Unplug from the Music Monopoly
Uncategorized Observations in Time
My favorite band as far back as I can recall was the early 2000s alt-rock band Staind and to a greater degree the lead singer and songwriter of the band, Aaron Lewis. I was about 13 or 14 when I began listening to their music. We got satellite TV and for the first time, I had access to 24-hour music programming through MTV, MTV2, VHI, and Canadian outlet MuchMusic. I remember listening to "MTV Unplugged" with Staind and falling in love with their songs in acoustic fashion. It was the first time I heard the song “Can’t Believe” played that way. The way the notes and tone of his voice were arranged sank into my bones.
This was formative in such a way that - though I myself wasn’t a musician - I fell in love with being in the presence of musicians, listening to organically produced music, and getting to know those musicians as the complex individuals they were.
Aaron Lewis' music is not terribly difficult, ranging from a combination of 2-4 basic chord progressions, usually consisting of a Gmajor, Gminor, A, and some version of C, repeated over and over again. Its simplicity on paper is unparalleled by how Aaron sings, the emphasis placed on certain chords well-timed to correlative emotive themes. He sang about the human condition; being alive, raw and unfiltered by what we are often told in popular media. His songs relented against the idea that we live in a meritocracy, that creativity is rewarded even if it cannot be monetized, or that life is as black and white as it can often be portrayed. Life is wiggly… messy, and his music addressed some of my own parallel realities at tumultuous points in a rather tumultuous life in my short chronology to that point.
Music gave me a way to channel that energy I was feeling - anger, fear, jealousy, pain - into an emotive outlet; something that wore me down if you will, but also left me in thought as to why I was feeling the way I was. Moreover, I would often question if the music got me worked up or if I was feeling that way already. I liked Aaron's music because I could decipher the lyrics and have a greater understanding of what he was singing about (and if I didn’t, I’d change the lyrics to keep the same tempo and create a remix of how the song made me feel). This translated into other works of music I sought out or found. Much of my musical taste throughout the years leaned political or addressed fringe groups who were expressing their bottled emotions through music. At the heart of creativity is great struggle, something our mainstream music industry knows very little about.
Much of my musical taste over the years have evolved in to the conversation around music. I had the opportunity to do a podcast with a musician friend of mine whose uncle was a prominent journalist in the music industry. In the conversation, he talked about how the industry has uses computer algorithms to determine the most marketable product to curate for the masses - not spontaneous or creative, but predictive and boring. He addressed how difficult it is for new artists to make money in music, and how the industry since the 1980s has shifted away from signing rock bands (or groups in general) as they can concentrate their influence over one person versus an organized group (such as in a band).
I still listen to new music, and much of that comes from suggestions from my wife and some of my younger friends. I tend to defer back to what I listened to in high school otherwise, which is what I believe a good majority of us do as we enter middle-age (as I am). Not always bad either. My short list of oldies might as well have been written last week:
Fortunate Son - CCR
Eve of Destruction - Barry McGuire
Tightrope - Papa Roach
Redemption Song - Bob Marley
(and some newer ones)
American Life - Ed Dupas
Watch it Fall - Billy Strings
Current Events gets old though, and sometimes we need to change the channel. Don’t want to start biting my nails waiting for what’s next and all. And music with an agenda, regardless of how right or wrong it is, is still tellin ya’ what do do or how to think. I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to be turned on to some really cool and different music over the past couple of years. Music for the sake of music… My wife and I went with some friends to Electric Forrest last year. This was a three-day festival with music running from morning to night featuring EDM (electronic dance music), folk, rock, hip-hop, and so many other amalgamations of live music coming together for the sake of the show. Two things became clear during the course of being with some 70,000 people for a common purpose:
You can become invisible and you can levitate. How, do you ask? Sure. You become invisible when you are unrecognizable in a crowd. Okay, right then, what about the levitation? You rise above it. Why did the angels fly? They took themselves lightly.
I also listen to and have for many years listened to classical music. There is something to be said about listening to music for the sake of the music, no agenda. I took a class last year in classical music theory and have since then pursued my own interests in the piano and harmonica. My grandfather Dominick was a prominent harmonica musician around Benton Harbor, MI through the latter half of the 20th Century. If I am worth my own salt, perhaps some good noise will come from my go at it.
If there is any interest in the podcast I did, the episode session is called "House of the Rising Sun" with Tim Enright. I have included the link here. My degree is in Social Work, though I spent the first half of my working life as a paramedic. In the course of those travels, I sought to document some of these experiences in writing and podcast form. You meet a lot of interesting people along the path, and I felt behooved to share the information I was receiving along the way.
The episode I did with Tim revealed a lot to me about how the sausage was made in an industry I had come to love, only to find out I was confusing the food for the menu. Music is powerful, and the media industries know it. They use it to assert influence over our very thoughts and actions and given the mass frenzy for buying Stanley water cups at $60 only to find them all half off on Marketplace now, I submit to you the jury yet another exhibit of evidence that they got us by the pocketbooks.
