Club? Bite me. You could have Stevie Ray Vaughn, The Doors and Kurt Cobain play and I won’t come there again, you greedy bastards.

Not counting Irish music, the first time I was really hooked by World Music was in graduate school.

A Canadian friend of mine in graduate school for French went to Oxford for a while. Yes, it is definitely confusing and the only thing it has to do with music is that while at Oxford, he met and became good friends with one of the members of Outback: Graham Wiggins. Graham gave him a didgeridoo and one night over at my friend’s house I asked him what this odd painted wood tube was. He ended up giving me a cassette tape of this band, Outback.

I was totally hooked. About three months later, I saw an Outback CD in the used bin and picked it up, and just in time, the cassette was going all ratty.

At that time, my playlist was basically Helmet, Ministry, Soundgarden, Rollin’s Band, L7 and Outback. It totally didn’t fit, but I just loved it from the start. It is very happy, fun, uplifting, toe-tapping, dance around music.

I love both Outback’s albums. I am not a big fan of Dr. Didg, I really wish I was because Graham Wiggins is a brilliant musician. I find Baka Beyond amazing though.

I still listen to Outback fairly frequently and a couple years ago I listened to almost nothing but Baka Beyond. I think I am a happier human because of it; it’s good for your brain. The second Outback album is called Dance The Devil Away and that’s just what happens. It exorcises the dark spots from your soul and leaves you smiling.

First off, I should mention that I know one of the band members but aside from causing me to listen to the CD the first time, that has no bearing on the stuff I’m about to say about this band. Well, except for that it is really fun to be able to praise a friend’s work.

In October, 2004 my friend sent me their new CD: stereovision and I embarked on a repeatable 11 song journey that I still take several times a month. I say journey, because this is one of those albums where every song stands alone and each has a unique personality, but when you get to the end of the CD, you feel like you’ve been on a trip. You’ve returned from a quest that you know was rewarding, but you’re not really sure where you just went. So, you go again and again.

This CD is textured, rich, deep. It rewards listening to closely with headphones, in the dark. There are treasures in this sound and like good film, good literature, good art, the more angles you look at this music from, the more it reveals. It rewards your inquisitiveness. Yet, and this is the cool part, it is a great CD to work to. You don’t have to go deep, and when you don’t, it’s just straight up fun music.

This CD makes me sing and dance and I suck at both, so it must be sonic sorcery.

Can you tell I dig this album?

I hear some Zero 7 in here. I hear some Fripp, some Eno. I hear some classic Bowie. But they’re all echos – this band stands alone.

Check ‘em out

When I was in college, far too long ago, a friend asked me to name my five favorite bands. It was probably just a conversation starter, but I had to think about it for a while (that’ll teach her to make small talk with me).

I came up with some rules. The band had to have more than one album, preferably 3 or more. I had to have liked them for at least 2 years. I had to think that they had staying power for me, so they had to have survived the obsessive phase where I listen to them over and over. I had to have returned to them after the obsession ran itself out.

The list was:

1. Dead Can Dance
2. Stevie Ray Vaughn
3. Tom Waits
4. Nick Cave
5. ....

Holy crap. I can’t remember #5. How sad. I now have incontrovertible evidence that my memory is only 80% of what it was.

It might have been Gypsy Kings. It might have been King Crimson. It might have been the Cocteau Twins. I think it was a few years too early to have been Soundgarden.

I have had the pleasure of seeing all these bands multiple times over the years with the exception of Stevie. When I was a high school senior, we had tickets to see him play at the Del Mar Fairgrounds which is just north of San Diego. That is, typically, a one-and-a-half hour trip from here. We packed a picnic, planning on finding some lovely park on the cliffs and then spending a leisurely late afternoon walking, and getting to the concert early. Sadly, LA lived up to its reputation and it was bumper to bumper all the way to SD. It took 6 hours to drive there. We got to the Fairgrounds as Stevie was getting off the stage. Strangely, I’m still sad about it.