Musical Spam

I'll lay down a ground rule before I start this: The quality of music is not enitrely subjective i.e. down to opinion. There is, factually, good music and bad music. What you like is irrelevant to what is good or bad musically. You can like music that is factually bad. I'm a musician and have discovered this and I know a lot of talented musicians who all share the same view and it would make sense to listen to the people who know most about the subject. (This is a whole different blog, heck, even a whole book potentially, there's so much to cover on this topic but, for the rest of this blog, if you won't accept it as truth at least recognise it's my premise)

Anyway, this leads me to my topic for this entry: Why are people content to listen to BORING or musically uninspring/unexciting/uniteresting music?
If you listen to the radio you'll agree with me that the vast amount of sound pumped out will quickly depart your memory as soon as the next song arrives. Trying to recall all you've listened to on the radio in one day is like standing on a bridge over a busy road and trying to read and memorise car number plates as vehicles drive below you. You may successfully read one, but it's vanished from your mind as soon as you move onto the next one (unless you listen to Capital, where the same songs are played about seven times in one day)
This is primarily because the unimaginably vast majority of music is fairly uninspiring and bland. This most definitely applies to the vile tosh dished out by the likes of Chris Brown, JLS, Ne-Yo, TI, et al. They could all be the same person.
Their (and other, don't think I'm prejudiced against RnB, Oasis are one of the biggest culprits in this, it's just that RnB is what is currently dominating the charts) music simply drifts inactively across our ears, never engaging most people, innocuous, unstimulating, devoid of a fresh voice, no challenging aspect, thin unpowerful nasal vocals and a rehashing of different "love" song buzz words. It's the same format of song reworked, reproduced, repackaged and resold. Nothing new, fresh or organic. Endlessly occupying the conveyor belt that is the music industry. It's not active, enaging or challenging on any real level. Hence why they ascend the charts so quickly and then vanish, only to be listened to again when we dust off 'NOW 71' for a house party.

It's what I like to call musical Spam- processed, repackaged from the irrelevant and unexciting parts of the animal, not ressembling real, organic, living, delicious meat at all. If you're a vegetarian, see one of my previous blogs!

And the real key reason people are happy to let empty music drop out of the radio and over their ears is because people don't like to be challenged.
Most people don't like, and because of the state of music aren't even used to, hearing songs with lyrics which force them to think and to assess themselves, their lives, their views. Most people don't want to hear songs which are musically, (NOT LYRICALLY. I'm talking about music not lyrics), new and exciting, forcing them to think really about how far can you stretch the term music, forcing them to try and accept and appreciate new kinds of musicianship, music that leads them to swirling, epic soundscapes like some kind of rippling space nebula of lights and colours you've never even conceived of. Most people want music to remain as something superficial- as a commodity (this is helped along by the big record labels, out only to make money, happy to provide us with the musical equivalent of Spam)

People don't even really want music that is going to engage them to really have fun! To really revel and get lost in pure, unadulterated musical enjoyment, one of the best gifts of humanity! Brilliant music doesn't have to engage you to have deep, reflective thoughts and emotions, it's just as valid for it to engage you in real, soaring, pulsating FUN, not simple apathy, with a willingness to let whatever you're being sold scrape across your ears and into your brain.

As a Christian who's met his fair share of people who don't want to hear the Gospel I know that human beings, more often than not, don't want to be challenged, don't want to be forced to review things in themselves and in their lives, don't want to take steps into new, exciting worlds, don't want to have to make an effort. It is the eternal cliche of being happy inside your comfort zone.

People need to wake up and appreciate the real value of music. To enjoy music on the level it deserves.

Music is a beautiful, humanity spanning, living, vibrant force. Albus Dumbledore once said to Harry Potter that music "is a magic that far exceeds any we teach at Hogwarts". We have to make a stand against music that has nothing to say, nothing to offer and nothing to create. Songs about love are well and good, but they need to be fresh, alive, simmering with energy and poignancy, not simply recycling the same words and ideas, that's not love at all. That's fake an plastic like Valentine's Day. Young person's in love, great what else is new?!
Please, I emplore you, next time a song from the charts happens upon your ears, LISTEN.
Think.
Ask yourself really, is this song doing anything for my life other than filling three minutes of it, keeping bordeom at bay?

I leave you with a quote from the band Switchfoot.
"If we're just adding to the noise-
turn off this song"

Rainy Town

There is a town somewhere, entwined around, laced across and running through a hill. The town is narrow, all the buildings taller than they are wide, all sardined together, walls white and slanted slate and steel rooves grey. The streets are like veins, thin and grey, almost blue, the tiny lines that carry life everywheere. They twist and turn and spin and loop and bend and veer and split and lead inescapably back, outlining the compressed buildings.
The town is so pressed it looks and feels like it could once have been a bigger town, sprawling like a puddle for uncharted, roaming miles, with gaping streets and discernible outlines, but some gigantic grey hand swept this metropolis up and rolled and pushed it untl it was this thin.
Like rolling up a newspaper, normally a vast sea of detail, spread out, every letter available, telling its own story. Space, air, freedom to roam, see the bigger picture. But when its rolled up, these tiny letters are thrown together, pressed up, gagging for air, barely enough space to be seen let alone tell their stories or discern themselves in the newspaer's entirety. It's clear when you see this rolled up paper that its full of life, characters, places, pictures, corners, little beauties. But they can't, for their sheer confusion and proximity, be seen.

And in the town it is always raining. Always raining.
And beautiful echoing siren voices chim throuogh the city veins, constantly there, but the citizens tune them out.
Vistitors suddenly become aware of them, rising from a drain or dropping from a pipe. One of those things you realise then wonder how you could tune it out when it's so present.
And all the time, underscored by the sounds of rain.

Rhys Laverty

From Your True Lover

We pretend to love the sun,
but the thunder and the rain stir our souls.
We keep it secret, just a whisper.

But the lightning and the water make us feel clean.

Like ghosts, free, in the dark,
for once unafraid of the shadows.

We love rainstorms at night,
purging and fresh,
glorious and beautiful.
Full of life, cascading redemption.

Droplets so frersh they break through the skin,
deep slumbering rumbles of satisfaction,
streaks of blistering light like new thoughts, strokes of genius.

And when the water trickles away,
swallowed,
and the sun defiles what was fresh,
and burns the blue and black and green,
it is all like an affair in the night,
an unexpected, tremulous, quivering, sensual visit
from your true lover.

Rhys Laverty