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A song of the year and its importance — part 1

Before anything else I should note this is a word-for-word repost from a Myspace blog some weeks back, but since I will continue this post here I feel it’s good to rescue it from there and include it here for reference. Anyway:

—

I consider this a rough draft more than anything else, but hopefully it will be of interest.

It has been a while I have had a particular song to hold on to, if that’s the best way to describe it. An anchor, something that provides a greater focus beyond itself and the specific hit it gives you (if it’s a good song, that is — I suppose a bad one functions in a similar but opposite fashion, but never mind that for now). To my slight surprise, I now have such a song, something that’s been almost inescapable in my mental landscape for some weeks now, and may well continue for some time yet. As time passes its importance will diminish accordingly — such is the way of things — but for now, right now, it is key and crucial.

A couple of weeks back, after going back and forth on it for a while, I decided to join some friends to go see the electronic act VNV Nation, who I’ve known about for some time but who I can’t say ever particularly followed closely. A couple of close friends of mine do, though, and I’d learned some small details along the way — that the band was led by Ronan Harris, and that it was his one-man show for a long while, that he was Irish but currently based in Hamburg, Germany, and that he’d been a mainstay of the Metropolis label in the US for some time.

A touch of background — in my own very magpie-like fashion, I’d learned about and followed a variety of acts that were prototypes to the style VNV worked in in earlier years, when I first started working as a radio DJ in particular. Like a lot of people, I suspect, Wax Trax! was a bit of a revelation in the late eighties, if also beholden to its own cliches, while perhaps more relevantly a group like Nitzer Ebb helped in showcasing the clipped, strident style of an aggressive dance approach pioneered by earlier groups such as DAF. As part and parcel of a large and ultimately protean ‘dark’ music scene — everything from skeletal folk to extreme noise and back again now seems to have been recruited to its ranks, and it resists easy and ultimate classification — it’s an approach I enjoyed, though as time went on and my interests expanded in further directions I stopped obsessively following the style and its various practitioners, as they seemed to bring little to the form beyond an increasing embrace of harder trance styles. This made sense, given the further lines of descent that could be drawn — not for nothing, for instance, did the Tamagothi parody game include ‘Raver’ as one of the final results for one’s skull-hatched pet — but it also seemed exhausted to me. Efforts like Apoptygma Berzerk and more recently Motor showed that something was going on still, but my inclination to look further wasn’t excited.

So much as background — I went off to the show, and these were my impressions, as posted first last that evening to some friends and then a bit later elsewhere, after some revision and meditation:

* More goth fashion variants than I’ve ever seen before. In fact more flat out full on goth/industrial types that I’ve seen at any show anywhere, period — conservatively speaking, I’d say every 9 out of 10 attendees were sporting the look. It was kinda impressive.

* I had no preconception of what the bandmembers looked like but I admit when Ronan Harris took the stage I didn’t expect to see a guy who looked like he could have been in the Mighty Mighty Bosstones (admittedly dressed in black) running around the stage like Bruce Dickinson and doing all kinds of hip-hop-as-interpreted-by-a-nu-metal-guy gestures.

* The open Depeche worship throughout was, of course, catnip for me. Harris said he first saw them in 1982 and combined that with a quick snarky rant about how people still give his band shit because they don’t use guitars. Also he pretty much has David Gahan‘s shtick down of getting the crowd going, ie turning on a dime from crooning along on something to “AWRIGHT LET’S SEE THOSE HANDS!” But he balanced that pretty nicely with good humor and what honestly seemed like a surprise at how packed the place was (Wiltern Theatre, mostly sold out — I was chilling at the back of the mezzanine) and how well they were received.

* I knew that trance has been the dominant element in whatever EBM evolved into some time back but I admit I was surprised at how well it worked for them. What I also found interesting was how the various lyrical hooks and/or cliches willingly embraced fit in with aspirational trance in general, especially “Perpetual.”

* Their iconographic approach is a logical descendant of things like Nitzer Ebb circa This Total Age and Laibach and other similar things, all cleaned up and post-rave to boot. It’s further reflected in the stage projections and the general design and instrumental set-up, lots of striking poses in the back and all. Jarring moments result — they play the beginning of one song which has an extensive sample from some guy about war’s destruction, and then all of a sudden the imagery is a CGI black/white cityscape that’s part Fritz Lang, part Speer/Riefenstahl with the band logo dominating the top of the tallest building while searchlights play up and down it or otherwise reach into the sky. Haven’t felt so unsettled in a live music context by what I was seeing and the implications one could draw from how imagery is reused and reinterpreted since I saw MIA two years back.

Still, all good in the end — it had been a *long* while since I saw a show heavily weighted towards that sonic approach in general and it was a good refresher.

With those as initial impressions, I returned home and, logically enough, fired up the band on Myspace (an easy assumption to make, and accurate). While the live experience was a treat, I wanted to see what they were like ‘straight up,’ for lack of a better term — in full studio control of the acoustics, without the (perfectly enjoyable) audience incitements, and so forth.

At the same time, I also scanned the Wikipedia entry and noted something that would soon prove of importance:

The “VNV” in the name stands for Victory Not Vengeance, in keeping with the group’s motto, “One should strive to achieve, not sit in bitter regret.”

More on that later, though.

The band’s Myspace site contains two tracks from its current album, Judgement, the first one being the second song on that album, “The Farthest Star.”

Now, those who know me well know my story about hearing “Soon” by My Bloody Valentine for the first time, and this is discussed in detail in Marooned, so I won’t repeat it here. My first time listen to “The Farthest Star” (well, second time, since it had been played at the show as well) was not like that at all, instead it was simply an immediate appreciation of it, late at night and running on little sleep. But because I didn’t have anything yet from the group, by default I kept coming back to it over the next couple of days.

And then again, and again.

At this point, if you’ve not listened to it yet, please click on the link to the Myspace page above and do so.  Meantime, in the relevant blog post, here’s what Ronan had to say about it:

2. The Farthest Star – Melodic, sometimes melancholic, sometimes uplifting, if you don’t care either way – it’s got beats. Seems to be popular with people who didn’t record it and hear it 4000 times.

This transcription site lists these lyrics, which as best as I can tell are accurate:

The will to greatness clouds the mind
Consumes the senses, veils the signs
We each are meant to recognize.
Redeeming graces cast aside
Enduring notions, new found promise,
That the end will never come.

We live in times when all seems lost,
But time will come when we’ll look back,
Upon ourselves and on our failings.

Embrace the void even closer still,
Erase your doubts as you surrender everything:

We possess the power,
If this should start to fall apart,
To mend divides,
To change the world,
To reach the farthest star.
If we should stay silent.
If fear should win our hearts,
Our light will have long diminished,
Before it reaches the farthest star.

Wide awake in a world that sleeps
Enduring thoughts, enduring scenes.
The knowledge of what is yet to come.
From a time when all seems lost,
From a dead man to a world.
Without restraint, unafraid and free.

We possess the power,
If this should start to fall apart,
To mend divides,
To change the world,
To reach the farthest star.
If we should stay silent.
If fear should win our hearts,
Our light will have long diminished,
Before it reaches the farthest star.

If we fall and break,
All the tears in the world cannot make
us whole
Again.

We possess the power,
If this should start to fall apart,
To mend divides,
To change the world,
To reach the farthest star.
If we should stay silent.
If fear should win our hearts,
Our light will have long diminished,
Before it reaches the farthest star.

Now, again, some people who know me well enough will wonder at the fact that I’ve quoted the lyrics in full — an old essay on Freaky Trigger is still my definitive statement on how I feel about lyrics in general.  But I had my various caveats and elaborations, and a key one here is this:

What needs to be kept in mind, though, is part of an earlier point — namely, that lyrics don’t simply not exist when encountered. As I hear music, again and again, things can and do slip through my straightforward enjoyment of the the music as a total unit….sometimes some of the really most amazing moments of a song’s words burrow in deep because for me they really are great. I can’t put my finger on what makes a truly great or memorable lyric any more than I can define a great or memorable song — and the two elements need not always be in sync, that greatness for both, for me to enjoy the song.

But perhaps, in this case, I can.

As they say, to be continued…

Why I like music — the extremely short version

Which, after you read this, may make you wonder what the hell the long version is about.

But it occurred me after outlining all the political details in the previous post that some form of review of why I adore music so intensely might be handy. In ways, it establishes a baseline.

That said I’ll cheat a bit here and pull in some details from other sources — I’ll be doing this a bit this week as I start everything rolling! — along with some further updates. So reaching into the endless sprawl that is the archives of alt.music.alternative, I was able to find this thread and specifically my post on it, detailing “Five Records That Changed Your Life,” at least in my 1997 judgment. Thus:

1. Shawn Cassidy — all his late seventies releases, including the
live album
Easy inclusion — he was the first specific musician I got into. You have to start somewhere — I was six and I thought his stuff was great.

2. The Mighty 690 AM radio station, weeknights, 1981 to 1982
I had gotten my first radio, and this was the station I kept it on, and this is what I listened to every night during sixth grade. There was nothing else. It was nothing but total Top 40, nothing else — the playlist literally repeated, with tiny variations, about every two hours. Pure pop, REAL pure pop, because that was precisely what was played — the popular hits. First introductions to New Wave, dance pop, funk, too many other things — and, of course, Casey Kasem counting down the Billboard hits every Sunday.

3. Duran Duran, “Hungry Like the Wolf”
Still remember the exact first time I heard this — late November 1982, upstate New York, I come down for breakfast on a cold day, and school once again looms. The local top 40 station is on [sigh -- no real equivalent to Mighty 690 there], it’s bopping along — and all of a sudden, a woman’s laugh, a keyboard squiggle, a great guitar hook, and this guy singing in a way I’d never quite heard before. From there it was a basic step to progress into Brit synth-pop in general, Soft Cell, Depeche Mode, and further and further into realms of electronic experimentation, pop groups, techno, ambient, industrial, swoony orchestrated pop, Roxy Music and glam rock…

4. Def Leppard, “Photograph”
Pretty much the same massive impact on me as Duran Duran, but in a different series of realms [and I don't immediately remember when I heard it first -- just sometime in early 1983]. One *killer* riff, biggest rock beat I’d heard yet, and loudest guitars, and catchy as all hell! Another example why Sheffield is the underrated locale in English rock history [see also Human League, Comsat Angels, Cabaret Voltaire, Pulp...]. From here, it leads to heavy metal in its radio sense for that time [Quiet Riot, Motley Crue, the works], but eventually into Guns n’ Roses, Metallica, Ministry, the Sex Pistols, thrash, punk, loud power-pop, T. Rex and glam rock [one of the many intersecting influences with Duran, actually!], grindcore, pure noise, avant-garde weirdness…

5. My Bloody Valentine, “Soon”
It’s late 1990, and now I’m a DJ at the college station at UCLA. Going to college has merrily expanded the range of what I have to listen to, and basically sent my late high-school record buying mania into an overdrive which has never really disappeared, almost 10 years on now. As I’m doing my show one day, I see the vinyl version of the “Glider” EP by MBV. Someone has reviewed “Soon” as being the most amazing thing out there, easily the equal of anything Sonic Youth might be doing. Being a touch familiar with Sonic Youth, I think, “OK,” cue it up, and play it.

Time STOPS.

Seven minutes later, the song ends and I realize I’ve been sitting at the console frozen the whole damn time, literally gaping in awe and ecstasy. I can barely move.

I think the rest of my life, musically speaking, will always be a pursuit of a similar moment, when I literally am made senseless by the greatest record ever made.

Now, anyone who’s read Marooned will recognize that concluding part as essentially a stripped-down take on what eventually ended up in my essay on Loveless in said book, so you can tell I’ve been pondering that incident for quite a while.

But as a summation of key records and music sources in my life, the list as a whole still holds well. About all I could add to it would be to note that I happily grew up with records always around — my folks got me a Fisher-Price ‘record player’ that was a glorified music box that I loved, but also got me a basic but fun record player for real that on three speeds (33, 45, 78!) and which I loved futzing around with in my preschool/grade school years.

Between that and the radio and my parents’ own listening, really I can’t imagine a time without easy access to music and favorite listening bursts and more besides. Among my loves included a great 1940s era manners-for-kids record — consisting of all these medleys sung by this friendly guy with a big band orchestra behind him, I’ve got it around somewhere still — lots of Sesame Street albums (up to and including the legendary Sesame Street Fever), Disney records, Free to Be…You and Me and much more besides (and don’t even ask what I thought when my folks got the original Star Wars soundtrack soon after the movie came out). A great stew of things and I haven’t touched on them all by any means, but it gives you an idea of what I was up to before Shawn Cassidy hit me like a ton of bricks.

Now quite why Cassidy, who was essentially marketed and sold as teen-girl material (or younger), should have hit with me is on the one hand a demographic oddity but on the other hand shows why demographics are so much trash. What matters isn’t intent but result, and the result was I heard his stuff and loved it. It had to have been because of his appearance in the Hardy Boys TV series, since I was a fan of the books from fairly early on. I even had the poster on the wall, and no regrets — dude was a hero, as far as I was concerned.

But beyond that — and to wrap up here — I can’t really say there was anything that prompted the rabid love that was already in place. It just simply was, and I had the atmosphere and interest in pursuing it further, as I did. That it took the steps above to reach full obsession is its own story, but I was already primed and ready to go. Now I partly make my living by talking about it on a regular basis — and I can’t say I mind at all. It’s something I always liked to do as well.