Grasping At Straws

Author: DC

Words: 900

First published: October 2008

Since I started writing about music, I have been trying to pull together a column that expresses why I find songs so magical, why they mean so much to me. To use words to persuade that person sitting out there, reading this and thinking “music just doesn’t excite me” that they should keep hunting, that at some point they will find that band or song or concerto that they fall in love with. To capture how one song can make you feel positively ecstatic while another crumples you up, maybe for good.

 

Each and every time I try this, I fail. I can’t find words that capture the feeling, it’s like trying to describe the colour black or the feeling you get from the first sip of the perfectly poured vanilla latte. I end up writing columns that are just dozens of examples of songs or musical moments that I adore but that, for all I know, may have no effect on anyone else. And I always end up trashing the article in frustration. However, the more I think about it, the more I am convinced that I’ve been missing the point all along.

 

There is no overarching theory. There are no words that will get this job done. There are only those moments of magic, there are only our personal reactions, and there are only descriptions. Sure, you can pick songs about, you can theorise that key changes create wave patterns that stimulate the cochlea or that the voice of Bon Jovi is scientifically proven to be an aphrodisiac to anyone wearing stonewash denim. But fundamentally all we are left with are the moments that matter to us. So I’m going to write a little bit about some of the moments that I love, and then I need to ask something of you all – I’d love you to email me or write in with yours. One persons Mozart is anothers Phil Collins and anothers Katy Perry, everything is as valid as everything else, as long as it makes your spine tingle. We’ll put them all together, put them on the website, and in 50 years time our children will be shocked that their parents loved Cheap Trick that much. So, to get the ball rolling, here are some of the things that I love:

 

–         The way Jay-Z spits the opening bars of “99 Problems”. My favourite intro to any song. The words are exceptional, but the best thing about this song is the tone – Jay’s voice is the perfect blend of teacher, confidant, resigned hustler and swaggering superhero. The best bit of all? The way he calls in the beat with an imperious “hit me”. It’s his way of saying “I could go on a capella all day and this song would still kill, but when this beat drops it’s all over”. Just killer.

 

–         That little crack in Ryan Adams’ voice. The musical equivalent of the Hillary Swank moment of defeat in “Million Dollar Baby” – it gets me every time. Sometimes Mr Adams doesn’t fully sing a note, instead using a cracking, hoarse whisper which manages to communicate lust, longing, despair, fear, hope and joy all at once. When he goes for it I feel like I’m in a lift dropping two floors a second while simultaneously kissing a beautiful girl and mourning the death of my grandmother.

 

–         The first 10 seconds of “Broadcasting” by hardcore heroes Comeback Kid. The whole song is stellar, but the opening is a pure musical adrenaline shot. The drums clatter in, the guitars roar and singer Andrew Neufeld snarls “a common threat sits in our house”. And it makes me feel like I could climb a mountain or fight Mike Tyson or achieve anything I could possibly dream of. When God works out, this is his soundtrack.

 

–         The line “you’re a wet martini in a paper cup” from “Wasp Nest” by The National. To me the only thing harder to pin down than the magic of music is the magic of a person that you love, like or admire. We try to, from the obvious (“man, she’s got great legs”) to the poetic (“she’s like the sun streaming through the clouds on a winters day”), but for my money no-one is better at this than Matt Berninger of The National. This description is both hugely opaque and totally understandable – it makes no sense, yet you know just what he means.

 

–         The lead guitar line in “Warbrain” by The Alkaline Trio. The lyrics are about all things dark and stormy, but you’d know that without even hearing them. The spiralling guitar line perfectly echoes the rising and falling of the wind during a storm, the utter beauty with the hidden threat, the crackle of lightening and the rumble of thunder. I once listened to this song about a dozen times in a row during a storm-swept bus ride in Scotland, and… man, that was something else.

 

So, there are mine. The chances are you won’t have heard them, or won’t necessarily quite understand why I love them so much. And that’s fine by me, as long as you have some moments of your own. So send them in, I’d love to read them – or if they are too personal and you don’t want to make them public then at least go find your ipod or turntable or boombox and give them a listen…

Common Existence

Author: DC

Words: 1,414

First published: Election Time 2008

During the 24 hours after Barack Obama was elected President of the United States of America, I seemed to run into all of the politically-aware people that I know. Some are left-leaning, others fall on the right of the spectrum, and of course they all had an opinion on what had happened and they had all experienced waves and waves of emotion as the results came in. Obama supporters felt elated, relieved, proud, shocked and stunned. His opponents felt sad, wary, worried and fearful. But what struck me that day wasn’t that people had reacted strongly to the events, you expect that during every election. The thing I noticed was that people, as they processed their responses and tried to make sense of what had happened, were actually physically reaching out to each other. The Obama fans were wrapping each other in celebratory hugs, exchanging high-fives and fist bumps and handshakes. The McCainites were literally leaning on each other for support, arms around shoulders, hands resting on the curves of backs, hands ruffling hair.

 

            The election was significant to each of the people on a personal level – they all believed in their favoured candidate, felt strongly that the world needed that man in these difficult times, and sensed that this was one of those moments upon which history pivots. But it was particularly powerful for them because it had become a communal experience, with people thousands of miles apart, people who might not normally be friends or even talk to each other, and people who would normally shy away from participating in “mass movements” all drawn together as part of something bigger. Victory or defeat weren’t things to savour or mourn alone, they had to be shared with others, oftentimes in that most direct form possible – physical human contact.

 

            As I walked home on the night after the election, I tried to think of anything else in recent memory that had made me feel so connected to people, a part of a bigger movement, like one of the swallows who fly in a perfect “V” formation over my house each spring. And I could only think of one thing that had made me feel so wired into the world, and it wasn’t an epic event or a single shining moment – it was something that had been around me forever and was there almost all of the time. It was music.

 

            Music utterly shapes the way in which I relate to people, and more often than not has been the thing that has made me feel bound together with others on a level that goes beyond the same-place-at-the-same-time ordinariness of things. Starting at the most basic level, music is my solution to personal shyness. I find it hard to talk to people I don’t know very well already, small talk is not my strong point, and that initial period of stumbling to find common ground kills me. And music is the way around that – simply asking someone who their favourite bands are and what music they like changes the conversation from something a bit intimidating into something fun and manageable. If the most basic communal experience is sitting around and talking to people, then music is my way in.

 

            Music isn’t just a conversational tool either, as it has the power to offer definition to who we are and, by extension, who we are likely to bond with. As a case study, look at the much-maligned “emo” community. The mainstream media couldn’t have misinterpreted what emo stands for more. They posit that it is eroding social interaction and values by encouraging kids to dwell on their inner feelings rather than outward actions, and by eroding individuality and replacing it with Hot Topic standardisation. Somehow this is meant to result in the development of a generation incapable of true friendship, who believe that there is only one “right” way to be. In truth, it’s about precisely the opposite – it’s about people in a fractured world in which it is hard to make friends trying to make that process easier by giving an initial upfront indication of who they are. “If you have black hairdye and a Paramore t-shirt like mine, then I’m probably going to like you”. It’s about people who don’t really know themselves yet clutching onto the one thing that they are absolutely sure of – that they adore the music they listen to – and projecting that outward. They aren’t less individual just because they love something that everyone else does, because that love comes from somewhere true and pure and absolutely individual inside them. And, crucially, of all of the musical “scenes” it is by far the least elitist of all – yes, you have to have something in common with the rest of your group, be it a love of My Chemical Romance or All Time Low. But then it doesn’t matter what else you do or love, you can listen to black metal or American hardcore or even the Backstreet Boys, and it makes no difference. As long as there is something there binding you together, that’s all that counts.

 

            Music also acts as a support system for those times when your sense of connection to the communal seems to fade, when you feel a little isolated or that what you are going through is so unique that no-one else could understand it. Having someone sing a line that connects with you and that speaks to your personal situation can restore that connection and remind you of what you are part of. In a recent interview with Spin Magazine, Thursday singer Geoff Rickly hit on exactly this when he explained that his band had called their new record Common Existence because “no matter how big the tragedy seems in your life, it's just the same thing every other person out there is going through. Even the biggest things in our lives are just very commonplace and everyday”. He’s not trying to downplay the severity of personal situations or to say that individual experience doesn’t matter; he’s just saying that you’re rarely as alone as you think you are. Sometimes, having a song remind you of that can keep you from spinning off out of orbit.

 

            Finally, just as the election victory gave people such an immediate thrill or shock that they felt physically compelled to lay hands on each other, so can music bring us together with other people in the most immediate sense. Anyone who has been in the crowd at that moment when a concert went from being merely “good” to “absolutely transcendent” knows what I mean. Sometimes when you hear the right song at the right moment, you don’t just want to sing or dance or headbang alone. You want to grab the nearest person to you, to put your arm around them, to shout back the lines together. Sometimes we don’t just want that direct connection, we crave it.

 

Once again Geoff Rickly understands this, singing during the climax of Thursday’s seminal song Sugar In The Sacrament that  “this is all we’ve ever known of god… fight with me, let me touch you now”. For a lot of people, that feeling they get when they listen to an amazing song, that feeling of beauty and thrilled excitement, is the closest they’ve come to a religious experience, is the thing that gives them the “First Black President” jolt of energy, is the moment at which they feel connected to everyone and everything. And it makes them want to come together with people to love or fight or have sex or talk or just to be.  It has certainly had that effect on me; I remember listening to Thursday play that song at the Electric Ballroom in London, England. I had my right arm around the shoulders of Dusty, one of my very best friends since primary school. I was screaming the words back at Rickly with everything I had in me. I was staring at the fearsomely bright plain white lights above the stage, because I felt like I might explode or cry or lose it altogether if I looked down at the band tearing at their instruments onstage. Every quarter second a moving body would bounce off me, spin around me, slam into my chest, and it felt totally perfect. And when the song had ended, and the band had filed offstage, and the house lights had gone up, almost no-one left the room. People stood there, milling around, hugging total strangers.