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On the DVD of Hedwig and the Angry Inch (an essential for anyone who's ever loved rock n' roll), there's a great documentary that tracks the creation of Hedwig, from persona to musical to film. The documentary opens with a sequence of clueless journalists asking Hedwig's creator, Jonathan Cameron Mitchell, question after silly question about the project. The camera finally lands on Cameron Mitchell giving a deadpan eye-roll and asking, "Well, what do you want to know?" This is, I think, an important question for any music fan to consider.
The ease and efficacy with which new music and artists can be consumed has been gradually increasing for a long time. But in the past two or three years, the whole music consumption machine has accelerated out of control. For casual music fans, as for the young obsessives-in-training who are only just discovering the artists that will change their lives and send them off in a million musical directions, this is a great thing. It's all right there, laid out for them on MySpace or in their friends' iTunes libraries. The portals of access are important things to look at critically, but the point is that they're there, they're not going anywhere, and the listening possibilities are endless.
For those of us who have crossed the devourer's threshold (and if you've crossed it, you'll know what I'm talking about; it's that moment when you suddenly see your favorite band as a branch on a family tree that goes on forever in both directions), the sword is double-edged. Music is a fierce and frenzied master, whether you're a lover or a creator. And with the huge quantities of music now available, it's as though the Internet has turned us all into computer systems with inadequate processors. No one has ever been able to get a handle on all the music out there — but we've come a long way from a young Bob Dylan having to steal a collection of folk records because they were the only known copies in Minnesota, and he had to have them. Forget catching up with the past. Now it's barely even possible to catch up with the present, let alone the future.
So what do we want to know? The fact that this question can even be asked is why I believe music writing can actually be worthwhile. Yes, there will always be formulaic crap that rehashes the same tired questions, reports gossip, or delivers rote reviews simply because a new release is available. And yes, the incestuous feedback loop between major labels and mainstream publications will always keep a lot of bad music in the public consciousness. Neither of these things will ever go away. They'll just get more and more absurd, and hopefully we'll all learn to laugh at them.
But as a response to the overwhelming accessibility of music today, I find there's also an increasingly real sense of public discourse about music that matters and will endure. It's a belief that music writing shouldn't have to be fodder, propped up on the strength of the music it discusses. That, in a nutshell, is the inspiration for this particular blog. I'll be doing my best to filter out all the formulaic garbage and convey an earnest sense of excitement about the stuff I think is really worth being excited about. I'll probably also have to grapple with the more general question of taste in attempt to justify my convictions.
I'll also be writing about things happening here in Montreal, if for no other reason than the fact that I live here, and proximity breeds knowledge and hopefully insight. Don't get me wrong, you probably won't find a more unapologetic champion of Montreal's best bands. I'm just not so sure I know what a "city" really is any more! We can talk about that next time.
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Another thing I'll be doing in this blog: Each column will be associated with a "pick from the past" — that is, a record that's at least five years old which I believe is mildly overlooked and stands the test of time.
The inaugural honors go to a hero of mine: Leonard Cohen. New Skin for the Old Ceremony (1974, Sony) is an amazing record beginning to end that's never been given the attention it deserves. It's funny, it's dark, it's sexy, it's sacred, it's profane. A fitting first choice, I think.
Posted July 2006
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