Why We Need Political Music

This may be a tad embarrassing, but after thinking doing some additional thinking, I have decided to issue a retraction of my recent post titled "No More Political Music."

(Retracting a post is a first for this blog. For the sake of contrast, I have left the post up, but I have deleted some parts I really didn't like).

That is not to say I will start writing much political music anytime soon, but in order to give a reason for this changed, I had spoken too broadly.  In reality, I do not need any grand philosophical reason, other than that just I feel like focusing on other kinds of music for the time being.  After doing some thinking, I decided the previous post is based on a faulty premise.  If we draw too bright a line between politics and the emotions that go into them, we risk losing perspective and compassion.  Here is an excerpt from the post in question:

So why no more political music?  It is because music is a vehicle for emotion, and politics should not be about emotion.  As a lawyer, I believe victories should be won on argument, not emotion.  If you take a position, be prepared to argue it, otherwise, you have no right to hold it.  It is not enough for something to feel right.  It is better to be able to say why something is right when all the noise and all the emotion is stripped away.

But of course, this is nonsense.  It is impossible to separate politics and emotions. This is because our emotions, and not just our arguments, inform our sense of justice.  It is sometimes too easy to shut down into apathy.  Caring is hard work.  I still believe it is important to ready every side to every story, and give every contrarian his or her fair hearing, but at some point we we run the risk of becoming too neutral.  We cannot stand by as passive observers while the world takes on important problems.  Political issues are real and they affect people's lives, and therefore political discussions must take the human element into account.  Our national conversation is not simply "an intellectual feast" (a phrase used by the late Judge Bork) or just one grand thought experiment.  It is instead an application of our values to the very serious problems that face us.  Because politics itself is a discussion about humanity, then music is fully equipped to handle it.

Admittedly, I have been a little bit discouraged by the political conversation in this country.  Even when "my side" wins, I still fee a nagging sense of frustration with the dialogue.  Just because emotion and politics do intersect, that does not mean it is impossible to have an over-saturation of emotion.  One need look no further than cable news to see a saturation of opinion with no basis in fact, and an abundance of those who make the case for fear instead of justice.  Listeners no longer need to be challenged because they now have the power to seek out whatever media is in line with their pre-formed opinions.  It is no longer considered virtuous to seek out opposing views.

This has spilled over into our government.  Partisanship is at a peak, and the dysfunction of our media is mirrored in our elected representatives.  But look one step further.  Our representatives may fail us, but we have also failed them. We the people have failed to get the government we want because we have failed to listen to each other.  We all need to turn off cable news.  Go read a book, or a newspaper, or the blog of a person you disagree with.  This is the only way our national conversation will become healthy again.  Become informed.  There is a place for logic and reason, however cold and dispassionate it may seem.

However, there is also a place for action.  Against the backdrop of today's noisy media, I do feel overwhelmed. Apathy always starts with a claim of "I don't know" which usually turns into "I cannot know."  The noisy partisans who think they are geniuses may be driving us down, but so are all those who would like to form reasoned opinions, but don't put in the effort.

And today's circumstances require more than the apathy we give them.  Our education system is nowhere close to equal.  We are still killing civilians with drone attacks.  We don't have equality in LGBT rights.  We are nowhere near to solving climate change.  Hopefully the rational arguments for justice can get us where we need to go.  But to say that human emotions play no part is ridiculous because these are human problems.  Everyone deserves the joys many of us take for granted. 

And music is perhaps better than anything at speaking to adversity.  If adversity is political, so be it, but you cannot take emotion and detach if from the search for justice.  Otherwise, we make ourselves heartless.  So I was clearly incorrect when I suggested that music and politics cannot mingle.  Who am I to say that the victims of oppression should not voice to that through their music?  What kind of hypocrisy would I preach if I were to say that expression is great, except when you're expressing thoughts about things that actually matter?


And now I'm done writing about politics (for now).

The Lost Art of Album Art

A couple years ago I was in a used clothing store, and I was happy to find a bin of old vinyl records for $0.50 each. I did not have a record player (and still don't, unfortunately), but I thought my good friend (and co-founder of People of the Future) Andrew would like them, so I picked up a few.  One of the albums in the box was Stand Up by Jethro Tull.  Stand Up was an album I had enjoyed for several years prior, but I only possessed it in digital form.  When I opened up the record I found something I did not expect:

Ok, maybe it's not that cool (it was 1969, after all), but it felt odd that I had liked the album for a while, and had been missing out on part of the experience the entire time. That's not to say that a paper pop-out of the band "standing up" is essential to enjoying the album, but I do enjoy little quirks.

It does raise a larger question about album art in general, and how important it is (or should be) to us as listeners.  Album art, is of course, is a natural and foreseeable product of the record industry.  If you need to put a record in a piece of cardboard, you might as well make it look pretty.  Musicians really went to town with this, and in some cases the artwork is just as iconic as the actual music contained on the record.

King Crimson's In the Court of the Crimson King comes to mind:

Not only does the album cover get your attention, but most people would agree when they hear the opening riff of "21st Century Schizoid Man" that the cover pretty accurately describes the character of the music.

I personally enjoy album art that relates to the music in some profound way. Consider Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here.  The two themes of the album were 1) the experience of losing someone to mental illness, and 2) the band's criticisms of the music industry.  These two themes intersected in the story of Syd Barrett, and the album's cover powerfully conveys the message of the music:

One can also take a different approach, and choose a cover that deliberately has nothing to do with the music.  This was the process behind Pink Floyd's Atom Heart Mother where graphic designer Storm Thorgerson was reportedly instructed to take a photograph of whatever he wanted, which ended up being a cow in a pasture:

It is my feeling that album covers featuring pictures of the artists are not as memorable, but of course, there are notable exceptions:

Well, this has certainly been fun reminiscing about the late 60s and early 70s, but now what?  I believe that in 10 to 15 years discs will largely disappear, and so what does that mean for the future of album art?  In the iTunes/Amazon MP3 age albums still have a picture associated with them, but you need to put on your reading glasses to make it out.  One could have the greatest album cover ever, and most people will only see it displayed as a 1 inch by 1 inch display on their ipods.  It's discouraging.

There are, of course, many good reasons to get rid of discs.  For one, they are terribly inefficient.  I consider myself an environmentalist, and to me it makes no sense to create plastic discs and ship them across the world when we could transmit the same information digitally. I do not have any hard numbers on this, but it stands to reason there would be considerable savings by replacing discs altogether, and markets will inevitably want to do things as cheaply as possible.  Radiohead reportedly considered releasing their album In Rainbows in a digital-only format, but ultimately rejected this idea over concerns that not all fans would have access to the material. I personally think this will become less of an issue as internet access for the general population improves, but it is definitely something to think about for the time being. Ironically, Radiohead, as far as modern bands go, tends to be quite focused on album art.  One wonders how they will react to a future that is based upon digital-only releases.

Some have noticed that MP3 files do technically have a lower quality than compact discs.  This is certainly true, but one wonders if the general public really cares that much.  I consider myself to an audio person for the most part, but I admit I cannot tell the difference between a CD audio file and an MP3 encoded at 256 kbps. That is not to say I think the distinction is unimportant.  (I'm sure I'll write about this issue soon). In any case, I think that improvements in bandwidth and increases in hard drive space will mean that in the next few years you will see a shift toward a sale of lossless audio files.

It is worth questioning why there should be such a thing as album art at all.  For most of music history it would seem that musical compositions were not generally tied to a specific piece of visual art created for the purposes of promoting the work. (I could certainly be wrong about this, and it sounds like an interesting topic for research).  Either way, we do not now usually associate classical compositions with a piece of "cover art" per se.  One could make the argument that an album with no cover is actually a restoration to what music should have been all along: an absolute statement divorced from any interpretive device.  Why should music be anything more than simply what you make of it?  Consider the line spoken by Fran Drescher's character in the spoof rock documentary This is Spinal Tap: "You think the cover is the reason an album sells?  What about the White Album?  There was nothing on that cover!"

But now the lid is off the box.  Some past albums are so associated with their cover trying to separate the two would be ridiculous.  (Leave it to xkcd to demonstrate this point).  Going forward, it is a different story. Album art came about because it was necessary.  Can we convince ourselves that it is still necessary even though we no longer have cardboard to decorate?  Even if we do not need album art, I think simply liking it is a good enough reason to keep it.  I'm willing to let the fiction go forward if you are.


And don't forget to eat a peach for peace.  Cheers.

No More Political Music

I would like to take this opportunity to say that I will no longer be making any more political music.

I am not going so far as to say that my previous political music has been repudiated, and I will probably continue to play some of those songs at future shows.  But I no longer think that I should be writing new political music.

As I previously stated, ever since I "released" the very confused album called Nine Questions I have been increasingly uncomfortable with the album's treatment of politics, specifically, the mixture of the spiritual and the political.  Is it really appropriate for spiritual tunes such as "Shifts" and "The Clockmaker" to appear alongside highly charged political tracks such as "Liberty" or "Comments on the Political Situation"? Because I am someone who is very troubled by the mixture of faith and politics in this country, I guess I get pretty mad at myself when I find myself doing the same thing.

So why no more political music?  It is because music is a vehicle for emotion, and politics should not be about emotion.  As a lawyer, I believe victories should be won on argument, not emotion.  If you take a position, be prepared to argue it, otherwise, you have no right to hold it.  It is not enough for something to feel right.  It is better to be able to say why something is right when all the noise and all the emotion is stripped away.

There is, of course, an analytical element to music, and some, such as Arnold Schoenberg, have tried to remove emotion from music altogether (at least this is how I perceive serial music, but please tell me I am wrong).  But to say that music is anything other than pure emotion in sonic form is to miss its beauty.  Because of music's power, transmitting a political message along with it could perhaps be seen as nothing less than problematic, even if that message may happen to be the right one.  The arguments should be able to stand on their own, not be propped up by a crutch, however beautiful that crutch may be.

Political music does have its merits without question.  Many would point to Bob Dylan as an example of political music done the right way.  I agree.  But Bob Dylan is great because he was right back then.  What if an equally skilled and clever songwriter had come along and communicated a pro-segregation, pro-war agenda?   I certainly doubt such a person would have escaped history's dustbin in the long run, but the power of music may have allowed such a person to do significant damage in the short term.  If music can give weight to a positive idea, what is stopping it from giving weight to a negative idea?

And do not forget about Richard Wagner.  For the past 150 years we have been trying unsuccessfully how to reconcile the beautiful music he created with the toxic political messages he placed beneath the surface.  It would be unfair to say that music alone was responsible for the rise of Hitler, but evil will easily disguise itself as beauty whenever it can.  As I wrote earlier, I do believe we as listeners have the right to take the music we enjoy and weed out the political messages we do not like, but that does not mean the process is anything close to easy.

Certainly on some political questions we have decided as a nation that there are clear right answers, and no music, however skillfully constructed will change that.  But what about the countless other issues where the "correct" answer is far from clear?  Many issues in today's dialogue fall in this category.  Is music equipped to weigh in on the nuances, or does it run the risk of over-simplification?  All in all, I have come to distrust political music not because I doubt music's effectiveness to at conveying a message.  Quite the contrary, I find music too powerful to be trusted.

And in many ways I do not trust myself.  If I thought I was right about everything, perhaps I would still be interested in writing political music.  But part of growing up is realizing your own limitations and seeing all sides of an issue.  On some issues I know I am right, but on many more I am worried I may be wrong. Before you can have true conviction, you must know what it is you do not know, and then you must learn where to go from there.  As for me, I fall under the former, but not the latter.  Nine Questions is artistically inadequate because, despite its title, it was more interested in answering questions than asking them, and these supposed answers came out before they were ready.  Don't get me wrong, I plan to live a life of argument, and I plan to win.  But for right now, my arguments will not appear in my music.

Music For Edgy and Intellectual Musicians

As I walking to class I saw one of my classmates.  This would have been fine except that both of us were listening to our ipods, and I'm sure we both had that sinking feeling "Oh no, I have to talk to someone now instead of staying lost in my tunes."  To her credit, she acknowledged this conundrum and laughed about it, and then decided to ask me what I had been listening to.  This reminded me of something one of my friends had told me about, where ipod listeners in New York City would confront each other and whichever one was listening to more obscure music was the "winner." 

"Dave Matthews Band," I said, acknowledging my defeat.

I made sure to clarify that the reason for this has been mostly to revisit my high school self, and that I don't fit into the usual stereotype of DMB fans. I am not a drunk frat boy with a popped collar, etc.

"Oh I never made those assumptions about you," she replied.  "I just assumed you had terrible music tastes."

Ouch!!

I told her that I usually listen to enough weird music that I had built up the credibility to occasionally listen to DMB, but by that point the music snob in me had officially evaporated.  The truth is, I'm used to people saying that the music I like is too weird, so being caught on a day when I was listening to something "mainstream" really threw me off guard.  I then started to second guess myself.  Even for those of us who claim to be interested in music as a pure art form are still influenced by the tastes and opinions of those around us.  For most of college I didn't listen to much DMB, perhaps to protest how popular they had become. Only recently I've come back around.

So when I saw my classmate again the next day I said, "Today I decided to listen to something edgy and intellectual."

"Oh, is it Steve Reich or something?" she asked.

Sure enough, the music playing on my ipod was Steve Reich's 2009 Pulitzer Prize winning composition "Double Sextet."  I sounded amazed that she guessed correctly, but she just said "Oh, I just know what edgy and intellectual means."

So I asked myself, if Steve Reich, one of the greatest composers in American history, can be put so neatly into a little box, then what makes him so artistically different from all the rock bands of the world?  What is the basis for the value judgments we make?

It's a hard question, but there has to be an answer.  Music fans of all genres cling to greatness, and if greatness doesn't actually exist, then all of us are under a collective fallacy, governed by no standards other than our own tastes.

I went to a concert in Rochester where "Double Sextet" was performed at the Eastman School of Music.  The concert was very well-attended, much more so than many other concerts I had seen at the same hall.  Particularly striking was the number of faculty members present.  The audience was pretty much a who's who of musical importance.  If you want people to know that you know what's up in modern music, then going to a Steve Reich concert is the way to do it.

Of course, nothing ever begins this way.  If the classical music establishment loves Reich now, it's only because he had rebelled against a different sort of establishment back in the 60s and 70s.  Reich came of age when dense dissonant music was still the norm, and by creating his signature free-flowing minimalism, he had the courage to do the exact opposite of everything that was expected of him.

So why is it that we can put Steve Reich in a neat little box?  Maybe it's because he invented the box.  But so did Dave Matthews.

When I was in 7th grade and all of my friends listened to Green Day, DMB's Before These Crowded Streets was "edgy and intellectual" by comparison, and most importantly, it felt authentic.  For me, DMB as fratboy champion didn't come until later.

I think we all want authenticity in the music we listen to, but that is balanced against an acute awareness of what everyone else is listening to.  If all the music you listen to is purposely obscure, then you can't sit around on Saturday night and compare favorite albums, because no one's lists will overlap.  At the same time, people do want to be the innovative listeners who have discovered something no one else has.  Listening is a social activity, and no one wants to be left behind, and certainly no one wants to be embarrassed.

But embarrassment has little connection to truth.  When someone says that a particular artist is their guilty pleasure, it says nothing about the content of the music itself, only that somewhere in society there exists a negative judgment about it.  But if you're anything like me, you don't want to be caught listening to something that may give away that your tastes are terrible.  All of these social issues go through the mind of a listener, and curiously, very few of these issues actually have any relation to the sound coming out, and how it moves us on an emotional level

So if authenticity exists, I have found it difficult to boil away all the other factors that determine why we listen to the music we listen do.  If you treat it like a sport, you're likely to lose often.  Ironically, it is the people who love music the most who try to outfox each other.  Perhaps we should not define ourselves by what we listen to, but rather how we listen to it.  If we listen to popular music with the attention any music deserves, then shouldn't that be better than listening to classical music just because we think it will make us seem smart?  Reich had it right when he said that the distinction between popular music and classical music is only artificial.  Similarly, I would say the the stock we put in someone else's opinion is also artificial.  If you like something, listen to it.  It should be that simple.  Of course, it never actually is.

Protect What is Important to You

Now that law school is in full force, I have asked myself whether or not I will have the time to focus on the new musical projects that I would like to complete.

The answer, of course, is that I have no choice. Every time I have made a conscious effort to set music aside and focus on other things, it has never lasted for long.  Let's keep it that way.

During orientation there was a faculty panel, and Dean Chemerinsky asked each of the professors to give advice for those beginning law school.  After the obligatory "I don't believe in giving advice" disclaimers, each professor had a couple of brief words. I don't remember anything anyone said, except for Prof. Glater. Perhaps he was telling us what we wanted to hear, but he said something which was important for me: "Find that interest that is not related to law, and protect that. Don't let anyone tell you this should be your whole life."

Of course, for me that interest is music.  And so I refuse to live by the notion that music has no place in the high-stress fast-paced world of law.  Otherwise I wouldn't have brought my recording equipment to Irvine. We are told to get an education to makes our lives better. But any life that closes off the important things is not worth pursuing. Rather than live in extremes, I would instead like to keep things as balanced as I can. I might be dreaming if I think I can make the album of my dreams during the first year of law school. But we creative types always live in a fantasy.

Comments on the Paul Ryan/Tom Morello Situation

Over the past few days there has been a little explosion in the media relating to the musical tastes of Paul Ryan, the Republican candidate for Vice-President.  Ryan claimed that one of his favorite groups is the left-leaning activist rock band Rage Against the Machine, but he went on to say that he only likes the music and not the words.  This provoked an angry response by guitarist Tom Morello, in the form of an op-ed in Rolling Stone Magazine.  This excerpt I found particularly interesting:

Ryan claims that he likes Rage's sound, but not the lyrics. Well, I don't care for Paul Ryan's sound or his lyrics. He can like whatever bands he wants, but his guiding vision of shifting revenue more radically to the one percent is antithetical to the message of Rage.

I wonder what Ryan's favorite Rage song is? Is it the one where we condemn the genocide of Native Americans? The one lambasting American imperialism? Our cover of "Fuck the Police"? Or is it the one where we call on the people to seize the means of production? So many excellent choices to jam out to at Young Republican meetings!

Not that it has a great deal of relevance for the purposes of this discussion, but I support Obama in this election, and would probably find myself closer to Morello than to Ryan on the political spectrum.  Even so, I find Morello's response problematic.

Morello says Ryan can like whatever bands he wants, but then is quick to offer his own view about the correct way to interpret the music of Rage Against the Machine.  As a musician myself, I am sympathetic to Morello's stance.  To ignore the words in Rage Against the Machine's music is to ignore a huge component of the total product, and no artist wants to see that happen, whatever that particular component might be.  But when you break it down, Morello does not have a strong leg to stand on.  Who is to say what a particular piece of music means?  To the dismay of many artists, when something is submitted to the public for consumption, the artist loses the monopoly that he or she had on how that piece is to be interpretted.  And realistically, how can it be any other way?  Music is worthless if the listener does not have the right to assign his or her own meaning to what is being heard.  What good would a Monet painting be if everyone who looked at it focused on the same elements and we were all moved in exactly the same way?  When I listen to music it takes me to other places, places which are unique to my mind own mind and off limits to all others.

So then if Paul Ryan wants to listen to Rage Against the Machine only for the music and not for the words attached to it, no one has the right to tell him he should not do that, not even the music's creator.  Most musicians, including Morello I presume, want to be outlived by their music, to see it stand for all time.  We may think we can attach a little sticker saying "This piece means _____," and many musicians over the centuries have done this very thing. But the more time passes, the more the particular circumstances surrounding the composition become obscured.  That is not to say we shouldn't try to investigate the intent of the composer, but to take it as infallible would be an error.

A well-crafted song dealing with lost love, for example, can have a wide appeal because many people will be able to relate to that situation in some way, and few would find the topic controversial.  Political music, on the other hand, is purposely designed to be contrarian and to incite strong feelings about specific issues.  If music is universal, then political music is by far the most un-universal variation.  I'm sure some have felt that politics and music will always be an uncomfortable pairing for this reason.  Attempts to detach music from its political intent are nothing new.  Wagner's opera are still enjoyed by many today, even though they were laced with distasteful political messages.  The only other alternative would be to reject Wagner entirely, and from an artistic standpoint that is unacceptable.  So then it stands that the act of picking out what we like and rejecting what we do not like is a listener's right.  Paul Ryan can sort out the difference on his own.

The Other Album

A few weeks ago I posted a very weird instrumental track called "My Own."  After a little bit more post-production, mixing, and mastering, I have decided to release "My Own" as a single, and it is now available on digital retailers.

Aside from its length of 3:49, there is very little about "My Own" that warrant its release as a single.  There are no discernible words, and no appealing melody of any kind.  The point of the track is only to express layered electronic textures.  From a compositional standpoint, there is very little material to speak of.  But I guess the track's lack of appropriateness as a single makes me particularly inclined to release it in that form.  I've never been one to do things the conventional way.

Usually a track is released as a single to anticipate the upcoming release of an album.  But as I mentioned earlier, "My Own" does not fit the organic feel I want to have for the upcoming album "Hydrogen."  So I then thought "My Own" could be released as a stand-alone single, not attached to any album.  That is where the tracks stands right now.  However, I think about music in large chunks, and so I am fairly convinced that "My Own" will not remain an orphan for too long.

One day I was thinking about expressionist art.  (Don't you love paragraphs that start off like that)  The movement began started to gain ground in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  There are a number of famous expressionist paintings, and probably the most well-known is "The Scream" by Edvard Munch.  Wikipedia has this to say about expressionism: "Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas. Expressionist artists sought to express meaning or emotional experience rather than physical reality."

I had begun to think recently about creating a musical project based around this idea.  Of course, expressionism as a musical style already exists, and it is largely associated with the atonal composer Arnold Schoenberg, and his followers in the Second Viennese School.  Now I don't intend to create an album of atonal classical music, but there is something that can be learned from it.  In the early 20th century time atonality was a new discovery, and it was used to convey certain emotions that previous music could not quite grasp.  Atonal music did not really catch on as it were, except in academic circles, perhaps to its dissonance and rhythmic obscurity.  But atonality as a way to express emotion, often uncomfortable emotion, did filter its way into the popular imagination.  (Seen any horror films lately?  Listen to the soundtrack!)

Just as atonality was a new discovery 100 years ago, I asked myself "What is the new discovery of today that has the potential to change music?"  Of course, the answer is electronics.  To be fair, electronics have been used in music for quite some time, but with the rise of digital recording and editing, the artistic potential of electronic music has really exploded in the last 20 years.

So if you were to mix the artistic goals of expressionism with the electronic technology of today, what would you get?  You might actually end up with something that sounds a little bit like "My Own."  So before long I found myself with the lead single I wanted, but it was the lead single to an entirely different album than the one I was already working on.

But why would this be bad?  "Hydrogen" is mostly written and planned, but very little of it is recorded.  "Expression," on the other hand, is mostly not yet written, but the parts that are written are already completely recorded because they were created spontaneously from the ground up.  Having another album as an outlet is actually quite healthy.  The tracklist for "Hydrogen" is already pretty much locked in, but I also wanted to allow myself to come up with other new music spontaneously, and not have to worry about whether or not it fit with "Hydrogen."  So having "Expression" as a vague parallel project will be a very good thing.  Just don't expect either to be done anytime soon. (At least you get to listen to the single...)