Unidentified subject!
Colin --
How are things? Where do you work now?
I was sitting in Applebee's with Ian tonight before work, munching away
on chicken fingers and fries and longing for a Guinness to celebrate St.
Paddy's Day. And I was idly watching SportsCenter
on the TV over the bar and half-listening to the pop station being piped
in over the stereo system in the restaurant.
Whatever this music network is, the selection is... interesting. It ranges
from 90s bubblegum pop to disco to reggae to ballads to country to hard
rock -- and everything in between. I think every
mainstream, franchise/ chain restaurant in America has the same radio
network, cause the music is ALL the same. Anyway, some Lionel Richie song
or other came on, and it made me think of the
early eighties. Lionel Richie songs always make me think of the early
eighties for some reason.
And it occurred to me that music has the capability to make us think of an
era of time, even if we weren't alive to experience it. Not exactly a new
revelation, I know. But the next thought that
occurred to me is that this may possibly be a phenomenon unique to this
century.
I mean, music historians can point to a baroque piece as being from this
century or that, or a popular drinking song from the 1860s as being a
prime example of Civil War period music, yes. But
never has music been so wide-spread and widely propogated as in the
twentieth century. Let us not forget that until this century, we didn't
have the capability to record music and keep it for posterity.
We do have sheet music, but every musician who's spent any time studying
classical music will tell you that the symphonies and concertoes of the
masters have lost something over the years. It really
is a shame we can't hear how it was when Beethoven was directing the
orchestra in his Fifth Symphony.
But in this century, anything we attempt can be recorded and laid down for
generations to come, just the way it sounded when it was performed, for
better or worse. I still have tapes and LPs of my
old high school band performances, with all the squeaks and squawks
preserved in hi-fi glory. Regardless of how you feel about them, they're
here to stay, at least as long as we preserve the
technology to play them (which is another debate altogether).
This isn't even mentioning restoring old recordings from the early
twentieth century. It's one of the nice benefits we're reaping from the
digital age. Personally, I'm glad we've been able to rescue
decades of music through the magic of digital remastering. The world would
be worse off if not for the resurrected wailings of Louis Armstrong and
Dizzy Gillespie on trumpet, or Billie Holiday and
Lena Horne crooning at us from forty years back. From here on out, there
is no excuse for us not to have any type of music, from any time this
century, at our disposal. This will finally let us have the
closest we're going to get to a time machine. What is a time machine after
all, if not something that sends us back to a certain period in our lives?
Anyway, just some thoughts. I dunno... I think I'm thinking too much.
Especially since all this was inspired by a Lionel Ritchie song. Shudder.
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